plogo posted:

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

quote:

But that's what these diehard Islamists wanted. For the whole world to be as poor and miserable as the Middle East. For us all to live the way the Muslims did in the good old days, when the Sultan ruled in Istanbul. Or earlier, when the Caliph ruled from Baghdad, fantastically wealthy while the common people sweated and starved and clung to their faith. And if it meant reducing the population of the world from six billion to half a billion, well, let eleven-twelfths of the human population die and Allah would sort them out in heaven.

What the terrorists aren't counting on, thought Cole, is that America isn't a completely decadent country yet. When you stab us, we don't roll over and ask what we did wrong and would you please forgive us. Instead we turn around and take the knife out of your hand. Even though the whole world, insanely, condemns us for it.

Cole could imagine the way this was getting covered by the media in the rest of the world. Oh, tragic that the President was dead. Official condolences. Somber faces. But they'd be dancing in the streets in Paris and Berlin, not to mention Moscow and Beijing. After all, those were the places where America was blamed for all the trouble in the world. What a laugh—capitals that had once tried to conquer vast empires, damning America for behaving far better than they did when they were in the ascendancy.

"You look pissed off," said Malich.

"Yeah," said Cole. "The terrorists are crazy and scary, but what really pisses me off is knowing that this will make a whole bunch of European intellectuals very happy."

"They won't be so happy when they see where it leads. They've already forgotten Sarajevo and the killing fields of Flanders."

"I bet they're already 'advising' Americans that this is where our military 'aggression' inevitably leads, so we should take this as a sign that we need to change our policies and retreat from the world."

"And maybe we will," said Malich. "A lot of Americans would love to slam the doors shut and let the rest of the world go hang."

"And if we did," said Cole, "who would save Europe then? How long before they find out that negotiations only work if the other guy is scared of the consequences of not negotiating? Everybody hates America till they need us to liberate them."

"You're forgetting that nobody cares what Europeans think except a handful of American intellectuals who are every bit as anti-American as the French," said Malich.

Amniotic posted:

Yowza. The President has now been assassinated by the the plan that Jesus Aurelius came up with, and now he and his buddy Bart are trying to figure out how not to get the blame. Know what it's time for? Some good old fashioned red-baiting.

Preach, Brother Card.

quote:

But that's what these diehard Islamists wanted. For the whole world to be as poor and miserable as the Middle East. For us all to live the way the Muslims did in the good old days, when the Sultan ruled in Istanbul. Or earlier, when the Caliph ruled from Baghdad, fantastically wealthy while the common people sweated and starved and clung to their faith. And if it meant reducing the population of the world from six billion to half a billion, well, let eleven-twelfths of the human population die and Allah would sort them out in heaven.

Seven Hundred Bee posted:

Seven Hundred Bee posted:

I almost picked a Thomas Kratman book for this, but his writing is actually too offensive to read even as a joke.

Somfin posted:

...there's a part of me that really wants to take a swing at it. I just put that man's name into google and I have never seen a face so fundamentally, thoroughly haunted.

Somfin posted:

...there's a part of me that really wants to take a swing at it. I just put that man's name into google and I have never seen a face so fundamentally, thoroughly haunted.

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.

quote:

"The people who set you and Malich up," said Alton. "The people who made drat sure Malich was there at the scene—almost blew it, though, didn't they, because you and Malich came that close to wrecking their plan. They didn't know what a soldier could do, did they! Didn't know that suppressing cellphones and cutting landlines wouldn't stop you! Didn't know our boys know how to improvise.

"Who are those people, sir?" asked Cole.

"The Left, Coleman, and you know it. The blue-staters.The latte-sipping assholes who took over this country by taking over the law schools so that everybody on the bench has been brainwashed into thinking that the written Constitution is nothing but modeling clay, you can shape it into anything you want and what they want is for it to be a nation where marriage between faggots and lesbians is sacred and you can kill babies right up to the moment they're born and who gives a poo poo whether the people vote for it or a constitutional amendment could ever pass! They learned with the ERA—you're too young to remember that, but I do—Equal Rights Amendment, they couldn't get it through the state legislatures, so they learned their lesson. No more amendments! Just take over the courts and make them the dictators. Make them tell us that the Constitution says the opposite of the words on the paper and then it will take a constitutional amendment to set things back to rights!"

Cole hated it when people talked like this. Because sure, he felt like this a lot of the time, but he didn't like hearing somebody say it this way. Angrily. Abusively. Cole might hate the way the courts decided stuff that was supposed to be decided by supermajorities of the citizenry, but he wanted it to be discussed and corrected reasonably.

Epicurius posted:

Quadrology? now. The 4th book in the series just came out.

quote:

What drives us to ignore the obvious fact that most Americans oppose specific evils and would side against those evils when presented with evidence of them occurring?

Perhaps it's our innate drive toward establishing a feeling of moral superiority. You don't get to feel morally superior when you name someone who acts in criminal fashion; you're just a witness, and witnesses are useful members of society, bettering society actively rather than criticizing it from the outside.

Or perhaps it's the burden that comes along with evidence. It's much easier to gain sympathy by telling a story about victimization without naming names — a story nobody can contradict, since you're not getting specific. In fact, if you do get too specific about allegations of sexual assault, as actress Lena Dunham did, your allegations might be called into question. And if you do get too specific about allegations of police racism and brutality, as the Seattle Seahawks defensive end Michael Bennett did, your accusations might be debunked.

OwlFancier posted:

I don't remember any of this from Shadow Complex.

JordanKai posted:

Reminder that this is the project that Epic Games (the people who are currently raking in billions off of Fortnite) decided they absolutely had to sign onto.

quote:

The company has been developing its 'Empire' project since 2006, first as an in-house written story, which was developed into a novel by Card, and was optioned by Warner Bros., with Die Hard and Matrix producer Joel Silver currently attached to the project.

Xelkelvos posted:

Epic didn't actually sign onto it. A company they had acquired, Chair Entertainment, did.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chair_Entertainment
They were the ones who originally signed the deal to work with Card (Chair was also founded n Utah in 2005), before being acquired by Epic in 2008. Shadow Complex came out in 2009. The only other game it had under its belt before acquisition was an XBLA game called Undertow.

Reading this article regarding Chair's acquisition, it may be the reverse case:
Which might suggest that Shadow Complex had more of the original gist of the story and then Card developed his parallel based on elements of the original planned story, with his obvious "tilt" and political leanings. That they came out so far apart from each other sorta renders it a little moot as by the time Shadow Complex cam out, idk if anyone knew or cared about Empire at that point.

JordanKai posted:

I stand entirely corrected, thank you!

Imagine making a fun little 2D action game and getting a legendary sci-fi author to write a tie-in novel to it, only for him to turn in Empire.

Wicked Them Beats posted:

I was a HUGE Card fan in my early adolescence. I still have like twenty of his books on a bookshelf, next to a bunch of Piers Anthony books and Magic the Gathering novelizations, as a shameful reminder of what I once enjoyed (I read every piece of crappy sci-fi and fantasy I could get my hands on). I should reread some of them just to see what messages I missed when I was 12.

quote:

"So it was a right-wing thing," said Cole. "Like Oklahoma City."

"Yeah, well, the Left had the Unabomber, though nobody ever seems to remember that his logic sounded just like Al Gore preaching about the environment—crazy as a loon, but full of all kinds of internal politically correct logic."

quote:

Then he remembered the boys sitting there listening. "I was making a point by exaggeration," he said to them. "We're not leaving the country."

"If we do," said Mark, "I want to go to Disney World."

"I want to go to Xanth," said Nick.

Wicked Them Beats posted:

Orson Scott Card, the esteemed luminary who rewrote Hamlet to be about the evils of homosexuality, does it again.

Vivian Darkbloom posted:

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.

quote:

It's a riveting story, and told in a way you haven't heard before, but if you care about America's prosperity and security, I might as well forewarn you. Be very afraid.

quote:

"Don't tell me I don't have a claim on Selma, Alabama!..."Don't tell me I'm not coming home to Selma, Alabama"

quote:

...overly inhibited by the facts. He is, as his supporters might say, after the bigger picture. It is that bigger picture that I want to contest.

quote:

Obama wants us to believe that his loneliness and lack of place were caused by being suspended between a white world and a black world, the world of his mom and the world of his dad.

But no! There was a division but hardly this one. The real division was between the comfortable but empty world that Obama inhabited and the dark, troubled world of the dad who caused that emptiness by being absent his whole life.

quote:

...where he talks to various relatives about who his dad really was, and then weeps at the man's grave.
It's powerful stuff. But at first glance it's a little hard for the reader to understand Obama's depth of allegiance. His dad was, after all, a complete jerk.

quote:

...I conclude that the father's near-magical skill of communication had been fully transmitted to the son. Later we will see how other people became hooked.

quote:

...for Obama Sr. this is not an issue of race; rather, it is an issue of power.

quote:

Obama could hardly have failed to read.

quote:

Just take over the courts and make them the dictators. Make them tell us that the Constitution says the opposite of the words on the paper and then it will take a constitutional amendment to set things back to rights!

Relevant Tangent posted:

I just want to say that compared to the poster reading Shapiro I feel like I got off easy.

The Oldest Man posted:

Have you read The Homecoming Saga? Because I have. The entire thing.

Antifa Turkeesian posted:

Astounding that he thinks democrats have done this rather than the right. I guess he's either telling on himself or thinking only of gay marriage.

WAR CRIME GIGOLO posted:

Here's the extended Chapo TH review of the book:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1FLVnzMBIY

I've never listened to this podcast / show before and its pretty solid. Especially the fact that I realize now ben shapiro is a basement dweller racist from his fiction novel. Where all of his scenarios are insanely "The blacks are getting whites to kill people to spark race riots" uses the term "Race peddlers" which is an anti-MLK term that was used. So he's a virtue signalling racist gently caress who gives scenarios like this

Its insane

BiggerBoat posted:

Thanks for this comedy gold and the subsequent rabbit hole. Been listening to some "audio books" on and off since you linked it and wound up on the Stephen Seagal book,...I poo poo you not..."The Way of the Shadow Wolf" which is as idiotic and predictable as it sounds.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2yqryICA_g

I swear to god, this is a fun thread to read - like MST2K for books - but godspeed to anyone who actually has to read this poo poo. I hate...HATE bad writing, as well as bad acting, but unlike a lovely movie I can watch for laughs, reading a book is a real investment of my time. These people publishing and reading this poo poo are too stupid to live but somehow the authors are revered as intellectuals for simply having managed to Write a Book. I guess in the same way that D'Souza is a "film maker" who only gets bad reviews because of "the media".

But I mean god drat. How do you guys slog through this drivel?

When I was married, I recall seeing a book on my Father in Law's shelf once written by a dude named BRAD THOR, glancing at the cover and liner notes and getting a big chuckle out of it. My in laws were (and are) big conservative ding dongs. Now I see BRAD THOR wrote the cover blurb for Shaprio's "True Allegiance" and it's right under the title to boot which I don't recall ever seeing before. Just googling "book covers", I don't see a single one with a testimonial blurb. Jesus Christ.

But I guess BRAD THOR is a big player in the realm of juvenile, shallow, poorly written patriotic fiction.

Discendo Vox posted:

Starting into my book tonight. I'll take notes and try to deliver a concrete single review. It's going to be very difficult to not instead spend a ton of time tearing it to shreds. I've already made the discovery that this guy was almost certainly the exact contemporary nemesis and target of my philosophical idol, Popper.

Somfin posted:

Nixonland starts off with an extended intro summarising the core ideas that the book is going to touch on, with the notable moment toward the end saying that the "protagonist" is not Nixon, nor LBJ, nor any of the great named figures, but the nameless voter who, for obvious societal reasons and along with 61.1% of their peers, voted Democrat in 1964, then, for the exact same reasons, switched to voting Republican in 1972. Yes, Nixon wins in 1968- but the crushing win, 60.1%, will be in 1972, which is where the book's timeline ends.

The first chapter of Nixonland are a breakneck assessment of LBJ's massive popularity, the triumphant Great Society reforms, the pressures they easily overcame, the growing public sense that the Republicans were finished after trying to run Goldwater, and the societal upheaval that resulted from the reforms... and somewhat more reserved summaries of the Watts Uprising and other riots, and the increasingly cruel and increasingly televised Vietnam War. It finishes with the excellent moment of Nixon breaking into a millionaire's mansion because he didn't want his first moment in that city to be him being "discovered" by the press at a hotel.

It's loving gripping stuff. While there are some deliberately humanising pulls of punches regarding Johnson's handling of Vietnam, it's not a book that pretends that everything was going fine until vile Nixon took over. LBJ is presented as someone who did a lot of barely-mitigated good, but also hosed up massively; less of a grey, more of a barely-blended black-and-white mixture. The focus, so far, is on the broader societal impact of the fact that people, ie our unnamed protagonists, were seeing poo poo like zippo raids in Vietnam and race-based violence in America, and all that was after doing the obvious right thing and voting for the Great Society guy who was supposed to fix everything. Speaking as someone with a grounding in media studies, this is an angle I can get behind, though I would have liked it to be a tad more explicit.

There is the slight problem that, in the copy I've got, it clocks in at about 1000 pages of primary text and about 200 more of notes, so I might take a bit of a while to get through it.