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Messages - honk

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1
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: US Presidential Election 2024
« on: November 02, 2024, 07:48:54 PM »
No mainstream politician thinks that all abortions should be allowed with zero rules or regulations that take into account things like the progression of the pregnancy.

Okay, how about your main favorite right now. What limits on abortion does Kamala Harris want? This was a specific question asked to her at the Trump-Kamala debate.

Kamala has clearly shown herself to be an abortion extrimist.

If a baby is born alive, doctors already have a legal duty to do everything they can to help it survive. That's the way it's always been. A bill like the one described in that article is a manipulative attempt to sell a false narrative to the public, and to vote for it is to concede and allow that false narrative to take hold. You can't just say "Well, if this doesn't happen to begin with, then there's no harm in voting in favor of this bill." That's not how politics works. It would be like voting on a bill that makes it illegal for black people to assault white people. Of course no politician would vote for that, and that wouldn't mean that you could logically respond to them by saying "Oho, so it should be legal for black people to assault white people?" The creation of a bill essentially says "There is a problem or something that we need to do better, and this bill is meant to address that," and voting for the bill says "Yes, I agree with you that there's a problem or something we need to do better." Harris was right to oppose this bill.

2
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Coronavirus Vaccine and You
« on: November 02, 2024, 03:24:48 PM »
From the article: "Our cloth masks made out of old bandanas wouldn’t have done anything, anyway."

I did say "outside of the anecdote about her family." It's not like she's saying that masking in general was useless. Doctors began clarifying quite early in the pandemic that people needed to wear surgical masks and not cloth masks to properly protect themselves.

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"To take an example close to my own work, there is an emerging (if not universal) consensus that schools in the U.S. were closed for too long:"

And? The author isn't saying she was wrong about this. She's saying that she was right all along.

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"Remember when the public-health community had to spend a lot of time and resources urging Americans not to inject themselves with bleach? That was bad."

And? Don't tell me you took this to mean that the author thought that telling people not to inject themselves with bleach because injecting themselves with bleach was actually good. That's clearly not what she meant. What was "bad" was the fact that the government had to tell people not to inject themselves with bleach, rather than it being common sense to not do that.

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"Los Angeles County closed its beaches in summer 2020. Ex post facto, this makes no more sense than my family’s masked hiking trips."

Yes, I suppose this could be considered valid evidence to support the we-were-wrong-please-forgive-us interpretation of this article. Beaches being closed doesn't usually rank high on the list of grievances held by pandemic skeptics, but nevertheless, this was a thing that society did (and ostensibly she agreed with at the time) that she's pleading should be forgiven. You get one. If the whole article was like this, I might have agreed with Rushy's interpretation of it.

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Many people have neglected their health care over the past several years. Notably, routine vaccination rates for children (for measles, pertussis, etc.) are way down. "

And? She's not clearly not happy about vaccination rates going down, as indicated by her describing it as people having "neglected their health care."

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You are correct, Sadaam...[/sarcasm] The article only mentioned social distancing.

I didn't say the article only mentioned social distancing. I said the author only admitted to being wrong about covid policies in an anecdote about her family where they went to crazy lengths to socially distance themselves from others while on a hike. That, and I guess about public beaches being closed.

I don't think I have to ignore anything you say to make it seem like you're being pedantic. After all, this entire, hmm, "discussion" is based entirely on you being pedantic!

...

Well this is certainly an opinion. While I can't claim your wild interpretations of other people's words is "wrong", I can point out that it doesn't seem to be the natural conclusion I would expect someone take take away from the article.

I guess I'll take that as a "No, I still haven't read the article." Good talk.

3
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: US Presidential Election 2024
« on: November 01, 2024, 03:27:26 AM »
Finally getting back to the points raised some time ago:

Which Americans and what gun control? I find that while "gun control" is often positively polled, the numbers change drastically when you word precisely what is intended by "gun control". Take these gallup polls for example:

https://news.gallup.com/poll/1645/guns.aspx

Should gun policy be more strict? Most Americans answer yes. Then, when asked if they want to ban assault rifles, assault weapons or handguns, the majority say no. In the case of handguns, a whopping +46% say no. Harris supports an assault weapon ban, which automatically puts her on the wrong side of the gun policy polls. Unsurprisingly, this has cost her support.

According to the most recent polls listed on that website, the majority of respondents do support bans on assault rifles, although in the past the majority opposed them. This fits with other recent survey information I've found here and here.

What sort of rights do Democrats protect? What rights do Republicans plan to remove? As far as I understand it, the only strong difference these days is on the T. The majority of people in this Gallup poll answered that changing one's gender is "wrong".

https://news.gallup.com/poll/1651/gay-lesbian-rights.aspx

Now, I'm not going to comment on whether it's wrong. What I am noting here is that the majority of people don't like the T in LGBT. Again, this is costing Harris support.

It's very misleading of you to point to the one section where the opposition won by a slim majority and ignore the section directly after where the opposition lost and by a bigger margin. I will say, though, that most polls I've looked up about public support for trans rights are all over the place, and it's hard to tell whether there are more results that suggest more people do support trans rights or the other way around. Nevertheless, whatever personal opinions Americans might hold about trans people's behavior, they're reasonably consistent in rejecting politicians who obsess over them. Ron DeSantis seems to be the only major politician who's found success lately in engaging closely with the culture war. Why this subject is apparently such a winner with him, I don't know, but then again, I also don't know why anyone would elect (and re-elect) an unpleasant, scowling little man with zero charisma or warmth who angrily snaps at his audience every time he gives a speech, so maybe Floridians are built different. There's a stark difference between personally disapproving of someone else changing their gender and voting for politicians who regularly rant about trans people and seemingly focus on them at the expense of issues that people actually care about, like the economy.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/majority-of-americans-reject-anti-trans-bills-but-support-for-this-restriction-is-rising

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/11/anti-trans-platforms-lose-elections/

https://www.yahoo.com/news/anti-trans-laws-not-politically-214632748.html

None of these are unbiased sources, admittedly, but their information seems legit, particularly with the election results. I can't think of any other major politician than DeSantis who's seen repeated success while building their identity almost entirely around reactionary culture wars. And of course gay rights are part of this subject. Imagine thinking that the GOP only has an issue with trans people and is totally cool with gay people all of a sudden. Laws restricting teachers mentioning homosexuality or banning books about gay relationships (while completely ignoring books or discussions about heterosexuality, because that's totally different), the rise in anti-drag bills, the "groomer" moral panic. In fact, that last one is the product of the current intellectual godfather of the conservative movement, Christopher Rufo. He's never been elected to any office, but I can't think of anyone outside of Trump himself who holds more sway over Republican policy positions and conservative language than him. As I mentioned, the "grooming" moral panic was his idea. Remember when every conservative was ranting about "CRT"? That was also Rufo's idea. And remember when some months ago every conservative abruptly stopped talking about "CRT" and began talking about "DEI" instead? Once again, Rufo decided on a change of terminology, gave the order, and every conservative from Republican politicians to gamers ranting about diversity in video games on the Internet obediently began ranting about "DEI" instead, a term that 99% of them had undoubtedly never heard before. This stuff isn't spontaneous. The conservative movement in this country is more or less controlled by a relatively small handful of hyper-religious nuts like Rufo. They hate gay people as much as they hate trans people, and it's only a matter of time before the Supreme Court overturns Obergefell and a coordinated attempt at striking down every gay marriage law across the country and put a federal ban into effect immediately goes into effect, just like it did with Dobbs. And speaking of abortion:

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This depends entirely on what you mean by "abortion rights". Do the majority of Americans support some form of abortion? The answer is yes. Do the majority of Americans support the Democrat party's particular flavor of abortion? No.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/1576/abortion.aspx

Over a third of Americans want abortion to be illegal entirely. The vast majority of Americans believe abortion should be possible only under "certain circumstances". More specifically, the vast majority of Americans think abortion past the first trimester should be illegal. Right off the bat, the Democrats have to fight over only 70% of voters who want some form of pro-choice. Only 22% of those voters want abortion to be legal under all circumstances. It could very well be that the "pro-choice" voters interested in mild abortion access end up voting for Republicans because they consider no abortion access to be better than a free-for-all.

This is a blatant strawman. No mainstream politician thinks that all abortions should be allowed with zero rules or regulations that take into account things like the progression of the pregnancy. It's Republicans who pursue an absolutist stance on abortion with their end goal of not allowing any abortions at all, not Democrats. By saying that some abortions should be allowed, people are agreeing with Democrats, not Republicans.

4
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Coronavirus Vaccine and You
« on: October 31, 2024, 09:32:58 PM »
So this is your argument so far:

1. The article wasn't written by the government. It doesn't matter.
2. THEN - Okay, so even though it wasn't written by the government, I suppose it can matter, but it doesn't say exactly what you want it to say

No, not "then." You latched on to half a sentence in my first post and ignored everything else I said to make it seem as though I was being pedantic. I'll post my first quote again so there can be no misunderstanding:

If you had read the entire article instead of just the headline (here's an archived link to avoid the paywall), you would have known that it's not saying what you think it's saying. It's an opinion piece written by one person who in no way "represents" the government or any company, and seems to be more interested in humblebragging about (supposedly) being right all along about schools being closed for too long and patronizingly offering forgiveness to those who doubted her than anything else. At no point does this article say that closing businesses and encouraging social distancing were wrong, nor that requiring masks to be worn in public buildings was wrong, nor that employers requiring their employees to be vaccinated was wrong, and certainly not that the vaccine was dangerous or unhelpful. This is not any kind of vindication for conspiracy theorists, unless your particular conspiracy theory happens to be that schools were closed for too long, and even then, the author would be on your side.

You ignored everything that I've bolded.

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We're trying to adventure towards the next natural point:

3. THEN - Okay, so it may allude to the things you say, but that's not good enough. It should say them verbatim!

After that, we can go even further! We can discuss your precise interpretation of sentences. This requires you state why you believe what you do, rather than just saying "hmm actually this article doesn't say anything".

You see, honk, like yourself, other people don't like admitting they made huge mistakes during the pandemic. They have to hint at it, while pretending to have been correct all along, but also giving away that they realized they were in the wrong. I suggest you thoroughly read the article with that in mind.

But it doesn't "allude to the things you say." I'm not saying that the we-were-wrong-please-forgive-us elements are there, but they're too indirect for my liking. I'm saying they aren't there at all. The author isn't admitting to (or hinting at, or vaguely indicating, or whatever wording you prefer), being wrong about anything, outside of the anecdote about her family trying to social distance while hiking. Quite the opposite, in fact, as the main point of this article is that she claims to have been right along but is such a big person that she's willing to forgive  her critics. Have you read the article, by the way? Because I wouldn't be surprised if you still haven't.

5
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Coronavirus Vaccine and You
« on: October 31, 2024, 01:33:34 PM »
You should really just read the article. I know you think you don't need to, but you should.

6
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Coronavirus Vaccine and You
« on: October 31, 2024, 03:30:07 AM »
Okay, we'll go through this one by one:

Then why did you respond at all? It seems like all you wanted was some kind of weird "gotcha" where you inform me that a newspaper is not actually owned by the government. Thank you for the informative post, very helpful.

If you'll notice, that was not addressed to you. I was talking to Action80.

Click on Rushy's quote, and you'll see this post:

Ah, my mistake for assuming that your response to me would be about the subject I was discussing. In any case, if you're not talking about the article, then I've got nothing to say to you.

Then why did you respond at all? It seems like all you wanted was some kind of weird "gotcha" where you inform me that a newspaper is not actually owned by the government. Thank you for the informative post, very helpful.

Now click on my quote, and you'll see this post:

I never posted one goddamn thing about Rushy's article, except the quote.

Ah, my mistake for assuming that your response to me would be about the subject I was discussing. In any case, if you're not talking about the article, then I've got nothing to say to you. I'm not interested in re-litigating covid policies.

So as you can clearly see, I was addressing you and not Rushy with that particular post. The post that you quoted earlier was addressed to Rushy and not you, but it's not the one that Rushy was responding to.

7
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Coronavirus Vaccine and You
« on: October 30, 2024, 05:58:48 PM »
Then why did you respond at all? It seems like all you wanted was some kind of weird "gotcha" where you inform me that a newspaper is not actually owned by the government. Thank you for the informative post, very helpful.

If you'll notice, that was not addressed to you. I was talking to Action80. You made a post about an article, I responded to you about the article, and then Action80 responded to me and quoted a line from the article. I quite naturally assumed that we were still discussing the article and responded in kind. If I had known that he wasn't interested in the article and just wanted to bitch and moan about covid policies, I wouldn't have bothered engaging with him.

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Businesses and governments are collections of people. People who pushed covid nonsense, collectively, as people. Some of those people (ergo: they) are publishing articles about having pushed this nonsense on their fellow man. Did this man personally pass covid legislation? No. Does he represent a certain apologetic factor in having people engage in performative nonsense? Yes.

People are the people that pushed covid policies (yes, that includes you!). The government isn't some magical entity that forces people to do things. Those people do things in voluntary agreement with the government. They don't actually have to do them!

Okay, so we're back to the point that not only have you not read the article, you haven't even read my previous posts where I discussed the article. Again, I would encourage you to read the article. Like I said in my previous posts, the author (a woman) is in no way apologizing for or admitting fault with regard to the most controversial covid policies involving mandatory public masking or vaccinations, and mostly criticized schools being closed for too long, not from the perspective of someone who's admitting that she was wrong and is asking forgiveness, but from the perspective of someone who claims to have been right all along and is condescendingly offering to forgive her critics.

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I think this is the core problem. You're not actually interested in a legitimate discussion. You just wanted to reply with nonsense. Did you genuinely believe anyone here believed a single newspaper represents the entire government? The answer is obviously no. Did you ask me to clarify? No. You wanted to imply a ridiculous take just to sound righteously incredulous. Good job.

Two problems here. First of all, if what you said was too stupid to be taken seriously, then you shouldn't have said it to begin with. It's not my responsibility to make your arguments for you. Second of all, your characterization of what I said just isn't accurate:

If you had read the entire article instead of just the headline (here's an archived link to avoid the paywall), you would have known that it's not saying what you think it's saying. It's an opinion piece written by one person who in no way "represents" the government or any company, and seems to be more interested in humblebragging about (supposedly) being right all along about schools being closed for too long and patronizingly offering forgiveness to those who doubted her than anything else. At no point does this article say that closing businesses and encouraging social distancing were wrong, nor that requiring masks to be worn in public buildings was wrong, nor that employers requiring their employees to be vaccinated was wrong, and certainly not that the vaccine was dangerous or unhelpful. This is not any kind of vindication for conspiracy theorists, unless your particular conspiracy theory happens to be that schools were closed for too long, and even then, the author would be on your side.

You focused on half a sentence from me ("It's an opinion piece written by one person who in no way "represents" the government or any company") and ignored everything else I said about the actual content of the article. If you had read my post, you would have seen my response to the argument you just made before you had even made it. Just like if you had read the article and not just the headline, you would have known that it's not saying what you think it's saying.

8
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Coronavirus Vaccine and You
« on: October 30, 2024, 01:41:40 PM »
I never posted one goddamn thing about Rushy's article, except the quote.

Ah, my mistake for assuming that your response to me would be about the subject I was discussing. In any case, if you're not talking about the article, then I've got nothing to say to you. I'm not interested in re-litigating covid policies.

I didn't realize government and businesses were made by robots that don't contain people with opinions. I should have known better!

Now that you're done having this absolutely insane take on what was posted, maybe you'll want to come up with something a bit more relevant than this ranting nonsense that comes to your head. Take a deep breath and try posting again, but this time read what you wrote before you posted it. This way, you don't post something like "hurr durr The Atlantic is not a department of the US government" and double-down on that as if it's an actual point that anyone was bringing up.

You're the one who said "they will have you do things that are obviously ridiculous nonsense, then when push comes to shove, they'll publish "sorry pls forgive :(" articles years later." How else could I possibly interpret that other than you apparently thinking that this article came from the same people who gave us covid policies? But if I'm wrong, as you insist I am, then please just tell me what it is that you did mean.

9
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Coronavirus Vaccine and You
« on: October 30, 2024, 02:36:45 AM »
^From the source provided by Rushy:

"But the thing is: We didn’t know."

I don't know who "we" is, but if you check the various threads on this forum and others, there are plenty of instances where many told the "we," they were absolutely full of shit with their approach in response to the "plandemic."

Going by the context, it's clear that the author is initially referring to her own family, and later on, to society as a whole. Whether or not you agree with her about what was publicly known and when is beside the point, which is that she is not speaking for or somehow representing any kind of official or semi-official body. That's what really drives a stake through this look-they-admit-it interpretation of the article. We know who the author is. She's not a politician or bureaucrat, nor does she work for any of the usual boogeymen of the right like the UN, the WEF, the Clinton Foundation, the Gates Foundation, and so on. She's a college professor who attracted attention during the pandemic by controversially arguing that schools should be reopened, and she wrote this article to gloat about the fact that she was right and that she magnanimously plans to forgive her critics.

I won't bother responding to the rest of your post, as it doesn't seem to have anything to do with this article.

Woah, it's an opinion piece? You mean to tell me the article wasn't written by the FBI and published by the CIA? Say it ain't so, honk. I'm devastated by this news. I can't believe it. I thought The Atlantic was a department of the federal government.

I know, it's so obvious! And yet, the person I was responding to really did seem to be implying that this article was some sort of mea culpa on the part of the government and businesses:

Always remember how companies and the government behaved when it came time to ignore all precedent and force you to do something against your will.

Reminder: they will have you do things that are obviously ridiculous nonsense, then when push comes to shove, they'll publish "sorry pls forgive :(" articles years later.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/10/covid-response-forgiveness/671879/

I didn't take him out of context or anything. This guy literally said "they will have you do things that are obviously ridiculous nonsense, then when push comes to shove, they'll publish "sorry pls forgive :(" articles years later." As insane as it sounds, he evidently thinks that the "they" who were responsible for covid-era policies (the government and businesses) were also responsible for this article. There's no other way to interpret his post. There's also, of course, the fact that this article doesn't say what he thinks it says, and that he clearly just looked at the headline and assumed he knew the content of the article without reading it, but that's admittedly less wacky than thinking that the government is writing opinion pieces in The Atlantic. What a dumbass, am I right?

10
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Coronavirus Vaccine and You
« on: October 28, 2024, 03:57:01 PM »
If you had read the entire article instead of just the headline (here's an archived link to avoid the paywall), you would have known that it's not saying what you think it's saying. It's an opinion piece written by one person who in no way "represents" the government or any company, and seems to be more interested in humblebragging about (supposedly) being right all along about schools being closed for too long and patronizingly offering forgiveness to those who doubted her than anything else. At no point does this article say that closing businesses and encouraging social distancing were wrong, nor that requiring masks to be worn in public buildings was wrong, nor that employers requiring their employees to be vaccinated was wrong, and certainly not that the vaccine was dangerous or unhelpful. This is not any kind of vindication for conspiracy theorists, unless your particular conspiracy theory happens to be that schools were closed for too long, and even then, the author would be on your side.

11
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: US Presidential Election 2024
« on: October 25, 2024, 02:02:29 AM »
Firstly, it's extremely unlikely that the IRS is hanging onto records of the income tax that a fast-food worker paid forty years ago; secondly, there's no good reason (both in the sense of Kamala's political interests and the public interest) to ask them to try to verify Kamala's McDonald's employment; thirdly, that's not a thing the IRS would do even if there was a good reason to verify Kamala's McDonald's employment; and fourthly, Trump and his supporters would immediately label any evidence the IRS produced as fabricated, so what would even be the point? Nobody who isn't already a ride-or-die Trump fan doubts that Kamala worked at McDonald's when she was younger, because it's entirely believable and would be an utterly pointless thing to lie about.

Wow, what a convent slew of semi-plausible excuses.

“IRS doesn’t have it”
“If they do have it, it doesn’t matter”
“If it does matter, they won’t release it”
“If they do release it, then it’s fabricated”
“If it isn’t fabricated, then it’s not relevant”

It reminds me of the narcissist’s prayer. Which I guess is fitting for Kamala.

What are you even talking about? I explained that there were several reasons that the IRS can't "verify" whether or not Kamala worked at McDonald's, and also correctly pointed out that even if they could offer any evidence, Trump supporters would immediately label it fake. The main idea behind the narcissist's prayer is that the various excuses offered are contradictory, and therefore indicate the speaker's insincerity. In this case, however, the "excuses," as you call them, are all true and all apply at the same time.

No, the fact that people care about whether or not the subject is worth caring about is not automatically evidence that they care about the subject itself. Those are two different things. To put it another way, if I made a thread saying that Trump wears pink underwear, and you responded by asking who even cares, that would not in and of itself be evidence that you cared about whether or not Trump wears pink underwear.

If everyone chimed in to talk about how much they didn't care about a topic in every thread, then all threads would constantly be filled with nonsensical posts of people informing everyone how very much they do not care. I think you can see why this would get out of hand rapidly.

As I already pointed out, this thread is filled with posts that no one cared about and did not respond to (because they do not care!) However, they immensely care about Harris' work history. Lots of regulars came to the thread, only to insist that they do not care in the slightest... while making long posts about how the evidence could exist but doesn't matter. It really makes me think.

But that's not what anyone is saying. It's not caring about whether or not Kamala worked at McDonald's, it's caring about the fact that people are trying to turn this into a big controversy and demanding that Kamala somehow "prove" what any normal person would accept at face value. You say that you don't believe anything without first seeing evidence of it, but that's simply not true. Every single person who lives in a society accepts without question plausible things they're told on a daily basis without demanding evidence of it first. If someone told you they went to Vegas last week on vacation, you'd believe them. If someone told you that they were having a bad day, you'd believe them. And when Kamala says that as a college student, she worked at McDonald's, normal people believe her, because it's entirely plausible and not the kind of thing that anyone could reasonably be expected to make up. Again, what if Trump wears pink underwear? You can care deeply about the fact that people are trying to make a big deal about whether or not Trump wears pink underwear without caring about whether or not Trump wears pink underwear.

Thank you for reminding me about responding to you about the popularity of Democratic and Republican positions. I was distracted by this nonsensical controversy.

12
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: US Presidential Election 2024
« on: October 24, 2024, 06:34:55 PM »
No, the fact that people care about whether or not the subject is worth caring about is not automatically evidence that they care about the subject itself. Those are two different things. To put it another way, if I made a thread saying that Trump wears pink underwear, and you responded by asking who even cares, that would not in and of itself be evidence that you cared about whether or not Trump wears pink underwear.

13
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: US Presidential Election 2024
« on: October 24, 2024, 03:37:12 AM »
Firstly, it's extremely unlikely that the IRS is hanging onto records of the income tax that a fast-food worker paid forty years ago; secondly, there's no good reason (both in the sense of Kamala's political interests and the public interest) to ask them to try to verify Kamala's McDonald's employment; thirdly, that's not a thing the IRS would do even if there was a good reason to verify Kamala's McDonald's employment; and fourthly, Trump and his supporters would immediately label any evidence the IRS produced as fabricated, so what would even be the point? Nobody who isn't already a ride-or-die Trump fan doubts that Kamala worked at McDonald's when she was younger, because it's entirely believable and would be an utterly pointless thing to lie about.

14
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: US Presidential Election 2024
« on: October 23, 2024, 09:38:25 PM »
The manager has been working there for forty years? I seriously doubt that, and even if it were true, how could they be reasonably expected to remember one of the undoubtedly hundreds of employees they've had over the years?

15
Arts & Entertainment / Re: Superhero Movies & Comics General
« on: October 21, 2024, 08:58:30 PM »
Joker was embraced by chuds immediately upon its release, leading to articles like this being written just a few weeks later. If Hollywood had been as worried by the movie's reception by the "wrong" people as you say, they had plenty of warning and plenty of time to change course before the Oscars. You might actually be right about the budget being fudged, as, like I said, I can't imagine how this movie with its whopping two locations cost triple what the first one did, but even if we suppose that the studio didn't lose money with this, deliberately trying to "self-destruct" a billion-dollar franchise out of spite is a weird step for a group of Hollywood producers, as opposed to one frustrated auteur.

I'm reminded of a dream I had some months ago where the MCU ended abruptly with an ugly, poorly-animated CGI short where a grotesque, giant Trump appeared on a beach and set off a huge explosion, destroying the world and killing everyone. This short was extremely controversial and was interpreted as being a spiteful take-that statement to the world at large because of the increasing likelihood of Trump being reelected president. It was extremely funny and I woke up laughing.

16
Arts & Entertainment / Re: Superhero Movies & Comics General
« on: October 21, 2024, 06:42:58 AM »
The politics of the people celebrating Joker may well have played a role in Phillips's decision to make this movie, but to extend that sentiment towards Hollywood as a whole, as if this was meant to somehow appease them, is a big stretch. I'll be the first to argue that the film industry has plenty of agendas and biases that get in the way of the supposed bottom line, but blowing close to two hundred million dollars on turbofucking a billion-dollar franchise, just because they didn't like how a bunch of alt-right types embraced the first movie? That's very far-fetched. Besides, if they regretted making Joker, why would they celebrate the movie months later by nominating it for a bunch of Oscars and letting it win two? It's their awards show, and they can award or snub any movie they like.

17
Arts & Entertainment / Re: Superhero Movies & Comics General
« on: October 19, 2024, 08:27:22 PM »
There's nothing alt-right or inherently politically conservative about this Joker or these movies. If you'll remember, the big controversy before the first one came out was that the character would turn into an incel hero and provoke similar violence - and I do still strongly suspect that the movie made a last-minute swerve and cut a scene of Arthur murdering Sophie to avoid that implication. For a sequel, with Joker being in a relationship with Harley, there'd be no fear of incels claiming him as one of their own, and there'd be nothing all that controversial about just another anti-hero-led crime movie. And if there were a political agenda behind this movie, I doubt that the people responsible would also want to drag Harley, a beloved character whose popularity has exploded in recent years and has become a feminist capeshit icon to her fans, down with Joker with this two-faced, sexist portrayal of her. This is by no means a politically progressive movie.

18
Arts & Entertainment / Re: Superhero Movies & Comics General
« on: October 19, 2024, 04:09:15 AM »
It's very bad, yes. Much like the first movie, it's very poorly written, the characters are paper-thin, and the themes are explicitly spelled out and then repeated several times to make sure we get it. Phillips squeezes in a number of "artsy" shots in that clearly mean nothing, but he hopes will look impressive and meaningful (to be fair, given his target audience's enthusiasm over the shot of Arthur smiling through the lipstick on the glass, he was probably successful). Ooh, the light seems to be shining on Arthur in this scene! Ooh, Arthur is centered and framed in silhouette in this scene! How avant-garde! Almost all of the movie takes place in either Arkham or a courthouse (how this movie could have possibly cost $190 million, almost triple the budget of the first one, is beyond me), meaning there's very little of the terrific depiction of Gotham that we saw in the first movie. The courtroom scenes in particular drove me nuts because of how little any of it resembles an actual trial. I'm not saying it needed to be strictly accurate, but it feels like the filmmakers did literally zero research into how actual lawyers talk and how actual trials work. Why does Arthur's lawyer think that his journal is somehow "privileged" and exempt from evidence? Why does Arthur's lawyer ask his former neighbor and unrequited love to repeat every humiliating insult Arthur's late mother aimed at him? Why does the judge allow Arthur to dress up in his Joker outfit and bully and intimidate a witness while not even asking questions? There are plenty of very successful legal thrillers that bring a sense of verisimilitude to their courtroom scenes, even if they aren't strictly accurate to the letter of the law or exact courtroom procedure. There's no reason this movie couldn't have done likewise.

This is the worst depiction of Harley (Lee, as this movie calls her) I've ever seen in any adaptation. Lady Gaga is fine in the role, but there's no real grounding to the relationship between her and Arthur, there's no good reason why they bond over music and sing to each other, and given how heavily (and repeatedly) the movie foreshadows it, it's not much of a spoiler to say that her character ends up being, in effect, yet another conspirator against Arthur in his woe-is-me life, one more person who seemingly has nothing better to do with her own life than traumatize and humiliate him to breaking point, because we live in a society. It's regressive, sexist, and unworthy of Harley. As for the songs I just mentioned, while I don't think they're terribly done, they don't really add much to the movie. Musicals work best when they go all out, and this movie is too devoted to its gritty, grounded aesthetic to really let loose during the songs. It raises the obvious question of why Phillips or whomever even wanted this to be a musical. Oh, and it's incredibly obvious to anyone with any knowledge of Gaga's singing talent that she's deliberately holding back during her songs, presumably to avoid making Phoenix look like a lousy singer in comparison. In fact, I'd guess that the worry of not wanting Gaga to outshine Phoenix too much is also why there are only one or two real duets, with the rest of the songs only being sung by one of them to the other.

Of course, the main reason why most of the first movie's fans absolutely hate this one is its hostility, for lack of a better word, to the first movie and its fans. And as someone who's been quite open about their dislike of the first movie and their patronizing opinion of its fans, I have to say...they have a point. Phillips clearly wasn't happy with how most fans of the first movie unironically idolized Arthur and saw him as a hero rather than a cautionary tale, and this movie is how he's chosen to take out his frustration. It's partially how he treats Arthur as a character (Arthur is raped into dropping the Joker persona. I'm not exaggerating. That really is what happens, and there's no more charitable way to read this. Nothing happens to Arthur between being Joker one day and not being Joker the next day but his rape. It has to be the rape that made him stop being Joker, because there was nothing else.) and partially how Lee and the Joker's fanbase are framed as being toxic, illogical, and manipulative, and very clearly a direct representation of the first movie's fanbase. The movie repeats many times that they are pushing Arthur into a role that he doesn't belong to and trying to make a violent and deeply troubled man out to be a hero. (The scene with Zazie Beetz's character is also a clear jab at the weirdos who saw Arthur as an incel hero.) It could not be more obvious that this is how Phillips has interpreted the first movie's fanbase. I get that it's frustrating to make something enormously successful that you feel has been so widely misunderstood.  I'm sure it would have been possible for Phillips to express his feelings about that in a sequel. But not like this. This just reeks of contempt.

There is one thing I'll give Phillips credit for with this movie. He took a risk and made the movie he wanted to make rather than take the safe route. It would have been easy to play to the fans and give them what they wanted, like a movie where chad Joker and Harley go on a Bonnie-and-Clyde-style rampage full of black comedy, fanservice, and we-live-in-a-society commentary. A crowd-pleasing sequel (not even necessarily a good one) would have grossed over a billion dollars, probably making more than the first Joker, and boosted Phillips's career. But he chose to sacrifice that opportunity in favor of making something that he clearly believed in instead, and I do have to respect that, even though it obviously didn't pay off.

19
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: US Presidential Election 2024
« on: October 19, 2024, 03:14:54 AM »
could it be that people don't like her policy?

If that were the case, then I'd question why the Democratic ticket even had a surge in popularity at all when Kamala replaced Biden. Policy doesn't win presidential elections in this country. If it did, then this election wouldn't be as close as it is. Tighter gun control is consistently popular among Americans. So is support for LGBT rights, greater taxation of the wealthy, and abortion rights, all positions that Republicans firmly oppose and have indicated they're going to be pushing even further in the opposite direction once they have the power to do so. The last point, abortion, is especially galling when you remember that Trump is responsible for the extremely unpopular Dobbs decision that overturned Roe in a very direct, straightforward way. Trump put three people on the SC, all of whom joined the majority on Dobbs and made up half of it. It is because Trump was elected and put his nominees on the SC that Roe was overturned. Trump is responsible. That's not my opinion; it's what objectively happened. So Americans don't want what Republicans are offering - and yet they keep voting for them anyway.

20
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: US Presidential Election 2024
« on: October 18, 2024, 06:01:53 PM »
I'm sure it really is just Trump clawing back the support he might have lost through Kamala's first surge of popularity and their debate. There's nothing that Kamala has said or done lately that could reasonably be assumed to have cost her any significant support. No prominent gaffes or missteps, no outrageous or especially controversial remarks. It feels ridiculous even talking about whether or not Kamala has made any conventional gaffes when Trump's rhetoric and behavior are becoming increasingly more psychotic, threatening, and senile, but the fact is that she really hasn't made any.

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