I listened to the recent chapo episode where they offer Zohran helpful advice with tinge of disappointment and I was surprised after being burned since Sanders lost (twice) and the Democrats betray them at every turn, including AOC, that they still are unable to grasp reformers aren’t revolutionaries.
Hell yeah dude
I know its about a year late but I went to check upon the Adam Friedland Show and saw a clip of that Richie Torres interview and that’s the most enraged and genuine I’ve seen Adam at from what I recall from him via Cumtown. I guess it’s nice that he achieved a level of success from an ironic studio host thing Nick Mullen set up for him as a satire on late night talk show hosts.
I checked upon that show because I heard that Stavros Halkias is going to play a talent agent in some Glen Powell movie and wondered what the rest of the hosts were up to.
Only if you don’t sound like or speak like Felix Biederman.
“Can’t someone else do it?” - Homer Simpson
Ironic given that the US has been home to so many political movements that did change the society for the better, even if it stopped short of revolution.
It’s really bizarre in a tragic way how passive and apathetic Americans are regarding to the degradation of their country, especially to how acute the financial distress has become in the past decade.
The State of Israel removing debris, rubble, and possible evidence from the scene of this international crime before the war and campaign against the people of Gaza has concluded and also crushing the debris is not cleaning up but indicates an intent to destroy evidence.
Even if the remains of buildings, culture, and human beings are ground into dust and the state of Israel manages to remove traces of its people, there is no getting around a census of Gaza, nor dismissing the overwhelming evidence and intent demonstrated to the world the past 3 years the state of Israel.
This is unwatchable.
I am compelled to ask here : Is Israel going to win this exchange in Lebanon, Gaza, and Iran because of US Support? I saw a post a few days ago that only a third of Americans believe Israel has committed genocide and that the momentum we saw in 2024/25 has been successfuly stifled by suppression of student protests, activism, and restrictions to free speech across the West.
(American leftists have placed their hopes, joining the liberal chorus, into liberal democracy, electioneering, and organizing around delegation of agency to state sanctioned and sponsored surrogates. Gone are the hours and days of protestors and non-violent resistance against the state and economy - perhaps due to the fact the US is no longer a manufacturing economy - to gain political leverage.)
This all seems so bleak.
In other words, the sanitized collaboration of ethnic cleansing & genocide to relocate and displace Palestinians because Israelis can’t learn to be - or sanctioned and disciplined with - equals with their neighbors or their oppressed victims.
Lindsay Graham and Mitch have retired from the US Senate.
I remember losers whining about Black people in Netflix’s Last Kingdom and Witcher. This is incredibly accurate.
They did this to Millenials in the 2010s: https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,2143001,00.html
Besides generational warfare of pitting proles against each other, it’s also just the old resenting the young - a timeless classic - in each iteration.
(e.g: Things like Skibbidi Toilet is generation Alpha/Z’s Nyan Cat or Annoying Orange; or in other words, nothing new under the sun.)
Those superheroes aren’t really vengeance driven aside from Batman. They’d probably let the police pursue them.
If we’re applying reality to Batman, which I was thinking about the other year when watching Gotham, is that you have to consider multiple things:
The Wayne parents, that is, Thomas Wayne and Martha Kane acted in ways that did not fit their bourgeois character and intelligence. They should have exited the opera through the lobby, wait for Alfred to pick them up, and then leave via their car. Also, billionaires still have private security when they do travel for outing/events and would not leave security up to an old SAS soldier but have multiple guards to protect them. In crime-ridden Gotham of all places. Even if Bruce was annoying them, people like the Waynes would know and act better. The Waynes were deliberately reckless in the Batman mythos.
Bruce, as the son of a billionaire, despite being an orphan and his mother’s family being the only ones he had left, would still not have been as isolated as he would have been to indulge and sulk in his parents’ murder. Bruce would have been integrated into his family’s bourgeois circles of connections, friends, and family as means of surrogate fostercare and groom him to succeed his parents as bourgeois giants.
Alfred was legal guardian of Bruce. Despite his sympathies for Bruce and wish to indulge him, Alfred would have been pressured by the bourgeois circle of Gotham and the state to put Bruce into trauma counseling, boarding schools, and away from his parents home and tomb.
Gotham itself would have eventually self-corrected through bourgeois discipline, i.e: capital flight, divestment, and strikes from municipal bonds. I think the story gets away with this by making Wayne Enterprises a monopoly on the city, insulating the city from capital discipline, but corruption and crime still scare away investors and Wayne Enterprises would have eventually shrank enough for other financiers or industrialists to crowd out the rent-seekers like in the Court of Owls.
This still wouldn’t stop the national and international bourgeoisie and state apparatus to discipline Gotham. A capital strike on municipal bonds would starve out the city of funds and connections to the state and federal governments would pressure investigations and emergency managers to subdue Gotham, as well as bring in a national guard as police/clean house of corrupt judiciaries. RICO became a thing for this reason. Tangentially, this type of crime-ridden hellscape city would drive out high/mid income earners into the suburbs or other cities. Labor flight & brain drain would happen too.
Alan Moore’s Watchmen and Killing Joke satirizes these superheroes well. They’re good reads.
at best this is the US disciplining Israel.
I watched the show because of Jensen Ackles, since I liked him in Supernatural and he just oozes charisma despite the SB character being genuinely evil.
But if we’re being honest the show is really bad. Season 1 is the best of the worst but leaning into the caricature of Trump as the show went on definitely killed the momentum and satire of the show.
The show and its spinoff is a very vulgar, cruel, obscene, program. SA is played for laughs in Season 4, and generally has terrible pacing and storytelling. The deaths in The Boys are all very cruel and sadistic, played for shock value, but it is just cruel and barbaric.
Anthony Starr was incredible as Homelander. He transcended the script’s prescription for his character and turned Homelander into a menacing figure, a deeply disturbed psycopath that started unraveling and escalating his menace throughout the series.
The liberal politics and resolution of The Boys is unsurprising. Liberals are only becoming critical of US Power when the Republican is in power, never questioning - out of captive fear of abandonment to the Republicans - the Democratic party and its inefficacy in combatting the GOP. Largely out of complicity themselves, but there are parts of indifference towards the vulnerable and fear of escalation (read: loss of privilege) without the Democrats.
Andor’s revolutionary expression is a fluke in these stories on streaming platforms that are based in politics.
Therefore its unsurprising for The Boys’ ending. Even in the comics the message was to embrace the learned helplessness and trust that the State and vigilantism (human resistance) will prevail. Nothing preventative to stop these entities, just reactive.
And that’s what superheroes are. Reactionary to crises. They don’t solve problems that cause problems, they defend status quo that produces them.
Idk if this belongs here but I’m glad The Boys is doing poorly/being received poorly now. I watched a few episodes because of Simon Pegg and Jensen Ackles, and and I tuned out/fast forward the sexual content. I think the premise of the show/entertaining aspect that had something to say was in like Season 1. It should have ended in Season 2 or 3, but I guess Amazon goaded Kripke to continue the series.
I’m vicariously happy that Jensen has a career after Supernatural, given that he was tied up in that show for 15 years, but reading the reviews, leaks, and comments on the internet about The Boys, I’m disappointed he went to network for Kripke. I think he did have another show on Amazon.
Torah said possession of the land is highly conditional. That it’s more a lease than a deed.
Quadrupluple strikes is such a brazen, open, and obvious war crime that it compels me to wonder if the state of Israel is just seeking its own annhiliation, since its reputation, especially after nearly three years, has become tarnished for generations.
Isn’t she a millionaire from inheriting his wealth? This is kind of sad in that it shows these people are in a state of hell. And it’d be pitiable if they weren’t intent on spreading their state of misery to the rest of humanity.
No love, just an emptiness in their hearts. Does she consider her children props or extensions of herself?
I can see we’re practicing levity in this absurd desecration and mockery of his life, even if the conservatives did value him, but it really is rather grim. I’m reminded of that episode from Chapo where they went to CPAC and Matt realized that he was witnessing a Black Mass, a cult dedicated to the annihilation of all things and meaning vis a vis hedonistic acceptance of terminal social and moral decline becuase they lack agency and motivation to change it.
Is the humor levied here meant for a catharsis on our own end or a lamentation of the world as it has become - or perhaps always was?