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Relevant Tangent
Nov 18, 2016

Tangentially Relevant

Alright, first of all, I want to point out I wasn't offered the mercy option.

Seven Hundred Bee posted:

(If you have read this book already let me know and I will find a suitable alternative!)

I choose to assume that's because you gave me the benefit of the doubt wrt choice of reading matter. I've never read a D'Souza book and am only familiar with him through Twitter and The Internet Culture Warriors Who Always Self-Own thread here on SA.

Let me take you back to 2010. Do you remember it at all? Cool, forget whatever you just remembered because the relation between this book and reality is going to be gossamer thin and you won't stay sane if you try to reconcile the two. Two years into the Obama presidency and D'Souza is going to answer the question everyone who'd recently suffered brain damage was asking: Why was Obama, famously black and angry, so mad?

I'm going to do this chapter by chapter in the faint hope that splitting it up will make it easier to read. Technically this counts as non-fiction, which just goes to show categorization is useless.

Chapter One - Dinesh Dreams Darkly of Dramatic Disclosures

"This is not the book I set out to write. In fact, it represents my third take on Obama. If it took me, who shares so much in common with the man..." D'Souza certainly isn't afraid to praise himself. Talks about a book D'Souza published called the End of Racism (in 1995, adorable) where he contended that racism was no longer systemic. :allears:
A casual swipe at Jesse Jackson as a race hustler. Here's an article he apparently recycles for a couple paragraphs if you're feeling masochistic. It's hard to read this book because it's very much of its time and a decade later I just do not care about a conservative's bad faith attempt to get into Obama's head. It's all very facile and low effort.

Relevant Tangent fucked around with this message at 13:20 on Oct 12, 2020

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Gravybong
Apr 24, 2007

Smokin' weed all day. All I do is smoke weed. Every day of my life it's all I do. I don't give a FUCK! Weed.
I do a podcast specifically about reading terrible books so I feel as if I have unfair advantage but if there’s any more books, I’d like one.

Or, I can throw some in the ring that I’ve already read for others.

Seven Hundred Bee
Nov 1, 2006

I've heard from a few of the participants about some challenges getting the books and am going to extend the deadline to Monday, October 26th - I don't want to deprive anyone of posting on election night.

Xelkelvos
Dec 19, 2012

Klaus88 posted:

I think the Video game has almost nothing to do with the book.

And it's a decent metroidvania.

Let's consult Wikipedia on this

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_Complex posted:

Epic Games indicated during an E3 interview that the game runs parallel to the events in the Orson Scott Card novel Empire, and that the game will dovetail with the sequel to the book Hidden Empire. Empire is a Chair-owned intellectual property that was licensed to Orson Scott Card to create a series of novels, though Card did not work on the game itself.

Jason Fleming (voiced by Nolan North) and his new girlfriend Claire (voiced by Eliza Jane Schneider) are backpacking in the mountains when they come across some caverns. Claire opts to explore them, saying she used to go there as a child, but when she does not respond to Jason's calls, he follows her. He comes across a massive underground complex manned by numerous soldiers with high-end technology. He manages to follow men dragging Claire through the complex and is able to rescue her. However, both have heard discussion among the soldiers about their group, the Progressive Restoration, which appears to be ready to launch attacks across the United States. Jason escorts Claire to the entrance to allow her to contact authorities, while he uses stolen high-tech devices to further infiltrate the complex and learn more.

In the complex's control room, Jason meets Commander Lucius (voiced by Graham McTavish), the leader of the Restoration, who reveals a long-term goal of inciting a civil war in the United States, allowing their group to take control. Lucius further reveals that they have already assassinated the Vice President of the United States, and are planning to launch an airship to attack San Francisco, California. Jason destroys the airship using the Restoration's nuclear missile platforms, and corners Lucius before he can escape. Furious, Lucius threatens Jason and his loved ones, declaring that the Restoration will kill everyone he has known. When Jason prepares to kill him, Lucius is shot in the head by Claire, who has arrived by a helicopter. She reveals to Jason that she is with the National Security Agency, and that she was investigating the Restoration. Claire had gotten romantically close to Jason after identifying him as a person capable of completing the infiltration of the base. Initially appalled by her deception, Jason departs the area with Claire.

The story is continued in the novel Empire, in which the President of the United States is dead and the civil war is about to start. A non-canonical ending is available midway through the game, where Jason can escape the complex and leave Claire to her fate.

So yeah, the villains in the game and the book are "Progressives" which is really funny for a game published in 2009 and a book written in 2006. Of all ironies, the writer for the game, Peter David, would probably balk at the politics of Card (though they might find agreement in some very specific things).

quote:

Politically, David identifies himself as liberal. He was critical of the George W. Bush administration in general, and the Iraq War in particular, as well as other Republicans and the religious right. He also became a staunch critic of President Donald Trump and his administration, criticizing his policies on a weekly basis. He has spoken out in favor of Israel's right to defend itself from aggressors, and has opined that certain criticisms of Israel indicate bias and double standards He favors gun control, and holds progressive or liberal views on LGBT issues, including favoring gay marriage and allowing openly homosexual individuals to serve in the military. He opposes capital punishment. He is an advocate of freedom of speech, having criticized various publicized instances of censorship in general, such as the targeting of comic book retailers for prosecution for selling certain comic books, and the Comics Code Authority in particular. He is a promoter and activist for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, which comes to the aid of such creators and retailers.
(I cut off the rest of the paragraph here because looking at the cites,they're largely weak or outdated things that seem to exist mostly to provide balance than anything more filling about his beliefs)

Discendo Vox
Mar 21, 2013

We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

Seven Hundred Bee posted:

Carl Schmitt was definitely a real piece of poo poo, but he is also one of the most important conservative political scientists of the last 100 years - The Concept of the Political is a fascinating exploration of a coherent conservative political worldview which also underscores many of the weaknesses of a liberal democratic system.

Seven Hundred Bee posted:

important conservative political scientist

just...want you to dwell on this a bit as a concept

Somfin
Oct 25, 2010

In my🦚 experience🛠️ the big things🌑 don't teach you anything🤷‍♀️.

Nap Ghost
I was really hoping for a nice fragrant turdblossom to poo poo all over but it looks like I've got a fairly serious book to get through. Having a bit of trouble sourcing a copy in New Zealand but I'll see what I can get hold of.

Amniotic
Jan 23, 2008

Dignity and an empty sack is worth the sack.

Let's check this out. Card isn't going to win the Nobel, but he can write a little bit. Oh the first chapter is about a young brilliant warrior, that's a bit on the nose.

quote:

He was good at knife work. He hadn't known until now how easy it was to kill another man. The adrenalin coursing through him pushed aside the part of his mind that might be bothered by the killing. All he thought of at this moment
was what he needed to do, and what the enemy might do to stop him, and the knife merely released the tension for a moment, until he started looking for the next target.

Oh.

I AM GRANDO
Aug 20, 2006

I wouldn’t call them conservatives in the American sense, but critics of democracy that are broadly of the right are useful in thinking about the nature of both democracy and liberalism. People still read Nietzsche, Heidegger, etc because they offer ideas worth thinking about.

Seven Hundred Bee
Nov 1, 2006

Somfin posted:

I was really hoping for a nice fragrant turdblossom to poo poo all over but it looks like I've got a fairly serious book to get through. Having a bit of trouble sourcing a copy in New Zealand but I'll see what I can get hold of.

Wait I'm stupid and got my books confused. Nevermind. Let me know if you can't source it.

Seven Hundred Bee fucked around with this message at 04:54 on Oct 12, 2020

Amniotic
Jan 23, 2008

Dignity and an empty sack is worth the sack.

So the brilliant warrior savant is already in Princeton in a PhD program after being promoted for rending his garments and mortifying his flesh after he couldn't save the one old man that died in his heroic defiance of orders to save a village from terrorists.

quote:

And now he knew that this was much of what the Army had sent him here to learn. Yes, a doctorate in history would be useful. But he was really getting a doctorate in self-doubt and skepticism, a Ph.D. in the rhetoric and beliefs of the insane Left. He would be able to sit in a room with a far-left Senator and hear it all with a straight face, without having to argue any points, and with complete comprehension of everything he was saying and everything he meant by it.

In other words, he was being embedded with the enemy as surely as when he was on a deep Special Ops assignment inside a foreign country that did not officially at least know that he was there.

Lest we think that perhaps this is a right wing screed, he's married to a Democrat:

quote:

Thank heaven he could go home to Cecily every day. She was his reality check.

Unlike the ersatz Left of the university, Cessy was a genuine old-fashioned liberal, a Democrat of the tradition that reached its peak with Truman and blew its last trumpet with Moynihan.

Chapter 2 and we're already getting "and that boys name was Albert Einstein" stories.

quote:


Some of them simply ignored him the rest of the semester-until his coursework forced them to give him an A. Others declared war on him, but their ham-handed attacks on Reuben always backfired, winning him the sympathy of the other students as Reuben answered all the attacks with unflagging courtesy and quiet good sense. Many of the others would begin defending him-and, by extension, the military. Thus Reuben would quietly lose all the classroom battles for the hearts and minds of the students, but win the war.

Amniotic fucked around with this message at 05:11 on Oct 12, 2020

Aramis
Sep 22, 2009



I'm trying pretty hard to frame what I'm reading from as neutral a lens as I can, judging it for its actual content; and I think this is doing the book a huge disservice.

Every. Single. Column. so far is so transparently biased, the rhetorical devices employed are so basic, that the only possible reaction I feel I can have to it as a self-contained entity is to just point and laugh.

Hopefully there's some more meat on this bone...

Xelkelvos
Dec 19, 2012

Aramis posted:

I'm trying pretty hard to frame what I'm reading from as neutral a lens as I can, judging it for its actual content; and I think this is doing the book a huge disservice.

Every. Single. Column. so far is so transparently biased, the rhetorical devices employed are so basic, that the only possible reaction I feel I can have to it as a self-contained entity is to just point and laugh.

Hopefully there's some more meat on this bone...

If you can, throw up some excerpts for the peanut gallery

Blurred
Aug 26, 2004

WELL I WONNER WHAT IT'S LIIIIIKE TO BE A GOOD POSTER
I've always wanted to read through and critique a book by one of these right-wing ideologues. Any objections if I do it here or will that just make the thread bloated unreadable?

Relevant Tangent
Nov 18, 2016

Tangentially Relevant

Every day (for nine more days, inshallah) I wake up and open palm slam The Roots of Obama's Rage into my ebook reader. Right then and there I start doing the moves with the main character, Barack.

Chapter 2 - The Black Man's Burden

We open with a brief hagiography of Obama's two years as President. I'm going to give you a taste:

quote:

Barack Obama is a radiant figure on the world stage. He looks the way an American president should look...he seems to be what Aristotle called the great-souled man.

...Obama stands astride American politics like a colossus. All political movements in the country are responses to Obama...

...Obama, like Nixon, would have interested Thucydides or Dostoyevsky.

Nowhere in there does he talk about what Obama has actually done in his first two years. It will also be the last nice thing he says for the rest of the chapter, presumably. The radiant Obama gets dismissed as a mask and "Obama II" the version conservatives convinced themselves existed gets brought out.

quote:

This Obama pushed through health care reform, essentially establishing government control over one-sixth of the U.S. economy...
D'Souza generously admits that conservative opposition to Obama so far has been shrill and ineffective, but fear not D'Souza has the goods. I do want to quote this grim portent for where the D'Souza Republicans were headed and why they all fell for Trump though:

quote:

Here is a president who has no business background and very few people with business experience around him; as he goes about slicing the economic pie, it is not clear that he has any idea how to make a pie.
A couple of pages spent admitting that if Obama is a socialist then it's a kind of socialism that works through the private market and seeks to avoid nationalising the industries the government is bailing out as much as possible.

We get what feels like a hundred pages on D'Souza's understanding of colonialism, neocolonialism, and anti-colonialism. To shorten it up considerably, Obama III the actual Obama understands America as a neocolonial state and he's going to try to wring that out of America and the West at large. The rich in America are a neocolonial force in America itself, exploiting the rest of the population. D'Souza assumes the idea itself will elicit such horror in his audience that he need not actually say 'this is incorrect, the rich are good' so neglects to do so.

Seven Hundred Bee
Nov 1, 2006

Blurred posted:

I've always wanted to read through and critique a book by one of these right-wing ideologues. Any objections if I do it here or will that just make the thread bloated unreadable?

Go for it!

Aramis
Sep 22, 2009



Xelkelvos posted:

If you can, throw up some excerpts for the peanut gallery

Fair enough!

From the very first line of the book, Ben is on the backfoot, laying down a defense against inevitable allegations that he's a right wing crank and/or grifter.

quote:

The “alt-right” is evil. White supremacism is evil. Neo-Nazism is evil.

I’ve been saying these things my entire career; [...]

You'd think that this is pretty cut and dry, but Ben can't even maintain that façade for very long.

For example: he is quick to paint all of Antifa as homogenous, but the Alt-right's problem come from only a subset of it:

quote:

This makes them [antifa] an existential threat, a cancer gnawing at the vitals of the nation. They aren't the only ones, of course: Some violent members of the "alt-right," for example, believe that non-white Americans are the existential threat [...]

These two quotes are both on the same page, by the way. Page 1.

Aramis fucked around with this message at 19:52 on Oct 12, 2020

Aramis
Sep 22, 2009



Ben is absolutely at his most entertaining when he decides to whip out his "big boy words". This seems to happen mostly when he's talking about stuff happening on his side of the political spectrum that he disapproves of.

The best example of this yet comes from Are We Really Living in Trump's America, which features perls such as:

quote:

[...] a haphazard agglomeration of random partisan prescriptions without any basis in a thoroughgoing vision of Americanism.

And possibly my favourite piece of mental gymnastics so far (emphasis mine):

quote:

Trump's "Make America Great Again" sloganeering hasn't promised a new unity of purpose. It has actually exacerbated a reverse polarization.

Robot Jones
Nov 12, 2016

Whatever Happened to... Robot Jones?

The American Political Tradition: And the Men Who Made It
A ravenous appetite for Americana
Foreward and introduction

In his foreword to Richard Hofstadter’s book The American Political Tradition: And the Men Who Made It, Christopher Lasch sets the historical context for Hofstadter’s career. The book, according to Lasch, “took shape in a confrontation not only with liberalism in politics but with liberal historiography.” Under the ostensibly leftist Roosevelt government of the 1930s, the American historian became no better than any cheerleader of American nationalism; Hofstadter’s focus on American historical traditions and their inadequacies is a direct response to that trend. Lasch claims the book’s real central theme is American political culture, and on this subject I imagine Hofstadter’s analysis will be equally as useful in modern America as it was in his era.

Hofstadter begins the introduction by immediately pointing towards what he sees as a flaw in contemporary American culture: “Americans have recently found it more comfortable to see where they are than to think of where they are going.” This obsession with past glory is common to failing empires, but Hofstadter argues that this nostalgia is a key element of what makes America “America”: the obsession with the founders, historical monuments and museums dedicated to trivia, prestige television about American history, all point towards a relatively narrow range of thought considered mainstream throughout American history.
Simply put, Hofstadter is arguing that Americans have a choice between a douche and a turd sandwich, and we have always been limited to those choices. All major political parties throughout American history agreed about “the rights of property, the philosophy of economic individualism, the value of competition.”

The rest of this review will be structured into 6 parts, two chapters per part. I hope to post regular updates throughout the week, as my bandwidth allows.

Amniotic
Jan 23, 2008

Dignity and an empty sack is worth the sack.

So Empire by Orson Scott Card might seem like a near future dystopia about a both sides civil war in the United States, fueled by sectarian violence and mechanized weapons. Hell, you might even think it's a bald Christ figure allegory squished onto a barely concealed retelling of the life of Julius Caesar and the birth of an american empire. But you would be wrong. What this book is really about is Card's rage at his inability to get respect or access to public fora unwilling to entertain his bullshit. In particular, Empire is a book about how universities and the broader intellectual world suck because they're full of people that think Card is full of poo poo.

I wonder if the crew that made the game knew what they were getting into with this.

axeil
Feb 14, 2006
I just wanted to say I am very, very excited to read the rest of the book reports that are going to come out of this given the stuff we've gotten so far.

Relevant Tangent posted:

Every day (for nine more days, inshallah) I wake up and open palm slam The Roots of Obama's Rage into my ebook reader. Right then and there I start doing the moves with the main character, Barack.


This legit made me laugh my rear end off, good luck with the rest of the book.


Happy reading everyone!


axeil fucked around with this message at 05:30 on Oct 13, 2020

TammyHEH
Dec 11, 2013

Alfrything is only the ghost of a memory...
This book is dedicated to "uncle joe"


Edit: as a non American im drawn to phrases that must I presume have a very intrinsically American usage and identity. "Black Irish mood", "impossibly long boat" and buttered bullet (though I can kinda get at what the author is going for) are all slightly jarring.

TammyHEH fucked around with this message at 09:44 on Oct 13, 2020

BiggerBoat
Sep 26, 2007

Don't you tell me my business again.
The best/worst/funniest Shapiro book is the non fiction one he tried to write, True Allegiance. Chapo Trap House did a read of some of it once and it was hilarious.

BiggerBoat fucked around with this message at 20:53 on Oct 13, 2020

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

Excited to hear the continuing story of ben shapiro's fascination with big burly men

Relevant Tangent
Nov 18, 2016

Tangentially Relevant

Settling down with some coffee for part three of this slog

Obama's Private War

quote:

Our theory, derived from Obama's testimony, is that he adopted his ideals from his father and we know that his father's ideals were anti-colonial ideals.
Obama has to keep his true motivations secret and figure out how to translate his ideology into actions and words that are palatable to the American people.

quote:

He cannot say America is a nuclear menace to the world, so he has to say that he wants a nuclear-free world.

quote:

Conspicously absent at the summit were North Korea and Iran, the former country in possession of nuclear weapons, the latter energetically engaged in the process of acquiring them.
Despite Obama getting the rest of the world to agree to a reduction in nuclear stockpiles it was really a hermit kingdom and a non-nuclear country not agreeing to disarm that was the problem. We get a Krauthammer reference (rest in piss you dead bitch) where he notes "nuclear weapons are not in themselves dangerous; what's dangerous is when they are in the hands of the bad guys." D'Souza's argument is that Obama wasn't trying to make the world safer from nukes he was just trying to disarm America.

D'Souza contends that Obama returning the Churchill bust that had been in the Oval Office to the British was a huge insult to the British and a deep insight into the anti-colonial mind of Obama rather than an acknowledgement that Churchill was a dick and the special relationship was going to need a bit of a rethink. He doesn't disagree that Churchill was a dick, he even talks about colonialism under Churchill, he just thinks acknowledging it insults the English.

quote:

...Obama announced that he would no longer wear a lapel pin with the American flag as had become customary for politicians and also many other public figures since the 9/11 attacks. "You show your patriotism by how you treat your fellow Americans," Obama said.

In Obama's ideology, we show our love for our country not through jingoistic flag-waving and foreign expeditions, but rather by agitating for domestic policies that take from the haves and give to those who don't have as much.
Again, the version of Obama that exists in D'Souza's mind is much cooler than the version that we got. No attempt is made to explain why jingoism is preferable to helping the people who live in your country.

We get the seemingly obligatory de Tocqueville paragraphs where a dead French nobleman from the stone age writes laudatory things about early Americans that set in stone for all time the nature of the nation's character. We get a brief rundown on American Exceptionalism. Obama's success is a clear example of American Exceptionalism. In a running theme for the book the argument as to how this is true is entirely non-existent.

D'Souza gets mad about stress tests for the big banks existing, contending that instead they should've just been allowed to pay back the money when they felt they were good rather than the government making sure they weren't going to immediately need another bailout. D'Souza gets shirty about Obama calling BP British Petroleum.

Obama trying to get Israel to reign in the settlers and generally to stop being an apartheid state is clearly evidence of his anti-colonial mindset. Obama has sympathy for the Palestinians, something no one who wasn't an anti-colonialist would bother with as it's politically damaging.

I'm really enjoying everyone else's reviews.

Vivian Darkbloom
Jul 14, 2004


Relevant Tangent posted:

We get what feels like a hundred pages on D'Souza's understanding of colonialism, neocolonialism, and anti-colonialism. To shorten it up considerably, Obama III the actual Obama understands America as a neocolonial state and he's going to try to wring that out of America and the West at large. The rich in America are a neocolonial force in America itself, exploiting the rest of the population. D'Souza assumes the idea itself will elicit such horror in his audience that he need not actually say 'this is incorrect, the rich are good' so neglects to do so.

Does D'Souza ever get around to explaining why opposition to colonialism is bad, or is it just sort of a wink and nudge? There's that American Revolution to explain away and all.

BiggerBoat
Sep 26, 2007

Don't you tell me my business again.

OwlFancier posted:

Excited to hear the continuing story of ben shapiro's fascination with big burly men

You mean "BRETT HAWTHORNE"?

Pander
Oct 9, 2007

Fear is the glue that holds society together. It's what makes people suppress their worst impulses. Fear is power.

And at the end of fear, oblivion.



BiggerBoat posted:

The best/worst/funniest Shapiro book is the non fiction one he tried to write, True Allegiance. The Chapo House did a read of some of it once and it was hilarious.

They did too? Behind the Bastards was the lengthy Let's Read I heard for Ben's book. God that book is something Steve Carell's character from the office would write.

BiggerBoat
Sep 26, 2007

Don't you tell me my business again.

Pander posted:

They did too? Behind the Bastards was the lengthy Let's Read I heard for Ben's book. God that book is something Steve Carell's character from the office would write.

You're right. Sorry I got them mixed up

The one I heard was CTH.

BiggerBoat fucked around with this message at 20:54 on Oct 13, 2020

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

Chapo did one as well but not the whole thing.

Dapper_Swindler
Feb 14, 2012

Im glad my instant dislike in you has been validated again and again.

OwlFancier posted:

Chapo did one as well but not the whole thing.

behind the bastards did alot of it and will probably do more.

Aramis
Sep 22, 2009



Today, I'm tackling part 3: The left's thought fascism.

The title confused me, because it certainly feels like this is pretty much the main premise of everything so far in the book.

That being said, I'm definitely starting to build a decent understanding of Shapiro's appeal. While I had him filled in the "grifter" drawer in my head up to now, he's a different beast altogether: definitely one of the most effective conservative pundits out there. Not that the bar is particularly high, but I can see his speech succeeding at pulling center-ish people away from the left.

He's reasonably good at mixing together actual facts, subtly misrepresented facts, and conclusions presented as other facts, all with an authoritative tone that induces trustworthiness. He almost always opens up with some unassailable fact, and very gradually transitions to some epic take-down. Unless you are well versed in the events that he's referring to ahead of time and/or paying close attention to his speech, he comes across as fairly convincing.

However, he's not that good. Even by pretending to be some alien learning about American politics through this book, his arguments are often flimsy at best, and sort of powers through by way of pure confidence. For example, he remains shockingly blatant in applying different standards to the left and the right. For example, in America's Left in the grip of insanity

Ben Shapiro posted:

Only nutcases on the right believed Barack Obama's governance was morally equivalent to the Iranian government. [...]. But many on the left seem to believe Trump is merely steps removed from the ayatollahs.

Frankly, as a reader, I'm kind of a little insulted by it. Did you think I wouldn't notice, Ben?

Also, every once in while, Ben drops the mask and accidentally lets out some true-believer libertarian lack of empathy like in The Left's War on Parenting:

Ben, gently caress the poor, Shapiro posted:

That case is far stronger in a welfare state, in which insufficient education often ends with the public bearing the brunt of such failures.

Unfortunately, this chapter spent most of its time railing at the democrats and the left, rather than defending conservatives, so I don't have a good word salad to share. I think Ben actually wants us to pay attention here. I do have the following nugget from The unbridgeable gap between left and right over human evil, which... I don't even know where to begin with that one...

Ben, thought juggler, Shapiro posted:

The right believes that human beings are capable of evil on their own. That’s why they see the rise of radical Islam as more of a problem than global warming. Good people won’t kill each other because of global warming. They will if they begin to believe evil ideologies, or support those who do.

Oh! How can I forget, I literally did a double take while reading The Democrats Lose Their S---. This came out of nowhere, and is completely out of character. I have no idea what happened here. My best guess is that this is how he drafts his columns, and that one somehow did not get cleaned up before publication.

Ben, wtf, Shapiro posted:

The GOP tweeted out a picture of a shirt sold by the Dem rats that says "Democrats give a sh*t about people."


Next up: Somehow, Ben puts a soapbox on his soapbox.

Aramis fucked around with this message at 19:32 on Oct 13, 2020

JordanKai
Aug 19, 2011

Get high and think of me.


Amniotic posted:

So the brilliant warrior savant is already in Princeton in a PhD program after being promoted for rending his garments and mortifying his flesh after he couldn't save the one old man that died in his heroic defiance of orders to save a village from terrorists.


Lest we think that perhaps this is a right wing screed, he's married to a Democrat:


Chapter 2 and we're already getting "and that boys name was Albert Einstein" stories.

It's baffling to me how closely the setup to this resembles that of the novel Trigger Warning, a far-right dime novel about antifa terrorists on campus. That novel was rightfully derided for the absurdity of its premise, which seemed to be completely disconnected from real-world social mechanisms, and yet this Orson Scott Card novel was celebrated upon its release despite complete tripe like this characterisation. :psyduck:

I think there was a time when people were much more forgiving of obvious, self-aggrendising author insert characters than they are now, and I think the world was worse for it.

Seven Hundred Bee
Nov 1, 2006

Great job to everyone who has been liveposting their read throughs! Empire sounds much worse than I remember.

Quick update:

Somfin had issues acquiring The Hitler Myth, so they instead will be reading... *drumroll*

Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America by Rick Perlstein



quote:

Told with vivid urgency and sharp political insight, Nixonland recaptures America’s turbulent 1960s and early 1970s and reveals how Richard Nixon rose from the political grave to seize and hold the presidency of the United States. Perlstein’s epic account begins in the blood and fire of the 1965 Watts riots, nine months after Lyndon Johnson’s historic landslide victory over Barry Goldwater appeared to herald a permanent liberal consensus in the United States. Yet the next year, scores of liberals were tossed out of Congress, America was more divided than ever, and a disgraced politician was on his way to a shocking comeback: Richard Nixon. Between 1965 and 1972 America experienced no less than a second civil war. Out of its ashes, the political world we know now was born. Filled with prodigious research and driven by a powerful narrative, Rick Perlstein’s magisterial account of how it all happened confirms his place as one of our country’s most celebrated historians.

Rappaport
Oct 2, 2013

Are we allowed to cheerlead in this thread? Because Nixonland is a wonderful read, and really the entirety of Perlstein's trilogy is. :allears:

Seven Hundred Bee
Nov 1, 2006

Rappaport posted:

Are we allowed to cheerlead in this thread? Because Nixonland is a wonderful read, and really the entirety of Perlstein's trilogy is. :allears:

Of course!

Somfin
Oct 25, 2010

In my🦚 experience🛠️ the big things🌑 don't teach you anything🤷‍♀️.

Nap Ghost

Seven Hundred Bee posted:

Great job to everyone who has been liveposting their read throughs! Empire sounds much worse than I remember.

Quick update:

Somfin had issues acquiring The Hitler Myth, so they instead will be reading... *drumroll*

Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America by Rick Perlstein



First, thanks to SHB for giving me a somewhat more easily acquired book- I live in New Zealand, specifically in Wellington, and getting books out of what's left of the library is a pain in the arse. After a long-delayed assessment decided that actually the building was, to use non-technical jargon, a "loving deathtrap" and "would absolutely kill everyone inside if there was a real solid earthquake"- which is something of a monthly risk in this city- the main building is and has been closed for years, and what's left is a long process of getting books out of storage and then talking to people and urgh. They did actually have a copy of The Hitler Myth, but actually getting access to it would be a process on the order of a week or more.

Second, I've actually heard of Nixonland and there was a vestigial bit of my brain that really wanted me to read it for a long time, and so I'm quite excited to have a good kick up the bum to get it read. Thank you!

plogo
Jan 20, 2009
Nixonland is great! Here's a negative review to balance out the inevitable lovefest.

https://newleftreview.org/issues/II53/articles/alexander-cockburn-the-great-divider

BiggerBoat
Sep 26, 2007

Don't you tell me my business again.

OwlFancier posted:

Chapo did one as well but not the whole thing.

Well, poo poo. Now I'm confused. Whoever it was it was loving funny but really short and they never finished it.

*google*

It WAS Chapo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYp_6DcUzbU

I'll have to seek out the BtB reading.

Xelkelvos
Dec 19, 2012

JordanKai posted:

It's baffling to me how closely the setup to this resembles that of the novel Trigger Warning, a far-right dime novel about antifa terrorists on campus. That novel was rightfully derided for the absurdity of its premise, which seemed to be completely disconnected from real-world social mechanisms, and yet this Orson Scott Card novel was celebrated upon its release despite complete tripe like this characterisation. :psyduck:

I think there was a time when people were much more forgiving of obvious, self-aggrendising author insert characters than they are now, and I think the world was worse for it.

Very much so. 2006 was only 14 years ago, but it's eras and lightyears away in terms of media environment and desires. To say nothing of the self-aggrandizing fiction writer sitting in office today or the ones who spun the dial up to 11 on Fox News and beyond. Just a simple trip to Reddit, Twitter or Facebook can fill you with so many stories of stdh.txt that people are rightfully sick of it. Mind, there's still people who revel in these sorts of stories, but it's generally to demean or mock their ideological enemies.

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Amniotic
Jan 23, 2008

Dignity and an empty sack is worth the sack.

Empire trip report -

Before continuing with the plot of "malicious Princeton history professor engineers the overthrow of the American government with dual false flag operations involving left and right wing coups", let's take a moment to dwell on Card's craft.

One of the protagonists is Reuben Malich, a special forces operator that beat himself in front of the savage villagers to express his remorse at the old man dying, got promoted to major, was assigned to Princeton to do a history PhD so that he could reconnoiter leftist Senators while blending in, and also possesses the self-insight and Stoicism of Aurelius.

quote:

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY was just what Reuben expected it to be hostile to everything he valued, smug and superior and utterly closed-minded. In fact, exactly what they thought the military was. He kept thinking, the first couple of semesters, that maybe his attitude toward them was just as short-sighted and bigoted and wrong as theirs was of him. But in class after class, seminar after seminar, he learned that far too many students were determined to remain ignorant of any real-world data that didn't fit their preconceived notions. And even those who tried to remain genuinely open-minded simply did not realize the magnitude of the lies they had been told about history, about values, about religion, about everything.
So they took the facts of history and averaged them with the dogmas of the leftist university professors and thought that the truth lay somewhere in the middle.

Well as far as Reuben could tell, the middle they found was still far from any useful information about the real world. Am I like them, just a bigot learning only what fits my worldview? That's what he kept asking himself. But finally he reached the conclusion: No, he was not. He faced every piece of information as it came. He questioned his own assumptions whenever the information seemed to violate it. Above all, he changed his mind-and often. Sometimes only by increments; sometimes
completely. Heroes he had once admired-Douglas MacArthur, for instance-he now regarded with something akin to horror: How could a commander be so vain, with so little justification for it? Others that he had disdained-that great clerk, Eisenhower, or that woeful incompetent, Burnside-he had learned to appreciate for their considerable virtues.

The name Reuben is from Hebrew, and means "Behold, a son". While the name Malich is from Croatian and means "small", the close Malick originates in Arabic, and means "King". So this genius warrior philosopher stoic is also by name a kingly son. Motherfucking Orson wasn't satisfied with making his hero Julius Caesar, he literally wrote warrior Jesus into his book.

E: If you think I'm reading too deeply into the madness, the second protagonist's name is Bartholomew, whose namesake is rather famously one of the disciples.

Amniotic fucked around with this message at 21:20 on Oct 13, 2020

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