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Seven Hundred Bee posted:I think the most charitable interpretation you could make is that he took the existential threat of nuclear annihilation seriously enough that he felt anything justified his end goal of "cooling" the Cold War (which, eh, maybe he did?) - but I don't think that reflects a deeper pacifist sentiment, but rather a justified concern with the world ending. A recent book on the Cold War by Odd Arne Westad makes an, I think compelling, case that Nixon's foreign policy was in many ways motivated by his distrust for the American people. He didn't think Americans would be willing to shoulder the burden of being the world hegemon, which was costly in many ways. They didn't want to go fight and die in Vietnam, they didn't want to keep subsidizing allies all over the world, they didn't want preferential trade terms enriching Japan and South Korea at the cost of the US consumer, and so on. He thought in the long run it would be more sustainable for the US to be one of a few great powers in the world instead of being the predominant superpower responsible for solving every costly problem around the world. So you get the Nixon Doctrine, which says the US will support allies but not take on their burdens for them. You get the Nixon Shock to wean US allies off of their reliance on the dollar as the world reserve currency and to devalue the dollar so that US consumers stop subsidizing allies' exports. You get Vietnamization to bring home the American soldiers whose unpopular war threatened the basis of US world power. And above all else you get detente, with the Soviets and with China, to reduce the costs and risks of the Cold War and to counterbalance the Soviets by strengthening China and bringing the Chinese into the American camp. Nixon was still a monster who did things like back Pinochet and invade Cambodia, but his primary motivation was a deep mistrust of the American people's willingness to shoulder the burden and accept the sacrifices required to be the world superpower. In this framing the key point isn't necessarily that Nixon himself did or didn't like war, but more that he thought Americans wouldn't accept the costs of fighting even a good war.
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Oct 20, 2020 20:30
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Folks, your Nixon takes are all very pretty but I'm pretty sure that we're about to get to most if not all of that good stuff, we got another 930 pages of this to go
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Oct 20, 2020 20:52
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We have reached Beyond Borders. I have high hopes that we can move away from vile offensive material and into pure unadulterated stupidity. This is where the bar is at this point for me. I have lost all hopes of getting even a sliver of an insight, of learning anything or having my views challenged by facts I had overlooked. Stupidity is all I can hope for. I don't feel like being angry again. The cover page for the section features a quote: quote:"The world must learn to work together, or finally it will not work at all." Then, as you turn the page, you are immediately confronted with the title of the first column, in big bold letters: Time to Defund the United Nations. Ok, that's a little jarring, but let's dive in regardless. Unlike most of our anti-hero's positions, the U.N. being a counterproductive entity that fails at most of its stated goals is a perfectly defensible one. It should be trivial for a skilled demagogue to build a solid case here. His failure makes for a great example of what makes Ben's style of argumentation so bad in of itself, even after putting aside the lies and misrepresentations. He refuses to ever give a single inch to whatever he's opposing. He just doesn't seem to grasp the concept of pulling your opponent up from the ground before punching them down again. He's relentless to the point of parody. Ben, |
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Oct 20, 2020 22:51
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, Shapiro posted:
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UCS Hellmaker posted:The thing was nixon was slated to win, 72 the dems were really in the dark with a fractured base and deeply in the divide of the southern dixiecrats and the more traditional left dems due to the civil rights movement. McGovern was a weak candidate that never truly had a shot, and unlike today there wasn't as much news media that would be willing to constantly tear apart the government and 24/7 news. Something that is worth remembering though is that McGovern was the candidate in large part because of Nixon's dirty tricks, because McGovern was seen as the furthest left and likeliest candidate Nixon could beat. Without the Canuck letter, for instance, there's a very good chance that Ed Muskie would have been the nominee—and had that happened, the party would have gone into November much more unified and without having suffered the infamous Eagleton affair. Now, whether or not it would have been enough to win is pretty drat hard to say, but the election would have at least been competitive rather than a complete blowout.
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Oct 21, 2020 05:27
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Acebuckeye13 posted:Something that is worth remembering though is that McGovern was the candidate in large part because of Nixon's dirty tricks, because McGovern was seen as the furthest left and likeliest candidate Nixon could beat. Without the Canuck letter, for instance, there's a very good chance that Ed Muskie would have been the nominee—and had that happened, the party would have gone into November much more unified and without having suffered the infamous Eagleton affair. Now, whether or not it would have been enough to win is pretty drat hard to say, but the election would have at least been competitive rather than a complete blowout. This is the thinking that produced Clinton, and he wasn't necessarily the force towards progress and good things.
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Oct 21, 2020 05:41
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I was tempted to format this review as a pastiche of one of Ben’s columns, but it’s simply not worth the effort. I’ve already put more thought and care into this than he has. In any case, here's my review of Ben Shapiro's Facts don't care about your feelings.  Facts don’t care about your Feelings presents itself as a modern Pascal’s Pensées. A collection of disparate vignettes supposedly forming, when seen as a whole, a coherent apologia of the author’s pet cause which happens to be under constant fire by their contemporaries. Where Pascal was defending Christianity, Ben Shapiro defends Conservatism, albeit in a roundabout way. Here, the vignettes are all editorial columns that saw publication between early 2017 and late 2019. Most columns follow a similar format: Starting from a popular event that happens to be dominating the headlines at the time, Ben explains how the positions of leftists in general and Democrats in particular on the issue are hysterical and/or ridiculous in some way in a effort to convince the reader that, while conservatives may get a bad rap in the Trump era, the alternative is even worse. Ben says it himself: “In exposing their own radicalism, the Democrats have provided Republicans with an opportunity to seize the middle with conservatism.”. Subjects covered range from political slapfights to abortion rights, socialism, media bias, education, etc…, but the theme never strays from leftists being laughable, irrational and dangerous, and the implicit conclusion that conservatism is its antidote. The book is aging terribly fast. It constantly refers to events that were part of the public discourse at the time of original publication, but have long since lapsed from the general consciousness. No effort whatsoever is made to contextualize the columns, and as a result the book is doomed to become nigh-unreadable by anyone who wasn’t present at the right time. One could be tempted to accuse the author and editor of being lazy in that regard. Ultimately, though, this plays in the book’s favour. This is because what recollection of notable events is present in the columns systematically paints a blatantly one-sided picture of often much more nuanced issues. The less a reader knows about the actual events underpinning the arguments, the more they are capable of enjoying the experience. I say “capable” because there’s another hurdle for a theoretical reader enjoying themselves to overcome. Ben wears his loyalties on his sleeve and his relentlessness in painting the left in as negative a light as possible quickly undermines whatever point he’s trying to make. He might see and present himself as standing up to the behemoth of leftism, but almost every single column is a gleeful uninterrupted flurry of blows from start to finish. I’m sure it’s very fun for people who happen to share Shapiro’s political enemies, but for anyone else, it’s hard to take seriously. In either case, no one is walking away from this any wiser than when they came in. I’ve been much more charitable to this book than it deserves up to this point, so let’s make it clear in closing: This is a piece of trash, and no-one deserves to be subjected to it. However, for a book that is ostensibly attempting to make a rational and objective case (you know, the whole facts over feelings things), it comes shockingly short. It's the saturday morning cartoon equivalent of punditry, and I mean this in the least charitable way possible. TL.DR.: The book can be entirely summed up by the following gif I quickly threw together, and deserves about the same level of respect it elicits:  I hope at least a few of you have gotten some enjoyment from the various rambling posts I made while reading the thing and/or from this review. Now give me that gang tag. Edit: VVVVVVV Thanks! There's no actual rush. That was just my lame attempt at some form of a mic drop. Aramis fucked around with this message at 13:13 on Oct 23, 2020 |
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Oct 22, 2020 17:22
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Aramis posted:I hope at least a few of you have gotten some enjoyment from the various rambling posts I made while reading the thing and/or from this review. Now give me that gang tag. Once the admins have uploaded the tag, I'll queue this up for you!
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Oct 22, 2020 19:36
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Herstory Begins Now posted:Once the admins have uploaded the tag, I'll queue this up for you! How can we get this done?
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Oct 22, 2020 19:45
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Aramis posted:I was tempted to format this review as a pastiche of one of Ben’s columns, but it’s simply not worth the effort. I’ve already put more thought and care into this than he has. Amazing post, thank you, you are also our First Superstar (Also saved my eyes from bleeding because I had to read Ben Shapiro)
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Oct 22, 2020 19:45
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Seven Hundred Bee posted:How can we get this done? I only messaged an admin earlier today, so i assume it should be done soonish.
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Oct 22, 2020 21:43
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Herstory Begins Now posted:I only messaged an admin earlier today, so i assume it should be done soonish. Ayup. Responded in a PM but I figured I'd dump it here for you all too. Here's a top secret mod forum leak: Athanatos posted:
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Oct 22, 2020 23:00
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Aramis posted:We have reached Beyond Borders. I have high hopes that we can move away from vile offensive material and into pure unadulterated stupidity. This is where the bar is at this point for me. I have lost all hopes of getting even a sliver of an insight, of learning anything or having my views challenged by facts I had overlooked. Stupidity is all I can hope for. I don't feel like being angry again. so he is arguing that UN sucks because they dont allow america to try to skull gently caress iran to death while israel and KSA help. like i can see not liking the UN because its basically a system from keeping the "great powers" from openly killing each other and while doing good humanitarian works. it doesn't do enough to stop smaller wars/proxy wars/etc.
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Oct 23, 2020 20:50
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The Roots of Obama's Rage Chapter 9 Taming the Rogue Nation quote:Barack Obama Sr. didn't write about foreign policy-he was, after all, an economist. Even so, he espoused a broad anti-colonial perspective that viewed the West and specifically America s the invader, occupier and terrorizer of the world. In line with the senior Obama's thinking, President Obama is conducting a war against what he considers to be the biggest rogue state of all: the United States of America. D'Souza makes zero attempts to dispute the assertation that America is a colonial or neocolonial power, presumably because even a decade ago nobody was dumb enough to buy it. Instead he makes the argument that America's adversaries (the usual suspects of Venezuela, Russia, and North Korea being joined by Zimbabwe*) also see America as a colonial/neocolonial power and so it's bad that the leader of America shares views with the enemies of America. I'm just going to give you a few quotes for this chapter, because it feels like nine chapters in I should let D'Souza make his argument in his own words as best he can: quote:Obama clearly has no sympathy for Bin Laden and his radical cohorts, whom he views as gangsters and criminals. Even so, he appears to agree with their assessment that America is the neocolonial aggressor and that the best way to promote peace and security in the world is to curb America's power and influence. quote:The real message of his "sharing" was that without European approval, there would be no more U.S. invasions, no more unilateral American military action. quote:Visiting China Obama did not hesitate to criticize the Chinese government for its violation of human rights. But this criticism was carefully balanced by his lamentations for America's own human rights record. quote:His larger point was to telegraph to the world that he intended to be a different kind of president, one whose main focus would be not on controlling the destiny of other nations, but rather controlling the actions of his own country. All of that is Bad, presumably. No effort is made to establish it as bad but it must be because it's all anti-colonial. D'Souza turns to the Iranian sanctions, and effectively declares them useless. Instead we should "support Iranians who are eager to overthrow their repressive government." D'Souza thinks we should've sent aid and spooks to help during the attempted Green Revolution in 2009. He reiterates that sanctions will never work and Iran will obviously have the bomb sooner rather than later if Obama gets a second term. quote:I don't want to dwell here on the outrageousness of accusing Bush of putting thousands of American lives at risk for the purpose of saving his own political hide. quote:"When we seek to impose democracy with the barrel of a gun we are setting ourselves up for failure." D'Souza gets mad about Obama releasing the various torture memos or as D'Souza calls them "terrorist interrogation methods". So that's chapter nine, there's one left, and even if we accept every single one of D'Souza's arguments he still hasn't made a case that being an anti-colonialist is a bad thing. *I looked into this more and unless he's making a reference to Rhodesia the reasons for Zimbabwe making the list as an American adversary in 2010 or any other year are completely opaque to me, if someone has ideas or even idle speculations by all means post them
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Oct 23, 2020 20:53
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Dapper_Swindler posted:so he is arguing that UN sucks because they dont allow america to try to skull gently caress iran to death while israel and KSA help. like i can see not liking the UN because its basically a system from keeping the "great powers" from openly killing each other and while doing good humanitarian works. it doesn't do enough to stop smaller wars/proxy wars/etc. Those are two separate columns. His problem with the U.N. starts and stops at "The U.N. is mean to Israel".
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Oct 23, 2020 21:02
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How can America be a colonial imperial power if it was once a colony under the thumb of the British Empire. How could Britain be a colonial imperial power if it was once a colony under the thumb of the Roman Empire. How could Rome be a colonial imperial power if so much of Italy was once a colonial holding of the Greeks.
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Oct 23, 2020 22:19
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VitalSigns posted:How can America be a colonial imperial power if it was once a colony under the thumb of the British Empire. How could Greece be a colonial power if it was once colonized by neolithic agriculturalists crossing the Aegean Sea by island-hopping from Anatolia.
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Oct 23, 2020 22:26
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First off, thank you to everyone who's been posting updates! Great job to all. To our other participants, you have until October 26th! Going forward, I'd like to shift this to a monthly, theme-based thread, and... dun dun dun, November's theme will be The War on Thanksgiving and Christmas. If anyone has any suggestions for good books about colonialism, early US history, Native Americans, liberals killing Santa Clause, or the purpose of holidays, send me a PM!
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Oct 24, 2020 02:10
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I'm a little nervous to post this, as I've never written a review before. I must admit that despite awareness of and respect for Chuck Tingle’s public persona, I would never have considered reading Domald Tromp Pounded in the Butt by his Fabricated Wiretapping Scandal Made up to Redirect Focus Away from his Seemingly Endless Unethical Connections to Russia if it had not been assigned to me. Like many, I had always imagined the stories themselves would add nothing to the effect of the titles and cover illustrations. The text is at once more and less than I expected going in, one of the 210-odd erotic volumes in his oeuvre, properly called tinglers according to their author. The 6,500-word story is narrated in the first person by Domald Tromp, a roman a clef figure for Donald Trump. Recently elected 45th president of the United States of America, he sits through a briefing from advisors, resolves to distract the public from his numerous documented financial connections to the Russian Federation with a dishonest tweet, plays golf with two Russian agents who stuff money into his pockets, meets the physical embodiment of his earlier dishonest tweet while on the golf course, and has sex with the male-identifying twitter lie. About half the text is taken up with Tromp’s narration of sex with the tweet—he says that his name is Gerbor—while the remainder details his day in the Oval Office and his interactions with his advisors. Curiously, he never narrates the moment in which he writes or sends the tweet itself and we’re left uncertain as to the text of it, one of a few unexpected lacunae in the narrative. The sex divides the story almost exactly in half, and we might think of it as a union of two different kinds of story, one pornographic narrative and the other light political comedy. In Tingle’s rendering, the two halves do not mix. Tingle’s representation of Tromp himself is a good bit gentler than one might expect from a very online and explicitly antifascist person like Tingle. Tromp makes for a sort of Homer Simpson or Zapp Brannigan in the first half of the story, selfish and lazy, but also oblivious and naïve in a childlike way. He displays no malice and doesn’t seem to understand why taking money from foreign agents is bad or even exactly why they might want to give him money in the first place. Tingle doesn’t narrate how Tromp became president or why. He displays no racism, no misogyny, no boomer-brained notions of American history or culture that might remind a reader of the reality of Donald Trump’s campaign and victory, nor of the nature of the historical Trump’s moral character. The absence of the text of his eponymous politically motivated dishonest tweet means that we have no direct evidence of how he lies or of how aware he is of the moral consequences of his lies. Tromp is a buffoon, but a harmless one, at least in theory: there is no sense that he will use his power to harm others and not much of a sense that he even understands that he holds any power at all. In the passage below, Tromp is made aware that he should pay attention to the subject of the briefing he wishes he could nap through by the threat of being placed in time out by the story’s figure for Steve Bannon, a figure mentioned but not seen:  This passage makes Tromp’s childlike nature explicit, showing that Tromp simply acts at the behest of his advisors without really comprehending what he’s doing or why, instead motivated by simple hedonism. Later, Tromp agrees to a request from Russian agents to lift sanctions against an unspecified country, Tromp’s only thoughts on the matter that “it’s hard to understand what my staffer was so concerned about. These Russian dinosaurs are great; very professional businessmen with an I-scratch-your-back-you-scratch-mine mentality that sets me at ease.” As the Russians stuff the pockets of his suit with hundred-dollar bills, he offers them the unprompted observation that “I like money.” When they ask him how he’s enjoying being president, he says simply that “It’s kind of boring so far. Everybody seems to love me, though.” Tingle presents him as a patsy for others, not able to act maliciously because he lacks the faculties necessary for malice or anything else that requires the ability to think more than a few minutes into the future. Even given the historical Donald Trump’s obvious self-centeredness, suggestibility, and short attention span, leaving his fantastic cruelty and drive to dominance out of the picture renders him something of a moral innocent, a hapless bumbler made into the instrument of schemers behind the curtain. Taken alone, the image of Donald Trump as a naïf in over his head would fall short as any sort of meaningful statement: even the tepid mush offered up on Saturday Night Live can acknowledge that Trump is obviously loathsome. Yet when balanced against Tingle’s second half, Tromp’s character offers up some surprisingly new possibilities for political statement. Once Gerbor arrives, all but the story’s final paragraph details first a seduction of Tromp and then explicit sex between Tromp and Gerbor, all narrated in the first person like the rest of the story. Were Tromp as malicious and domineering as is the historical Donald Trump, this would color the narrative in distinct ways once Tromp starts to describe sex with Gerbor. I’m not expert enough to speak to the conventions of romance with any real precision, but it seems that audiences expect the point-of-view character to be easy for readers to project themselves onto in traditional romance stories. Nobody wants to read about an unlikable character getting hosed if the point is that the narrative is supposed to help you imagine that you’re the one getting hosed. The focus is supposed to be on the sexual acts themselves and on the subjective experience of engaging in them. In crafting a protagonist who’s dim and selfish but fundamentally bland, Tingle makes it easier to deliver a proper gently caress-and-suck interlude where there’s nothing particularly dissonant about Tromp focusing on pleasing his lover and reflecting with reasonable articulateness on his own pleasure. And despite ample opportunity to careen into the surreal given the premise, Tingle—I hope he would forgive me the turn of phrase—plays the sex extremely straight. For the curious who won’t drop $3.00 on this tingler, Gerbor confronts Tromp with the demand that he have the opportunity to know his creator. Tromp is puzzled at first but finds himself overcome by Gerbor’s charisma and striking good looks. Despite Tromp earlier describing him as a floating mass of phone cords and desk phones, Gerbor from this point has distinctly humanoid features: a strong jaw, defined abs, and the most impressive cock Tromp has ever seen. He finds it easy to succumb to Gerbor’s desires and first performs fellatio—glad at the idea that he is pleasuring his partner—and is then penetrated face down before turning over so he can masturbate while Gerbor nears climax. Both he and Gerbor achieve orgasm at the same moment and share mutual gratitude before Gerbor dresses and departs the golf course, not answering Tromp’s suggestion that they stay in touch.  I don’t know if I should have shared the details of this encounter in so explicit a fashion while posting in regular dnd, but they are the part of the story I was least certain that I would get and which are perhaps most surprising. A key aspect of stopping at the title of any tingler, no matter how silly, is that you never know whether there’s any sex in the story or whether the idea of sex is the entirety of the gag. The real surprise here for me is that there is no gag when it comes to the sex, really. In a way, it’s the opposite of the kind of unfunny boomer meme where Trump and Putin are photoshopped onto old gay porn stills or where there’s just a Minion next to text like “Donald Trump is a homosexual because he performs oral sex on Vladimir Putin!” These vulgar productions express a bedrock homophobia and a brittle, tired twentieth-century masculinity: it is bad for a man to have sex with another man, the man who is penetrated is especially disgusting for submitting to the sexual desire of a man, and homosexuality itself is inherently shameful. Tingle is leagues away from such notions. Despite Tromp’s buffoonishness, he’s a guy who takes sex seriously—he’s not a selfish or an inattentive or an inarticulate lover. There’s nothing self-evidently absurd about the story’s sex, either. That is to say, within the confines of the narrative, it appears completely natural—or as natural as the sex in any romance story. There’s no sense of whether Tromp is gay or straight, pansexual or bi, and there’s no sense that these categories even exist for Tromp or Gerbor. Perhaps the Tingleverse is one of compulsory homosexuality or one in which women do not exist (none appear in this tale), but it seems more apt to say that the scientia sexualis that makes categorical definitions of sexuality possible simply does not exist in Tingle’s reckoning. In marrying a fundamentally sympathetic version of Donald Trump with a straightforward sex narrative, Tingle perhaps performs a more fundamental sort of attack on Trump than would be possible with a conventionally satirical take. For Trump would still agree with the fundamental proposition that being gay is bad if he were pilloried by being accused of homosexuality as the blue-state dads of facebook would have it, and so to attack him in such a way is to agree with him. Merely insulting him as in traditional satire would agree with the foundational principle on which he operates, that all life is war and the biggest bully is the winner. Instead, we get a weird tale that refuses to be mean, and in so doing it destabilizes the terms on which someone like Trump greets the world. Tromp is kind of lovely, but he likes a good gently caress and he’s not even really all that lovely. Gerbor is a cartoonish mishmash of wires but also an Adonis with a massive hog. Tromp’s lies comes back to haunt him, but not in a bad way. Many commentators have agreed that satire is a fundamentally conservative form in its insistence on punishment and the demand for a return to a set of norms that must dominate through irony or otherwise. I don’t have a firm enough command of queer theory to properly describe any process of destabilization that Tingle might undertake here, but even an ignoramus like me can see that one could, if they really wished, see Domald Tromp Pounded in the Butt by his Fabricated Wiretapping Scandal Made up to Redirect Focus Away from his Seemingly Endless Unethical Connections to Russia as a pointed refusal to accept the terms of reactionary politics. That’s kind of interesting. Certainly, Tingle seems like a perceptive guy with some kind of definite politics, hidden behind weird irony and terminal shyness though they may be. I have no idea if he set out to be famous by riding the burgeoning wave of weird DIY Amazon erotica hitting in the mid-2010s or if he’s a kind of Henry Darger compelled by private springs to set his vision loose who then decided to ride the tiger of his fame wherever it would lead. He does seem shy, but he also uses his platform to good ends, even in cases where he doesn’t have to. I hardly need to rehearse the contours of his legend here—how he conspired with Zoe Quinn to send her to humiliate the nazis of science fiction in their moment of triumph, or how he became the third- or fourth-most famous caller to former goon Hbomberguy’s Donkey Kong 64 charity livestream and used his ebook cash to help save the Mermaids organization from transphobes. His website features a pretty nice section where he explains how he thinks it would be disrespectful to all who have suffered and died to write a tingler about covid-19, along with a few free stories and encouragement to donate to some health charities instead of paying for them. His twitter is pretty weird, but he will break character occasionally if the subject is important or if he thinks it will help someone. I’m glad for his politics, even if they’re not the most accessible.  So, should you read Domald Tromp Pounded in the Butt by his Fabricated Wiretapping Scandal Made up to Redirect Focus Away from his Seemingly Endless Unethical Connections to Russia? I don’t know that you have to. In a sense I feel like a summary is about the same as actually reading it, in the same way that there’s no reason to visit one of those roadside mystery spots where balls supposedly roll uphill once somebody tells you how they work. But I’m glad I read it because the experience got me thinking about what it means to resist domination. I’m glad it’s out there and I’m glad he’s out there. And if you’re at all curious, he’s included a bonus tingler, Slammed in the Butt by Domald Tromp’s Attempt to Avoid Accusations of Plagiarism by Removing All Facts or Concrete Plans from his Republican National Convention Speech, because as he puts it “love is the soul of books, and what better way to show a little love than with a free gift?” It’s a good value if nothing else. I AM GRANDO fucked around with this message at 07:25 on Oct 24, 2020 |
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Oct 24, 2020 06:47
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Your book review is a masterpiece and thank you for your service. If you'd like the gangtag shoot me a PM with what version you'd like and we can get it added!
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Oct 24, 2020 06:53
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Chapter 10 The Last Anti-Colonial quote:Bill Clinton could not hide his disdain for the man who seemed to be stealing the Democratic nomination. "A few years ago," he told Kennedy, "this guy would have been getting us coffee." D'Souza immediately goes to war against Obama's father. quote:Think about what this means. The most powerful country in the world is being governed according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s--a polygamist who abandoned his wives, drank himself into stupors, and bounced around on two iron legs (after his real legs had to be amputated because of a car crash), raging against the world for denying him the realization of his anti-colonial ambitions. This philandering, inebriated African socialist is now setting the nation's agenda through the reincarnation of his dreams in his son. quote:Obama is on a systematic campaign against the colonial system that destroyed his father's dreams. With a kind of suppressed fury, he is committed to keep going until he as brought that system down. And according to his father's anti-colonial ideology, which Obama has internalized for himself, that system is the military and economic power of the United States of America. Based on his understanding of Obama's psyche, D'Souza predicts the future. I'll just jot these down, it'll be fun to see if he was right abou--Nope, instead we get a tangent about Cecil Rhodes. Said tangent boils down to Cecil Rhodes did nothing wrong. We do finally get three specific predictions and they're Obama will raise taxes on the rich but not cut spending, Obama will take no serious actions to prevent Iran from getting a nuke and so Iran will get a nuke outside of Israel launching airstrikes, and lastly that Obama will try U.S. military officers and soldiers for war crimes committed in Iraq and Afghanistan. You will notice that one of those predictions is extremely generic Democratic economic policy, one of them is literally 'will follow international laws', and one of them was flat wrong. You can argue that the sanctions and other deal making with Iran weren't effective if you want, (though you'd be wrong) but Iran still doesn't have nukes. quote:Throughout this book, I have been outlining the formulation of Obama's anti-colonial ideology and showing the harmful impact of that ideology on America's economy and America's position in the world. But this is to judge Obama on terms that he would not accept. In this final chapter I intend to assess Obama's anti-colonialism on its own terms. How effectively does it meet its goals of bringing down the rich and powerful and raising up the wretched of the earth? quote:"How did the Indians get all these things?" the unavoidable answer is, "Colonialism." No one is suggesting that the British came to India to provide the Indians with a universal language or scientific education or anything like that. quote:Obama may not join me, but as an Indian myself who has greatly benefited from this colonial legacy, I am quite willing to give two cheers for colonialism. I say "two" and not "three" in deference to my ancestors, who had a hard time under colonialism. But while colonialism was bad for them, it has been good for me. Hey, it's thanks to the Brits that English is my first language and that's how I was able to write this book. So while Obama fumes, I am happy to raise my glass and toast that curmudgeonly old defender of the British empire, Winston Churchill  We get a bunch of apologism for why colonialism worked out so well in India and didn't work out in Africa. Really, if the colonizers had been allowed to work their will it would have been fine is what it boils down to. The Portuguese and the Belgians are mentioned as "leaving almost nothing" to develop Africa. The various atrocities are completely unmentioned. The section ends with quote:The blunt truth is that anti-colonialism is dead; no one in today's world cares about it--except the man in the White House. He is the last anti-colonial. The rest of the world has no interest in how many schools the Belgians built, or didn't build, in the Congo, or how British officials in Kenya used to beat their house servants with canes. We are now living in a new world. The book ends with a rousing call to action. Unspecified and surely legal action. quote:Obama's dream is actually an American nightmare. It's time to act. Yes, we need change, and this time the change we need is to change the man in the White House. America isn't the rogue elephant: Obama is. It's not a matter of putting him out of his misery; it's a matter of putting him out of our misery. Summing it all up then, Obama isn't a bog standard Democrat with soaring rhetoric, he's actually a time-traveling Luo tribesman who is going to bring down America from inside the Oval Office. Two hundred plus pages of this poo poo and not a single bit of it is worth remembering. I hope every single copy of this was bought by various conservative think tanks so it can moulder away in peace, because I'd hate to think that the person this was marketed at exists. I'd like the transparent version of the gangtag, a jamocha shake, and a large fry.
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Oct 24, 2020 14:54
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Do you think Dinesh is a true believer, or someone who understands the stupidity of his marks really well? I understand that it could easily be both, but surely pride would compel him to build slightly more plausible arguments if he understood how bad they are, right? I guess another way to ask the question is: does he write these books to be read, or are they props meant to make conservatism appear popular and legitimate through their appearance on store shelves and best-seller lists via the Heritage Foundation buying them pallets at a time to stash in a big warehouse?
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Oct 24, 2020 19:51
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Is it possible to be a grifter in that lane without becoming a true believer after you've done it for decades? I vaguely recall studies that showed that just being in the same room as Fox News was enough to measurably shift the political positions of white men of any political persuasion, for example.
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Oct 24, 2020 20:05
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D'Souza broke campaign finance laws to make illegal donations to Republicans, I think he's a true believer.
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Oct 24, 2020 20:08
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Amniotic posted:Is it possible to be a grifter in that lane without becoming a true believer after you've done it for decades? I vaguely recall studies that showed that just being in the same room as Fox News was enough to measurably shift the political positions of white men of any political persuasion, for example. The best example of that would be Ann Coulter. As much as everyone was convinced she was a grifter during the Bush years, her tripling down and losing it over Trump not delivering makes it clear that she's the real deal now.
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Oct 24, 2020 20:19
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That’s a good point. It would take a superhuman amount of discipline not to start genuinely believing the things you energetically put into the world for your entire adult life. I have trouble lying at all, even if it’s in the service of something I genuinely think is good.
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Oct 24, 2020 20:24
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Antifa Turkeesian posted:Do you think Dinesh is a true believer, or someone who understands the stupidity of his marks really well? I understand that it could easily be both, but surely pride would compel him to build slightly more plausible arguments if he understood how bad they are, right? I think sometimes it's done to convince himself that he's a person worthy of respect. Obama leads America but is angry about her past sins while D'Souza has licked every boot he's ever run across and is at best a mediocre pundit. That bit where he raises a glass to Churchill, he seems to have been personally offended by Obama returning the bust to the UK. If you contrast his reaction to being a colonial subject to his imagined reaction of Obama's father, one of them is admirable and one of them is toasting Churchill. I think he knows his books are props but he'd very much like them to be taken seriously. Without doing the work of course, if you look at the man's personal life it rapidly becomes clear he's a bottom-feeder right-wing charity case.
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Oct 24, 2020 21:42
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Antifa Turkeesian posted:Do you think Dinesh is a true believer, or someone who understands the stupidity of his marks really well? I understand that it could easily be both, but surely pride would compel him to build slightly more plausible arguments if he understood how bad they are, right? its a mix. he probably believes most of the insane bullshit he spews but he probably knows on some level that most of the poo poo he says is lies. he excuses that with "that (insert slur) probably thinks that anyway and if not gently caress (insert slur)" type poo poo. Relevant Tangent posted:I think sometimes it's done to convince himself that he's a person worthy of respect. Obama leads America but is angry about her past sins while D'Souza has licked every boot he's ever run across and is at best a mediocre pundit. That bit where he raises a glass to Churchill, he seems to have been personally offended by Obama returning the bust to the UK. If you contrast his reaction to being a colonial subject to his imagined reaction of Obama's father, one of them is admirable and one of them is toasting Churchill. i mean also, he was always a bigoted scum bag. i am gonna go overly paternalistic and poo poo but dudes just a collaborator because he thinks if he is always "one of the good ones" he can be respected and poo poo and keep his station and poo poo. its also he is just one of those conservative type dudes that kisses rear end to "strength" and will always moraly justify the actions of oppressor's and poo poo.
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Oct 24, 2020 22:43
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let me say that i'll probably go back and rewrite this because holy poo poo its a bad review i'm sorry please don't hate me I’d like to preface this by stating that i haven't actually done any kind of critical review writing since high school, nor have i read critically in itself - reading is a passive enjoyable experience, so bare with me on this. For uncle Joe. I would like to state for the record that no amount of suspension of disbelief is enough to make me actually believe that any of the relationships listed in (at time of writing first 10% of) the book are in any way possible or real. The audience is asked to believe that both Obama and Biden have meaningful relationships with random workers throughout the capital who are quite happy to break serious amounts of the law in order to drop info to what amounts to an old boys club. (Cops giving info on cases, doctors giving info on patients) Add to this a frankly below workmanship level of writing (“an impossibly long speedboat entered the frame, cutting through the surf like a buttered bullet” really? Shaffer we can do better) and one can only presume Andrew Shaffer hates me and the rest of the audience and this is some sort of avante garde visual BDSM. The author very obviously has a parasocial relationship with both Biden and Obama - a level of head canon that doesn’t match with any reasonable reading of both of these figures. Obama is portrayed as an impossibly cool superhuman - going from skiing off the coast of south africa to being able to fix a light 12 feet off the ground in the middle of the night without the help of ladder while biden is portrayed as deeply envious and frustrated that he has been forgotten by the impossibly sauve and accomplished former president (maybe this is accurate? idk). Let's talk about joe. This book is about Joe. Even when he's at someone else's funeral and he's telling his inner self that it isn’t about him, it's about joe. Joe Biden is enthralled with his own sense of grandeur - he compares himself to his imagined old man's club...Obama….Carter… Biden - because he has a self entitled view of his own place in the world. I’m not sure this satire of Biden is intentional, I truly believe that Shaffer is writing this straight - that there's no stinging satire of the assumption that Biden's inner monologue puts forth. Ultimately i think this book reads better as a satire of the mind of someone who would actually believe that their mainstream democratic idols would act in such a way and commit to such selfless actions but sadly I'm not convinced in any way that this is written as a satire. This reads like a mainstream yearning for a time of better decorum, like a budget kindle unlimited version of the west wing for bored people on planes - Shaffer truly believes in his idols in a completely non cynical way and this has actually messed with my broken internet brain. Curses on 700 bees for choosing this book for me its actually so bad lmao
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Oct 25, 2020 08:26
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 That is not what I was expecting. At all. Somehow, I had in my mind that it would be a sort of bog-standard murder-mystery with Obama and Joe copy-pasted in.
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Oct 25, 2020 18:51
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That one seemed the most wretched to me, even with Dinesh and Small Ben. Do they solve a crime? I’d be interested to know what the author thinks is a crime, where they think crime comes from, and what justice looks like.
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Oct 25, 2020 18:59
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I don't know if anything can beat Ben's "Nationalism isn't always bad. When combined with Patriotism, it's a solid tool against international communism" unironic take for me.
Aramis fucked around with this message at 19:59 on Oct 25, 2020 |
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Oct 25, 2020 19:55
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Aramis posted:
I mean it is, its just very terrible for that.
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Oct 25, 2020 19:55
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Aramis posted:I don't know if anything can beat Ben's "Nationalism isn't always bad. When combined with Patriotism, it's a solid tool against international communism" unironic take for me. just you loving wait.
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Oct 25, 2020 20:02
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Tommunist posted:let me say that i'll probably go back and rewrite this because holy poo poo its a bad review i'm sorry please don't hate me i mean i am one of those broken people who like biden on a personal level sorta beyond policy disagreements and also still likes Obama somwhat, this weird prosocial like this gives me the jibblies. Aramis posted:
same. that would be dumb but maybe fun. like a weird murder she wrote meets encyclopedia brown but Biden is just standing in the corner giving the thumbs up at junior detective melissa peppers as they solve the case.
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Oct 25, 2020 20:56
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Dapper_Swindler posted:i mean i am one of those broken people who like biden on a personal level sorta beyond policy disagreements and also still likes Obama somwhat, this weird prosocial like this gives me the jibblies. If you actually like Obama and Biden and can get past some of the obvious flaws with the book its not a terrible dumb toilet read - my main problem i outlined was that I couldn't imagine either Biden or Obama acting in this way and my impression was that the author had imprinted his head canon onto these two people. I guess you have to to actually write an Obama and Biden solve crime book alas.
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Oct 25, 2020 21:10
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Orson Scott Card posted:We live in a time when people like me, who do not wish to choose either camp's ridiculous, inconsistent, unrelated ideology, are being forced to choose—and to take one whole absurd package or the other. Empire, by Orson Scott Card, is a delusional fantasy of radical centrism standing firm against a tide of Left (Card always capitalizes this) cultural dominance. Pulled in to write filler novels associated with a video game, Card showcases how completely the aftermath of the 9-11 attacks broke his brain. A conservative Mormon with a bibliography of "great men misunderstood by history" science fiction to his rear, Card's personal affront at the surge in support for gay marriage and occasional consequences for bigoted speech in public spheres were crystalized by the broad rejection of the rationale for the second Iraq War into a paranoia (focused on Jews, women, college students, anarchists, leftists, George Soros) that is a strong precursor of the right rhetoric in the Trump era. Like his peer Scott Adams (If you don't know, Dilbert went off the rails and Adams is a massive chud), the introduction of globalist conspiracy theory has done no favors to Card's already unever work. Who is at fault for the fall of America as an idea? Card tells us in the afterward (after mealy-mouthed both sidesing a bit): Orson Scott Card posted:In academia, it consists of the denial of degrees, jobs, or tenure to people with nonconformist opinions. Ironically, the people who are most relentless in eliminating competing ideas congratulate themselves on their tolerance and diversity. In most situations, it is less formal, consisting of shunning—but the shunning usually has teeth in it. Did Mel Gibson, when in his cups, say something that reflects his upbringing in an anti-Semitic household? Then he is to be shunned—which in Hollywood will mean he can never be considered for an Oscar and will have a much harder time getting prestige, as opposed to money, roles. That's right - college professors and the vulnerable students that they prey on. It might seem absurd to think that Card can spin a second American Civil War out of campus activism and the fact that he can't get invited to speak at colleges, but damned if he isn't going to try. As ridiculous as this sounds, this is the plot - a brilliant Princeton history professor (who sagacious quotes serve as epigraphs for each chapter) cultivates a leftist conspiracy to overthrow the governments of blue states with his seminars. The leader of this Progressive movement is a thinly disguised George Soros, who uses his fortune to fund the construction of laser guns, mechs, and hoverbikes. That same professor also cultivates a pretend right-wind conspiracy to overthrow the federal government. That same professor also coordinates an al-Qaeda attack that assassinates the President, Vice President, and most of the Cabinet in his role as the NSA Advisor to the President. The plan for this attack is written by a genius Christ stand in special forces operator who is recruited unknowingly into doing so by the same professor while pursuing his history PhD at Princeton. After the assassination of the president, the professor uses the special forces unit to destroy the leftist insurgency (capturing George Soros in the process) and in the aftermath the professor manages to get himself nominated by both the Democrats and Republicans and is elected President with a mandate for radical centrism. For all the plaintive whining about extremists on both sides, Card's rather by-the-numbers plot is undercut by his politics, which bleed through the characters that we are supposed to find noble. One of the protagonists is Reuben Malich. The novel opens with a chapter describing Malich nobly trying to save a primitive village (probably in Afghanistan) from vicious Islamists. There is one civilian casualty, an old man that throws himself into harm's way, after whose death Malich tears off his clothes and beats himself while screaming. After being promoted for rending his garments and mortifying his flesh in his heroic defiance of orders to save a village from terrorists, we get a taste of his reaction to being ordered to enroll in a PhD program at an elite university. 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. 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. Chapter 2 and we're already getting "and that boys name was Albert Einstein" stories. quote:
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. It's clear that we are supposed to consider Malich a Hero, and in particular a Christian Hero. It's fair to conclude, given the afterward, that Malich is Card's philosophical alter ego in the story. Card's persecution complex also shows in his characters' names - 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. Malich's second in command (Bartholomew Cole, where I'll point out that Bartholomew is a disciple of Jesus) is another noble warrior doing what he must - how do these True Americans respond to the assassination of the President? Some good old fashioned red-baiting. quote:
Europeans. Intellectuals. Academics. College students. The media. Card is painting with a broad brush what he sees as the downfall of the US - it would be funnier if his views weren't the undergirding of what gave the world Donald Trump, President. Despite his insistence that "both sides" are at fault, his attack is clearly on entities he associates with the left. No character in the book with moderately liberal views is given any agency at all. A vegan college leftist that takes classes from the big bad and assassinates Reuben Malich decades later (after serving as his trusted secretary). A Jewish billionaire that funds an insurrection in response to trolling by the history professor. Engineers that are tired of building weapons or reject their role in the war on terror. Media figures (other than O'Reilly, who is presented as a straight shooting truth teller) concerned with nothing more than manipulating the population on behalf of politicians. Blue states and cities ready to revolt at the first plausible opportunity. Al Gore and his nutty environmentalism (that didn't age well Orson, sorry). They're all either nuts or being manipulated. Even with all of this bullshit, this story might have held together as a sort of Clancy-lite military thriller. Instead, it's a stone soup of recycled characters from better stories - Jesus Christ, Marcus Aurelius, Julius Caesar, Octavian, Hari Seldon, Jason Bourne, Jack Ryan.. nothing here is fresh, everything is tired, and Card rushes the novel to arrive at the afterward. He could have just made a blog post. In fact, he probably did. I did not read it, but the sequel is set in Africa, where Cole and the spec ops unit are sent to deal with a plague and unrest so that the history professor can consolidate his control of the US (along the lines of the fall of the Roman Republic, as Card just cannot stop hammering away at given any opportunity.) There's a long history of criticism of the gender and sexual politics of Card's work, and the ways that his religion shows up in the "singular great man" structure that most of his best known books follow (exemplified by Ender's Game and sequels). I doubt that Card is capable of writing a book like that anymore (regardless of the obvious ubermensch/fascist tendencies that even Ender's Game shows) because his brain has the Guiliani-rot, and it's not clear that you get over that. Empire sucks, and most of his latter-day work sucks, and it will almost certainly continue to suck. Don't read this book - if you want this kind of near-future paranoid military humping bullshit, read Jack Ryan or Reacher. The terrifying aspect of all this is that Card would absolutely be wearing an armband to clean up the culture, thinking it would be temporary, which brings to mind https://youtu.be/xGfHkdR3tXs because he clearly loves his country in an intense, horrifying way. Amniotic fucked around with this message at 21:43 on Oct 25, 2020 |
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Oct 25, 2020 21:27
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Discendo Vox posted:just you loving wait. Awww jeez, I keep forgetting about Carl Schmitt, looming over us all. well... huh... maybe Ben... Product of its time... Nah, I've got nothing.
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Oct 25, 2020 23:19
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Discendo Vox posted:just you loving wait. You prodded me to get my whole review up, because there's no way I want to follow ol Carl.
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Oct 25, 2020 23:37
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Tommunist posted:If you actually like Obama and Biden and can get past some of the obvious flaws with the book its not a terrible dumb toilet read - my main problem i outlined was that I couldn't imagine either Biden or Obama acting in this way and my impression was that the author had imprinted his head canon onto these two people. I guess you have to to actually write an Obama and Biden solve crime book alas. i mean judging by your summery it sounds like something i wouldnt like either. i like them sure but i loving hate cringe worshipful bullshit.
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Oct 26, 2020 00:29
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| # ? May 9, 2024 15:55 |
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whooooooooooops
I, Butthole fucked around with this message at 09:19 on Oct 26, 2020 |
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Oct 26, 2020 09:09
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