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Josef bugman posted:Is les mis a leftist work? Absolutely. Revolutionaries are the good guys even if they're bad at it, the cops and bourgeoisie are the villains, the chief cop character is the main antagonist who upon realizing how bad being a cop is kills himself, etc.
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Jan 25, 2022 23:33
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Josef bugman posted:Is les mis a leftist work? Arguable. It talks about the injustices of poverty and the carceral system in a way most musicals don't, but it also places the characters as good people in a bad place while most of the other working class people are assholes trying to crab-barrel them. Val Jean understands how hosed the system is after he is paroled but then he goes and runs a business becoming rich off the labor of his workers, who are again portrayed as petty assholes to Fantine, the Good One Who's Just In A Bad Situation. Though, props to Javert who upon realizing how awful it is to be a cop, kills himself. I like the revolutionaries but it does portray them as idealogues who are doomed and the character that we follow is actually a rich man who's doing poverty tourism.
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Jan 25, 2022 23:34
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TheIncredulousHulk posted:Jaxyon linked the evidence of his own potential slave ownership so I won't get into that part Also, it has to overlook how he treated John Adams who was opposed to slavery. I like Hamilton but 1776 has a more accurate view on the whole revolution. Though, it WAY glosses over Jefferson.
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Jan 25, 2022 23:38
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Valjean could have prevented all of it if he just didn't steal that bread. Also, he redeems himself by opening and operating a sweatshop.
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Jan 25, 2022 23:38
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Rochallor posted:So that's how we're going to get our causus belli against China: just keep flying F-35s near China until they encounter their fatal weakness, rain. From pages ago, but I work in a machine shop that makes some parts for the plane, and  you have no idea how right that is.
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Jan 25, 2022 23:41
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Majorian posted:Absolutely. Revolutionaries are the good guys even if they're bad at it, the cops and bourgeoisie are the villains, the chief cop character is the main antagonist who upon realizing how bad being a cop is kills himself, etc. One of the last songs is Beggars at the Feast, about how the absolute worst pair of people end up rich and powerful thanks to the failed uprising. Although in the book, Madame Thenardier ends up dying in prison and the husband moves to America to become a slave trader.
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Jan 25, 2022 23:46
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skylined! posted:A study showing that monoclonals aren't useful against Omicron, if anyone needs. None of the articles I've seen link to any of the studies directly. I read this as Monocles and immediately removed mine
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Jan 25, 2022 23:47
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It also has the main love interest deeply traumatised at the murder of his friends to such a degree that any ending is at best bittersweet.
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Jan 25, 2022 23:51
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The book is pro-revolutionary, at least sympathetic and it was a controversy when it was released. The musical really is not revolutionary at all.
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Jan 25, 2022 23:53
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:Valjean could have prevented all of it if he just didn't steal that bread. Well the revolutionaries all would have died anyway unless I missed something. Along with Marius Fantine would still have got knocked up and left her daughter with the Thenardiers, where she wouldn't have got rescued.
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Jan 26, 2022 00:05
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Jaxyon posted:Arguable. FWIW bolded has been my lived experience with most of my coworkers.
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Jan 26, 2022 00:05
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She'll be 82 next year. https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/1486116180612235265
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Jan 26, 2022 00:20
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Kalli posted:One of the last songs is Beggars at the Feast, about how the absolute worst pair of people end up rich and powerful thanks to the failed uprising. In other words, it's very clearly anti-petty bourgeoisie, and is strongly hinting that liquidating the kulaks is a necessary step we must be prepared to take. A Good Book And Musical.  Thom12255 posted:She'll be 82 next year. Yyyyyyep. She'll live out the rest of her career in the House minority though. Majorian fucked around with this message at 00:25 on Jan 26, 2022 |
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Jan 26, 2022 00:23
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Majorian posted:In other words, it's very clearly anti-petty bourgeoisie, and is strongly hinting that liquidating the kulaks is a necessary step we must be prepared to take. A Good Book And Musical. Valjean is the hero of the musical and is definitely petite bourg and marries of his daughter, whom he literally bought off people poorer than him via extracted labor, to an upper class leach whom he saved from danger when his playtime with revolution got real. And they shame sex workers I think Les Mis is an excellent musical but the question was whether it was leftist, it is, but not without problems.
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Jan 26, 2022 00:27
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some plague rats posted:This is incredible. NATO is a defensive pact, that's all! We're standing up to those big mean Russian bullies! The US just has honest concerns about aggression in eastern Europe! Seriously, do you work for the state department? a much more direct, non-hypothetical parallel would probably be the negotiations around the guadalupe hidalgo treaty between the US and Mexico, which you might find interesting and can read about here (basically relevant from the beginning, but the stuff on 277 should sound awfully familiar to the present situation ukraine is in) https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/1835328.pdf eh in 2022 I don't think the us would particularly care if some russian troops were in mexico beyond some performative grumbling. Russia already has a base just 300 odd miles from the US and materiel installations are basically irrelevant to a potential superpower conflict in a world where russian nuclear armed submarines exist and are already off the coasts of the US, which they of course are because that's the major point of having a nuclear armed submarine fleet if anything it would just be used as an opportunity to go completely loving ham trying to intercept anything and everything, much like what the US does currently in Alaska
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Jan 26, 2022 00:31
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or put much more briefly, it's a kinda nonsense comparison because 1) russian troops in mexico would not trigger a US invasion and 2) mexico is not going to seek out foreign guarantees against us territorial aggression because the us has committed to respecting mexico's territorial integrity the ~top secret solution~ to this situation is for russia to commit to (and follow through on) leaving ukraine as is so that they have no need of foreign backing. It's literally that simple.
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Jan 26, 2022 00:41
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Majorian posted:Yyyyyyep. She'll live out the rest of her career in the House minority though. Yeah, but is that really functionally any different than what she's doing now? She still gets to do her part to make sure nobody to the left of Reagan is allowed to hold any influence in her party while collecting bribes and tossing out the occasional soundbite about Republicans that she'll end up walking back while her white wine mom base keeps hooting and screeching about what a super epic own it was. The only difference will be her job title.
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Jan 26, 2022 00:44
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This is the perfect time to retire, Pelosi. You aren't going to get to do a drat thing for at least two years.
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Jan 26, 2022 00:48
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Majorian posted:Absolutely. Revolutionaries are the good guys even if they're bad at it, the cops and bourgeoisie are the villains, the chief cop character is the main antagonist who upon realizing how bad being a cop is kills himself, etc. Counterpoint: successful revolution is impossible, quitting is the correct decision, priesta and mayors are good, and proletarian entrepreneurs are villainized just because they loot corpses
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Jan 26, 2022 00:49
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FlamingLiberal posted:This is the perfect time to stay in, Pelosi. You don’t even have to pretend to do a drat thing for at least two years.
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Jan 26, 2022 00:56
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Thom12255 posted:She'll be 82 next year.
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Jan 26, 2022 01:03
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some plague rats posted:This is incredible. NATO is a defensive pact, that's all! We're standing up to those big mean Russian bullies! The US just has honest concerns about aggression in eastern Europe! Seriously, do you work for the state department? After 1990 or so - yes? Why would we give a flying gently caress about Russia pissing away money to build bases in Mexico? The gently caress are they gonna do with the troops? Invade loving Texas? What would Russia be afraid of? There was more money to be made from plundering Russia after 1990, and now, there is more money to be made from trading with it, rather than… what? Invade Russia? Because that worked so well the last half dozen times. And buddy, it’s not the US having ‘concerns’ about aggression in Easter Europe. It’s the loving countries in Easter Europe who just managed to throw off the Russian yoke after decades of occupation. Poland arguably wanted nothing more than to join NATO, even more so than the EU or the Euro. But gently caress self-determination of European countries, because it may annoy Russia, right?
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Jan 26, 2022 01:04
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GreyjoyBastard posted:Counterpoint: successful revolution is impossible, quitting is the correct decision, priesta and mayors are good, and proletarian entrepreneurs are villainized just because they loot corpses Victor Hugo's son (I think) complained about how generous and humble the bishop character was, to which Hugo replied that a bishop who was a kind and saintly man was the most brutal satire on the clergy of which he could conceive. Les Miserables is a long loving book but I think anybody who's posting in this thread would find it rewarding. Sure, there's lots of chapters about the history of nunneries and how furniture is moved from one room in the church to another (as well as a book-length digression about the Battle of Waterloo), but there's also a lot of discussion about how systems fail people and the indignity of poverty. Hugo at the time was on a transition from wishy-washy liberal to a more leftist type; a little longer and he might have reversed his anti-guillotine position. Make sure you get a more modern translation, though; I've been skimming the Gutenberg version and it's nowhere near as good. There's a version titled The Wretched by Christine Donougher that I really like.
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Jan 26, 2022 01:10
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Herstory Begins Now posted:or put much more briefly, it's a kinda nonsense comparison because 1) russian troops in mexico would not trigger a US invasion and 2) mexico is not going to seek out foreign guarantees against us territorial aggression because the us has committed to respecting mexico's territorial integrity It was an analogy. It's not supposed to be a perfect, one-to-one comparison that seems workable in the current situation, it was designed to illustrate a point about how roping every country east of the Atlantic into a giant American middle finger to Russia org might be seen as a provocation maybe? Attacking the analogy I used instead of engaging with the point it was making because "well actually the US have promised not to gently caress about with Mexico!" is just shadowboxing.
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Jan 26, 2022 02:08
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morothar posted:Poland arguably wanted nothing more than to join NATO, even more so than the EU or the Euro. That 'arguably' is doing a lot of heavy lifting considering we're talking about membership of a group that was specifically being enlarged to include them because the US was afraid that greater inter-european co-operation would shrink the American sphere of influence. That was the reasoning behind the NATO expansions from the 90s on- to prevent any damage to American hegemony. some plague rats fucked around with this message at 02:16 on Jan 26, 2022 |
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Jan 26, 2022 02:13
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some plague rats posted:It was an analogy. It's not supposed to be a perfect, one-to-one comparison that seems workable in the current situation, it was designed to illustrate a point about how roping every country east of the Atlantic into a giant American middle finger to Russia org might be seen as a provocation maybe? Attacking the analogy I used instead of engaging with the point it was making because "well actually the US have promised not to gently caress about with Mexico!" is just shadowboxing. Your neighbor becoming friends with the person across the street in part because you are an outrageous rear end in a top hat is not a provocation, you're just an rear end in a top hat.
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Jan 26, 2022 02:13
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Bel Shazar posted:Your neighbor becoming friends with the person across the street in part because you are an outrageous rear end in a top hat is not a provocation, you're just an rear end in a top hat. Okay but in this analogy not only is the person across the street an equally big rear end in a top hat, he set fire to your house a couple times. That doesn't sound like a provocation to you? some plague rats fucked around with this message at 02:21 on Jan 26, 2022 |
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Jan 26, 2022 02:17
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It seems extremely unlikely that Russian troops in Mexico wouldn't trigger a US attack. Not only do we have a whole Doctrine named after some guy that says we'll attack any European powers who try to play soldier in our hemisphere but uhhh the Cuban Missile Crisis?
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Jan 26, 2022 02:21
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some plague rats posted:Okay but in this analogy not only is the person across the street an equally big rear end in a top hat, he set fire to your house a couple times. That doesn't sound like a provocation to you? No, it sounds like they're both assholes. I mean i get why Russia would call it a provocation but that really just highlights the fact they're acting like a selfish, violent prick for hypocritical reasons.
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Jan 26, 2022 02:26
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How many Latin American governments did we coup or attempt to coup just in the last five years, just for electing governments we didn't seem friendly enough to our interests, not even signing any defensive pacts with Russia or China? Brazil, Bolivia, Honduras, Venezuela, that's just off the top of my head.
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Jan 26, 2022 02:27
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some plague rats posted:Okay but in this analogy not only is the person across the street an equally big rear end in a top hat, he set fire to your house a couple times. That doesn't sound like a provocation to you? can you just talk about this directly without using multiple layers of analogies?
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Jan 26, 2022 02:27
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VitalSigns posted:It seems extremely unlikely that Russian troops in Mexico wouldn't trigger a US attack. Not only do we have a whole Doctrine named after some guy that says we'll attack any European powers who try to play soldier in our hemisphere but uhhh the Cuban Missile Crisis? Aren't the Russians already in cahoots with Radical Islamists and MS-13 in Mexico anyway? Didn't they find prayer rugs near border tunnels? Or was I watching the Sicario movies after eating pizza and Vicodin at 1am again?
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Jan 26, 2022 02:27
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Herstory Begins Now posted:can you just talk about this directly without using multiple layers of analogies? I apologize for any difficulty but at the same time i have found benefit by working through this analogy.
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Jan 26, 2022 02:28
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VitalSigns posted:It seems extremely unlikely that Russian troops in Mexico wouldn't trigger a US attack. Not only do we have a whole Doctrine named after some guy that says we'll attack any European powers who try to play soldier in our hemisphere but uhhh the Cuban Missile Crisis? Actually I'm informed that actually the US would not give a flying gently caress if Russia wants to piss away money like that and would not care. What are they going to do? Nuke Texas?
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Jan 26, 2022 02:28
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Bel Shazar posted:No, it sounds like they're both assholes. We've wandered too far into the analogy and stopped making sense now. Let's dial back to baseline a bit. What aggressive actions from Russia do you think are being prevented by Poland joining NATO?
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Jan 26, 2022 02:30
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It's a pissing match between major powers with real people stuck in the middle.
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Jan 26, 2022 02:32
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It doesn't seem like a pissing match to me. It seems like Putin is being an outrageous aggressor. He has only himself to blame for driving EE nations further and further West.
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Jan 26, 2022 02:35
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Majorian posted:My favorite portrayal of Alexander Hamilton, for the record is, Rufus Sewell's in the HBO John Adams miniseries. There he's just portrayed as a crazy motherfucker.
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Jan 26, 2022 02:44
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Thom12255 posted:She'll be 82 next year. This party does not care about actually governing. If they did, she would not die in office at 103.
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Jan 26, 2022 03:33
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Nucleic Acids posted:This party does not care about actually governing. If they did, she would not die in office at 103. have faith, i'm sure she can hold out to at least 110, maybe 112
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Jan 26, 2022 03:35
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