1

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: US Presidential Election 2024

« on: September 08, 2024, 08:15:14 PM »

Of course, the family invited Trump. Of course, the family allowed pictures.

It's not up to the family. Politicians are not allowed to hold political events and take pictures for the purposes of campaigning at Arlington. Nobody can make you admit that this was a political event and Trump was taking (very tacky) pictures for the purposes of campaigning. Nevertheless, any reasonable person would agree that's what happened, and that specifically, Trump's plan was to pretend that this was an official, public ceremony and blast Biden and Harris for not attending.* You can refuse to accept this and keep insisting "Nuh uh" all you want, but that doesn't you're making a good case or that you're a good debater. It just means that you're being obstinate.

*To wit, here's Fox News trying to frame the story that way once they received their marching orders:

https://twitter.com/FoxNews/status/1829544169469038814

Interestingly enough, this used to have a community note attached to it correctly pointing out that there was no official event, only a private ceremony, but it's no longer there, presumably because Musk intervened and had it removed.

This is why no charges were filed.

Use your head for a moment. Pretend for a moment that you agree with me that Trump was behaving illegally in this case. Do you really, really, think that any federal prosecutor, a few months before a presidential election in which Trump himself stands a good chance of becoming their boss, would dare risk their career by launching a lengthy, controversial prosecution against a powerful political figure who will undoubtedly take revenge if they're elected, all over a fairly minor offense? That would never happen. I would go so far as to say that Trump could have unzipped his pants and pissed all over the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on camera and no prosecutor would have dared touch him.

2

Arts & Entertainment / Re: Superhero Movies & Comics General

« on: September 01, 2024, 06:10:05 PM »

That scene is far from the only moment in the movie where genuinely ambitious or interesting ideas are buried under poor execution. I don't want to spend too much time talking about Snyder fans rather than the movie itself, but so many of their defenses of it can be chalked up to them analyzing individual scenes or moments meticulously, deciding on what they're supposed to convey, and then accusing people who criticize them of simply not getting it. But movies are first and foremost meant to be watched and enjoyed, not picked apart and studied like they're an academic treatise. Part of the job of the director and screenwriter is to communicate their ideas to the audience using the language of film, and if they can't do that, and need to rely on fans going back over their movie to say "Hmm, yes, so what this scene really means is this..." or "People mock this scene because they think its goofy, but what they don't realize is that the characters were..." then they've failed in that job. To put it more simply, execution is just as important as intent, and simply understanding the intent behind any given scene or moment doesn't suddenly make the execution of that scene or moment retroactively better.

I could keep talking about this subject as it relates to BvS for quite a while, but I'll just give one more example: Batman's odd voiceover right at the start of the movie, where he says, "There was a time above... a time before... there were perfect things... diamond absolutes. But things fall... things on earth. And what falls... is fallen. In the dream, they took me to the light. A beautiful lie." Even setting aside the silly phrasing that comes from directly quoting Yeats and Heaney (doesn't sound so great when you take it out of context, does it?), what exactly is Batman talking about? The first part of it isn't too hard to figure out, especially seeing as it takes place during the Waynes' murder and subsequent funeral. Bruce Wayne's idyllic life was upended and everything changed after his parents were murdered when he was a young boy. Standard Batman origin story. But what about the final two lines, beginning with "In the dream..."? It's very cryptic, and doesn't sound typical for Batman. And I'm certainly not the only one who was puzzled by those lines, because Snyder has been asked about their meaning on the weird social media platform he likes. Here's his explanation:



I'm not going to make fun of Snyder for struggling to express himself verbally. I can see what he means, and it does seem to be a fair summary of this Batman's worldview. Unfortunately, expressing this Batman's worldview by way of a cryptic monologue that's never brought up again at the start of the movie only confuses the audience. Remember, this is a whole new Batman (hence BvS having yet another scene of the Waynes being murdered), and one that makes major deviations from Batman's usual character. The Batman of the comics, along with the various versions of him we've seen in previous adaptations, very seldom questions or doubts the righteousness and importance of his mission as Batman for longer than the space of a single conversation. The audience can't reasonably be expected to "get" from a couple of odd lines at the start of the movie that this Batman has lost faith in what he does the same way that they could reasonably be expected to "get" that Bruce's life changed forever after the deaths of his parents. The only people who are going to get anything out of this monologue are the fans who go back over the movie having already watched it and analyze each scene to figure out the filmmakers' intent. Everyone else is left confused after watching what amounts to a very standard, if over-the-top, Batman origin scene with a pretentious poem attached to it.

This has already gone on for way too long, so I'll just start throwing out some more standard critiques. The movie is dull and depressing. It makes no sense for Superman to be a brooding stoic, and just like MoS, the movie is far more interested in Superman as an idea than as a three-dimensional character with a personality and worldview of his own. Doomsday is awful - ugly, unfaithful to the source material, and completely superfluous to the titular struggle between Batman and Superman. If they had jazzed up the fight between Batman and Superman a bit, that would have been a far better climax to the movie than fighting Doomsday. I don't like that Batman uses guns and is a killer, especially when his killing isn't even an intentional reflection of this Batman having lost his way and gone down a darker route, but is just there because Snyder thinks that superheroes not killing is unrealistic, and also because he's an immature edgelord who's insecure about liking capeshit, so he feels the need to edge it up. I also don't like how the Batmobile is this armored behemoth that smashes through everything in its path with brute force. That's just not Batman, and it's not the Batmobile. I've noticed this trend of trying to "toughen up" the Batmobile in adaptations before, notably in the Nolan trilogy and Arkham Knight (and parodied in The Lego Batman Movie), and I can only assume that it's coming from a place of embarrassment in dealing with the fact that Batman drives around in a Bat-themed car.

Is there anything I like about this movie? At times it's beautiful. I like Wonder Woman - it's funny now thinking back to how brightly, and yet briefly, Gal Gadot shone as seemingly the MVP of the entire DCEU. The effect largely wore off right around the time that WW84 flopped commercially and people stated to get tired of Gadot's very limited acting talent, which became all the more clear with every movie she appeared in. Still, at least for this movie, the novelty of seeing this character on the big screen for the first time, combined with Gadot's striking looks and charisma, were a highlight of BvS, and definitely paved the way for her own movie to become such a big hit. And as much as I don't like Batman as a killer, I think there's something very compelling about this Batman, not least of which is Affleck's strong performance. It really is sad seeing the difference between Affleck's performance in this movie and how much he phoned it in in his later appearances. He really believed in this movie, and it's clear that its critical failure crushed him. Oh, and Jeremy Irons plays a very solid Alfred (interestingly enough, deviating from the latest trend in adaptations of giving Alfred working-class roots, as we've seen in the Nolan trilogy, Gotham, and The Batman) and has a good rapport with Affleck.

The best scene of the movie is, just as I felt when I first saw it, Batman's fight scene in the warehouse. It's not perfect. I (obviously) don't like how Batman kills a few people, I don't like how he uses his enemies' guns and knives against them, and I don't like how Batman can endure gunshots at close range and still keep fighting (although they do at least stagger him somewhat, which is definitely preferable to how The Batman and The Flash portrayed him as entirely unfazed when several enemies emptied their assault rifles into his chest all at once). But apart from those details, it's fantastic to see a Batman who's moving fast, hitting hard, using his gadgets, and generally being a very believable physical threat. I also really like how the scene shows Batman take a few hits and get knocked to the ground (I whupped Batman's ass) at one point, only for him to keep fighting effectively from the ground until he can get back on his feet and regain the offensive. It's so much better than the previous movies where Batman slowly lumbered about under a heavy rubber suit, and it's crazy how they kept doing that for so long. Nobody cares if the Batsuit isn't as solid and heavy as a realistic suit of armor would be! It's fucking capeshit!

The negative impact of this movie was momentous. Audiences did not like this movie, and I want to be very clear on this point, because it's yet another detail that Snyder fanboys keep trying to rewrite history on. Look at the numbers for a moment - poor word of mouth was killing this movie at the box office within the very first weekend. That's not normal! Usually a front-loaded blockbuster performs well throughout the first weekend, and then starts sharply declining. But no, even on the very first day it came out, people were already telling their friends not to see this shitty movie. And it did still have an enormous drop-off the next week. Overall, the movie grossed $874.4 million at the box office, which I'm sure made WB a healthy profit, but for a movie starring Batman and Superman together for the first time? With the first appearance of Wonder Woman? And at the height of the capeshit boom? It should have grossed twice that, or at least over a billion. This was all the evidence WB needed that Snyder was toxic to their brand. It's not hindsight to say that this was their warning (I would actually argue that MoS was their warning) and that they should have cut ties with Snyder immediately. Not slowly pivot away from his vision, not add more producer notes to his films, but immediately pull the trigger on a new director and a new overarching plan for the DCEU. But they didn't, and so we ended up with the flop that was JL. I'll talk about JL later, because, again, this has grown obscenely long, but it's important to remember that the immediate reception to JL was a direct consequence of BvS's poor reception. It had nothing to do with Joss Whedon or studio interference. All that stuff only came to light much later.

Many old-school capeshit nerds will call BvS the worst capeshit movie ever made. I wouldn't go that far. For all its cynicism and edge, there is at least an artistic sincerity to it that comes of a director who was genuinely trying to make a good movie, as opposed to a studio that shits out a lab-produced movie that's little more than a collection of "trailer moments" and lousy jokes. So by that standard, it's at least better than the theatrical cut of JL and Suicide Squad. But make no mistake, it's bad. It's very, very bad. And, yes, I know this review is ridiculously long, and probably nobody is even reading this far. I can't help it. I just had so much to say about this.

3

Arts & Entertainment / Re: Superhero Movies & Comics General

« on: September 01, 2024, 06:07:53 PM »

I'm delighted that Crudblud has finally resumed the Batshit Odyssey and reviewed BvS. I largely agree with most of it, and especially how overwhelming it feels to try to appropriately criticize a movie this monumentally, fundamentally wrong-headed and broken. The best thing I can do, I think, is just sort of list all of my issues with this movie one after the other, and not to spend too much time or effort on trying to summarize it all. I've ranted about BvS in this thread many times over the years, but it'll be nice to have all of my points, or near enough, in two posts.

If I had to point to what's the biggest issue in BvS, which is no easy task, I think I'd single out just how hollow the central conflict - the "v" of the title, so to speak - feels, and how little of the movie contributes to that conflict, despite being ostensibly presented as such. Let's start from the beginning. I actually don't think that Bruce's introductory scene on the ground in Metropolis during the flashback to MoS is a bad one. I mean, it wouldn't be the beginning of my ideal capeshit film, and I think it's really tacky how heavily and deliberately Snyder invokes the imagery of 9/11, but there are a lot of things that work here. Bruce running into danger while everyone else is running in the opposite direction is a strong visual, there's a poignancy to Bruce comforting the young child that's surprisingly gentle for Snyder, and Bruce's furious glare at Superman says far more than any dramatic speech or vow of revenge would. If nothing else, the scene is at least clear. It very firmly establishes Bruce's personal animosity towards Superman. There's still over two hours of movie to go before Batman challenges Superman, so you'd expect his opinion of Superman to be expanded upon in that time, right?

But it isn't! It's all just red herrings and pointless diversions, most of which stem from Lex Luthor's ridiculous and overly-complicated master plan. For example, there's Guy With No Legs, as Crudblud dubbed him. He's an employee of Wayne Enterprises who lost his legs during the destruction of Metropolis, and is now a hobo. Bruce tries to do right by him by sending him disability or compensation checks, but they're returned uncashed, with "YOU LET YOUR FAMILY DIE" scrawled on one of them. This is actually Lex's work, though - he's intercepted the checks and sent them back with that message. In the meantime, Lex seizes on Guy's disability and financial straits to groom him into becoming an anti-Superman activist who will testify at the congressional hearing - except Lex puts a bomb in his chair, which explodes and kills everyone. Now, Lex does all this because...because...he's trying to unnerve Bruce (whom he knows is Batman, because reasons)? He tricks Bruce into thinking that his former employee blames him for what happened, has refused his money, and become a suicide bomber. Well, I don't know if Bruce could reasonably be expected to know that it was Guy who blew up the hearing, as only Superman, being the only survivor, could have reported on what happened. But we'll give the movie the benefit of the doubt and say that Bruce has been successfully tricked into thinking Guy rejected his money and blew up a congressional hearing instead. What does this actually change between Bruce and Superman? Bruce already hates Superman and already thinks he's a danger to the world. What was the point of this whole scheme?

A subplot that I find even more frustrating concerns the character of Kahina Ziri. She supposedly witnesses the chaos that Superman causes in the fictional African nation of Nairomi near the beginning of the film, and publicly accuses Superman of killing innocent people and not caring about whom he hurts. I think it's a pretty bold idea and a strong visual to have an African woman call out Superman, with all his power and privilege, and basically challenge him to do better, and the movie is clearly drawing a parallel between Superman and real-world American military intervention. This is what motivates Superman to decide to start looking for out the powerless instead of just responding to major catastrophes, and this ends up with Clark investigating the stories of Batman and the stabbed prisoners. So far, so good...but no, because then it turns out Kahina was lying the whole time. Instead of being a character with agency, she was just another one of Lex's hired pawns, and is murdered after she has a change of heart. Turns out Superman had nothing to worry about and no need to change his priorities or worldview at all! What bullshit! Snyder teases this really provocative and genuinely deconstructive idea, and then he chickens out on actually following it through!

I just mentioned the prison stabbings, which are also weird. This movie first indicates to us that this is a darker Batman who's been pushed over the line by showing us that he's been branding criminals that he captures with the shape of his bat symbol. This is what gets Superman on the case of Batman, and I do think that having him stand up for the rights of prisoners is a refreshing character beat and a very Superman thing to do. However, the movie textually is less concerned with the cruelty of branding prisoners and more with the fact that branded prisoners are being murdered by other prisoners when they're in jail. In Superman's eyes, Batman isn't just being cruel; he's responsible for these deaths. So now we have a clear ideological conflict between Batman and Superman...except that no, because it turns out that Lex was paying prisoners to murder the branded criminals. See, Superman doesn't really have a big problem with Batman after all, because it was all Lex's fault. Like I mentioned a few posts ago, the movie treats Batman sparing Lex his brand at the end as a turning point for him and a sign that he's moved past his darkness, but why? The brandings were apparently only bad because of the prisoners being stabbed, which only happened because of Lex's machinations.

There are more examples in the movie of how the enmity between Batman and Superman, or the enmity between Superman and the world at large, all come down to Lex's ludicrous and convoluted master plan rather than genuine ideological conflicts between the characters. The only conflict between them that isn't engineered by Lex is the one that's established at the very beginning of the movie - Batman's anger at Superman over the events of MoS. Instead of building on that, Snyder just wastes two hours of screen time on Lex's diversions and manipulations. It's narrative dead air, and it's dogshit storytelling to have both main characters be manipulated by another character this much. Agency is important. There's a world of difference between Batman and Superman fighting because they chose to and them fighting because Lex has manipulated them into fighting. I honestly believe that Snyder doesn't understand this. If asked about it, he would probably say, "What does it matter if Batman and Superman meant to fight or if they were tricked into fighting? What's important is what's on screen. The scene of them fighting would still play out the same way, so it wouldn't make a difference to the audience."

And even setting aside the fundamental problem of Lex's master plan fatally undermining the conflict between Batman and Superman, the fact is that the plan is very silly on its own merits. It's way too complicated, it relies on specific actions being taken by multiple other characters that Lex had no way of accurately predicting, while it also paradoxically has weird blind spots like Lex bizarrely equipping his men with rare, experimental ammunition that can be traced back to him, which Lois inevitably ends up doing. That last detail especially grates on me because it's such an obvious and weak pretext on the part of the screenwriters to get Lois involved with the main plot. They really couldn't come up with anything better than our supposedly ingenious villain conveniently (and for no discernible purpose other than reasons) using special ammunition that would lead right back to him? The movie would be have been much stronger and more focused without Lex's goofy master plan dictating the plot. If they really wanted Lex in this movie, then they could have kept him in the background as an agitator, someone who's trying to pit the rest of the world against Superman, and that would have been a good tease for him to maybe be the main villain in a later movie.

I'm going to keep talking about Lex! Without even discussing Jesse Eisenberg's performance, this character is terrible as written. Most of his dialogue feels like it's meant to reinforce either how smart or how weird he is. Regarding the intelligence aspect of it, this is not a convincing depiction of a smart person. I know I've shared this article before, but it really does do a great job of breaking down the superficiality and utter inanity of the intelligence that Lex supposedly displays. There had to have been a better way of showing off how smart Lex was. Like, maybe the movie could have shown him designing the anti-metahuman weapons he was interested in, or perhaps building a power suit for himself. Or maybe they could have shown us how Lex discovered the identities of Batman and Superman - it really grinds my gears how the momentous story detail of Lex Luthor knowing who Batman and Superman are is treated in such a casual way. Even just giving him a few scenes of technobabble would have been more effective than "Let's have him bring up Icarus; only really smart people know the story of Icarus!" As for Lex's weirdness, it doesn't serve any narrative purpose, I can't imagine any actor somehow making his lines not incredibly annoying, and I'm pretty sure that it all came down to just another capeshit movie trying to make its villain more like Heath Ledger's Joker from TDK.

A bit about shared universes now - I get why Snyder didn't want to just copy the MCU and put teasers for upcoming movies at the end of this one. There's nothing wrong with trying to integrate those elements into the movie properly. However, having Wonder Woman just watch three teasers for upcoming movies directly before the climax of this one, with dramatic music blaring as our title characters prepare for their final showdown, is not what I'd call good, organic integration. There must have been so many ways to hint at the existence of Aquaman, Cyborg, and the Flash without having to just watch these videos back to back in such a clumsy, forced way. Maybe Clark or Lois covered a high school football game that Cyborg played in for the Daily Planet. Maybe Batman investigated the convenience store robbery when he heard about the involvement of a super-fast metahuman, logically suspecting Superman. Maybe Wonder Woman knows about Atlantis or has encountered its people in the past. And if they really wanted to keep the videos that we saw in the movie, they could at the very least have pushed them to way earlier in the movie, maybe with Lex showing them to Holly Hunter during the scene where he talks about metahumans. Also, implying that Lex is the one who designed these capeshitters' logos is really fucking lame. It makes the whole universe feel so small.

That being said, Wonder Woman watching these teasers right before the climax of the movie isn't nearly as bad as the ridiculous "Knightmare" scene. I really feel like this scene was almost forgotten in the wave of negative criticism that was directed at BvS after its release, and as such has never gotten the shit it truly deserves. Because it really is one of the worst scenes in the movie. For one thing, it's just another teaser for an upcoming movie. This scene goes on for five minutes and bears no relevance to the actual movie it's in, being immediately forgotten and only brought up again in the Snyder cut of JL. And not only is it just a teaser, it's also a really bad teaser. It's - intentionally, I believe - vague and obscure, beginning in medias res and providing no explanation to the audience of what's going on in this scene or why. I don't think there's anyone in the world, no matter how much of a DC fan they might be, who could have watched this scene for the first time without being baffled. Again, to stress this point, this isn't simply one line of dialogue or a brief exchange, it's a whole five minutes of the movie, nestled right in the middle like a short film. It's insane that Snyder thought it would be a good idea to interrupt his own movie and confuse the audience for five minutes with this fever dream, and it's even more insane that a producer didn't intervene and insist that the scene be cut. Also, I have no doubt that the presentation of Batman as a trigger-happy gunslinger and Superman as a murderous dictator were for the sake of edge and shock value more than anything else.

Speaking of bad scenes, let's discuss the most infamous one of all - "Martha." While it was universally mocked when BvS first came out, this scene does play a key role in the efforts of Snyder fans to argue that BvS is actually a good movie and is simply misunderstood by people who didn't "get it." Their argument goes that of course Batman doesn't really spare Superman's life simply because his mother has the same name as his. That's just a coincidence that gets Batman's attention, and by extension has him realize exactly what he's doing. He's about to kill a defenseless man in cold blood, a man who means no harm and has objectively done great things for the human race, a man who has someone who loves him enough to dive between him and his would-be killer, a man who loves and cries out for his mother, just as Batman remembers doing himself as a young boy all those years ago when his parents were taken from him. Batman realizes that because of his fear and paranoia, now he's the man with the gun, and he's the one who's about to permanently separate a loving mother and son. And so he flings his spear away in disgust, etc.

I have no doubt that this was the intended takeaway for audiences in this scene. And as described here, I think it sounds perfectly fine. Poignant, even. Unfortunately, the scene doesn't quite resonate this way on screen, and the main reason why is the "Martha" factor. The movie puts way too much emphasis on this odd maternal coincidence and plays it up as a huge dramatic moment that's enough to throw Batman for a loop and change the whole situation, even if we're meant to understand that it's not in and of itself the reason why Batman spares Superman. That's how movies work, after all - once you frame something as being important using the language of film, then it becomes important to the movie regardless of whether that's consistent with the characters or story. Batman and Superman having mothers with the same is important to this movie because it's framed as being important, and no after-the-fact rationalizations will change how this scene actually plays out. The end result is that the audience is primed by a scene like this to immediately start thinking about geeky capeshit trivia instead of actually being moved by Batman's arc.

I honestly don't think that the "Martha" coincidence should have been brought up at all. Like, maybe they could have squeezed a reference to it at the end of the scene and put it in place of Batman saying "Martha won't die tonight" to Superman. I think with that line the film is trying to suggest that Batman might actually find some psychological closure for his failure to protect his own mother by saving Superman's mother - which is genuinely a pretty ambitious and interesting idea for Batman. But they didn't really need to invoke the coincidence to communicate that idea, and could have conveyed it just as easily - and a bit more clearly, too - by simply having Batman say something like "I lost my mother when I was a child. I won't let you lose yours," to Superman. Like I said, the coincidence is just geeky capeshit trivia, and bringing it up at all risks overshadowing the poignancy of Batman's arc. I have no way of knowing this for sure, but I honestly suspect that it was Snyder himself who decided that this bit of trivia needed to be "addressed" and worked into the story. It feels like the kind of thing a dumb fanboy like him would insist on including in the movie.

4

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: US Presidential Election 2024

« on: August 31, 2024, 02:55:05 PM »

"He wasn't talking about black people! He was obviously just talking about congresspeople in general! You're the one who's racist for assuming he was talking about black people! And even if he was talking about black people, there's nothing racist about saying that some black people are smart and some are dumb! That's no different to white people! You're the one who's racist!"

5

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: US Presidential Election 2024

« on: August 31, 2024, 05:24:39 AM »

How many politicians have pictures of themselves laying a wreath at Arlington National Cemetery? Can we just assume that it is many politicians, or do we need a collage of demonstrative photos? It could be argued that any sharing of a picture or video of a politician at Arlington is used for political reasons, as it would imply a moral or patriotic message about that politician.

Those pictures are taken by official Arlington photographers for official Arlington events. Once the politicians have access to the pictures, they can of course do whatever they want with them, but what they can't do is bring their own photographers onto Arlington to take pictures for their own political gain.

you are a colonial era puritan who says it is inappropriate to smile or display positive gestures at cemeteries

No, I didn't say that. I'm specifically talking about Trump's performative broad grin and thumbs-up. The vast majority of people can intuit a clear difference between an occasional smile and a display of crude, gleeful exuberance, especially when it's coming from a politician who doesn't know any of the deceased.

6

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: US Presidential Election 2024

« on: August 31, 2024, 01:27:14 AM »

Trump grinning and flashing a thumbs-up in that picture - beyond being incredibly tacky and inappropriate - is all the proof we need that this was meant as a political stunt and wasn't simply a neutral, respectful visit to the cemetery. Why would he be posing like that if it wasn't meant to be a political photo op? In fact, why would Trump's own photographer (as opposed to the official photographers who work at Arlington) be there and photographing him at all if it wasn't a political photo op? By the way, it's only a matter of time before Trump changes his story to "Yes, this was a political photo op, and it's good that it was." He first denies, then admits what happened every time he gets into trouble, and every time he does, he makes the people who have been denying the story on his behalf look ridiculous.

7

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: US Presidential Election 2024

« on: August 30, 2024, 01:22:36 PM »

I especially love how part of the plan was to pretend this was an official memorial and then criticize Kamala for not attending. And judging by the number of Trump fans on Twitter I've seen responding to this story by asking where she was or why she wasn't there, it may actually be working, at least among their target audience.

8

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Is the UK okay?

« on: August 30, 2024, 01:45:46 AM »

Right - and that's illegal in the USA

...

Right. But that's identical to the USA. I don't understand how you're only now discovering that inciting violence is not acceptable in the West.

Like I told you, incitement has to be in regard to imminent illegal action to be against the law in America. As in, it needs to be in the heat of the moment, right then and there. Posting on social media, "People should commit this crime," and someone else reading the post and thinking to themselves, "Hmm, this person makes a good case. I think I will go commit that crime!" would not be illegal in America, while it evidently is in Britain.

Some pertinent quotes from your first example:

Jordan Parlour, 28, was jailed for 20 months after pleading guilty to inciting racial hatred with Facebook posts in which he advocated an attack on a hotel in Leeds as part of the violent public disorder that swept England last week.

In Northampton, Tyler Kay, 26, was given three years and two months in prison for posts on X that called for mass deportation and for people to set fire to hotels housing asylum seekers.

For what it's worth, I'd strongly suggest not posting "Dagnabbit, those there immigrant hotels, we should burn these sonovaguns down! Come join me on <date> at <time>! Load my guns and horn my swaggle, we're goin' a' killin' tonight!" It's not gonna go well for you.

It would be entirely legal for me to call for hotels housing immigrants to be burned down in America. If I said that I was going to do it, it would become a threat, which is not protected speech, and if I called for people to join me at a certain date and time, it would become planning an attack, which is also not protected speech. But none of these guys threatened to do these things themselves, much less planned an attack out, so that's not really relevant. All their charges came down to simply encouraging other people to commit crimes, which is protected speech in America outside of the imminent factor.

Also, out of curiosity - do you know who Wayne O’Rourke is, or did you just bring him up because you thought the short article supported your position?

I don't know who he is outside of what the article says, and I don't think it really matters. The point is that nobody in America could ever be prosecuted for "stirring up racial hatred" or "anti-Muslim rhetoric."

Once again, I'm assuming you have no idea who "Count Dankula" is, and outside of "haha wow silly Britain arrested a guy for a Nazi dog!!!!!" you have no awareness of his long history with law enforcement?

You're right again, but I also don't see why that matters. Free speech has to be for everyone, regardless of their criminal record or how shitty they are as people, to truly mean anything.

The lengths you've been going to defend actual neo-Nazis here are impressive. I know this is out of extreme incompetence and not malice, but I'm not sure I'll be able to take you seriously the next time you claim to not be racist, or to support anti-racist movements.

Oh, come on, do you really think this huhuhuh you must agree with him then! bullshit is going to work on me? Really? That's a Babby's First Free Speech Debate-tier fallacy if I've ever heard one, and it's beneath you.

I'm not sure how you can see a man who posted photos of himself holding a gun and threatened to kill people based on their religion and decide that it was "ranting about Muslims". It really surprises me that you see no difference between making credible threats on people's lives and "ranting". Then again, I understand you've got a mythology to defend here.

Was he actually making threats, though? Because he wasn't charged with making threats, and neither the prosecutor nor the judge described what he said as being a threat. The whole case seemed to revolve entirely around him saying "offensive" things and stirring up hatred. I think it would be a higher priority to take down an armed man who's threatening to go out and kill minorities (and prosecute the case as such) than it would be simply to take down a guy saying racist stuff online, even in Britain, and the fact that this didn't happen suggests that the authorities didn't view this as a threat at all. The gun can easily be explained as just a prop to make himself look tougher and more badass.

Have you read that article? Did you follow up on what happened after it was published? It's talking about law enforcement overstepping its boundaries, and it has since led to significant adjustments. Like, yea, things went badly eight years ago when the government was trying to respond to a rise in violence. Lessons were learned, changes were implemented, and now things are going less badly. This is a good thing - it shows that our system works, and self-corrects when needed. I think y'all could learn from that, and it's not the big "gotcha" you were looking for.

I was just Googling around for examples of Britain punishing people for speech that would be protected in America. I should have guessed that I'd land on some outdated results. I do still feel that governments policing the expression of opinions like this is both fundamentally wrong and far too much power for them to be trusted with, but I'm glad that improvements are being made.

9

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: US Presidential Election 2024

« on: August 29, 2024, 05:44:51 PM »

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/trumps-arlington-cemetery-campaign-event

Just an insane story all around.

10

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: US Presidential Election 2024

« on: August 26, 2024, 02:25:16 AM »

Is Kamala promising anything about JFK disclosure or Big Pharma? No? Then she won't be getting RFK's voters.

Yeah, you're probably right. Anyone dumb enough to support a crank like RFK Jr. for president probably doesn't have the critical thinking skills to realize that the president can very easily declassify any files he want, that RFK Jr. is being offered a meaningless sinecure to court his voters, and the fact that Trump already said he'd declassify the files and broke his word in his first term.

11

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Is the UK okay?

« on: August 26, 2024, 12:07:37 AM »

I'm sorry to hear you fell for it. I'm not really going to invest the energy in convincing you of something so obvious. The OP says "if you commit crimes, we'll use extradition treaties to extradite you where appropriate". It refers to people who ran away abroad after committing crimes on British soil, and who continue to commit crimes - it's an extremely milquetoast statement, and perhaps it confuses you that it's a statement at all. I encourage you to take a deep breath and examine where you got your reading of the situation from - after all, you already pointed out it makes zero sense.

There may be a cultural difference here. Americans like to (but only sometimes) be very prescritpive in their wording, so they would say something like "we will prosecute to the FULLEST!1!!! extent of the law". Europeans tend to omit obvious statements like these, because they're obvious. We don't feel the need to caveat our statements with something like "we'll enforce the law unless it's illegal to do so", because we don't have a culture of cops breaking laws when it suits them.

I agree with you that Rowley wasn't threatening to extradite and prosecute citizens of other countries, and also that it was reasonable for him to not bother spelling out the obvious point that of course British laws don't apply to citizens of other countries. Nevertheless, he was very clearly talking about prosecuting people for the crime of "inciting" people to commit crimes by posting online. He was asked "What are you considering when it comes to dealing with people who are whipping up this kind of behavior from behind a keyboard, maybe in another country?" and he responded with "Being a keyboard warrior does not make you safe from the law. You can be guilty of offenses of incitement, of stirring up racial hatred, there are numerous terrorist offenses regarding publishing of material. All of these offenses are in play in people on provoking hatred and violence on the streets. And we'll come after those individuals..." I'm not misunderstanding him or taking him out of context. He's talking about prosecuting people for expressing opinions online or calling for actions that rile up other people or encourage them to commit crimes. There are at least three people who have been punished for this already. And I think it's been pretty well-documented that Britain does have a long history of prosecuting people for hate speech or simply saying offensive things online. I wish I could find more timely examples, but there's a guy who dressed his dog up as a Nazi, and there's a guy who ranted about Muslims online. According to this article, there was even a huge anti-hate speech crackdown some years ago, with thousands of people being arrested over the course of a year.

Negatively? Not at all. America's free speech laws are roughly sensible, as I've said multiple times already. Though it is telling that you perceived these statements as negative...

There did appear to be a certain negative connotation to phrasing like "it does much worse than most of Europe," "unlike civilized countries," "the meme that is your defamation laws," and "the US's poor standing in press freedom benchmarks," at least in my view. But that's just a quibble. More importantly, American schoolchildren are not required to say the pledge of allegiance. They only have to stand during it. That changes everything.

12

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: US Presidential Election 2024

« on: August 25, 2024, 11:21:11 PM »

Actually this RFK-JFK task force announcement about falls in line with what Trump is saying in that 2018 link:

"Trump announced on Thursday that the public must wait another three years or more before seeing material that must remain classified for national security reasons — more than five decades after Kennedy was killed Nov. 22, 1963 in Dallas, Texas."

It was Trump's decision to make everyone wait another three years before declassifying the documents. Nobody made him do it. He had the power to declassify the documents at any point during his presidency, and he said he would do it before breaking his word and saying "nope, actually we need to wait another three years before they can be released." And if Trump is reelected, he will once again have the power to declassify the documents at any point - or refuse to do so and keep them classified, like he did in his first term. He doesn't need a task force to do it, and he doesn't need to give RFK Jr. a made-up position to do it. All he has to do is give the order. It is literally that simple. I don't know why Trump decided not to declassify the documents in his first term (Trump doesn't give a shit about national security), but anyone who seriously cares about declassifying them would be out of their mind to trust Trump on this.

13

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: US Presidential Election 2024

« on: August 25, 2024, 01:37:35 PM »

The president doesn't need a task force or a commission to declassify documents. He can simply give the order and it's done. In fact, according to Trump himself, all he has to do is think about declassifying a document for it to be official. There's also the very obvious fact that he could have declassified any of these documents during his first term in office - and as it happens, he had said he would, only to apparently change his mind. Giving RFK Jr. a meaningless job doesn't change anything. It's entirely up to the president whether these documents are declassified at all, and I think you'd have to be very gullible to think that this time Trump will totally follow through on declassifying the files after he already broke his word on this same subject.

Also, Vance's incredible visit to a donut shop has to be seen to be believed:

14

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Is the UK okay?

« on: August 24, 2024, 02:48:14 PM »

I think the "imminent" qualification is very important. It's the difference between yelling "Jump!" at a would-be suicide jumper and talking about how you feel that anyone who's ever had a suicidal impulse ought to go through with it, or the difference between yelling "They're going to kill you! Run, fight back, don't let them take you!" at someone whom the police are arresting and talking about how you feel that as a general principle, nobody should ever peacefully submit to being arrested - or, to return to the Tyler Kay case, the difference between leading an angry anti-immigrant protest to a hotel known for housing migrants and refugees and bellowing, "There it is, let's burn it down!" and expressing your anti-immigration opinion and saying you'd like to see the hotels that house immigrants be burned down.

I have no fucking idea what you're talking about, nor do I have any interest in finding out. It sounds like you might be agreeing with me, but its obscured by layers upon layers of whataboutism.

I don't think there's anything complicated or difficult to understand about this concept. Encouraging other people to commit a crime in America is only illegal when the potential crime is both imminent and likely to happen, in recognition of the fact that social pressure can put undue influence on someone in a heated moment. In Britain, however, people are arrested and prosecuted simply for saying things that might influence other people to commit a crime at some point in the future, or, even worse, for simply being offensive. Even if I accept that the Sutton case was because that guy was rioting and not simply for what he said, the OP leaves no doubt that people are being punished or threatened with being punished simply for expressing opinions online that might influence other people to go out and commit crimes at some point in the future.

You were the one who raised the point of all the other types of regulated speech and negatively compared them to how they're handled in other countries. If you don't want to follow through on your own argument...okay? Kind of weird, but it's your call. And if your whole point was just to say that America does technically have laws regarding speech and therefore they shouldn't criticize the laws that other countries, then I'll just say the same thing that I did in my last post - it's beyond pedantic. Nobody in America thinks that there are literally no laws whatsoever that govern speech. What's being criticized are the specific laws governing speech in Britain and other countries, not the fact that they have laws to begin with. Of course they have laws regulating speech. Every country has laws regulating speech. Pointing this obvious fact out isn't a brilliant rebuttal.

Did you miss
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/may/18/facebook-comments-arrest-prosecution

This is a story about a guy being prosecuted for making threats. As it happens, he was entirely innocent, and the police were overzealous at best and corrupt at worst, but there's nothing inherently wrong with prosecuting someone for making threats. Making threats should absolutely be illegal. The problem in this case lies with the police, not with the law.

Bullshit. It's not just a shitty opinion, it's dangerous incitement in the context of stabbings in which a 17 year old stabbed a bunch of kids, killing 2, following which a load of disinformation was spread online that the 17 year old was a refugee and/or a Muslim. Neither are true. That sparked a load of riots in which hotels housing refugees were sent on fire and people's lives were endangered. I have no issue with people involved in that either directly or indirectly being punished. To characterise those tweets as "just expressing an opinion" is a massive stretch.

Those people chose to riot. Nobody made them do it. Think about it this way - if a dumb racist guy saying dumb racist shit online is enough to spark these riots and hotel-burnings, then you should be a lot less concerned about the people who spread these opinions and a lot more concerned about the people who obviously share these opinions and are willing to act on them. I guarantee you that not a single one of these people rioting were anything other than deeply racist themselves, and more likely than, most of them were probably regular criminal offenders too. Blaming riots on people expressing anti-immigration opinions as if they're somehow responsible for what all these other people did, as if all these rioters were fine upstanding citizens until racist shitposters corrupted them, is just avoiding the real problem, and doing so in a way that's fundamentally ugly for being so anti-free expression.

The issue I have in this thread is some people trying to paint the US as a shining beacon of liberty and freedom and the UK as as cesspit of oppression and control.

That is a very silly thing to say, yes. It's exactly because all governments are fallible organizations full of fallible people that I believe the right to free expression is so important. A government doesn't have to be marching stormtroopers down the street to be untrustworthy. The points that xasop raised about colonialism certainly aren't wrong, but we don't even need to go that far back to find good examples. Just twenty years ago, the U.S. government infamously lied about weapons of mass destruction being in Iraq and launched a catastrophic, destructive war for the purposes of their own political goals and enriching their cronies in the oil business. As part of their efforts, they aggressively smeared and tried to discredit anyone who questioned the facts or didn't enthusiastically support the war, both before and after the invasion. If there was a way to arrest and prosecute people for expressing their opinions, they absolutely would have done it, and figured out a way to spin their charges as somehow being "hate speech" or "incitement" after the fact. It's precisely because a government won't always have good, trustworthy people in positions of power that we need strong restrictions on what they can or can't do. To me, free expression is one of those things that should always be protected. The ability to restrict it is simply too powerful a tool for any government to be trusted with.

15

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: US Presidential Election 2024

« on: August 23, 2024, 04:05:37 AM »

Just the News is a garbage website that spreads misinformation and conspiracy theories, and this article in particular is light on verifiable statistical analyses of polls and relies heavily on the supposed authoritative weight of pollsters Scott Rasmussen and John McLaughlin insisting that something isn't right. The obvious response is that neither Rasmussen nor McLaughlin are neutral, objective observers giving their sincere professional opinions. They're both Trumpworld stooges whose continued relevance in the conservative mediasphere (mediaplane?) relies on them telling their audiences what they want to hear. Trumpworld does not tolerate bearers of bad news.

I also really like how a big part of this article is devoted to their incredulity that Kamala is more popular as a presidential candidate than a vice president. There are several elements that can explain this discrepancy. Firstly, and most importantly, the vice presidency is a very difficult job for anyone to distinguish themselves in. It's primarily a supportive role where they don't spend much time in front of the camera or publicly "doing" much of anything, and are mostly expected, at least in recent years, to represent some element that the president themselves lacks. Hence why Obama had an older, experienced senator as his VP, why Trump had a very openly religious establishment Republican as his VP, and why Biden had a younger woman of color as his VP. It's more than possible for a vice president who's mostly stagnating in the president's shadow to shine once they start campaigning for themselves as president. There's also the fact that Trump's campaign spent so much time hammering Biden on his age and frailty while he was running, and so switching Biden for Kamala has turned Trump's advantage into his disadvantage. And there's of course the candidates' vice presidential picks - Kamala made a good choice, while Trump made a terrible choice.

Of course, it's always good to have some skepticism of what the polls are saying, and make sure you vote no matter what. It's weird how McLaughlin claimed in the article that this was all an effort to suppress Republicans' votes, when falsely presenting Kamala as doing better than she really is is more likely to hurt her than help her by possibly making her potential voters complaisant.

16

Arts & Entertainment / Re: Just Watched

« on: August 21, 2024, 08:12:18 PM »

The sooner the Marvel slop machine dies, the better off society will be.

17

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: X can now fake election tampering evidence

« on: August 17, 2024, 08:41:46 PM »

From what I see this article is not even complaining that people online are creating election tampering evidence.

Obviously not, seeing how this AI was only just created, and the election isn't for another few months. NPR is arguing that people can create false evidence, not that they are. That's the very premise of the article, not some hidden truth that you've cleverly managed to discover.

18

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Is the UK okay?

« on: August 17, 2024, 08:37:12 PM »

This is what I get for waiting too long before responding. Now I have to answer posts from several pages ago.

Honk, do you really think the classic "I'm just following orders" justification is relevant here?

Given the stakes, yes, I do. But don't worry, I'll have a different take if and when this guy starts committing war crimes or crimes against humanity.

I keep forgetting that you believe normalized injustice is acceptable (you'll claim you don't, then bring this exact point of argument up in some other unrelated thread).

I've already told you that I don't think enforcing these laws is morally right. That doesn't make him a monster or even someone of poor moral character overall. There's a wide gulf between doing a bad thing and therefore fundamentally being a bad person who can always be counted on to do bad things.

They're not completely different and they are fundamentally related. Power hungry enforcement of insanely authoritarian laws all have the same foundation. His thinking that he can use his wacky powers to extradite people from across the world is not remarkably different from the idea that he can punish people for mean tweets in the first place.

There's a major difference between those two ideas. People are regularly punished for mean tweets in the UK, whereas extraditing citizens of other countries to punish them for breaking laws of a country they aren't subject to is a thing that has never happened and could never happen, and the chief of the Metropolitan Police can safely be assumed to know that. It makes perfect sense for Rowley to believe that he can do the former and not believe that he could do the latter.

He's a rich executive that lives and works in the UK, him calling for the UK to prosecute foreigners is relevant to the discussion.

Yeah, but I don't think it's fair to really blame the UK for having a dumb rich executive who publicly says stupid shit detached from the reality of the law among its population. By way of a counter-example, there's a similar dumb rich executive who lives and works in the US who also publicly says stupid shit detached from the reality of the law - in his case, it's been repeated assertions over the years, including one quite recently, that people who burn or deface the American flag should be punished by the law. Never mind the fact that flag-burning is textbook free speech and laws prohibiting it have been explicitly ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. Still, I think you'd agree that it wouldn't really be fair to ask "Is the US okay?" as a general question simply because of this guy. Simply because of this guy's dumb take on flag-burning, I should clarify. I do think it's fair to ask "Is the US okay?" as a general question when we take into account that the guy I'm talking about is the former President of the United States, and has a good chance of being re-elected this November. But that's going off-topic.

Real freedom of speech - in the sense that you can literally say anything you want - doesn’t exist in the US or the UK or anywhere. And nor should it, actually. All societies are governed by rules, and they have to be because in a society my actions affect others. So I can’t drive as fast as I like because I might kill someone. You can’t just do or say anything you want in the context of a society. All those Americans trumpeting their “freedom” must scratch their heads every time they get a speeding fine. In the US you can’t even cross the road until the little man tells you. They’re so free!

This sort of response - "Hey, I think your rules are bullshit." "Ah, but you have rules too! Hypocrite much?" - is so pedantic that it's not worth even discussing. What I especially object to about speech restrictions in Britain is that expressing certain opinions is punished, which is a thing that never happens in America. For example, let's look at the case you mentioned earlier. This guy is being punished for expressing his opinion. Maybe things would be different if he were explicitly asking people to burn down a specific hotel, but he's really not. It's a shitty opinion from a shitty person, but an opinion nevertheless, and he should be free to express it. If the government has the power to decide which opinions are permissible and which ones aren't, I don't think that society is truly free. Sure, you agree with them now. But what happens in the future if your opinion is the one the government says isn't permissible? What happens if many years in the future, corrupt elements in the government are cracking down on political and social opposition to their policies by declaring those opinions impermissible?

After all, incitement to riot is illegal under US federal law, and "incitement to imminent lawless action" (lmao nice specificity, good job guys) is also exempt from first-amendment protections. This is fairly sensible (if asininely phrased, but we're not expecting competence here, are we?). Discussing this would be as pointless as pointing out that water makes your skin dry.

I think the "imminent" qualification is very important. It's the difference between yelling "Jump!" at a would-be suicide jumper and talking about how you feel that anyone who's ever had a suicidal impulse ought to go through with it, or the difference between yelling "They're going to kill you! Run, fight back, don't let them take you!" at someone whom the police are arresting and talking about how you feel that as a general principle, nobody should ever peacefully submit to being arrested - or, to return to the Tyler Kay case, the difference between leading an angry anti-immigrant protest to a hotel known for housing migrants and refugees and bellowing, "There it is, let's burn it down!" and expressing your anti-immigration opinion and saying you'd like to see the hotels that house immigrants be burned down.

Unlike civilised countries, "obscenity" is considered an acceptable excuse to crack down on speech

I strongly agree with you that obscenity laws are bullshit and have no place in a country that values free speech, and I remember making a thread on the subject many years ago on the old FES. In fact, I'll go further and say that what especially grinds my gears about obscenity prosecutions is that judges historically seem to interpret the final part of the Miller test that determines whether or not something should be concerned obscene, namely "Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value" as "Do I personally find this work to appeal to my own subjective taste?" which I don't think at all is what the Supreme Court meant by that! For example, George Carlin's hilarious routine about the seven words you can't say on television, an absolute comedy classic, was ruled by one court to lack artistic merit, although thankfully they didn't go so far as to declare it obscene.

That being said, though, do other countries not have or enforce obscenity laws? There's a whole section about the UK on Wikipedia, but it doesn't exactly summarize the question we're discussing neatly. I'm sure you know more about it than me.

neither is "commercial speech"

"Commercial speech" is simply subject to more regulations than political or religious speech. For example, if you really want to put out a political ad that says something ridiculous about how every citizen will be given their own flying car if you're elected, you can. Nobody's going to stop you. But when you're promising goods and services in exchange for people's money, then there are more rules. You can't just outright lie about the benefits or lack of drawbacks that the drugs you're selling have, for instance. This is perfectly consistent with speech being free as a general concept, and I don't think that other countries do things especially different.

I'm glossing over the meme that is your defamation laws, because... y'know, low-hanging fruit.

I'm surprised to hear you say that, because I've always heard that Britain is the country that has the most memal defamation laws of all, ones that heavily favor plaintiffs and have been used many times by rich assholes (J.K. Rowling being one prominent example) to silence people they don't like in a way that would never be allowed in America. You really think that America has worse defamation laws?

Oh, and not to mention the US's poor standing in press freedom benchmarks.

Please explain. What's wrong with our press freedom?

For what it's worth, it's been great following the UK police's effective response to the riots and terrorist attacks. The US has been left in the dust, despite their police departments being so much bigger and better-equipped. Someone should look into that, y'all are being scammed out of your tax dollars.

There are a lot of things that Britain does much better than America when it comes to policing, but arresting and prosecuting people for expressing certain opinions is not one of them. It's fundamental to a truly free society, and without that, your freedom only exists at the government's pleasure.

19

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Is the UK okay?

« on: August 12, 2024, 03:50:40 AM »

He's not a psychopath for enforcing laws that you don't agree with, let alone laws that are pretty much standard fare in every first-world country that isn't America, and even if he were, that wouldn't make the case that he was insane. Being a bad person who enforces unjust laws and being crazy enough to think that your own country's laws somehow apply to the citizens of other countries are two completely different things.

20

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Is the UK okay?

« on: August 11, 2024, 10:54:43 PM »

No, he's not personally deciding that people should go to jail for tweets. As Tom pointed out, Britain does not have the same freedom of speech that America does, and people are regularly prosecuted there for saying things that would be protected here. And just to head off what I'm sure you're about to say next, no, I don't think that means his arresting people for tweets is okay or morally justifiable. That's not what we're talking about. He's not delusional for talking about doing something that's regularly done in Britain, regardless of how objectionable you and I find it. It would, however, be utterly delusional for him to think that British laws somehow apply to citizens of other countries, and there's no evidence to believe that he does think that outside of some ambiguity in his wording which could mean that if interpreted a certain way, but could also just as easily mean that he doesn't think anything so ridiculous if interpreted a different way.