The General US Politics Thread

Clinton won most of the voters who say their most important issue was the economy

But dat economic anxiety tho!

That's across the country. The South is as racist as usual obviously, but the economic conditions are an important part of understanding what happened in the rust belt. So is racism; they're both integral parts of what happened.

Sigh...look one of the things a work of art is supposed to do, especially if it is compelling, is get people of entirely different beliefs and political attitudes to appreciate it. Fyodor Dostoevsky was a Russian Orthodox anti-semite Great Russian monarchist and yet he was a favorite of the European and American Left and greatly inspired many Jewish writers with Franz Kafka saying Dostoevsky was "his brother" and Woody Allen being a big fan. Vladimir Nabokov, an atheist liberal anti-communist who supported the Vietnam War hated Dostoevsky and blamed him for Communism even if Lenin and most Bolsheviks hated Dostoevsky as well. That's how complex great art can actually be, that's because Dostoevsky is one of the greats.

John Wayne is seen as a cowboy actor in America but in France among left-wing cinephiles he is considered a great actor, someone of genuine acting talent. The French take American movies seriously as an artform, regardless of political attitudes. They love Clint Eastwood for instance. But the American right thinks of the French as surrender monkeys just because they opposed the Iraq War.

That some members of the American right like good movies and books and music, doesn't mean anything if and of itself. Alan Moore would feel a little miffed that some Trump voter liked V For Vendetta but he'd also be pleased with himself as an artist that his work is complex enough that it can appeal to someone with different views.

edited 2nd Dec '16 4:17:58 PM by JulianLapostat

Palin: Trump's Carrier deal is 'crony capitalism'

BWAHAHAHAHA!

It's not like Sarah Palin has that influential of a voice anymore, but it's a good sign for those of us hoping to see Trump impeached.

I mean, if I poured my heart and soul into a story that had a core message of promoting peace and tolerance, and then some bigots took it and twisted it, claiming that it supported their views hate and what-not...well, first I would be wondering where the hell I went wrong if that's the message people are getting out of it, but I would also be very upset that a story that I wrote was being used to promote all the things I despised and doing what I felt was harm to society. I do not want bigots to read my stories and think to themselves "Yes, this supports my worldview, I do not need to change it one bit."

So when people read Watchmen and read stuff that Moore meant as "Rorschach is messed up" and went "Rorschach is badass and totally right about everything"...well, I can imagine why he'd be pissed off. So no, I do not think such an outcome is desirable.

edited 2nd Dec '16 4:35:59 PM by KarkatTheDalek

I am guessing there will be some kind of Night of the Long Knives where Trump moves against Republicans and his own post-truth predecessors. First Bush II, now it will be Palin.

Expect jokes about Caribou Barbie from the One True Twitter Feed.

Palin not only doesn't have influence, she's not even in Congress. So I'm very unsure how anything she currently says is encouraging regarding chances of impeachment.

More that even if she doesn't have power, others like her do.

Well in the case of V for Vendetta it is not really a story "promoting peace and tolerance", its an exploration of anarchism, violence, civil disobedience and power. It's about fascism and mass-media, and what the idea of hero is. And the fact is in that comic, Moore makes it clear that even the bad guys have some humanity to it. And that the violence, like say that woman who kills Adam Susan, is ambiguous. The whole point of him having a Guy Fawkes mask is reflective of that as Moore noted. People celebrate bonfire night but its not clear we are supposed to celebrate that a terrorist plot failed or we are celebrating Fawkes, because as Moore noted, many people tend to describe Fawkes blowing up Parliament in a way that's kind of respectful of him. There's that whole joke, "Guy Fawkes is the last man who walked into Parliament with honest intentions". It's part of the whole Draco The Leather Pants and Damn, It Feels Good to Be a Gangster! and Evil Is Cool thing.

Ultimately as an artist you should hope that people start thinking about your work and figure stuff out, otherwise you will be giving propaganda. And one or two will get the wrong message but that shouldn't matter much.

Well the thing is Rorscharch starts out defending Truman dropping the atomic bombs only to find someone doing something similar for the same reasons, and opposing it. So that's something worth considering. Politically, Watchmen was about Reaganism but doesn't mention Reagan because Moore knew that St. Ronnie was popular in USA at that time and he wanted to make people think. Moore's little-known "Brought to Light" was his most political piece in the 80s, it dealt with the CIA's actual post-war record but few have read it.

And ultimately the kind of art that got Trump elected wasn't Watchmen, because while it has sold well and remains in print, it was never the great bestseller. John Byrne's The Man of Steel outsold Watchmen, as did Knightfall, and both the authors of those stories are wingnuts.

If any kind of artwork inspired Right-Wing Americans to Trump its stuff like Batman and the Dark Knight movies which have billionaire superheroes and glorify wealth like nothing else and makes this guy into some Christ-figure. The whole Batgod cult, that culminates in the awful Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice movie where Batman is glorified and sanctified and seeks to destroy Superman, the embodiment of liberal multicultural America. The fact that Superman is unpopular these days while Batman is popular is suggestive of an American shift in values, as is the whole Iron Man becoming more popular than Spider-Man and Captain America. and Spider-Man these days is no longer a Working-Class Hero but a corporation owner in the comics (which does make sense since how else would he be able to stay in New York).

"he whole Batgod cult, that culminates in the awful Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice movie where Batman is glorified and sanctified and seeks to destroy Superman, the embodiment of liberal multicultural America"

just a thing here: if something Batman cast himself as some sort of nietzchian figure who slay god, he only come to sense when he understand Superman is not some sort of god figure he project on him, but and actual person who have a mother like him used to be.

Hell, Luthor quote "you how what is the oldest lie in america? that power can be innocent" sum pretty well Trump suporter

Actually, I wasn't talking about Moore's work there, I was talking about my own hypothetical work. I was mostly just talking about what sort of thing I wouldn't want to see perverted by bigots. I probably should have made it more clear; sorry about that.

I can understand that...but truth be told, I don't know if I'm really one for subtlety and ambiguity. I can certainly try, but I'm always worried that people will misinterpret what I'm trying to convey. Maybe that makes me overly moralistic, but...I don't know, I'm not really trying to be a literary giant here. I mostly just want to write the stories I want to write, and hopefully entertain people and help encourage the sort of values that I think are important.

And to be honest, in my hypothetical situation, I was less worried about one or two people and more about such an interpretation of my work gaining enough traction that it actually inflames bigotry, and paints me as the sort of person who would be pleased with that. Maybe that's overly paranoid, but I've always been a bit of a worrier.

As for Moore, I mean to claim that his work got Trump elected - just that there are people on the Right who see it as validation over their own beliefs.

edited 2nd Dec '16 5:06:29 PM by KarkatTheDalek

edited 2nd Dec '16 6:20:46 PM by JulianLapostat

That's such a stupid phrase. When did the FF ever pretend that a single one of them was innocent of anything? They slammed each other in the papers and published no retractions.

Bruce Wayne also donates to and runs a fuckton and a half of charities and halfway houses and so on.

Take the whole postmodern waffle to the culture thread, please. You're gumming up the politics, now. :/

Because, seriously: only P. T. Barnum is in play, if any philosopher has any sway with Trump at all, that is.

Didn't Barnum never actually say "there's a sucker born every minute" though?

In any case, point still holds.

A good example of that is Michael Moore. Moore is a liberal and a propagandist. I share a lot of his views but I think his documentaries are simplistic, and propagandistic. And what did that achieve. Fahrenheit 9/11 came out the same year that Bush got re-elected and this time earned the popular vote.

And since then Moore has made a few more movies with an openly liberal perspective and it hasn't achieved anything at all. What Moore has done, is inspire right-wingers. Steven Bannon has taken inspiration from Moore's movies as well as Leni Reifenstahl, so he claims.

So if there is a liberal who gave conservatives bad ideas...it's Michael Moore and not Alan Moore.

Wrong Moore, eh? Heh.

Well, I certainly don't want to be a straight propagandist. I suppose I'll just have to think about how I want to write the stories I'm interested in writing.

The Tao of Barnum: make it colourful, make it loud, make it bold, change the roster often, mean little and keep moving.

edited 2nd Dec '16 5:20:18 PM by Euodiachloris

Lmao

That sweet schadenfreude.

edited 2nd Dec '16 6:21:01 PM by JulianLapostat

I think with Superman, the problem is that he's often seen as a Gary Stu, but at the same time giving him flaws or nerfing him also creates backlash. By contrast tech-based heroes like Batman tend to be more down to Earth. I'd say it's mostly a brain v brawn thing. We like Batman because the main reason why he wins is because he's smart. Superman often wins because he's able to pull more physical might out of thin air.

For tech heroes being billionaires, some of it is capitalism combined with Reed Richards Is Useless (many billionaires are, in fact, gadgeteer geniuses). Another aspect is that for a gadgeteer, having access to materials to make gadgets is a required secondary ability. And if they're a private actor who doesn't work for the government, then being a billionaire helps justify that.

Wow, Conservatives are really starting to sell out Trump already. I thought it'd take at least a year before these big names started talking crap about Trump.