This thread's purpose is to discuss politics in works of fiction/media. Please do not use this thread to talk about politics or media in isolation from each other.
I was thinking of asking what people thought were the most interesting post-election Trump related media.
The Good Fight on CBS Access devoted their entire second season to dealing with the subject.
Edited by MacronNotes on Mar 13th 2023 at 3:23:38 PM
She/Her Pronouns
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Yes, but that does not make what most of them have been doing necessary.
If its a choice between "people being Transphobic jerks" or "Political Correctness is going a bit mad!" I'm going to pick the latter. Partially because the latter fear is overblown, partially because the former is actually really bad.
Edited by AzurePaladin on Apr 19th 2019 at 1:19:46 PM
The awful things he says and does are burned into our cultural consciousness like a CRT display left on the same picture too long. -Fighteer
Shin Megami Tensei IV
I really can't think of a case, eithet real or funcional, where Conservativism made the world a better place
Watch me destroying my country
Given the Soviet Union and communist revolutions included many massive The Purge, ruthless suppression of freedom, and mass murder of innocents—the fact that the Right Wing was direly oppositional to it is not in any way shape or form a bad thing. Even with the bad things going on in the West, the total suppression of freedom and mass murder of dissidents mean it was far worse on the Eastern side of things.
"Things may not be perfect, but we don't have camps and mass starvation."
Reactionary ideologies are often opposed by conservativism after all.
Edited by CharlesPhipps on Apr 19th 2019 at 10:28:56 AM
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
,You guys are thinking of it purely in terms of modern politics, not the concepts as a whole. There will always be a conservative and progressive wing of society, and you need to have both to keep things balanced.
Edited by archonspeaks on Apr 19th 2019 at 10:28:58 AM
They should have sent a poet.
Servant of the Omnissiah
West Germany, post-1945. Almost entirely dominated by the CDU/CSU, and it seems to have done fairly well, all things considered.
Certainly better than the so-called DDR.
Admittedly, West Germany is the only example I can think of.
I hold the secrets of the machine.
Weirdly, I'd say the person that did the most good as a reactionary conservative is probably Richard Nixon...in China. His policies in the United States have had terrible lasting effects and created the GOP but he also made negotiations with Maoist China that allowed the country to save face (irony in using a Japanese term here is unintentional) while doing a near 180 on their economic policy. Communist China is still a dictatorship with actual political prison camps nowadays (ugh) but it saved millions from starvation and destitution.
Nixon's reputation as a die-hard anticommunist and unwavering enemy allowed both sides to look good while they negotiated rather than either caving in to hardliners.
It's why Nixon became a Vulcan proverb.
Edited by CharlesPhipps on Apr 19th 2019 at 10:35:47 AM
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
I'm not overly fond of the "Old vs. New" branding of Conservatism and Progressivism because it doesn't really have practical meaning in and of itself. That an idea is new does not say anything about its actual properties. I gave a definition at the bottom of page 165 I prefer.
There's also an issue of memory, here. Society has resembled what progressives want before, and traditionalists rarely want to return to the actual past. These are little more than rhetorical devices without any substance.
Edited by Protagonist506 on Apr 19th 2019 at 10:36:39 AM
"Any campaign world where an orc samurai can leap off a landcruiser to fight a herd of Bulbasaurs will always have my vote of confidence"
Well, that’s kind of the main conceptual issue with progressivism, and why conservatives holding them back is necessary.
See the progressive embrace of eugenics for a perfect example.
They should have sent a poet.
Considering we talk about conservatives and what they are, here's an interesting video about origin of conservatism, that may help discussion:
Servant of the Omnissiah
So is it Conservatism or Conservativism? Or are they two entirely different things?
I hold the secrets of the machine.
All I know is Thanos will solve all of our problems with a snap.
Edited by CharlesPhipps on Apr 19th 2019 at 10:55:00 AM
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
Servant of the Omnissiah
As long as he offers good dental, sure. Because Mom-And-Apple-Pie Captain America sure as heck didn't.
Shin Megami Tensei IV
Somehow I got into a Mexican progressive youtuber saying that USA has no right to feel pride in defeating Imperial Japan because the nukes.
Seriously. What's up with "Progressives" treating nukes as a Moral Event Horizon.
Edited by KazuyaProta on Apr 19th 2019 at 2:21:53 PM
Watch me destroying my country
One of the most memorable facts about the nukes is that Japan was trying to surrender at the time—to the Soviet Union.
Horrible Judge of Character doesn't begin to cover it.
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
Your friendly neighbourhood Regent
Because in context I was?
I mean, it's not that complicated.
Eh, not quite. It was trying to achieve a negotiated surrender through the Soviet Union, which would have given the SU a seat at the table during those negotiations and allowed Japan to gain some concessions by playing the Western Allies' interests against those of the Soviet Union.
Edited by Robrecht on Apr 19th 2019 at 9:29:19 PM
Angry gets shit done.
Shin Megami Tensei IV
If we go for western American media, you would believe that the war against Japan was just Pearl Harbor and the Nukes.
Watch me destroying my country
That surrender offer had essentially zero support in the Japanese military and government. The US bombing campaign, not the atomic bombs alone but the whole thing, was the decisive factor.
Edited by archonspeaks on Apr 19th 2019 at 12:26:56 PM
They should have sent a poet.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/05/30/the-bomb-didnt-beat-japan-stalin-did/
Bluntly that's not true. The Japanese military and government were already prepared to surrender at that time but were debating the terms of doing so. The Soviet Union's invasion was viewed as a worse alternative and they didn't want to give into unconditional surrender but surrender was already something they were set on and had made overtures toward.
The impact of the Soviet declaration of war and invasion of Manchuria and Sakhalin Island was quite different, however. Once the Soviet Union had declared war, Stalin could no longer act as a mediator — he was now a belligerent. So the diplomatic option was wiped out by the Soviet move. The effect on the military situation was equally dramatic. Most of Japan’s best troops had been shifted to the southern part of the home islands. Japan’s military had correctly guessed that the likely first target of an American invasion would be the southernmost island of Kyushu. The once proud Kwangtung army in Manchuria, for example, was a shell of its former self because its best units had been shifted away to defend Japan itself. When the Russians invaded Manchuria, they sliced through what had once been an elite army and many Russian units only stopped when they ran out of gas. The Soviet 16th Army — 100,000 strong — launched an invasion of the southern half of Sakhalin Island. Their orders were to mop up Japanese resistance there, and then — within 10 to 14 days — be prepared to invade Hokkaido, the northernmost of Japan’s home islands. The Japanese force tasked with defending Hokkaido, the 5th Area Army, was under strength at two divisions and two brigades, and was in fortified positions on the east side of the island. The Soviet plan of attack called for an invasion of Hokkaido from the west.
In logistical terms, the American bombing from the nukes vs. bombing via napalm or other methods was not terribly different in casualties.
Edited by CharlesPhipps on Apr 19th 2019 at 12:33:16 PM
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
It's a bird.
Because of the risk that they'll kill more people than just your intended targets, over a long period of time?
Speaking only for myself though, it's less about which specific weapons were used, and more about who they were used on.
Still a great "screw depression" song even after seven years.
The conclusions that article draws are a little iffy. First off, it’s sort of a strawman to the argument I was making. The American bombing campaign including the atomic bombs, not simply the atomic bombs, was the deciding factor. I mentioned that above, if you notice. Second, the evidence for Japanese support for a surrender to the Soviets is terrible. It’s all after the fact and anecdotal, and there is primary source evidence for the vast majority of the Japanese military and government supporting a fight to the death.
As we saw in Japan, that’s not really true.
Edited by archonspeaks on Apr 19th 2019 at 12:38:09 PM
They should have sent a poet.
Your friendly neighbourhood Regent
Ya think maybe that has something to do with the way that after the surrender the US had complete control over Japanese records?
I think it might have something to do with why those records mostly support the US's justification for why they absolutely had to drop those nukes and only hidden records that were discovered after the end of the occupation suggest something different.
Edited by Robrecht on Apr 19th 2019 at 9:52:35 PM
Angry gets shit done.
Nuclear attacks are a war crime, one of the worst, in fact.
There is a time where such things can be justified...but even in-context it was a moral dilemma. Also, most people don't entirely understand the context of the situation.
"Any campaign world where an orc samurai can leap off a landcruiser to fight a herd of Bulbasaurs will always have my vote of confidence"
The whole “coverup and conspiracy” angle doesn’t really hold up, considering how overhwheling the totality of evidence pointing towards Japan wanting to go down fighting is. The factions supporting surrender in their government were few and far between with very little political power.
I’ll also add that a good deal of those “hidden records” are considered forgeries.
Edited by archonspeaks on Apr 19th 2019 at 1:14:01 AM
They should have sent a poet.
It's a bird.
From the other wiki: (Emphasis mine)
In preparation for dropping an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, the Oppenheimer-led Scientific Panel of the Interim Committee decided against a demonstration bomb and against a special leaflet warning. Those decisions were implemented because of the uncertainty of a successful detonation and also because of the wish to maximize shock in the leadership.[90] No warning was given to Hiroshima that a new and much more destructive bomb was going to be dropped.
I believe this should more or less sum up how I feel about the whole thing.
Still a great "screw depression" song even after seven years.
Progressivism pushes forward and conservatism holds steady. With all of one or all of the other things go off the rails.
Edited by archonspeaks on Apr 19th 2019 at 10:16:56 AM
They should have sent a poet.