Author Topic: Laissez-faire Politics Thread - Praxis? I didn't play Deus Ex, sorry. (Read 221621 times)

He recently even joined the Los Angeles chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, proudly proclaiming on Twitter that “I consider myself a democratic socialist. Always have.” When I ask him why a successful Hollywood filmmaker would do something like that, he looks at me completely shocked, even disappointed: “Why not?”

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“I went back after I got to know him, and I rewatched the Anchorman movies, and Step Brothers and Talladega Nights,” says Adam Davidson, cocreator of NPR’s “Planet Money” and a frequent collaborator of McKay’s. “I went back and really saw that passionate voice shouting through these funny movies and realized ‘Oh, those were, like, angry, pointed, and brilliant dissections of our culture.’”

Davidson served as an adviser on The Big Short where, despite very different temperaments and politics, he and McKay hit it off. “Our entire first year of collaborating was arguing about trade,” McKay says with a smile. “To his credit, he conceded some points.” Where McKay had the populist fervor, Davidson was trained in economics at the University of Chicago. “[McKay’s] texting me every single day on a huge range of topics about how does the world actually work and how should the world actually work,” says Davidson. “I don’t think I have anyone else in my life who is as voraciously curious about every aspect of it and whose brain is on fire trying to understand it.”

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McKay tells the story of the radical anti-capitalist roots of Chumbawamba’s 1997 megahit “Tubthumping,” which he introduces as “the ultimate populist, activist story”: “[the song] was part of their deliberate thirty-year strategy to empower the working class and overthrow the status quo of England.” Davidson goes quiet. “I honestly don’t know if you’re doing a bit right now,” he says.

McKay backs up and sets the scene — Thatcher’s rise in the UK, the 1984 miners’ strike, and a little anti-capitalist collective, Chumbawamba, trying to figure out what the hell they could do about it. With McKay playing clips of their ever-evolving sound, we hear how the band eventually traded in the fuzzed-out guitars and guttural punk howling for drum machines and slick vocals, ditching the subculture to go pop. But their goal wasn’t money — it was to wage class war. And after fifteen years, it paid off with a hit that was no doubt heard by legions of workers around the globe — maybe more. The defiant chorus, still stuck in the heads of millions to this day, was about working-class resilience even after all the defeats: I get knocked down, but I get up again. You are never gonna keep me down.

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McKay even shot an epilogue in which Derek Jeter, playing himself, acts as a kind of left-wing Deep Throat (with a touch of Matt Taibbi), handing our heroes their next assignment, this one on Gold-man Sachs: “The whole damn system is clogged up with dirty money. And the news doesn’t say a word about it,” says Jeter. “’Cause who owns them? The same corporations who own the government.” It was cut from the theatrical edition.

“The audiences hated it,” McKays says. “We would screen it, and it would just thud.” So he decided to drive home his point, instead, in the end credits, with a slickly crafted animated presentation on the startling rise in economic inequality. It charts everything from the explosion of the CEO-to-average-worker pay ratio to a comparison between the NYPD retirement benefit and the average chief executive package. Everything he’d been wanting to scream at his audience came pouring out in that sequence. It was a risky move — going full Bernie Bro just one year into the Obama presidency, when Bernie Bros didn’t even exist yet.

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After The Other Guys, McKay tried to get a comic book adaptation off the ground — The Boys, by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson, set in a world where superheroes are very much real, but are also deeply corrupt and dangerously unaccountable corporate-sponsored celebrities. The title refers to a secret black-ops team tasked with keeping those superheroes under control — by any means necessary.

It’s the total antithesis of The Avengers and its celebration of libertarian billionaires thumbing their nose at democracy. “The famous line where [Tony] Stark lands and he’s like . . . what did he say? ‘The US military is privatized,’” McKay says, wincing. The dangers of an arrogant, unaccountable elite with blood on their hands flying around the world? For McKay, they might as well be hedge fund managers on coke. He cut a proof-of-concept trailer for The Boys and shopped it around town, but nobody would bite.

why is this happening

curly · « **Reply #1280 on:** December 03, 2019, 04:11:18 PM »

Joe Molotov · « **Reply #1281 on:** December 03, 2019, 04:14:43 PM »

Uh oh, Upsetera thread incoming! "Who is this old fuck that says Disney movies aren't cinema and doesn't even love Baby Yoda??"

curly · « **Reply #1282 on:** December 03, 2019, 04:59:43 PM »

Foucault would have known about Baby Yoda

Tripon · « **Reply #1283 on:** December 03, 2019, 08:44:26 PM »

https://twitter.com/cafedujord/status/1192972896991211520

toku · « **Reply #1284 on:** December 04, 2019, 11:50:26 PM »

https://twitter.com/kenklippenstein/status/1202365668013809668

OnlyRegret · « **Reply #1285 on:** December 05, 2019, 01:58:39 AM »

Crash Dummy · « **Reply #1286 on:** December 08, 2019, 03:24:35 AM »

any good articles etc on hypermodernity?

OnlyRegret · « **Reply #1287 on:** December 09, 2019, 02:18:53 PM »

https://twitter.com/annakhachiyan/status/1202707578024845314

benjipwns · « **Reply #1288 on:** December 09, 2019, 06:00:34 PM »

Quote from: Esch on December 09, 2019, 01:49:59 PM

Study up, folks

(Image removed from quote.)

I was going to say what my score was, but I was reading the chart counterclockwise from No Treason so I got to "Precursors of Ancap" and saw "Ayn Rand" and now I refuse to participate.

Joe Molotov · « **Reply #1289 on:** December 09, 2019, 06:02:25 PM »

ayncap

benjipwns · « **Reply #1290 on:** December 09, 2019, 06:18:44 PM »

"interchangeable books, choose one"

what's the difference between "novice" and "beginner"?

The Helicopter Pilot's Handbook, zero reviews on Amazon

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One problem with helicoptering is that there are virtually no flying clubs, at least of the sort that exist for fixed wing, so pilots get very little chance to swap stories, unless they meet in a muddy field somewhere, waiting for their passengers. As a result, the same mistakes are being made and the same lessons learnt separately instead of being shared - it's comforting sometimes to know that you're not the only one to inflate the floats by accident! Even when you do get into a school, there are still a couple of things they don't teach you, namely that aviation runs on paperwork, and how to get a job, including interview techniques, etc - flying the aircraft is actually less than a third of the job. Another is that nobody really tells you anything, either about the job you have to do (from the customer) or how to do it (the company) - you will always be up against the other guy who managed to do it last week! Sure, there will be training, but, even in the best companies, this will be relatively minimal. This book is an attempt to correct the above situations by gathering together as much information as possible for helicopter pilots, old and new, professional and otherwise, in an attempt to explain the why, so the how will become easier (you will be so much more useful if you know what the customer is trying to achieve). In short, this is all the stuff nobody taught me - every tip and trick I have learnt has been included.

I saw a similar thing to this that was like "top 50 libertarian books" or something along those lines and it was what you expected until about #20 where nearly the last thirty were all prepper books or "above normal" Federal Reserve related rants or both, I assume the state had such a dangerous person murdered

benjipwns · « **Reply #1291 on:** December 09, 2019, 07:17:08 PM »

I initially thought that the $ indicated obscure self-published works that they sell and nobody has ever seen, as those often dominate a lot of these kinds of things, but at least two of them including Viking Age Iceland are at least semi-legit academic works, the others are just collected essays. Viking Age Iceland is literally what it says on the cover. I assume it drew attention because the Vikings did not exactly setup a "state" as there weren't really any at the time so things like "they had no foreign policy or standing military" is misapplying a current concept backwards. I think it's more a problem of our current IR scholars not considering "raid and rape everything in sight" as not being a valid "foreign policy" due to their bigoted cultural norms.

However one of them is most definitely this, and you'll never guess which one:

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Quote from: A Plan To End the State

The essays contained in this volume were the result of many years of intensive thinking and reading about liberty. They address a topic, anarchist strategy, that is underdeveloped. Many people have written about how a free society might operate. But relatively few have applied hard thinking to the key question of "What do we do to achieve that world?" In the few instances people have, their proposed solutions have always been vague (a generic call for "education") or unconvincing (defeating the state through black markets - "agorism"). This is a problem. As long as we lack a comprehensible plan to bring about a free society, we will be unable to convince people that our ideology has a future. This will make them unwilling to act on our behalf. A person acts, as Mises explained, only if he believes that by acting he will successfully remove a felt uneasiness. Until we develop a plan to beat the state, I do not think our movement will inspire the hope necessary for action. The essays in this book are an attempt to solve this problem. In them, I outline a comprehensible plan for ending the state.

[close]

jakefromstatefarm · « **Reply #1292 on:** December 11, 2019, 04:07:28 PM »

https://arzamas.academy/materials/1269

curly · « **Reply #1293 on:** December 11, 2019, 06:11:16 PM »

I've gone from Left SR to Bolshevik. You really do get more conservative as you age.

benjipwns · « **Reply #1294 on:** December 11, 2019, 06:52:03 PM »

I think I may be in for some trouble comrades:

spoiler (click to show/hide)

"the more things stay the same" amirite

[close]

OnlyRegret · « **Reply #1295 on:** December 11, 2019, 08:10:11 PM »

Quote from: jakefromstatefarm on December 11, 2019, 04:07:28 PM

https://arzamas.academy/materials/1269

I got Menshevik Centrists, the dot is about a unit up and left from them. But all I remember about that era of Russia was one class many years ago so :shrug

OnlyRegret · « **Reply #1296 on:** December 12, 2019, 02:41:36 AM »

On the subject of quizzing, I want you to take the Canadian one, Benji.

https://votecompass.cbc.ca/canada/

Edit: If you need coaxing, I'll share mine.
It's a bit of a shite thing though, BQ do not deserve to be that upper-left and neither are the Libs that far apart from the Cons.

Crash Dummy · « **Reply #1297 on:** December 12, 2019, 03:30:36 AM »

Quote from: jakefromstatefarm on December 11, 2019, 04:07:28 PM

https://arzamas.academy/materials/1269

i'm a filthy centrist

Great Rumbler · « **Reply #1298 on:** December 12, 2019, 09:02:21 AM »

World's Most Laughable Centrist

Mandark · « **Reply #1299 on:** December 13, 2019, 12:29:12 AM »

https://twitter.com/willmenaker/status/1205253288083345408

cc: Esch

Mandark · « **Reply #1300 on:** December 13, 2019, 12:55:50 AM »

I get rooting for both guys to win, but the implication seems to be that they could each have been platforms for some shared global project and

"With Corbyn's defeat, the last hope for citizens of the UK, and indeed the world, is that Americans get free health care and college!"

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Or really "a president who in his heart really wants Americans to get free health care and college even though it doesn't happen" but I'm tryna find a charitable reading.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

I'm obviously not trying that hard. Sue me.

[close]

benjipwns · « **Reply #1301 on:** December 13, 2019, 01:03:45 AM »

Quote from: OnlyRegret on December 12, 2019, 02:41:36 AM

On the subject of quizzing, I want you to take the Canadian one, Benji.

https://votecompass.cbc.ca/canada/

I think the "French Canadians have no human rights" and "Quebec should be turned into an open-air slave farm" positions affected my vertical position.

OnlyRegret · « **Reply #1302 on:** December 13, 2019, 01:53:10 AM »

Quote from: benjipwns on December 13, 2019, 01:03:45 AM

Quote from: OnlyRegret on December 12, 2019, 02:41:36 AM
On the subject of quizzing, I want you to take the Canadian one, Benji.

https://votecompass.cbc.ca/canada/
(Image removed from quote.)

I think the "French Canadians have no human rights" and "Quebec should be turned into an open-air slave farm" positions affected my vertical position.

Good policies, want to take over the PPC? I'm sure no one will fight you over it.

benjipwns · « **Reply #1303 on:** December 13, 2019, 02:07:52 AM »

lol I did the thing to weight the answers and it barely changed except for boosting one party, apparently my desire for a Republic outweighed hating French Canadians:

OnlyRegret · « **Reply #1304 on:** December 13, 2019, 02:09:38 AM »

I wouldn't put too much stock in the finer details, just at face value.

team filler · « **Reply #1305 on:** December 13, 2019, 03:21:35 AM »

benjipwns · « **Reply #1306 on:** December 13, 2019, 03:29:12 AM »

Probably the one getting to work indoors.

curly · « **Reply #1307 on:** December 13, 2019, 04:38:56 AM »

Quote from: Esch on December 13, 2019, 01:07:22 AM

I think the 'democratic socialist' innanet movement really does believe that it's the antidote to fascism and capitalism in decline in the first world (despite how many years of history to the contrary). Corbyn and Bernie stans have a lot to shake hands over, they both summon great man theory to lionize washed up demi-Trots as their saviors and collapse in agony whenever reality punches them down. They genuinely believe what they're doing and saying is new and will work and people will just tail their politics because hell, they have People First Politics right? The dissonance comes when they are forced to come to grips with the reactionary nature of the classes they want to recruit. Look at jezzas platform itself, the confusion is clear when the Brexit Question is put on the table.

WRONG

https://twitter.com/sunraysunray/status/1205280974017310722

https://twitter.com/lara_eleanor/status/1205285778999382016

https://twitter.com/marcusbarnett_/status/1205287276785352705