Mariana Horchata posted:

the iraq/afghan war 2 this day are still incomprehensibly complex international clusterfucks that from the get-go had no purpose beyond exerting power both foreign and domestically thru mass media manipulation via fear

Lastgirl posted:

i wonder how many people in the american population are basically half cyborg at this point as a result of these wars

technology is pretty much on pace for augmentation

we're going for the Deus Ex: Mankind Divided route

Oiled and Ready posted:

Well, sort of.

Ares is the guy advocating peace, but only to amplify the panic when that expected peace is shattered. He is not revealed to be the god of war; he is revealed to be the god of war profiteering. He is meant to symbolize the hidden evil that enables peak villainy, then solemnly sends heroes (armed with more of his weaponry) to reestablish order.

The movie is, on the surface, about World War I, but it begins at the tail end of said war. On close review, it is not about World War I at all; it is instead an indictment of American, French, German, and British capitalists for enabling the rise of fascism in Germany.

Ares disguises himself as British Lord who, under auspice of armistice, travels to Germany. He is actually there to ensure the bombing of London with a deadly gas. This bombing was planned by Ludendorff, who Wonder Woman initially thinks is Ares -- until she kills him and the war rages on. Chris Pine speculates that this is because war has nothing to do with Ares, but his argument is proven wrong. When she spares the other fanatic, Maru, and instead kills Ares (war profiteering), the war comes to an immediate end.

Ludendorff, by the way, was an actual German General. In real life though, he didn't die in 1918.

In 1917, a full year prior to the events in the film, the German Reichstag had voted in favor of an armistice that would allow Germany to claim victory in a defensive war and keep their borders intact. These were terms the Entente would have almost certainly accepted. Ludendorff, though, was furious. He successfully lobbied to have the Chancellor removed, and bullied the representatives into funding the war indefinitely.

Ludendorff argued that Germany needed to have expanded borders for defense against future aggression. In reality, he was steered to this conclusion. War profiteers in his orbit were hungry for French minerals in the resource-rich border regions. They had already succeeded in pushing him to modify Brest-Litovsk and the Romanian armistice to line their pockets, and still they were not satiated.

As a result, Germany fought on with no hope of securing victory. Ludendorff, a man who had never been one to lie to his own soldiers, suddenly began distributing false propaganda about America and Britain's "weak position". His fanaticism would end up losing Germany even the mineral-rich region they had taken from France a half-century prior, Alsace-Lorraine. Ludendorff was eventually removed by the Kaiser and a new nobleman Chancellor because he was a roadblock to any realistic path to peace. Both these men were from old nobility, and thus were both aware of the wiles of the profiteers, and too respectful of the lives of the German people, to engage in artificially extending the conflict themselves.

When the war was lost, Ludendorff could have blamed himself. He could have also blamed the industrial profiteers who pushed him to rebuke armistices time and again. Since he was anti-Semitic from jump, though, these specific industrialists were obviously not Jewish.

What he did instead was work through his trauma by creating the stabbed-in-the-back myth. He also blamed the social democrats, who were forced to sign a terrible agreement solely because he himself had blocked their prior armistice. His industrialist friends were not an option, but he was more than willing to blame all the other profiteers -- especially those he was already bigoted against. Soon enough, he was close friends with Adolf himself.

In Ludendorff's post-war memoirs, he accurately proclaimed,



He went on to participate in the Kapp Putsch, then the Beer Hall Putsch. During the latter, Hitler proclaimed Ludendorff would lead the Nazi army.

As the Putsch marched on the capitol, the following d e c o r u m occured:


In 1924, he was elected to the Reichstag. In 1925 he stood for Chancellor against his friend Hindenberg, and he couldn't handle losing that election. A Berlin paper's 1925 above-fold ran with a now-even-more-awkward headline:


Ludendorff, however, was so absurd a character that even Hitler could not remain his ally once he rose to power. Ludendorff's sin, according to Hitler? He bought into too many conspiracy theories. Turns out, some of them may have been on point.

Ludendorff's 1933 telegram to Hindenberg is hard to source, but it can be found in contemporaneous books. Meanwhile, the only people I could find dismissing it as a forgery were internet neonazis. Seems like a confirmation to me! It purportedly read:


Ludendorff finally died in 1937. In one of Hitler's most Trumpian moves ever, and that says a lot,


So when Wonder Woman kills Ludendorff and the war does not stop, the implication is that Ares is meant to symbolize war profiteering, and since there is a ready supply of nationalist zealots in all nations, war can only end with Ares' death.

Solid flick.

Zeroisanumber posted:

It's cool that we maimed a shitload of people but developed basic bionics as a way to half-rear end fix it.

Nonsense posted:

SKULL.GIF posted:

u never asked for this

BONGHITZ posted:

??

Nonsense posted:

Nonsense posted:

SKULL.GIF posted:

good writeup ty

this did more than anything else I've ever seen to convince me that I should give wonder woman a chance watching

Low Desert Punk posted:

redneck nazgul posted:

i remember the dwarf war

Nonsense posted:

https://twitter.com/TrumpHotels/status/912397569795510272

MaxxBot posted:

Jeb! is very pro-LGBT

ScrubLeague posted:

Low Desert Punk posted:

Lastgirl posted:

i wonder how many people in the american population are basically half cyborg at this point as a result of these wars

technology is pretty much on pace for augmentation

we're going for the Deus Ex: Mankind Divided route

ScrubLeague posted:

how many rapes do you think hugh hefner did i bet he's over the cosby line

Lastgirl posted:

https://twitter.com/EMlNEMOBAMA/status/913257495862349824

https://twitter.com/EMlNEMOBAMA/status/913257750448283650

Nonsense posted:

https://twitter.com/TrumpHotels/status/912397569795510272

Redgrendel2001 posted:

All of his hotel food makes me so angry and I'm not even a foodie.

Nonsense posted:

Nonsense posted: