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comradekatara · 15 days

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lok was truly so crazy for being like yeah the season 1 villain is an allegory for maoism?? except he’s literally not a communist in any meaningful way bc he never once even mentions the issue of uh. class. and season 2’s villain is ostensibly a theocrat who exploits his religious/spiritual authority to exert neocolonial control over a recently independent territory/people but all he really wants is to fuse with the personification of chaos and plunge the world into darkness for ten thousand years. and season 3’s villains are an anarchist terror cell who do have clearly defined goals and advocate for proletarian rule but also they’re fucked up little sadist freaks who love chaos and torturing teenagers. and season 4’s villain is a fascist ethnonationalist dictator and she’s gonna be the ONLY character in the entire show to mention that the ostensibly independent city state where most of the show’s plot has taken place is literally a fire nation neocolony proxy state on stolen earth kingdom land. the famously anarchist character who values independent personal freedom and hates nothing more than being told what to do and telling people what to do is now the agent of said neocolonial state in the form of being the literal chief of police. who gives a shit about her arc as an abused disabled girl who fights to assert her power and autonomy while also learning to accept her own vulnerability around the people she loves, and how that narrative might be personally meaningful to many disabled people. she’s a cop now. oh, and the firstborn son of the pacifist monk who had to fight tooth and nail to assert his values as the sole survivor of the genocide against his people is now a military general, again, for the army of said neocolonial proxy state. the kid who was orphaned as a child and grew up on the street fighting to survive another day is helplessly stupid and naive and his only purpose is to chew the scenery in increasingly less funny, more obnoxious ways. if you were expecting the even remotely coherent politics of atla, a story fundamentally about the struggle to resist imperialist violence both as a target of it and from within the imperial core while grappling with your identity and the impetus to preserve your cultural heritage in the face of genocide, then you’re shit out of luck, because that show was made in the bush era, back when liberals protesting the iraq war and implicating americans in their role in upholding imperialist agendas was acceptable. but this is the obama era, so of course you can still deport people at staggering records and drone strike civilians and worship at the altar of capitalism, as long as you remember that reinforcing the status quo through implicit violence is good as long as you’re a queer disabled brown woman!!! more woman of color chiefs of police!!! more bisexual woman ceos!!!! more indigenous war profiteers!!!! more hot girl ethnostates!!! absurd fucking show…

#incoherent identity politics neoliberal mess……#socially progressive fiscally conversative: the show #sorry for this i know i make this post like once a week but i was explaining lok to my friend who has seen like 2 atla eps #and every time i explain it im just like….. how is this possible #[fox news guy voice] THANKS OBAMA #lok crit #to be clear i love that korra is a queer disabled brown woman…… i am not immune to identity politics obviously #but like. i do recognize that as a flaw of mine…. in fairness….#I’m sure there’s like a bunch of stuff I’m missing rn too #but swagever.

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deadpresidents · 6 months

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Today is a good day to remember Salvador Allende, the democratically-elected President of Chile, who died in September 1973. Allende most likely shot himself in the La Moneda Presidential Palace in Santiago when he could no longer fight off the forces of General Augusto Pinochet as they executed a violent coup heavily supported by the United States and Henry Kissinger. Pinochet then ruled Chile as an American-supported "anti-communist" military dictator for nearly two decades in which tens of thousands of Chileans were killed, jailed, or simply disappeared.

Allende, a socialist, was popularly elected as Chile's President with promises to strengthen democracy in Latin America and institute significant economic, education, and health reforms in order to dramatically improve the social welfare of the Chilean people. Some American leaders, like Henry Kissinger, saw him as a potential threat -- a South American version of Fidel Castro -- and the CIA begin laying the groundwork for eventual regime change.

The biggest problem with Allende, in Kissinger's mind, was the very fact that he was freely and democratically elected. In a memo to President Nixon that is still somewhat shocking to read, Kissinger wrote that "Allende was elected legally...He has legitimacy in the eyes of Chileans and most of the world; there is nothing we can do to deny him that legitimacy or claim he does not have it." Kissinger then reminds Nixon that "We are strongly on record in support of self-determination and respect for free election; you are firmly on record for non-intervention in the internal affairs of this hemisphere and of accepting nations 'as they are.'" Then he spends several pages outlining ways in which to undermine, delegitimize, and potentially eliminate "the Problem." After all, as Kissinger wrote shortly before Allende was elected, "I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves."

#History #Salvador Allende #Chile #Latin America #South America #Allende #Augusto Pinochet #Henry Kissinger #Richard Nixon #President Nixon #Nixon Administration #Foreign Policy #CIA #Regime Change #Coups #Kissinger #Death of Henry Kissinger #Politics

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prontaentrega · 11 days

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@fluctuating-fixations It's mostly about some specific word choices that don't really change the plot or the whole direction of the story so it's not like, an entirely different book, but they alter the whole tone of it and makes it worse to me. The first thing i noticed I didn't like about it was when Valentín first mentions Marta and he says "my girl" i immediately went he would not fucking say that!!!!!

In the original Spanish the word he uses for Marta is "compañera" which translates to partner or comrade (F). It's not the most common word to talk about your girlfriend in spanish so it's a deliberate choice on his part. What was the need to change it? to make it sound more natural? to make him sound less political?

In that same page he goes on to talk about his guerrilla comrades and he actually uses the word compañeros for them. The masculine/neutral form of the word he uses for Marta

But the one that really annoyed me is this one

Because in this part the word he uses in Spanish is, again, compañera. And idk about you but i think it has a completely different meaning if you say "if she's my woman, it's because she's in the struggle too" or if you say "if she's my comrade/partner, it's because she's in the struggle too." And besides he would never call anyone "his woman" it's just completely contrary to his whole character... this and a bunch of other small stuff like it mischaracterizes Valentín as more of a macho figure than he really is. And this is an issue i have with literally every adaptation and translation of this book tbh everyone's always so fixed on making this college educated communist latino more violent and sexist and angry. I wonder why

This one's minor but it also bothers me, when talking about the panther woman movie there's a character that in Spanish is "the architect colleague" but in English she's "the assistant" ????? what reason was for that other than misogyny

Maybe this is a non-issue and I'm nitpicking but with the book's narrative being exclusively a dialogue between two people, word choice is fundamental because this is the only way we have of knowing these characters. And especially on a book where gender expression and gender roles are such a main theme this is not like, getting mad because they switched coffe for tea on a sentence. Which I'm also mad about btw. They completely ditch any mention of the characters drinking mate and switch it for tea. Once again I'm asking what was the point? to make it all less exotic? to make it easier to understand to English speakers? having to look up what a mate is or just guess it from context isn't gonna kill anybody, but the translation is so afraid of alienating its gringo audience that it discards cultural context and reduces its only two characters to shallower versions of themselves. And I'd say the cultural context is pretty relevant because this is a book about two political prisoners under a dictatorship that was written and published when Puig's own country was under a neoliberal dictatorship. It's not Vonnegut's cat's cradle with a made up dictator in a made up country, this was actually the situation in Argentina in 1976.

And obviously someone who only speaks english won't notice any of this. What makes me sad about this is that none of the problems i have with it have to do with impossible cultural clashes, it would be extremely simple to fix all of that. It's a tragedy that the only english translation of a latin american book about gender and propaganda was made in 1976. But still I'd rather someone read the book even with the bad translation than not read it at all

#chizitxt #ive been wanting to complain about this translation for so long thanks for giving me an excuse ✌️#el beso de la mujer araña #id probably have more to complain about if i read more of it but i dumped it pretty early on

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boot2004 · 8 months

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For some reason these are some issues I’ve seen people argue over so I’ll just say what it is

Nazi Germany was far worse than the Soviet Union, even under Stalin

The Soviet Union still wasn’t great, especially under Stalin

America was worse than the Soviet Union before and after Stalin’s rule (during Stalin’s rule America was better but still awful)

Ukraine definitely has problems but in a war against a state that wants to commit genocide, especially against the people in the state it’s attacking, the defender is in the right (so Ukraine is in the right)

RUSSIA ISN’T COMMUNIST IT’S AN OLIGARCHY WITH A DICTATOR THAT’S LITERALLY THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF COMMUNISM

Canada was absolutely in the wrong for praising that SS fuck

US bad but that doesn’t mean the states opposed to the US are inherently good

All states are bastards but some are worse than others

#anarchism #anarchocommunism #communism #ukraine #geopolitics #politics #us politics

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ktwritesstuff · 1 year

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The Professor (Pedro Pascal smut inspired by SNL)

Title: The Professor Fandom: RPF: Pedro Pascal, Hot for teacher AU Rating: Explicit Characters & Pairings: Pedro Pascal (professor of Latin American Studies) x Reader (bedraggled PhD candidate) Word Count: ~2000 Summary: As if that SNL skit wasn't going to launch a thousand smut fics... As always, lovingly beta-read by @bs-fangirl. Additional notes below the cut.

Notes: This is my first "real person fic," may God have mercy on my soul. Additionally, my Spanish is virtually non-existent; I've relied heavily on Google Translate and asking my coworkers questions on the sly, my apologies for any errors! As we all know, this is not a story about actual human Pedro Pascal, but the fictionalized version which lives rent free in our heads. And as proper fan girl culture dictates, we keep this shit locked down. But just in case:

This note is for actual human Pedro Pascal and Pedro Pascal only. I don't know why you would click "Read More" on a post clearly labeled "Pedro Pascal, Hot for teacher AU" but if you have, I beg of you LOOK AWAY, SIR. LOOK AWAY. If you choose to proceed, I will not be responsible for any trauma you may suffer as a result. Thank you.

For everyone else, I give you:

The Professor

Professor Pedro Pascal was the head of the Latin American Studies department at your small college. You had never been in his classes as an undergrad–Latin American Fiction and Poetry, and a special seminar on the Magical Realism of Isabel Allende–but it was well known around campus that his family had fled Pinochet when he was a child, which granted him unsurprising street cred among your communist-leaning circle of friends. He had been appointed the interim director of the campus’s Literary Center–after his predecessor was ousted for exposing himself in a virtual meeting.

As the Center’s Graduate Assistant Director, it meant although he wasn’t technically your boss, you were suddenly spending an annoying amount of time working around the throngs of freshman girls who flocked to his office hours. You couldn’t really blame them. He was, if not an outright heartthrob, a reasonably good-looking college professor. A strong face, with a short, rugged beard, a striking Roman nose, and deep brown eyes with the most charming crow's feet. He had a lean physique, with a hint of softness at the belly, just this side of a “dad bod.”

His modest good looks combined with a cheerful disposition and a penchant for quoting the love poetry of Pablo Neruda were like catnip for liberal arts majors. And although you were a card-carrying bra-burning feminist, you weren’t entirely immune.

“Professor,” his office door was open, but you knocked on the frame.

Pedro looked up from the stack of resumes you had been sent to review before the selection panel for a new director.

“Coffee?”

“Mi angelita,” he sighed, rising from his desk to graciously accept the warm cup from your hands. “What time is the first candidate arriving?”

“Noon,” you said. “You, me, Dr. Monroe, the Provost, and Assistant Dean are sitting on the interview panel.”

Pedro looked at his watch.

“Shit,” he sighed. “I have Intro to Creative Writing at 9:30.”

“I’ll set up the conference room,” you said as he shoved his papers into his messenger bag, slinging it over his shoulder, still carrying the open mug as he raced down the stairs.

“Thank you, Angel. Thank you!”

It was a six month process to find a new director. Six months of staring across the conference table, chewing on the end of your pen, pretending not to be affected by the way he leaned in when you spoke and stroked his thumb across his lower lip in concentration. Or the obscene way he spread his legs in a comfortable chair while speaking with candidates in front of a panel of students.

And having to do it all over again when your first choice–a student favorite–declined the position, to stay in New Jersey of all things. You knew Pedro was relieved to have reached a conclusion; he didn’t care for the administrative duties or politics. He wanted to teach, to be with his students. You admired that about him, he appreciated your organizational skills (and the fact that when you made coffee it counted as a meal.) You worked well together, but now that was coming to an end.

It was past 9pm and you had already closed up the Literary Center for the night, but Pedro was still in his office, reviewing students’ papers.

“I’m done for the night, Professor,” you said. “Is there anything I can do to help you get out of here?”

“That depends,” he said, with a wry smile that had you convinced he was only half-kidding. “How’s your Spanish?”

“Hmm,” you said, stepping into the light of the desk lamp. “¿Dónde está la biblioteca? ¿Como estas? Bien, gracias. ¡Qué lluvia! And that’s all I’ve got.”

Pedro chuckled. “I’ve heard worse.”

“That and un tequila, por favor.”

“Tequila,” Pedro repeated, intrigued. He reached into the bottom drawer of his desk, pulling out a bottle of Patron. “That I can help you with.”

Your mouth fell open in surprise.

“Professor,” you deadpanned. “I don’t know if you knew this, but alcohol is not permitted in academic buildings.”

"Lucky for me," he said, picking up the bottle. "I have tenure."

You laughed and Pedro laughed; you offered to run downstairs to retrieve a pair of glasses and a salt shaker from the kitchen while he finished grading papers in record speed.

“I worry about these kids,” Pedro said, three shots deep. “I do! The moment they hear something the least bit troubling, they refuse to engage with the material. Our world exists in shades of gray. They want things to be ideologically pure, when what they need is to learn to discern. To question. To decide!”

“I understand what you’re saying, Professor,” you said.

“Pedro, please,” he interrupted you. “Pedro.”

“Pedro,” you repeated. “I agree, but there’s no reason we need to elevate and spotlight the same tired canon of bigots, abusers, and dead white men year after year when there is so much more out there.”

Pedro downed another shot and pointed an accusing finger at you.

“Look who’s talking,” he said. “Your PhD is in Shakespeare Studies!”

“I know,” you laughed, pouring yourself another glass. “I know, I’m a terrible person.”

“You are not,” he said, suddenly serious. “You have an incredible mind and the most beautiful way of looking at the world.”

You felt languid and relaxed and warm. You liked the way Pedro looked at you. There was something undeniably romantic about getting drunk in the richly furnished office, with its leather armchairs and oak bookshelves, debating the merits of Nietzsche and bell hooks.

“Okay,” you broke the silence. “Okay, here’s a fun fact you can pass along to your successor. There are 3 prints signed by Allen Ginsberg in this building, and you can see them all from this desk.”

“There’s the one on the wall,” Pedro said, pointing to the framed portrait hanging above the bookshelf.

“Yes,” you said, rising from your chair and moving to the other side of the desk. “And there in the hallway, on the right, that's an excerpt from "Howl" they set in the printshop downstairs.”

You perched on the arm of his chair to get closer to his eye-level, pointing through the open door. You slipped, nearly falling into his lap and he placed a hand on your back to steady you. He smelled amazing, like old leather and warm spices.

“And there, in the stairwell, you can just make out the top of his head on that linotype,” you explained. “Do you see it?”

“I do.”

When you turned your head, Pedro was looking at you. Perhaps it was the tequila, but you were almost certain he was staring at your lips, his eyes heavily lidded, smiling lazily.

“You look tired,” you warned. You should have gotten up to leave, but you didn’t want to. You didn’t want this warm, lovely feeling to ever end.

“Just thinking,” he said.

“About what?”

“Kissing you,” he said.

You were almost surprised; you had spent so much time trying to convince yourself that your semester-long flirtation was a one-sided puppy crush. You had been so busy with your research and recruiting and planning, you had forgotten somewhere along the way that you were a stone cold fox with tits and ass for days and enough sex appeal to blow the top off Mount St. Helens.

“You can,” you said, turning your body toward him. “I don’t mind.”

“I shouldn’t.”

“Fine then,” you turned to stand.

Pedro seized you by the waist, pulling you back into his lap and into a long, slow kiss. His lips were surprisingly soft and his mouth tasted like salt and lime as his tongue brushed into yours with careful, confident strokes.

“That was nice,” your eyes fluttered open as Pedro finally pulled away. “You’re a good kisser.”

“You, too,” Pedro said. “Again?”

You tilted your chin, touching the point on your neck, just below your ear. As Pedro leaned in, working the beginnings of a hickey into your neck, you guided his hands from your waist to your breasts. You pressed against him, moving to straddle his thigh.

“More?” Pedro asked.

“Yes,” you panted. You braced yourself on the back of the chair, one hand on either side of his head, grinding against his leg, feeling hot and wet as he kneaded your breasts with reverent appreciation.

“Mi amor,” he breathed.

“Pedro,” you held his face, nipping at his bottom lip.

“Dime, lo qué quieres.”

“Fuck.” His accent went straight to your cunt. You ran one hand up his thigh, groping at the crotch of his chinos.

Pedro let out an obscene moan and hoisted you up onto his desk. He slid his hands up your thighs, fingers slipping into your panties. He ran his fingertips through your folds, tracing circles around the swollen nub of your clit with an absolute shit-eating grin.

“Qué lluvia.”

You howled with laughter. “I know that one! I know that one!”

“A huevo.”

Pedro rose from his chair, bunching your dress up around your waist. You pulled his shirt free from the waistband of his pants, running your hands up the warm skin of his back.

“Want you,” you sighed. “Want you inside me.”

“Whatever you want, Angelita.”

Pedro pulled your underwear down to your ankles, pausing to retrieve a condom from the wallet in his back pocket, like an over-eager undergrad, pulling down his pants to roll it on. He pressed the head of his cock against your clit. You grabbed him by the ass, wrapping your legs around him to guide him into you.

Pedro flicked his hips into you with short, quick strokes, sending jolts of energy through your core.

“More,” you pleaded breathlessly. “Deeper.”

Pedro lifted your ankles onto his shoulders, pressing into you long and slow until you could feel him bumping against your cervix. You gasped, reaching behind you, scrambling for leverage, knocking the computer monitor off the desk.

“Oh no!” You turned, trying to catch it before it crashed to the floor.

“It’s okay!” Pedro said, taking your face in his hands to guide your gaze back to his eyes. “It’s a shitty computer. It’s fine.”

You moaned, letting your head fall back, grabbing for his chest with one hand as he fucked you.

“So soft,” he moaned against your ear. “So fucking good for me, Angel.”

“Give me your hand,” you said, guiding his fingers back to your clit. “Up and down, right there. Oh God.”

You grabbed Pedro’s shoulder to brace yourself.

“I’m close,” he warned.

“Not yet,” you pleaded. “Just a little more.”

You could feel your own climax building inside you. You just needed a little more to push you over the edge.

“Oh God!”

Pedro came inside you with a gasp as your inner walls clenched around him. He slowly withdrew, supporting your legs, and easing you onto your back, scattering papers and pens onto the floor. He kissed your neck and your breasts as his hands explored the curves of your body.

You woke the next morning on the couch in Pedro’s office. You were lying on top of him; your head on his chest. He had his arms around you, your head was pounding as you squinted into the daylight.

“We got fucked up last night?” you said.

“Yup.”

“It was nice."

"It was," Pedro agreed, kissing the top of your head as you blinked sleep from your eyes.

"What time is it?”

You grabbed his forearm, turning it so you could look at the face of his watch.

“Oh shit,” you gasped. “I have Freshman Seminar in half an hour.”

“I already missed my morning classes,” Pedro moaned, letting his head fall back against the armrest.

“Do you want to explain to Dr. Monroe why I can’t teach her class?” you said, rising from the couch and searching the office floor for your underpants.

“No,” Pedro said. “She scares me.”

You pulled your underwear back on, finding your bag, you used the satin scarf tied around the handle to cover the love-bites blooming on your throat and chest. You dabbed concealer under your eyes and added a fresh coat of red lipstick.

“Would you like to have lunch together? Not at the Caf. Somewhere nice, like a date.” Pedro asked, sitting up. He looked endearingly child-like with his bedhead and giant brown eyes.

You paused, checking your reflection in your compact mirror.

“Can we do that?” you asked.

“I don’t see why not,” he said. “You were never my student and after this week we won’t even work together any more.”

“Oh,” you nodded. “Yeah, that sounds nice.”

“I’ll pack things up here and meet you after class.”

You smiled. “I’ll see you then.”

#rpf: pedro pascal #pedro pascal x reader #hot for teacher AU #mr. ben has us in a chokehold #mr. ben snl #pedro pascal x you

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prying-pandora666 · 9 months

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On the Disconnect Between ATLA and LOK: Or Why Reactionary Centrism Ruins Everything

I’ve made it no secret that I’m no fan of LOK’s writing for a number of reasons. But today I want to focus on only one issue: its politics.

I am baffled as to why LOK is seen as being the more “woke” story. Just because the protagonist is a buff brown woman with a female love interest (only implied until the comics, really)? This is such an incredibly shallow reading focusing only on aesthetics and ignores the actual content and philosophies LOK espouses.

But let’s not get into religion, iconography, the effects of colonialism and westernization etc, or we’ll be here forever.

Instead let’s just focus on the politics.

The Forge

Part of the disconnect between ATLA and LOK are the cultural conditions in the USA when both were made. The forge from whence they came was quite different.

Avatar: The Last Airbender

ATLA criticized imperialism.

If this show had been made during the height of Manifest Destiny, or during our super fun times illegally annexing territories (like Hawaii), it would’ve likely struggled to tell its story as well as it did. It would’ve been far more controversial and likely would’ve needed to take a more “centrist” approach, making it seem like imperialism isn’t “all that bad”.

It might have even come out and said that it isn’t imperialism itself that is the problem, but that Sozin to Ozai were big mean dictators that did it the wrong way!

But because ATLA came out in the 2000s—during a time in which the world had widely come around to thinking imperialism is kinda some super villain schtick—it was easy for the story to focus on the perspective of the victims of such campaigns and tell it from this point of view.

We don’t get long segments of feeling sorry for Ozai, now do we? The closest we get is Azula, who herself serves as a victim of this war that has consumed her childhood and deprived her of a safe, loving environment in which to grow and develop, instead having been groomed into a living weapon for her father and nation’s war machine.

So now let’s compare this to LOK.

The Legend of Korra

What does the first season of LOK cover? Collectivism, social activism, civil disobedience escalating to acts of violent defiance against the state.

What was going on in the USA in 2012 when LOK came out?

Occupy Wallstreet.

Socialism vs capitalism, the 99% versus the 1%, civil rights and equality; these are all issues we are still grappling with today. They’re highly politicized and divisive. There is no universal agreement about them.

And so LOK had no “safe” villain or “evil” ideology to combat. Instead it had a complicated and widely divisive topic to tackle that was contentious then and continues to be today.

As a result? Too much time is wasted equivocating.

Both Sides Are The Same! (But Not Really)

We get some soft worldbuilding early on in Book 1 of LOK showing how the infrastructure of this city is built to benefit benders and box out non-benders, but this is never given real focus. We SEE how the trains and police are dominated by earth/metal benders, we SEE how factory jobs employ lightning benders, while non-benders live in the slums which subject them to violence. But none of this is ever the focus or the point.

Almost as if the show is afraid to make a real critique from the perspective of the working class or an oppressed minority group.

Instead the story quickly falls off a cliffside as every tired old pejorative thrown at communists is recycled for Amon.

His sympathetic backstory is a complete fabrication meant to hide that he is actually part of the oppressor class.

They pretend to be the powerless oppressed group, and yet have the funding of the richest industrialist in the city?

The rich industrialist is a member of this supposedly oppressed class but really he’s just a secret villain looking to change the world for his own personal reasons and not to protect his fellow nonbenders (these same accusations are thrown at Jewish people re: Marxism).

There are no sincere attempts to communicate their grievances sympathetically or build a coalition or garner public support. Instead The Equalists only use violence, fear, and other oppressive silencing tactics.

The desire to make everyone equal by “stealing” people’s individuality. (The old “make everyone equal heights by cutting tall people’s legs down” chestnut).

And more!

This is kinda bonkers propaganda if you’re looking at it from a left-wing perspective, right?

And it seems weirdly incoherent if you’re trying to look at it from a right-wing perspective, especially with Tarrlok standing in as the villain “on the other side”.

But it makes PERFECT sense as an enlightened centrist horseshoe-theory piece that can’t commit to either side and has to warp and undermine its own story to fit a “both sides are wrong” message. Heck, it’s so heavy handed it even made Amon and Tarrlok brothers!

This is the problem that plagues all of LOK.

Look at the other villains too!

Amon: Civil Rights Activist or Bad Faith Opportunist?

Amon

Pretends to be: A civil rights activist for an oppressed minority group.

Is actually: A bad faith actor whipping up a small or non-issue into a much bigger one and convincing people to turn on each other for his own personal gain/revenge. Once defeated, the problem disappears.

Electing a non-bender somehow makes everyone happy and the problem is never addressed again. Just like electing Obama ended racism! Oh wait…

Unalaq: Spiritual Environmentalist or Environmental Satanist?

Unalaq

Pretends to be: A spiritualist concerned about the environment and the spirits. Basically Al Gore meets Tenzin Gyatso but willing to start a civil war over it.

Is actually: An occultist weirdo who wants to fuse with LITERALLY SATAN and usher in 10,000 years of darkness or something, and willing to start a war over it.

In an attempt to make a spiritual foil for Korra, who struggled with the spiritual parts of being the Avatar, the story took a weird turn and made a choice widely regarded as “fanfiction on crack” by having Unalaq aspire to become “The Dark Avatar”.

But it’s okay, you see, because while Unalaq’s criticisms of waning spirituality and lack of protection of holy sites could be seen as a knock against environmentalism, by the end Korra recognizes that Unalaq had a point and that the spirit portals should be left open.

So why exactly did Unalaq want to be the Dark Avatar and usher in an era of darkness? How was that supposed to resolve the problem he presented and Korra ended up agreeing with?

It doesn’t, and once again we are left with a contradictory centrist message of “protecting the environment is good but you should be suspicious of anyone that actually advocates for it”.

Also thanks for demystifying the origin of the Avatar and ruining the original lore for where bending came from with your Prometheus/Christian allegory. Ugh.

Zaheer: Spiritual Guru Fighting Against Modernity or A Charismatic Dummy Who Learned Everything About Anarchy From a Prager U Coloring Book

Zaheer

Pretends to be: An anarchist seeking to bring down oppressive regimes, therefor resetting the world to a more egalitarian time

Is actually: An idiot who doesn’t even know the difference between an ancom and an ancap and has no coherent ideology. He just wants chaos, I guess, which isn’t whah anarchy or anything is about.

Perhaps realizing they messed up so badly with Unalaq that even the creators were unhappy with the results, they attempted the spiritual foil idea again with Zaheer.

This time they actually had a writing staff which makes this season the agreed upon best of LOK.

But the tip-toeing around making any actual criticisms and falling back on the “both sides are bad” cop-out are only exacerbated by how uninformed and nonsensical Zaheer’s actions are. Not unlike Amon, he takes none of the steps an actual activist would take. He never even speaks to the people of Ba Sing Se to find out what they need or want. He just kills their leader, announces it, refuses to elaborate, then bounces and lets the city tear itself apart in the power vacuum.

It’s an entertaining spectacle! Just like his later torture of Korra is visceral. But none of it has any real substance to support it and so the horrific acts he commits feel like senseless edgelord tantrums.

Even Bolin knows it. Once Zaheer is defeated, Bolin shoves a sock in his mouth, therefor cementing Bolin as my favorite of the Krew for all time.

Kuvira: Literal Nazi or Literal Nazi but she didn’t mean it!

Kuvira

Pretends to be: A fascist, putting people in labor camps and uses the equivalent of an atom bomb to crush her enemies under heel in the name of unifying the continent under her control.

Is actually: All of those things but she had good intentions! She just went too far! Give her a slap on the wrists because her and Korra aren’t so different, you see!

Perhaps the most bizarre writing choice was to make the fascist the only truly sympathetic villain of this series. The reasons become quite clear, however, when we recognize one thing.

Yes, she’s styled after the Nazis.

Yes, her actions in modern day are more reminiscent of Russia.

But who is the only nation to have ever used a weapon of mass destruction on the level of the atom bomb? The USA.

And here is where the unwillingness to make a bold criticism or take a hard controversial stance is the most apparent.

Kuvira acts like a fascist and has a lot of Nazi-vibes, but she is also a grim reminder of the USA’s own imperial history. Of our flippant use of a horrifying technology that still continues to have consequences for the descendants of the victims even today. It is one of the worst violations of human rights and decency in history. And the USA is the only nation to have ever actually used one.

So if you ever feel it’s weird that Kuvira was arguably the worst of the villains but got off with only house arrest and a happy ending with hugs from her family? You’re not alone. Kuvira has to be “not that bad” or else you’re critiquing the USA itself. And that is a level of controversy this franchise doesn’t seem interested in dipping it’s toes into.

It’s the reason they equivocate and justify by having the Earth Prince step down and choose democracy. This isn’t an East Asian ideal. This wouldn’t have been a popular or virtuous choice in that time period. Many would’ve regarded it as tyranny of the majority, or a disorganized chaos without a consistent central authority.

It’s only seen as the perfect solution in the Democratic West. So you see, it’s not so bad, because at least we have democracy! We aren’t as bad as Kuvira who really isn’t all that bad either! Or so the narrative tries to apologize for itself.

And this is even more apparent with everyone’s problematic fav!

Varrick: How Elon Musk Wants Us To View Him vs What Elon Musk Wishes He Was

Varrick!

Is presented as: A quirky, funny, Tony Stark-esque genius who made a mistake and deserves a redemption!

Is actually: A war-profiteer willing to escalate tensions and shed the blood of his own people with no remorse to make money. Also he builds the equivalent of the atom bomb for Kuvira and her allegorical Nazis. But he gets a happy ending with a weirdly westernized wedding anyway!

Isn’t it telling that the villain who is written to be the most loveable and sympathetic is, in fact, the capitalist industrialist?

And not like that yucky evil industrialist Hiroshi Sato funding the Equalists and their civil rights movement.

No, no! Varrick is the good kind of industrialist! The kind that is non-political and mostly cares about money and inventions! After all, he only built a weapon of mass destruction for the Nazis, not the civil rights protestors!

Which brings us to…

Our Civilized Poverty vs their Savage Poverty!

And hey, that’s fair because look at the differences between Republic City and Ba Sing Se!

Sure, both had destitute populations starving and without proper shelter due to the disconnected elite leaders who didn’t care about their plight.

But the homeless people of Republic City are presented as jolly and helpful and never state a single grievance even as they live in a tent city underground! Everyone knows that democratic poverty is better! Therefor Sato was totally unjustified in funding an equality movement!

The poor people of BSS, on the other hand, are victims of that mean old non-democratic Earth Queen and later of the power vacuum left by her assassination, therefor their plight is ACTUALLY horrific. Kuvira may have been bad but she and Varrick are justified because of the unAmerican conditions!

Looking at it this way, so many of LOK’s problems fall into place. It perhaps serves as lesson in not tackling complex problems with the intention of a clean solution unless you’re willing to take a controversial stance and stick to your convictions.

I don’t think the creators intended to make a libertarian criticism of every social movement and apologia for capitalism and fascism. It’s just a sad reflection of what is and isn’t controversial in our current society. Divorced from actual morality or perspective.

What a waste.

This Post Brought To You By: Viewers Like You! (or: Check out this thing I made)

All that said, if you want a well-written and more adult take on the ATLA universe, check out the Kyoshi and Yangchen novels! F. C. Yee doesn’t pull any punches and perfectly balanced the darker, more visceral elements an adult story can have, with expert worldbuilding and humanized characters that feel believable even when they’re in fantastical situations.

Or if you want more ATLA instead, kindly check out @book4air: A project creating a pseudo Book 4 using both the official comics and original materials, fully dubbed, orchestrated, and partially animated by industry pros who happen to be fans!

Some comics are getting rewrites too, so whether you love the comics and want a fresh take, or hate the comics and want a change, we are doing our best to make this accessible for everyone including people with disabilities who may not be able to enjoy the originals.

Check out our first episode here!

If you can afford to, consider supporting us on Patreon! Every episode is expensive to produce and we are a bunch of broke artists. Some which don’t even have consistent or reliable housing. Any little bit helps.

If you can’t, no worries! You can still help by spreading the word so our videos can overcome the YouTube algorithm.

With all my love for this franchise and its fandom, I hope you all continue to enjoy your favs regardless of my criticisms.

#avatar the last airbender #atla #avatar #Legend of korra #lok #book 4 air restoration project

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zvtara-was-never-canon · 2 months

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You realize Asian countries have big cities, and skyscrapers. And modern technology, that all of that is not only a thing in the West???

My guy, the Aang statue is very obviously inspired by the statue of liberty and the creator of Ford lives there. Republic city is "New York, but in the 1920s", and so I'm gonna point out that this american bullshit where it does not belong. Looking at a New York City inspired thing and saying "That's an american thing" is not the same as saying "And every asian city is just a tiny little vilage where everyoen is dirt poor and has to walk for a whole hour to have any acess to water."

And even if Republic City had instead been inspired by Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, Seul or literally any major asian city - that still doesn't explain the HUGE leap in technology in between those shows that are last than 100 years apart. We went from a mostly feudal world with ocasional bare-bones industrial stuff that only one nation really had any access to (and that the show was constantly highlight could often be BAD for them) all the way to the prohibition era and World War I stuff. One more season and they'd reach the point of Korra having to airbend to save people from the deadly smog that is fucking up their lungs.

And even the name REPUBLIC city is peak "Americans have to remind everyone that their form of government is the only valid one, and thus force it in a world that clearly only works with absolute monarchies, tribal chiefs, or a crazy dictator." It's really no wonder the first villain Korra ever went up against was a shady dude that you knew was shady because he said the word "equality" a lot and that the whole fandom keeps saying is communist even though he didn't say anything communist-like.

#anti lok #anti legend of korra #anti korra

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palms-upturned · 1 year

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The horror of disco elysium and pjõl is distinction as separation I think… the way that everything in the story hinges on how well Harry can understand others and make himself understood, the theme of partners who are separated from one another, physically or emotionally or both. Harry conceptualizing Dora as a religious figure with the power to absolve or condemn him, to give him permission to live or take it away, to make sense of his pain and the apocalyptic fallout of their breakup when the truth is that it was a very common, mundane story of a failed relationship. People who tried and failed to understand each other, care for each other, create a future where they could comfortably exist together.

And it just didn’t work. That’s all. It just didn’t.

Because people grow and change in unpredictable ways, and they live through entirely different experiences that are difficult for others to understand, and histories and ideologies that we don’t even entirely understand shape the ways we perceive the world and each other and even ourselves from the moment we’re born.

STEBAN, THE STUDENT COMMUNIST - "You asked that question because you're still under the influence of ideology. That's natural. You're like a fish that's only now discovering that her whole life has been dictated by the movements of sea currents."

STEBAN, THE STUDENT COMMUNIST - "That's what ideology is. It's like there are these invisible forces everywhere, pushing and tugging you this way and that, and you don't even know they're *there*."

YOU - "What does this have to do with communism?"

STEBAN, THE STUDENT COMMUNIST - "Everything, man. That is part of the communist project, to destroy the ideological structures that reduce men and women to these hollow shells of identity."

YOU - "Is it even *possible* to imagine a world without ideology?"

STEBAN, THE STUDENT COMMUNIST - "Of course it's possible. Just extremely difficult. You practically have to be a world-historical individual to do it."

The appeal of the pale is that there is no distinction, no separation, not between people and not between times. No longing for the past, no pain in the present, no fear of the future. No misunderstandings between people. No loneliness. Everything becomes vapor and intermingles. But this is, essentially, a suicidal fantasy. Entropolism is portrayed as a kind of nihilist acceleration. If this world is doomed, then let’s hurry it the hell up and end all our fruitless suffering! It’s a position that doesn’t believe that there’s anything about the human experience worth holding onto. True love is possible ONLY in the next world for new people. It is too late for us.

And yet, it doesn’t seem to hold true at the end of the day, not even for someone like Tiago, who is one of the most extreme entropolists in the game.

TIAGO - "Might even be nice to have some company..."

EMPATHY - He said that in spite of himself. He's more attached to the human than he'd like to think.

Harry drives that car into the sea because he feels like it’s too late for him. He doesn’t believe he’ll ever be loved again. He feels a painful disconnect from the world around him, as someone straddling the line of living in the margins while also perpetuating the same marginalization that estranges him from others. But he survives the wreck and climbs out of the water and is immediately consoled by kind strangers who acknowledged his humanity and cared about him. For the rest of the game, we see him attempt to understand others and make himself understood to varying degrees of success. He is distinct and separate from others, but he is never alone.

To become vapor is to be alone. To be human is to be able to come together. Un jour je serai de retour près de toi.

ACELE - "Egg came with us. He made this wheezing puppy dog sound all the way back. Couldn't even speak."

ACELE - "It was definitely Coal City, because it took us two days to walk back to the Fau. He just wheezed the whole way, we never really asked him why he came with us. Or who he was. I think his name is Germaine..."

ACELE - "People are sweet," she says quietly.

EMPATHY - You can see it must have been a great night. The memory causes her to go silent for a moment or two.

#meg talks #disco elysium #suicide mention #coughs anyway.

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beardedmrbean · 4 months

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A controversial Seattle teacher allegedly told students that identifying as “straight” is offensive. He even scolded some of his male students for being a “product of the patriarchy that teaches young boys not to care.” It resulted in a parent filing a complaint with Chief Sealth High School. In defending the teacher, Seattle Public Schools (SPS) offered what appears to be a verifiably false statement to the media.

Tenth-grade Ethnic Studies World History teacher and self-identified communist Ian Golash asked students to complete a “Social Identity Wheel” worksheet, according to the parent, who asked for anonymity. It asks students to explain their various identities, including racial, ethnic, gender, socio-economic status, physical, emotional, or developmental disabilities, and sexual orientation. The worksheet is intended to tell students that their identities determine whether they receive unearned privilege or oppression.

The parent’s 15-year-old son labeled himself “straight.” Golash took issue with that word “because it implies that to not be straight is to be ‘crooked’ which could have a negative connotation.”

‘Straight’ is offensive to Ian Golash

The student’s mother shared an email thread with The Jason Rantz Show on KTTH. In it, she complains about the comment to Golash and the school’s principal, Ray Garcia-Morales.

“When filling out a Social Identity Wheel, he (her son) was told that if he identifies as straight that he needed to pick a term that was less offensive. It is completely inappropriate to dictate what terms a student can and cannot use to identify themselves with,” the mom wrote in the September 24, 2023 email.

Golash said he did not target her son with his comment. He did, however, admit to saying something similar to the entire classroom.

In the email response to the mother, Golash allegedly told the parent that he “stated explicitly that I was not going to tell them how they should identify except to explain the difference between race, ethnicity and nationality.” But he did cast aspersions on identifying as “straight.”

“Because I think language has power and that it shapes the culture that we live in, I did say to the class, in response to a student, that I do not use the term ‘straight’ because it implies that to not be straight is to be ‘crooked’ which could have a negative connotation,” Golash wrote. “But, again stated that I am not interested in telling them how they should identify and that the wheel they are completing is for their own reflection, not for me to assess.”

A very contrived position

Golash taking offense to the term “straight” in this way may be the only such example in the country. It’s a common and accepted term.

Chief Sealth High School has a Gay-Straight Alliance Club. Even GLAAD (formerly the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) uses “straight” as an alternative descriptor for heterosexuals. The term “straight-ally” is still used by LGBT groups.

The contrived issue came up in a 2015 Washington Post column about etiquette. The readers (not Golash) asked if the term “straight” is offensive. Steven Petrow (the author of “Steven Petrow’s Complete Gay & Lesbian Manners”) responded by saying he’s never been asked that before. He concluded it was neither offensive nor a slur.

“I’ve never heard of a gay person saying they were offended by the use of straight. Do some straight folks find it problematic? I think you are saying that you are and, if so, I’d like to know why,” he wrote.

‘Product of the patriarchy that teaches young boys not to care’

The parent also claimed in the email that Golash shamed her son during a conversation about Florida banning left-wing classes with critical race theory indoctrination. Her son had missed the day the class watched a video about the topic, and told Golash he didn’t know why the state legislature forwarded the ban, according to the mom.

“I’m told that rather than converse about the topic and provide him with information and an actual answer, he was told that he was a ‘product of the patriarchy that teaches young boys not to care,'” the mom wrote in the email. “You missed an opportunity here to teach your student about current events and instead shamed him for being a male. To assume that he’s being raised in a patriarchal household is a very mistaken one.”

Again, Golash disputes some specifics but admits to bringing up the issue.

“My response about patriarchy was not directed at one student, it was connected to discussions of systems of power that we had been having in the previous few days and the behavior of several boys in the class,” he wrote, according to the email. He did not dispute saying the quote the mother provided.

The Jason Rantz Show on KTTH asked Golash if the emails properly depict what he sent to the parent and if he wanted to offer additional context. He did not respond.

It’s part of a political agenda

Golash focuses a portion of his curriculum on issues around gender identity. The same parent previously complained that Golash failed her son on a quiz for correctly saying men cannot get pregnant and that women do not have penises. The mom eventually pulled her son from his class.

“Mr. Golash has introduced many controversial topics into the classroom and instead of inviting open, constructive and truthful conversations, he provides biased resources that only aid in pushing his own ideological agendas,” the mom told The Jason Rantz Show on KTTH. “In this particular instance, he tried to persuade the language the students used in an attempt to censor them. Mr. Golash instructs his students what to think and not how to think. This in no way provides identity-safe classrooms that allow students to feel visible and valued.”

She says her son started to “self-censor … due to Mr. Golash’s intolerant teaching tactics.” Only after this incident, she said Golash accused her son of being disruptive and disengaged. She called it “retaliatory in nature.”

In the email thread, Golash did accuse her son and other classmates of unruly behavior. He said his frustration with their alleged behavior, “resulted in words I said that day that I might not phrase in the same way today.”

Seattle Public Schools is mostly silent

According to a screenshot of an email shared with The Jason Rantz Show on KTTH, the district is investigating the two separate complaints against Ian Golash.

First, the school is reviewing the quiz that the student failed for taking objectively true positions: Men can’t get pregnant and women do not have penises. Second, according to an email, Chief Sealth principal Garcia-Morales told parents there was an investigation into a separate incident where antisemitic curriculum was taught to students.

Seattle Public Schools (SPS) won’t say much about Golash, including how far the investigation has progressed. They also would not comment for this story, neither confirming nor denying Golash’s purported communication with the parent. Even if they did comment, they’ve previously misled the media with a statement.

More from Jason Rantz: Democrats reject child marriage, but accept their gender reassignment

Misleading the media and public

When The Jason Rantz Show on KTTH exclusively reported the “men can get pregnant” quiz, the story ignited a firestorm of criticism and ridicule towards Golash and the district. SPS appeared to give out the same statement to multiple outlets, but added an extra detail to Fox News.

In the original report, the mother complained that Golash and another teacher engaged in name-calling. One teacher allegedly called her son “f****d and racist,” and Golash allegedly made the comment about being a “product of the patriarchy that teaches young boys not to care about anything.” SPS denied the claims when asked by Fox News.

“Claims that the student was called names have not been reported to SPS. We have confirmed with the school’s principal that this is the first reference to any name-calling,” a spokesperson told Fox News.

The statement appears to be false.

In a February 2, 2023 email, the mother’s husband emailed a teacher and principal Garcia Morales. In it, he complained of conduct against his son. He wrote that his son told him the teacher explained to the classroom, “If you’re white, that’s f****d up and racist.” The principal was also on the email over Golash’s comments about the patriarchy.

SPS would not say why they told Fox News that my report was the first reference to any name-calling.

#nunyas news #this guy's exaggerating some it looks like #but teacher is still a douche

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commajade · 1 year

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If you have legit grievances with the DPRK, what might they be?

i mean. they are a governing institution under life and death pressure in every decision they make. the lack of resources because of US/UN sanctions and the aftereffects of a recent genocidal war limit their choices a lot. they make lots of political decisions i don't agree with and have lots of domestic policies i do not agree with. they have prisons and enact violence on their people the way national governing institutions tend to do. they have an elite social class and officials with selfish political goals and corruption within the government like every other country in the world. they are simply a poor communist nation. i don't know enough about the specifics to bring up a list of grievances and i wouldn't even discuss them on this platform.

there's no point in a conversation that isn't starting from a point of acknowledging that all western knowledge about the dprk is orientalist anticommunist propaganda. we can't have a proper discussion when the vast majority of people can't even understand simple historical facts about korean history without experiencing socially conditioned moral outrage. i can't even say that the US tried to erase the korean civilization from the earth and almost succeeded without people claiming genocide is too strong of a word for that. how am i going to discuss the nuanced complicated and morally complex issue of present day dprk politics when i can't even state that the dprk isn't an evil tyranny with an insane dictator. it's not. it's a small poor communist nation. that's it.

the dprk is a small poor communist nation with few political allies and the most powerful political enemies in the world and i am not going to assist in spreading orientalist lies about it and that's literally the extent of my goals in talking about the dprk on this platform. it's a miracle that they still exist considering the strength of their enemies and they're the living legacy of the anticolonial korean revolutionary movement that has been violently suppressed in south korea. they're not ideologically pure by any means but the people of the dprk are my people who survived extermination and carry revolutionary korean history that i am a part of and i will defend them from racist lies when i can.

#asks #dprk

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givemearmstopraywith · 4 months

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i kknow this may not be your area of knowledge but do you know why the pope is suddenly saying this stuff re: marxism? hes always been progressive and genuine in his beliefs (same gender stuff, the lunch w the drag queens, etc.) but to outright say "we should befriend communists" is surprising to me. power play? old age? hes also a communist? idk

i was raised catholic and spend most of my time at a jesuit college! it's a complicated issue, but i'll do my best. edit: i also want to say that i am both pro-francis and generally very unhappy with the church in general, so i've tried to be as objective as i can.

pope francis is, first, argentinian, and second, a jesuit. as a south american he knows liberation theology, a marxist-based theology of the poor which developed in south america during the 1980s. because of its association with marxism liberation theology was treated with huge suspicion by the catholic church. cardinal ratzinger, later benedict xvi, wrote a fairly nasty castigation of liberation theology in the 80s- if i find it i'll link it.

this is the context, i believe, of his comments on marxism: it's not only a home ideology for francis, it's more necessary than ever in our current social climate. francis has always been what most catholics would consider a liberally minded pope, he exhibits that fabulous tenet of catholic social teaching called "the preferential option for the poor," and everything he has done during his papacy gestures to this, including his encyclical on climate change, laudato si, and his recent moves towards affirmation of gay and trans people being baptized. even his tour of canada to make formal apologies for residential schools came about for similar reasons: it wasn't perfect, but the reason there hadn't been a formal catholic apology prior to francis was because doctrine around papal infallibility dictates that a sitting pope cannot refute or roll back the statements of a previous pope: an apology for the doctrine of discovery and residential schools would have constituted admitting that a previous pope had been wrong, which is tantamount to admitting that god himself is wrong, since the pope is the representative of god and a direct descendent of the apostle peter. doing as much throws the entire church into a very negative light, but francis apologized anyway- which, again, while deeply imperfect is a huge deal within the church, certainly infuriated a lot of conservatives, even if it seems essentially inadequate to non-catholics.

francis isn't a communist, i don't think, but he is good. he's very apart from what constitutes the majority of the catholic magisterium (ordained members of the church- priests, bishops, cardinals, etc)- a kind of internal division developed after vatican ii, where on one hand you had conservatives who preferred traditionalism, the type of leaders who wanted to keep things QT with the reagan administration who was funding mass murder in nicaraugua- that is, at it's core, the primary reason why liberation theology was rejected when it first emerged, why it has been slow to gain traction in the church. ratzinger was a staunch conservative, and john paul ii was less so; leadership in the church goes through cycles where traditionalists are usually followed by more liberal-minded popes, who appreciate vatican ii for the groundbreaking and monumental achievement that it was rather than acting as if it signified a breakdown of religion.

the other thing is francis being a jesuit: i have a lot of jesuit friends, have gotten most of my theological education from jesuits, and applied to a jesuit college for my phd. jesuits are incredibly socially minded, dedicated consistently to social awareness and justice, and less inclined towards enclosure and privation from the world at large than other orders. they are also dedicated to poverty, like franciscans. the jesuit order is not perfect (they still will not allow a women's jesuit order, and they have a dismal track record of colonialism) but francis is the first jesuit pope and this is a huge deal in terms of the type of theology that his leadership embodies as a result. jesuists are not as a monolith liberal-minded and forward thinking, but they are generally more ready to adapt and evolve catholicism to meet contemporary needs rather than maintainig strict adherence to traditional views at the expense of the body of christ- that is to say, the body of all believers, or all whom god loves, which is everyone. incidentally, leonardo boff, one of the fathers of liberation theology, was also jesuit.

this is a pretty and dirty answer to your question but i hope it makes sense- essentially francis is recognizing that the needs of god's people override that of the church, because god's people are the church equally or more than the magisterium is the church, but it is the magisterium who has been preferred historically. but he has surprisingly little room in which to make moves towards this because of canon law and other doctrines. he's doing his best, though, more than i ever thought i'd see: i appreciate and love him deeply.

#replies #he almost makes me want to convert. but. no i shant <3

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hussyknee · 6 months

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From 16 Nov WH Press Briefing

Q: Can you just detail for us what kind of evidence the U.S. has seen that Hamas has a command center under Al-Shifa Hospital? Biden: No, I can’t tell you. I won’t tell you. Journalist: Do you feel absolutely confident based on what you know — Biden: Yes. Journalist: — that that is the truth? Biden: Yes. Journalist: And, Mr. President, after today, would you still refer to President Xi as a “dictator”? This is a term that you used earlier this year. Biden: Well, look, he is. I mean, he’s a dictator in the sense that he — he is a guy who runs a country that — it’s a communist country that is based on a form of government totally different than ours. Anyway, we made progress.

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deadpresidents · 5 months

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How many absolute monarchs are there in the world?

•King Salman of Saudi Arabia •Pope Francis •Sultan Haitham bin Tariq of Oman •Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah of Brunei •The King of Swaziland (now Eswatini): King Mswati III of Swaziland (AKA Eswatini) •United Arab Emirates: Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed (Each of the seven Emirates that form the UAE have their own absolute monarch and Sheikh MBZ, as leader of Dubai, is the overall ruler of the nation.)

Did I miss anybody? I think those are the only absolute monarchs still in power today. The rest of the world's royalty are constitutional monarchs, so they reign but do not rule.

(There's an argument for including Kim Jong Un on the list of absolute monarchs despite the fact that he's not a King and North Korea is a Communist country. He's obviously a dictator, but the Kim dynasty has virtually ruled North Korea like a secular monarchy for nearly 75 years with the supreme leaders inheriting their power through hereditary succession. Kim Jong Un took over immediately upon the death of his father, Kim Jong Il, who had assumed power when his father -- North Korea's first paramount leader, Kim Il Sung -- died in 1994. Of course, North Korea isn't officially considered a monarchy, but the manner in which the Kim family has ruled the country and transferred power from father-to-son for three generations and counting resembles the structure of an absolute monarchy more than a "traditional" totalitarian dictatorship.)

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mariacallous · 3 months

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Sherwood Eddy was a prominent American missionary as well as that now rare thing, a Christian socialist. In the 1920s and ’30s, he made more than a dozen trips to the Soviet Union. He was not blind to the problems of the U.S.S.R., but he also found much to like. In place of squabbling, corrupt democratic politicians, he wrote in one of his books on the country, “Stalin rules … by his sagacity, his honesty, his rugged courage, his indomitable will and titanic energy.” Instead of the greed he found so pervasive in America, Russians seemed to him to be working for the joy of working.

Above all, though, he thought he had found in Russia something that his own individualistic society lacked: a “unified philosophy of life.” In Russia, he wrote, “all life is focused in a central purpose. It is directed to a single high end and energized by such powerful and glowing motivation that life seems to have supreme significance.”

Eddy was wrong about much of what he saw. Joseph Stalin was a liar and a mass murderer; Russians worked because they were hungry and afraid. The “unified philosophy of life” was a chimera, and the reality was a totalitarian state that used terror and propaganda to maintain that unity. But Eddy, like others in his era, was predisposed to admire the Soviet Union precisely because he was so critical of the economics and politics of his own country, Depression-era America. In this, he was not alone.

In his landmark 1981 book, Political Pilgrims: Travels of Western Intellectuals to the Soviet Union, China, and Cuba, Paul Hollander wrote of the hospitality showered on sympathetic Western visitors to the Communist world: the banquets in Moscow thrown for George Bernard Shaw, the feasts laid out for Mary McCarthy and Susan Sontag in North Vietnam. But his conclusion was that these performances were not the key to explaining why some Western intellectuals became enamored of communism. Far more important was their estrangement and alienation from their own cultures: “Intellectuals critical of their own society proved highly susceptible to the claims put forward by the leaders and spokesmen of the societies they inspected in the course of these travels.”

Hollander was writing about left-wing intellectuals in the 20th century, and many such people are still around, paying court to left-wing dictators in Venezuela or Bolivia who dislike America. There are also, in our society as in most others, quite a few people who are paid to help America’s enemies, or to spread their propaganda. There always have been.

But in the 21st century, we must also contend with a new phenomenon: right-wing intellectuals, now deeply critical of their own societies, who have begun paying court to right-wing dictators who dislike America. And their motives are curiously familiar. All around them, they see degeneracy, racial mixing, demographic change, “political correctness,” same-sex marriage, religious decline. The America that they actually inhabit no longer matches the white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant America that they remember, or think they remember. And so they have begun to look abroad, seeking to find the spiritually unified, ethnically pure nations that, they imagine, are morally stronger than their own. Nations, for example, such as Russia.

The pioneer of this search was Patrick Buchanan, the godfather of the modern so-called alt-right, whose feelings about foreign authoritarians shifted right about the time he started writing books with titles such as The Death of the West and Suicide of a Superpower. His columns pour scorn on modern America, a place he once described, with disgust, as a “multicultural, multiethnic, multiracial, multilingual ‘universal nation’ whose avatar is Barack Obama.” Buchanan’s America is in demographic decline, has been swamped by beige and brown people, and has lost its virtue. The West, he has written, has succumbed to “a sexual revolution of easy divorce, rampant promiscuity, pornography, homosexuality, feminism, abortion, same-sex marriage, euthanasia, assisted suicide—the displacement of Christian values by Hollywood values.”

This litany of horrors isn’t much different from what can be heard most nights on Fox News. Listen to Tucker Carlson. “The American dream is dying,” Carlson declared one recent evening, in a monologue that also referred to “the dark age that we are living through.” Carlson has also spent a lot of time on air reminiscing about how the United States “was a better country than it is now in a lot of ways,” back when it was “more cohesive.” And no wonder: Immigrants have “plundered” America, thanks to “decadent and narcissistic” politicians who refuse to “defend the nation.” You can read worse on the white-supremacist websites of the alt-right—do pick up a copy of Ann Coulter’s Adios America: The Left’s Plan to Turn Our Country Into a Third World Hellhole—or hear more extreme sentiments in some evangelical churches. Franklin Graham has declared, for example, that America “is in deep trouble and on the verge of total moral and spiritual collapse.”

What a terrible place all of these people are describing. Who would want to live in a country like that? Or, to put it differently: Who wouldn’t sympathize with the enemies of a country like that? As it turns out, many do. Certainly Buchanan does. Russian cyberwarriors work with daily determination to undermine American utilities and electricity grids. Russian information warriors are trying to deform American political debate. Russian contract killers are murdering people on the streets of Western countries. Russian nuclear weapons are pointed at us and our allies.

Nevertheless, Buchanan has come to admire the Russian president because he is “standing up for traditional values against Western cultural elites.” Once again, he feels the shimmering lure of that elusive sense of “unity” and purpose that complicated, diverse, quarrelsome America always lacks. Impressed with the Russian president’s use of Orthodox pageantry at public events, Buchanan even believes that “Putin is trying to re-establish the Orthodox Church as the moral compass of the nation it had been for 1,000 years before Russia fell captive to the atheistic and pagan ideology of Marxism.”

He is not alone. The belief that Russia is on our side in the war against secularism and sexual decadence is shared by a host of American Christian leaders, as well as their colleagues on the European far right. Among them, for example, are the movers and shakers behind the World Congress of Families, an American evangelical and anti-gay-rights organization that Buchanan has explicitly praised. One of the WCF’s former leaders, Larry Jacobs, once declared that “the Russians might be the Christian saviors of the world.” The WCF even has a Russian branch, which is run by Alexey Komov, a man in turn linked to Konstantin Malofeev, a Russian oligarch who has hosted far-right meetings all across Europe. At the WCF’s most recent meeting, in Verona, senior Russian priests mingled with leaders of the Italian far right, the Austrian far right, and their comrades from the American heartland.

Carlson’s support for Russia, by contrast, takes the form of snarling sarcasm rather than open admiration. Much as Jane Fonda once posed, just for the provocative kick of it, with a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun, Carlson has started teasing his viewers and his critics with his amusingly contrarian views on Russia. “Why shouldn’t I root for Russia?” he asked recently. A couple of days later, he tried it again: “I think we should probably take the side of Russia, if we have to choose between Russia and Ukraine.”

Ironically, during the Reagan administration, Carlson’s father ran Voice of America, the radio station that broadcast American values into the U.S.S.R. Or maybe this is not an irony, but rather an explanation. In his book, Hollander described the prestige that Albanian communism once enjoyed in Sweden and Norway. Few Scandinavians had ever been there, but that didn’t matter: “Albania is picked up simply because it seems to be a club with a particularly sharp nail at the end of it with which to beat one’s own society, one’s own traditions, one’s own parents.” Now Carlson is using Russia as a club with which to beat his own society and his own traditions.

Fortunately for all such critics, they don’t have to spend much time in the country they are “rooting” for, because there is no greater fantasy than the idea that Russia is a country of Christian values. In reality, Russia has one of the highest abortion rates in the world, nearly double that of the United States. It has an extremely low record of church attendance, though the numbers are difficult to measure, not least because any form of Christianity outside of the state-controlled Orthodox Church is liable to be considered a cult. A 2012 survey showed that religion plays an important role in the lives of only 15 percent of Russians. Only 5 percent have read the Bible.

If American Christians would find little to cheer for in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, American white nationalists would be disappointed too. Carlson has wondered aloud about America’s racial mix, asking, “How precisely is diversity our strength?” He would have a real dilemma in Russia. Nearly 20 percent of Russian citizens do not even identify as Russian, telling pollsters that they belong to different nationalities, ranging from Tartar and Azeri to Ukrainian and Moldovan; more than 6 percent of Russians are Muslims, as opposed to 1.1 percent of the U.S. population. And that might be a gross underestimate of the actual number of Russian Muslims, since in some parts of the country, Muslims are off-limits to census takers. Remember all those phony stories about Swedish and British neighborhoods that are supposedly no-go zones ruled by Sharia law? Russia has an actual province, Chechnya, that is officially ruled by Sharia law. The local regime tolerates polygamy, requires women to be veiled in public places, and tortures gay men. It is a no-go zone, right inside Russia.

As for Putin himself, there is no evidence that this former KGB officer has actually converted, but plenty of evidence that Putin’s recent public displays of Christianity are just as cynical as Stalin’s vaunted love for the working classes. Among other things, they are useful precisely because they can hoodwink naive foreigners. But you don’t need to listen to me say so. Listen, instead, to the words of a young Russian, Yegor Zhukov, who was put on trial for publishing videos critical of the regime. In an extraordinary courtroom speech, he addressed the loud support for “the institutions of the family” that Putin often offers in Russia, and contrasted it with reality:

An impenetrable barrier divides our society in two. All the money is concentrated at the top and no one up there is going to let it go. All that’s left at the bottom—and this is no exaggeration—is despair. Knowing that they have nothing to hope for, that no matter how hard they try, they cannot bring happiness to themselves or their families, Russian men take their aggression out on their wives, or drink themselves to death, or hang themselves. Russia has the world’s [second] highest rate of suicide among men. As a result, a third of all Russian families are single mothers with their kids. I would like to know: Is this how we are protecting the institution of the family?

The reality of Russia isn’t the point, just as the reality of Stalinism wasn’t the point, not for Sherwood Eddy and not for George Bernard Shaw. The American intellectuals who now find themselves alienated from the country that they inhabit aren’t interested in reality. They are interested in a fantasy nation, different and distinct from their own hateful country. America, with its complicated social and political as well as ethnic diversity, with its Constitution that ensures we will never, ever all be forced to feel as if “all life is focused in a central purpose”—this America no longer appeals to them at all.

Most of them know that this fantasy foreign nation they admire seeks to put an end to all of that. It seeks to undermine American democracy, beat back American influence, and curtail American power. But to those who dislike American democracy, despair of American influence, and are angered by American power? That, truly, is the point.

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