Eh. Think about how Ayn Rand hated Libertarians.

It would be really hard to make the movie today without making the main character MAGA

That’s one angle. I could just as easily see him as a scratched-liberal. Someone akin to Bradley Whitford in Get Out, who brags about having voted for Obama (twice!) and spouts indignation at corporate greed and military policing. But as the movie progresses, he becomes increasingly callous towards equally put-upon neighbors, family, and his working-class peers.

By the end, he’s demonstrating sneering contempt for a litany of people whom he blames for the current state of the nation - prideful gays, immigrants who won’t assimilate properly, minorities he repeatedly accuses of being anti-white, ungrateful young people, worthless civil bureaucrats, the homeless who refuse to get a job, the middle managers who refuse to give him a job, the vile foreigners who are stealing all the jobs - until he’s expressing all the same grievances as MAGA, but still reserving open contempt for anyone in a red hat.

A man driven to the point of ultimate alienation and self-destruction, because he cannot get off his high horse long enough to show compassion or comradery with anyone else.

You can read “Falling Down” as this tragic story of a normal guy pushed too far. Or you can read it as an entitled Boomer gone off his rocker over trivial consumerist bullshit.

So much of the movie is couched in racist/classist undertones - Douglas losing his temper with Korean and Hispanic immigrants, retail service and blue-collar workers - while presenting the main character as this righteous force of white masculinity that can only be defeated by an even more righteous agent of Law & Order.

Describing William Foster in the same terms as Redditors describe upper-class middle aged white women is pretty on-the-nose.

I guess now that the Iran War is over (again) and the Ukraine/Russia war isn’t exciting anymore, Steve Miller has Trump back on this old hobby horse.

Wonder what they’re planning to do with all that new hardware

No need for a translation. We’ve been producing these articles since the war started. They couldn’t bother to churn out more than three sentences for the length of the article. Barely a paragraph.

“Let’s see Donald Trump Vladimir Putin wriggle his way out of this one” is just the mantra western media cranks out when there’s nothing exciting to report. Putin has been on the verge of defeat and ignominious removal from office going back to Maiden. He’ll be on the verge of defeat for the next twenty years, at this rate.

They’ll be doing monuments in the classic style

over the charred remains, so that future generations know the glory of running face first into enemy fire to plant the next flag.

Don’t join the military. Don’t let your loved ones join the military. It’s a death cult.

After all, there’s a whole lot of shit going on in eastern culture that westerners don’t really understand…

That’s okay, because we have someone to explain it.

But she grew up a product of the Chinese propaganda system

A KGB spy and a CIA agent meet up in a bar for a friendly drink

“I have to admit, I’m always so impressed by Soviet propaganda. You really know how to get people worked up,” the CIA agent says.

“Thank you,” the KGB says. “We do our best but truly, it’s nothing compared to American propaganda. Your people believe everything your state media tells them.”

The CIA agent drops his drink in shock and disgust. “Thank you friend, but you must be confused… There’s no propaganda in America.”

During the Gaza genocide, I was talking to a Taiwanese friend and he said “yeah, it looks bad, but at least they’re finally getting rid of Hamas”

Extremely xenophobic society about to hit new eschalons of paranoid reactionary politics.

The Takaichi administration came into office and began talking about turning the defence industry into a growth industry

Bad news for Korea, historically speaking.

🤑

What are we rating this blunt rotation?

Make one post feel like it’s got a thousand lurkers

Australia had proposed to provide Vanuatu with 500 million Australian dollars ($344 million) over a decade under the terms of the agreement as originally drafted.

One way to make friends and influence people.

TIL, the only actual international naval base China maintains is in Cambodia. It’s bizarre to think Australia even needs to do this.

here we are probably the last unpolluted corners of the human experience

:-/ I seriously doubt that.

At some point, we’ll have to find a better way of sifting the wheat from the shit. But I’d be crazy to assume bots around bouncing around the Lemmiverse pushing misinformation just like they are everywhere else.

Everyone goes to Reddit, despite it being an AI Bot filled shit show

Search engines direct you to Reddit as a first page - even first result - choice. It’s superceded Wikipedia in a lot of cases.

Critical support to the real MVPs

They’ll whip you for chewing gum.

Imagine what they’ll do if you actually try to affect politics

It’s crazy to think anyone is going to get prosecuted for this genocide. Americans are going to talk about Gaza like Turks talk about Armenia in 30 years.