#Cancel Culture & Election Fraud

[risetvusa]

The Big Oil Industrial Complex: How Oil is Damaging us As Plastic?

Big Oil Industrial Complex | Rise.TV

Big Oil Industrial Complex is the collective list of six or seven largest publicly listed and investor-owned oil and gas firms in the world. In the United States, they are often referred to by this name because of their political and economic clout. There is some disagreement on which firms now make up Big Oil Complex, however, Total Energies, ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron Shell, and Eni are all named regularly super majors in The Big Oil Industrial Complex. 

But are you familiar with the marketing conspiracy behind the Big Oil Industrial Complex? Did you know it is vaster than your imagination? Here in this blog, we will guide you thoroughly about how the Big Oil Industrial Complex is using oil to make plastic, which is one of the biggest enemies of human health on the planet right now.

Did you know oil has been used to make plastic? 

Many scenarios utilize the oil industry's own records to support their assertions that the company hides the rising danger posed by its own products.

Below are some surprising facts about the oil industry:

Plastic is made from 8 to 10 percent of the world's oil supply.

It is estimated that annually 12 million barrels of oil are needed to produce plastic bags in the United States. 

Each week, the typical American trashes around 10 bags without recycling them. That means they use 520 bags per year, which is equivalent to fuel for 60 miles of driving.

Why was plastic really pushed on the public?

A worldwide energy revolution is now underway. Oil companies are concerned because more affordable renewable energy and electric vehicles lead to a cleaner and safer system. That’s why, The Big Oil Industrial Complex is looking forward to Petrochemicals, and plastics in particular, as the next big thing for growing their business.

According to the International Energy Agency, by mid-century, plastics generated from fossil fuels would account for more than half of the increase in oil demand worldwide. The United States is a significant provider of plastic polymers and competes with oil-rich Middle Eastern nations like Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Qatar.

Through 2050, the demand for petrochemicals, which are used to make plastic, is anticipated to rise by almost 10 million metric tonnes every year.

How are we choking on plastic?

Despite the convenience of plastic, our reliance on plastic goods has had detrimental repercussions on our environment, society, and health.

Below are the detrimental facts about plastic that will make you shocked:

The amount of plastic production globally has doubled during the past 50 years

Edible things like chewing gum contain plastic

The global use of plastic bags is staggering, at 2 million each minute

The recycling rate for overall produced plastics is only 9%

Every single minute, a truckload of plastic is poured into the ocean

By 2050, 99% of seabirds and animals will be relying on plastic

Approximately one million plastic bottles are purchased every minute

95% of plastic pollution in the oceans is carried by 10 rivers of the World

Plastic contributes to 73% of beach garbage worldwide

An average human eats 70,000 microplastics each year

By 2050, the ocean may contain more plastic than fish

Fortunately, we can solve the plastic problem in the simplest way, by reducing its use. Reducing plastic consumption, especially single-use plastic, is an important step in improving our treatment of the environment. In order to create healthy surroundings for everyone, it is necessary to recycle plastic and minimize its usage.

You might be thinking, why is plastic being pushed as the best way to prevent climate change, when plastic is actually a huge contributor to the environmental problem? And why celebrities refuge to eat out of plastic containers?

To get answers of all your queries, watch our complete video series “The Big Oil Industrial Complex” on the platform of  Edge of Wonder at Rise TV.

[longwindedbore]

I didn’t have any of this on my 2024 Bingo Card

[1] Darth Cheney and I are voting for the same Presidential Candidate.

[2] Then I learn that back in 2019 Seth McFarlane in “Family Guy” accurately predicted Trump’s ‘empire’ at no more than $700M and all of it tied up in debt (could have saved me days to come to the same conclusions working through the details in Judge Engoron’s decision on the Motion for Summary Judgment.

[3] Now Melanie and I are in agreement that the gunfire incident on July 13 is suspect

“Now, the silence around it feels heavy. I can’t help but wonder why didn’t law enforcement officials arrest the shooter before the speech? There is definitely more to this story. And we need to uncover the truth,” Melania Trump says. The 20-year-old shooter was able to fire off multiple rounds from a nearby rooftop before he was killed by law enforcement officers.

======================================

In the “Family Guy” episode referenced Peter’s accusation that “you’re cash-poor” prompts a fist fight with the Mango Mussolini.

At one point Melania hands Peter a golf club and the promise of a sex if he gets rid of Trump.

Melania may be hoping for a ‘Peter with a golf club’ criminal investigation accelerate her and Barron’s futures post-Trump?

So Melania may also be thinking but not saying that what a GREAT COINCIDENCE it was that

[a] the shooter had an ultra-right internet footprint

[b] just when Trump was facing a ultra-right anti-Trump-as-candidate uproar in the RNC in two days by the anti- abortion crowd over Trump’s waffling.

[c] the BS photo op of six Secret Service Agents allowing the defiant fist in the air exposing Trump’s head and chest to potential accomplices.

[d] an ultra-conaervative shooter worked the miracle of getting ultra-conservatives to shut up and seeth in private at the RNC (Cancel Culture!)

That’s one scenario.

On the other hand Dark Money may be worried that Trump has the six Opus Dei SCOTUS judges on his enemies list for turning down his plea not to release his taxes to New York State.

Weisselberg flipping, criminal conviction of Trump Payroll Co on 17 counts of tax evasion, the bank fraud Civil case, the Felony convictions (for falsifying financial documents NOT for paying hush money). Probably the $100M IRS tax lien on Trump Chicago gisxa result of info shared by Leticia James.

An ultra-conservative kid who worked for big hedge fund spraying bullets overhead [**] may have been meant as a warning not to mess with SCOTUS.

I don’t see any scenario in which the Democrats see an advantage in Trump as a martyr - the Dems raise too much money from being the only other choice in thd 67th or 68th ‘most important election of your lifetime.’

As long as Trump’s alive inspiring MAGAs will energize voting the local theocratic patriarchal narcissus out of local and state offices 2026 &. 2028.

Obviously by the time the RNC Harris was already in as the new candidate. Assassinating Trump would have killed the pure joy of his being gobsmacked by the old switcheroo right after the RNC. Joy anticipated from Dark Brandon on down.

Whatever the scenario those Secret Service agents are too well trained in what to do. Whatever that was thatthe world saw on July 13 had to be a deliberate violation of massive amounts of protocols.

In every scenario but the lone gunman vs the Keystone Kops there will be an ongoing murder investigation.

Someone is going to flip because it’s life without parole.

There may already be a sealed grand jury indictment. One of which lists Co-Conspirator #1?

Such an indictment may remain sealed until after the Election for the same reasons the Court acceded to postponing Trump’s Felony sentencing.

I have an unsealed indictment on my 2024 Card.

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

[**] Within a one or two second window of time while being caught in the Butler police/SS counter sniper crossfire the kid fired a seven shot burst.

He would have had it already set for a burst rather than targetting Trump.

Experts have trouble with bursts

[believe-you-me-you-believe-me]

Projection is a psychological defense mechanism in which individuals attribute their own undesirable thoughts, feelings, or motives to others. This mechanism allows individuals to avoid acknowledging their own negative traits by seeing them in others instead. In the context of political discourse, projection can be used strategically to deflect criticism and undermine opponents.

Projection in Politics:

Psychological Mechanism: People naturally tend to project their own beliefs, fears, and behaviors onto others. In politics, this can manifest as accusing opponents of tactics or goals that one’s own side is using or considering.

Deflection Strategy: By projecting, a political group can deflect criticism from itself. If a conservative group is engaging in a particular behavior, accusing liberals of the same behavior can serve to confuse the issue and make it harder for observers to determine the truth.

Preemptive Accusation: Projection can also be used preemptively. By accusing liberals of certain actions or intentions first, conservatives can create a narrative that makes it harder for liberals to credibly make the same accusations against conservatives later.

Examples in Right-Wing Media and Politics:

Accusations of Bias: Right-wing media often accuse mainstream media of liberal bias. This can serve to distract from their own biases and undermine the credibility of mainstream sources. By framing themselves as victims of bias, they can rally support and foster distrust of alternative viewpoints.

Claims of Election Fraud: Claims of election fraud by right-wing figures often come despite a lack of evidence. This can be a form of projection if those making the claims are themselves involved in questionable practices. By accusing others, they preempt criticism and sow doubt about the electoral process.

Attacks on Free Speech: Right-wing politicians may accuse liberals of stifling free speech through "cancel culture." This can obscure efforts by conservatives to limit speech they disagree with, whether through legislation or social pressure.

Impact on Political Discourse:

Erosion of Trust: Projection can erode trust in public discourse. When accusations are made without evidence, it becomes harder for the public to distinguish truth from falsehood, leading to increased polarization and cynicism.

Misdirection: By focusing attention on accusations against opponents, projection can misdirect public scrutiny away from the actions and intentions of the accusers. This can allow those engaging in unethical behavior to avoid accountability.

Polarization: Projection contributes to the deepening divide between political factions. By continuously framing the other side as the primary aggressor, both sides become more entrenched in their positions, reducing the likelihood of constructive dialogue.

In summary, projection in politics is a powerful tool that can be used to deflect criticism, preemptively undermine opponents, and misdirect public scrutiny. In the context of right-wing media and politics, it often manifests as accusations against liberals that mirror the actions or intentions of conservatives, contributing to polarization and distrust in the political system.

[beardedmrbean]

All elections including the presidential vote set to take place next spring are technically cancelled under martial law that has been in effect since the conflict began last year.

"We must decide that now is the time of defence, the time of battle, on which the fate of the state and people depends," Zelensky said in his daily address.

He said it was a time for the country to be united, not divided, adding: "I believe that now is not the (right) time for elections."

The frontline between the warring sides has remained mostly static for almost a year despite a much-touted Ukrainian counter-offensive, with Russian forces entrenched in southern and eastern Ukraine.

Officials from the United States and Europe -- Kyiv's key allies -- are reported to have suggested holding negotiations to end the grinding 20-month-old conflict.

But Zelensky has fiercely denied that Ukraine's counter-offensive has hit a stalemate, or that Western countries were leaning on Kyiv to enter talks.

The United States and other supporters have publicly maintained they are ready to back Kyiv with military and financial aid for as long as it takes to defeat Russia.

Global attention has turned to the Middle East since the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel -- and Zelensky has come under increasing pressure.

Art museum hit in Odesa 

Russian strikes overnight in the southern Ukrainian region of Odesa left eight people wounded and damaged a historic art museum, Ukrainian officials said, in the latest barrage of drones and missiles.

Three more were injured in a Russian shelling attack on the southern city of Kherson on Monday, as Kyiv doubled down on its warnings that Russia was planning to pummel Ukraine's energy infrastructure ahead of the winter.

Images released by officials from inside the Odesa Fine Arts Museum showed art ripped from the walls of the 19th-century building and windows blown out by the aerial bombardment.

UNESCO said it "strongly condemns the attack" and that "cultural sites must be protected".

On Monday, Zelensky said that Ukrainian forces had successfully destroyed a major Russian ship in the Kerch shipyard in annexed Crimea.

The president, who was elected in 2019, said in September that he was ready to hold national elections next year if necessary, and was in favour of allowing international observers.

Voting could be logistically difficult due to the large number of Ukrainians abroad and soldiers fighting on the front.

Zelensky's approval rating skyrocketed after the war began, but the country's political landscape has been fractious despite the unifying force of the war.

Former presidential aide Oleksiy Arestovych has announced that he would run against his former boss, after criticising Zelensky over the slow pace of the counter-offensive.

Also on Monday, a close advisor to the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army, General Valery Zaluzhny, was killed by an explosive hidden inside a birthday gift.

"Under tragic circumstances, my assistant and close friend, Major Gennadiy Chastiakov, was killed," Zaluzhny wrote on Telegram, saying an investigation had been launched.

Ukrainian prosecutors meanwhile said they had formally notified two senior defence officials that they are suspects in a large-scale fraud case involving the purchase of military uniforms.

Ukraine has been fighting an uphill battle against systemic corruption as part of reforms urged by the West for membership to institutions like the European Union.

[vebstoreis]

"Polarizing Political Discourse: The Don Lemon and Nikki Haley Controversy Sheds Light on Toxicity in Media and Society"

The article discusses the recent controversy surrounding comments made by CNN host Don Lemon about former UN ambassador Nikki Haley. During a segment on his show, Lemon criticized Haley's response to a question about the 2020 election, stating that she was perpetuating the same lies about voter fraud that led to the January 6th Capitol riot. Haley responded by calling Lemon's comments "disgusting" and accusing him of trying to incite violence against her. The article explores the larger issue of how political discourse has become increasingly polarized and toxic, with both sides quick to attack and vilify those who disagree with them. It notes that social media has played a major role in exacerbating this trend, allowing people to spread false information and engage in "cancel culture" against those who don't conform to their views. The article also highlights the challenges facing journalists in today's media landscape, with many feeling pressured to take sides and cater to their audience's biases rather than reporting objectively. It notes that Lemon has been a controversial figure in this regard, with some accusing him of being too partisan in his reporting. Overall, the article raises important questions about the state of political discourse and media in today's society, and the need for greater civility and respect in our public conversations. Read the full article

[jackass-democrats]

Tumblr must still be deleting Anti-Democrat blogs. They deleted Jackassdemocrats.tumblr.com with no warning or explanation around 2-2-24.

They’ll probably delete this one too, so just in case you can still follow along at the following. Update - It’s 3-18-24 and it just reappeared. Not sure how long it will last.

https://JackassDemocrats.com/

Rumble - https://rumble.com/c/JackassDemocrats

Twitter/X - @JackassDemocrat https://twitter.com/JackassDemocrat

Truth Social - @jackassdemocrats https://truthsocial.com/@jackassdemocrats

Gettr - @jackassdemocrat https://gettr.com/user/jackassdemocrat

Mastodon - https://mastodon.social/@JackassDemocrats

As always, never buy anything made in china. Don't ever trust a democrat and NEVER leave your child alone with one.

[foreverlogical]

Donald Trump’s descent into madness continues.

The latest manifestation of this is a report in The New York Times that the president is weighing appointing the conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell, who for a time worked on his legal team, to be special counsel to investigate imaginary claims of voter fraud.

As if that were not enough, we also learned that former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who was pardoned by the president after pleading guilty to lying to the FBI, attended the Friday meeting. Earlier in the week, Flynn, a retired lieutenant general, floated the idea (which he had promoted before) that the president impose martial law and deploy the military to “rerun” the election in several closely contested states that voted against Trump. It appears that Flynn wants to turn them into literal battleground states.\

None of this should come as a surprise. Some of us said, even before he became president, that Donald Trump’s Rosetta Stone, the key to deciphering him, was his psychology—his disordered personality, his emotional and mental instability, and his sociopathic tendencies. It was the main reason, though hardly the only reason, I refused to vote for him in 2016 or in 2020, despite having worked in the three previous Republican administrations. Nothing that Trump has done over the past four years has caused me to rethink my assessment, and a great deal has happened to confirm it.

Given Trump’s psychological profile, it was inevitable that when he felt the walls of reality close in on him—in 2020, it was the pandemic, the cratering economy, and his election defeat—he would detach himself even further from reality. It was predictable that the president would assert even more bizarre conspiracy theories. That he would become more enraged and embittered, more desperate and despondent, more consumed by his grievances. That he would go against past supplicants, like Attorney General Bill Barr and Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, and become more aggressive toward his perceived enemies. That his wits would begin to turn, in the words of King Lear. That he would begin to lose his mind.

So he has. And, as a result, President Trump has become even more destabilizing and dangerous.

“I’ve been covering Donald Trump for a while,” Jonathan Swan of Axios tweeted. “I can’t recall hearing more intense concern from senior officials who are actually Trump people. The Sidney Powell/Michael Flynn ideas are finding an enthusiastic audience at the top.”

Even amid the chaos, it’s worth taking a step back to think about where we are: An American president, unwilling to concede his defeat by 7 million popular votes and 74 Electoral College votes, is still trying to steal the election. It has become his obsession.

In the process, Trump has in too many cases turned his party into an instrument of illiberalism and nihilism. Here are just a couple of data points to underscore that claim: 18 attorneys generals and more than half the Republicans in the House supported a seditious abuse of the judicial process.

And it’s not only, or even mainly, elected officials. The Republican Party’s base has often followed Trump into the twilight zone, with a sizable majority of them affirming that Joe Biden won the election based on fraud and many of them turning against medical science in the face of a surging pandemic.

COVID-19 is now killing Americans at the rate of about one per minute, but the president is “just done with COVID,” a source identified as one of Trump’s closest advisers told The Washington Post. “I think he put it on a timetable and he’s done with COVID ... It just exceeded the amount of time he gave it.”

This is where Trump’s crippling psychological condition—his complete inability to face unpleasant facts, his toxic narcissism, and his utter lack of empathy—became lethal. Trump’s negligence turned what would have been a difficult winter into a dark one. If any of his predecessors—Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush, and Ronald Reagan, to go back just 40 years—had been president during this pandemic, tens of thousands of American lives would almost surely have been saved.

“My concern was, in the worst part of the battle, the general was missing in action,” said Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, one of the very few Republicans to speak truth in the Trump era.

In 30 days, Donald Trump will leave the presidency, with his efforts to mount a coup having failed. The encouraging news is that it never really had a chance of succeeding. Our institutions, especially the courts, will have passed a stress test, not the most difficult ever but difficult enough, and unlike any in our history. Some local officials exhibited profiles in courage, doing the right thing in the face of threats and pressure from their party. And a preponderance of the American public, having lived through the past four years, deserve credit for canceling this presidential freak show rather than renewing it. The “exhausted majority” wasn’t too exhausted to get out and vote, even in a pandemic.

But the Trump presidency will leave gaping wounds nearly everywhere, and ruination in some places. Truth as a concept has been battered from the highest office in the land on an almost hourly basis. The Republican Party has been radicalized, with countless Republican lawmakers and other prominent figures within the party having revealed themselves to be moral cowards, even, and in some ways especially, after Trump was defeated. During the Trump presidency, they were so afraid of getting crosswise with him and his supporters that they failed the Solzhenitsyn test: “The simple act of an ordinary brave man is not to participate in lies, not to support false actions! His rule: Let that come into the world, let it even reign supreme—only not through me.

”During the past four years, the right-wing ecosystem became more and more rabid. Many prominent evangelical supporters of the president are either obsequious, like Franklin Graham, or delusional, like Eric Metaxas, and they now peddle their delusions as being written by God. QAnon and the Proud Boys, Newsmax and One America News, Alex Jones and Tucker Carlson—all have been emboldened.

These worrisome trends began before Trump ran for office, and they won’t disappear after he leaves the presidency. Those who hope for a quick snapback will be disappointed. Still, having Trump out of office has to help. He’s going to find out that there’s no comparable bully pulpit. And the media, if they are wise, will cut off his oxygen, which is attention. They had no choice but to cover Trump’s provocations when he was president; when he’s an ex-president, that will change.

For the foreseeable future, journalists will rightly focus on the pandemic. But once that is contained and defeated, it will be time to go back to focusing more attention on things like the Paris Accords and the carbon tax; the earned-income tax credit and infrastructure; entitlement reform and monetary policy; charter schools and campus speech codes; legal immigration, asylum, assimilation, and social mobility. There is also an opportunity, with Trump a former president, for the Republican Party to once again become the home of sane conservatism. Whether that happens or not is an open question. But it’s something many of us are willing to work for, and that even progressives should hope for.Beyond that, and more fundamental than that, we have to remind ourselves that we are not powerless to shape the future; that much of what has been broken can be repaired; that though we are many, we can be one; and that fatalism and cynicism are unwarranted and corrosive.

There’s a lovely line in William Wordsworth’s poem “The Prelude”: “What we have loved, Others will love, and we will teach them how.

”There are still things worthy of our love. Honor, decency, courage, beauty, and truth. Tenderness, human empathy, and a sense of duty. A good society. And a commitment to human dignity. We need to teach others—in our individual relationships, in our classrooms and communities, in our book clubs and Bible studies, and in innumerable other settings—why those things are worthy of their attention, their loyalty, their love. One person doing it won’t make much of a difference; a lot of people doing it will create a culture.

Maybe we understand better than we did five years ago why these things are essential to our lives, and why when we neglect them or elect leaders who ridicule and subvert them, life becomes nasty, brutish, and generally unpleasant.

Just after noon on January 20, a new and necessary chapter will begin in the American story. Joe Biden will certainly play a role in shaping how that story turns out—but so will you and I. Ours is a good and estimable republic, if we can keep it.

PETER WEHNER is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He writes widely on political, cultural, religious, and national-security issues, and he is the author of The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump.

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

by Scott Christensen | COVID-19. Unjust lock-downs. Churches shuttered. Threats to religious freedom. Election fraud. Rampant rioting. Civil unrest. Police defunding. False prophets of social justice. Gender confusion. Sexual degeneracy. Cancel culture. Fake news. We are living in dark days and there is every indication that they will get darker. Adding to these societal ills, many are experiencing...

[thegiftedoneishere]

Major League Baseball is scheduled to hold its 91st All-Star Game at Truist Park in Atlanta on July 13—the first time in 21 years the league’s annual showcase is to be played in that city. But pro baseball should extend Atlanta’s All-Star drought, and other sports should avoid scheduling their own signature events in Georgia, to show Republican state lawmakers that their latest efforts at voter suppression are unacceptable.

In the past, major sports organizations have forced other states to reconsider infringements on their citizens’ rights, and that kind of pressure is sorely needed in Georgia now. Last week, Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, signed an elections bill that President Joe Biden has described as “Jim Crow in the 21st century.” The law imposes new voter-identification requirements for absentee ballots, limits the use of ballot drop boxes, and hands state officials more power over local elections. Even before the legislation passed, many voters of color in Georgia faced hours-long queues at the polls. Making those waits even more arduous, the new law bans giving food and water to people in line to vote.

It’s bad enough that the new law furthers the “big lie”—the baseless election-fraud claims that former President Donald Trump and his associates made before, during, and after the 2020 presidential election. The Georgia law also is an obvious attempt to intimidate and discourage voters of color, who helped clinch Biden’s narrow victory in November, elected two Democratic U.S. senators in January, and gave the Democratic Party full control of Congress.

In the days after the election bill passed, the Major League Baseball Players Association’s executive director, Tony Clark, indicated that players might support moving the yearly summer classic in response. “Players are very much aware” of the new law, Clark told The Boston Globe. “As it relates to the All-Star Game, we have not had a conversation with the league on that issue. If there is an opportunity to, we would look forward to having that conversation.” Meanwhile, Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, who is Black and Asian American, already has said that he would consider passing on the opportunity to manage the National League team in the All-Star Game because of what’s happening in Georgia.

Civil-rights activists have discouraged a comprehensive boycott of Georgia, because such an action could harm vulnerable families and undermine the Black economic base in the state—most notably in Atlanta, a city that has been ripe with opportunity for people of color. Bernice King, the daughter of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., tweeted: “Please stop the #BoycottGeorgia talk. That would hurt middle class workers and people grappling with poverty. And it would increase the harm of both racism and classism.”

But more targeted actions could help, and this is where athletes and sports leagues could be particularly influential. When major sports organizations have taken a stand for civil rights, they have been able to achieve substantive results. The NFL moved the 1993 Super Bowl out of Arizona because the state refused to enact a paid holiday honoring King. The NBA moved its 2017 All-Star Game out of North Carolina because of a state law demanding that transgender people use public bathrooms and locker rooms matching the sex on their birth certificate. For almost 15 years, the NCAA banned South Carolina from hosting championships because the Confederate flag flew on statehouse grounds.

In each case, those states backed down. Major sporting events are powerful motivators because they provide a significant economic boost and a badge of prestige for host cities. Conservative politicians who willingly ignore civil rights and other social-justice issues may listen when their stubbornness jeopardizes their standing in a sports-obsessed culture. Some fans might support Georgia’s new law now, but that support could be severely tested if the law winds up costing the state the All-Star game or other big events.

Could officials in Georgia be persuaded by such arguments? Keep in mind that Atlanta has become an extremely attractive destination for major sporting events because it has favorable weather, excellent transportation links to the rest of the country, and the headquarters of many potential corporate sponsors. If not for the global pandemic, the 2020 Final Four would have been played in Georgia’s capital city. The Super Bowl was held there in 2019, as was the College Football Playoff semifinal. The PGA Tour’s Masters Tournament is in Augusta every year.

By moving the All-Star Game to another city, Major League Baseball could show an overdue commitment to social progress. Despite how much pro baseball celebrates Jackie Robinson for breaking the sport’s color barrier in 1947, MLB doesn’t exactly have a reputation for taking a strong stance on racial issues. Last year, MLB was the last among the major professional sports leagues to speak out after George Floyd died under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer. When another wave of protests hit the sports world following the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, several MLB teams postponed games to acknowledge the racial reckoning sweeping the country. But the league brass had difficulty coming up with a unified response involving every team.

Overall, pro baseball has struggled to attract Black players and fans and address a long history of entrenched, systemic racism in the sport. Today, just 8 percent of MLB players are Black, down from 18 percent in 1986. At the start of last season, three teams—the Arizona Diamondbacks, the Tampa Bay Rays, and the Kansas City Royals—didn’t have any Black players. Pro baseball has only two Black managers, one of whom is Roberts, who is just the second Black manager in MLB history to win a World Series.

Although baseball’s past record on race can’t be excused, becoming the first pro sport to cancel a major event in Georgia would give some meaning to MLB’s otherwise empty statement last June pledging to “be better” on racial issues. Baseball can be the first to lead the way with a targeted boycott, but every league should now consider Georgia off-limits for major sporting events. Those who undermine democracy shouldn’t be rewarded for their pernicious efforts to disenfranchise people of color.

[considerourknowledge]

Report: Consequences Hard For People Who’ve Never Faced Any

MyPillow CEO and former President Donald Trump’s butt buddy Mike Lindell has been under fire for continuing to peddle conspiracy theories about election fraud online, having been banned by Twitter earlier this week. Retailers like Kohl’s and other major companies are cutting ties with Lindell because they don’t want to be seen doing business with a nutjob internet conspiracy maven. Lindell has blamed cancel culture for his recent woes, but according to a new report from The Duh Institute, he is merely experiencing consequences for his actions. “Consequences are hard for people who have rarely, if ever, experienced any. They want to blame the media, or cancel culture, but it’s most often because they’re just assholes who aren’t able to see how their behavior is the problem,” says Dr. Grant Johansen who authored the report. “Fragile white men are the ones who most often can’t come to grips with the consequences of their racist, sexist, shitty actions.”

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

March 1, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

This morning, conservative pundit William Kristol wrote in The Bulwark what a number of us have been saying for a while now, and it dovetails cleanly with the current Republican attempt to suppress voting.

Kristol warns that our democracy is in crisis. For the first time in our history, we have failed to have a peaceful transfer of power. The Republican Party launched a coup—which fortunately failed—and “now claims that the current administration is illegitimately elected, the result of massive, coordinated fraud. The logical extension of this position would seem to be that the American constitutional order deserving of our allegiance no longer exists.”

“So,” he notes, “we are at the edge of crisis, having repulsed one attempted authoritarian power grab and bracing for another.”

Claims that American democracy is on the ropes in the face of an authoritarian power grab raise accusations of partisanship… but in this case, the person making the claim is a conservative, who goes on to urge conservatives to join behind President Joe Biden to try to save democracy. Kristol warns that “a dangerous, anti-democratic faction” of the Republican Party “is not committed in any serious way to the truth, the rule of law, or the basic foundations of our liberal democracy.”

Kristol’s call is notable both because of his position on the right and because he warns that we are absolutely not in a moment of business-as-usual. Perhaps because it is impossible to imagine, we seem largely to have normalized that the former president of the United States refused to accept his loss in the 2020 election and enlisted a mob to try to overturn the results. Along with his supporters, he continues to insist that he won that election and that President Joe Biden is an illegitimate usurper.

This big lie threatens the survival of our democracy.

At the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) conference this weekend in Orlando, Florida, Trump supporters doubled down on the lie that Biden stole the 2020 election. From a stage shaped like a piece of Nazi insignia, speakers raged that they were victims of “cancel culture” on the part of Big Tech and the left, which are allegedly trying to silence them. To restore fairness, they want to stop “voter fraud” and restore “election integrity,” and they want to force social media giants to let them say whatever they want on social media.

In the Washington Post, commentator Jennifer Rubin said the modern conservatives at CPAC had no policy but revenge, “resentment, cult worship and racism,” and no political goal but voter suppression. It is “the only means by which they seek to capture power in an increasingly diverse America,” she notes. A poll showed that “election integrity” was the issue most important to CPAC attendees, with 62% of them choosing it over “constitutional rights” (which got only 48%).

Trump himself packaged this lie in words that sounded much like the things he said before the January 6 insurrection. He claimed that he had won the election, that the election was “rigged,” and that it was “undeniable” that the rules of the election were “illegally changed”—although none of his many court challenges stuck. He attacked the Supreme Court in language that echoed the attacks on his vice president, Mike Pence, that had rioters searching him out to kill him. “They didn’t have the guts or the courage to make the right decision,” Trump said of the justices.

The purpose of this big lie is not only to reinforce Trump’s hold on the Republican Party, but also to delegitimize the Democratic victory. If Democrats cheat, it makes sense to prevent “voter fraud” by making it harder to vote. “We must pass comprehensive election reforms, and we must do it now,” Trump said.

Republican reforms, though, mean voter suppression. Currently, Republican legislators in 43 states have introduced more than 250 bills to restrict voting. They want to cut back early voting and restrict mail-in voting, limit citizen-led ballot initiatives, and continue to gerrymander congressional districts. Arizona is trying to make it possible for state legislatures, rather than voters, to choose the state’s presidential electors. Rather than try to draw voters to their party’s candidates by moderating their stances, they are trying to win power by keeping people from voting.

I cannot emphasize enough how dangerous this is. We have gone down this road before in America, in the South after 1876. The outcome was the end of democracy in the region and the establishment of a single, dominant party for generations. In those decades, a small body of men ruled their region without oversight and openly mocked the idea of justice before the law. A member of the jury that took only 67 minutes to acquit Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam for murdering 14-year-old Emmett Till in 1955 famously said, “We wouldn’t have taken so long if we hadn’t stopped to drink pop.” White men dominated women and their Black and Brown neighbors, but their gains were largely psychological, as the one-party system created instability that slowed down economic investment, while leaders ignored education and infrastructure.

Tomorrow, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in a lawsuit concerning Arizona election laws. The case is from 2016, when Democrats argued that two Arizona voting laws discriminated against Hispanic, Black, and Indigenous voters in violation of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which prohibits laws that hamper voting on the basis of race. The laws called for ballots cast in the wrong precinct to be thrown away and allowed only election officials, letter carriers, household family members, or caregivers to return someone else’s mail-in ballot. A violation could bring a $150,000 fine. The court’s decision in this case will have big implications for the legitimacy of the restrictions Republican legislatures are trying to enact now.

Meanwhile, Democrats are trying to shore up voting rights with H.R. 1, the For the People Act of 2021. This sweeping measure would make it easier to vote, curtail gerrymandering, make elections more secure, and reform the campaign finance system.

They are also proposing the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act, H.R. 4, which would restore the parts of the Voting Rights Act the Supreme Court gutted in 2013 in the Shelby v. Holder decision, limiting changes to election laws that disproportionately affect people of color. After Shelby v. Holder, a number of states immediately enacted sweeping voter suppression laws that disproportionately hit minorities, the elderly, and the young, all populations perceived to vote Democratic.

Neither of these bills will pass the Senate unless the Democrats modify the filibuster rule, which permits Republicans to stop legislation unless it can muster not just a majority, but a supermajority of 60 votes.

Today the Senate Judiciary Committee voted in favor of Judge Merrick Garland for Attorney General. Garland is noted for supervising the prosecution of the men who bombed the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, in 1995, hoping to topple the federal government. In his opening remarks to the Senate Judiciary committee last week, Garland vowed that, if confirmed, he “will supervise the prosecution of white supremacists and others who stormed the Capitol on January 6—a heinous attack that sought to disrupt a cornerstone of our democracy: the peaceful transfer of power to a newly elected government.” He promised that he would follow where the investigation led, even if it went “upstream” to those who might not have been in the Capitol, but who nevertheless were participants in the insurrection.

The vote to move Garland’s nomination to the full Senate was 15 to 7, with Ben Sasse (R-NE), Mike Lee (R-UT), Josh Hawley (R-MO), Tom Cotton (R-AR), John Kennedy (R-LA), Ted Cruz (R-TX), and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) all voting no.

With the exception of Sasse, all those voting no have signed on to the big lie.

—-

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[smokeybrand]

Mutiny

I’m not a fan of Joe Rogen. I find a lot of what he says to be problematic as f*ck but the way he says it, is FAR more damaging. Dude pushes some wild, dangerous, nonsense under the guise of “free speech”, disingenuous “debate”, and insidiously leading questions. Rogen is the Frat Boy version of Tucker Carlson in a lot of ways and that sh*t just doesn’t appeal to me. Beta males who think too highly of themselves listen to this due and take him seriously. These are people who are not self-actualized, who’s entire personality is based on their car or their sneakers or some other superficial bullsh*t they confuse for a personality, and that’s what Rogen’s entire show is; Superficial bullsh*t. So when he pushes dumb-f*ckery like “Don’t get the shot if you’re young and healthy”, these idiots who are either teenagers or have the mentality of teenagers, f*cking listen and we have a spike in cases. Because Joe Rogen said so.

The other day, this asshole bought into that whole “White Fear” sh*t, talking about how the Straight White Male is the most persecuted demo in America and i just groaned. This is the same exact sh*t Carlson does on his show, verbatim, just slightly less racist. It’s the current strategy of what is fast becoming the American Fascist Party, Republicans. It’s hypocritical f*cking nonsense and i hate it. How the f*ck would Joe Rogen, a Straight White Male with a whole ass podcast, be silenced or censored or persecuted/ He’s a multi-millionaire with one of the most popular platforms on f*cking Spotify. How the f*ck would any White person, especially Straight White Males, get silenced in the US? The bones of this country are built to uphold a very specific form of White Supremacy. Hell, cats talk about all these rights and liberties but, in the very beginning, those rights were only extended to White Male Landowners; basically Rich White Men, and guess who the f*ck Joe Rogen is? The constitution had to be amended to include every one else which means this country was designed to be a haven for objective White Supremacy. The fact that they replaced Straight with Rich is just a misnomer used to broaden that division and you have assholes with real audiences buying into that dangerous bullsh*t, disseminating that poison to their followers. And they just drink that persecution complex kool-aid, up. It’s f*cking absurd.

The irony in all of this is the fact that the country is getting younger and browner. Statistically, by the time Gen Z’s kids come of age, we’ll outnumber White people. The margin will be slight but they’ll be the overall minority in this country and that’s why we have all of this fear-mongering and treasonous tantrums. That system the Founding Fathers built to protect their power, is falling apart. It's all a matter of time. Why do you think they're fighting so hard to keep DC and Puerto Rico from becoming actual States? I can guarantee those cats who signed the Constitution never anticipated the influx of melanated people over the years, interbreeding with their lily White sensibilities, or the homogeneity desegregation would bring to society or the way Black culture ended up shaping the entire American zeitgeist or how the Internet just blew the doors off any illusion US citizens had about our true status in the world at large. I was born in 1984. Ten years before i existed, the South was still heavily segregated. My generation, the Millennials, were the very first to be completely free from the social consequences of the Civil Rights Movement. We were far enough removed from that to just see people, not race. I was exposed to so many more cultures, religions, and people, as a kid, than my ma had been when she was young. It wasn’t like, all of a sudden, we were singing kumbaya together, but it was definitely a start, one that has only gained more and more momentum as the Generations who came after mine, started coming of age in a world whose borders are just ceremonial at this point because of the Tech age.

I met my chick and made friends across the globe in a chatroom. One of my closest friends lives in New Zealand. Another stays in Finland. My birthday twin lives in England. She’s a year older than i am and has a beautiful family. My Puerto Rican sister met her dude around the same time i met my chick. He’s from Alabama. She moved from the island to be with him and they've settled down in Georgia where they share a beautiful daughter. My best friend became so close with an Asian girl from Australia, that he adopted her as his own sister. They spoke at least twice a week for the next fifteen years, all the way up until he passed away. The world is much smaller, much clearer, than it has ever  been before, and it turns out that it’s full of color. Color these Straight White Men are, apparently, terrified of. That’s got to be it. That’s got to be why they’re throwing these big ass tantrums and constantly fear-mongering about it. I don’t understand. When Brie Larson said what she said, it was the truth. There are THOUSANDS of films about White dudes you can watch. The entirety of film history is Straight White Males. What is so bad abut getting some chicks or People of Color or some LBGTQ representation in a few leads? Why can't we have strong Black performances in movies where we don't play the “magical Negro” or f*cking Slave? Why can't we have an all Asian cast when the principals aren't constantly fetishized? What is so terrible about giving a role to a Muslim that isn't linked to some ridiculous terrorist trope? Who’s really offended by this and why are they so goddamn fervent about it? Straight White Males, bud.

It’s because their grip on the reins is slipping. The power and the privilege they’ve had for so long, too long, is started to tip in the other direction. The playing field is, ever so slowly, evening out and these Straight White Males are losing their sh*t. They’ll talk about “being racist against white people” and “it's fine to interview everyone but hire cats who are qualified” with one breath but then absolutely savage voting rights directly focused on crippling the Black vote and desperately cling to the idea that 45 still deserves to be president, even though a steady stream of his criminal incompetence has been flowing out of the the White House since he’s left. The level cognitive dissonance is f*cking hilarious. It’s as bad as the GOP complaining about “cancel culture” while literally silencing Liz Cheney. Are you f*cking kidding me? I gotta sit here and listen to a very vocal minority complain about the direction of the MCU because they’ve decided to add a plethora of female and POC roles going forward into Phase Four. They keep asking “who's this for?” and it's obvious it's for everyone, not just Straight White Males. That, to them, means it's going to be bad. Just because the focus has shifted from three White dudes in leading roles, suddenly the MCU has lost it's way. It’s like, all of a sudden, just because the MCU wants to represent their audience as a whole, not just a narrow and shrinking part of it, we’re not supposed to trust in Feige anymore. Are you kidding me? The Green Knight is slated to be another massive hit for A24. The cat who wrote that film was bounced from studio to studio because he created that story specifically as a vehicle for Dev Patel and no major studio wanted to make it with him in the lead. Dev Patel is a f*cking Oscar winner and a brilliant actor but this movie, draped in surreal and beautiful imagery, driven by a visceral, bloody, focus, wasn’t going to get made because the lead this plot was specifically written for, happens to be brown. But Straight White Males are the ones being silenced? Okay, bud.

Joe Rogen is a symptom of a greater problem and it’s the problem of White Fragility. White Fragility fuels the worst of our society. It's the genesis of racism and bigotry. It drives Nationalism and is fertile ground for cults of personality which blossom into whole ass dictatorships. These motherf*ckers are in they’re feelings and will burn this country to the ground if it means they will stop getting their way. Brie Larson calls out the ridiculousness of the race bias in Hollywood? They attack. Arizona flips Blue because Indigenous people and Black folks come out to vote in droves? Voter fraud and four recounts, one months after the election has been called and Biden has already taken office. Jordan Peele says, out loud, to the entire country, that he’s not interested in telling stories with White people in the lead? Shadow banned from Hollywood. Dude was the toast of Hollywood after Get Out and Us. He said what he said and cat's been trapped behind the camera as a Producer ever since. It’s nuts because these people complaining about how hard it is to be and how unfair the current social climate is to Straight White Males, have called Twatter NPCs whiny, SJW, children, for years. Bro,you’re the same, just racist! You are the Trump to their Obama. You are the thermodynamic reaction to their Civil action. You assholes are arguing the same merit, just on the opposite ends of the spectrum so, if they’re whiny assholes, wouldn’t you have to be, too? The only difference is that the Twatter assholes have a zeal for inclusion while you Rogen Bros have a penchant for White Supremacy and, given the choice, I'd have to agree with the Blue Checkmarks in this regard.

Straight White Males have had the run of this country since before it was a country and look what they’ve done with it. Look where we are, right now, in the year of our lord, 2021. This is as far as we have come under their stewardship. It’s time for a new captain, i think. Sorry if that hard truth hurts your feelings. Now please steer us away from those very obvious rocks. I’d rather not violently crash into that reef and sink into a watery grave before we can get our hands on the wheel to right this ship, all because you assholes are in your feelings, thank you.

[rachelbethhines]

If I see any of my followers reblogging bullshit lists about what Kamala Harris has done wrong in her career, I’ll not only block you, I’ll also report you for election fraud. 

We right now have a literal NAZI in the White House who is murdering children for profit!!!!

I don't give a fuck about your purity cancel culture. Now’s not the time. 

Harris was never my first pick for VP; but I’ll be damned if I let a bunch of bots and unthinking brownie point fake leftists get away with damaging the progressive movement and the only hope for millions of peoples lives. 

[go-redgirl]

Nolte: Poll Shows Republicans Care About Issues, Democrats Just Hate Republicans

A Echelon Insights poll shows that Republican priorities surround the big issues of the day, while Democrat concerns are focused almost solely on hating Republicans.

Echelon polled 1,005 registered voters between February 12 and 18 and found the following…

Starting with the most concerned, the top issues of concern for Republican voters are illegal immigration, lack of support for police, high taxes, left-wing media bias, the moral decline of the country, socialism, Antifa, China, late-term abortion, election fraud, tech censorship, and discrimination against Christians.

To put this in perspective, 81 percent of Republicans are extremely/very concerned with illegal immigration. The bottom issue on this poll, Christian discrimination, still has 57 percent extremely/very concerned.

Starting with the most concerned, the top issues of concern for Democrat voters are — no joke — Trump supporters, white nationalism, systemic racism, gun violence, healthcare coverage, domestic terror, police brutality, discrimination against the alphabet people, sexism, voter suppression, student debt, and capitalism.

A full 82 percent of Democrats are extremely/very concerned with Trump supporters.

So the thing freaking out the left more than anything else is the fact that … you and I exist, the fact that we Trump supporters share this country with them. It’s not Global Warming or world hunger, neither of which made the list. No, what is freaking Democrats out more than anything else is us, people who dare to think differently, vote differently, speak and believe differently.

Listen, it’s over…

The idea that we can reason with or shame the left into being decent or into not hating us is over.

Numbers like this perfectly explain why Republicans are being blacklisted and canceled, why we are being disappeared from the dominant culture, which is this hostile towards us, this afraid of us, hate us this much, and see us as this big of a threat.

We have to disengage from the dominant culture because no amount of pleading will make a difference.

We have to build our own Internet, our own corporations, continue to build our own media, home school, cancel cable TV…

The full-blown assault on our liberties and freedoms at the hands of Democrat-run government and hostile mega-corporations is only going to get worse.

Moreover, the threat against our personal safety at the hands of left-wing terrorist groups like Antifa and Black Lives Matter is only going to increase.

When you’ve convinced yourself that the other side is Hitler, you can do what Democrats, the media, academia, Hollywood, and Big Tech have done — convince yourself it’s okay to be Hitler to fight Hitler…

We are fighting Hitler. The left has become Hitler. We are hated for who we are. Period.

The same Democrats who created Jim Crow to express their hate and to hold on to power are desperate to segregate and subjugate us for the same reasons.

Blacklists and riots are only the beginning. We’re going to see more voter fraud, and once Democrats own the Supreme Court, the Constitution will be legally overturned as a means to disarm and persecute us.

These people fucking hate us. You have to wake up to that fact. And when people who fucking hate you rule over you…

Need I go on?

Politics Democrats John Nolte poll Republicans

[aion-rsa]

Gina Carano Was Fired from The Mandalorian, But Should Cara Dune Live On?

https://ift.tt/2N0IeiI

Gina Carano deserved to be fired from The Mandalorian after months of posting dangerous online rhetoric that goes against everything Star Wars should stand for. After Carano used her Twitter bio to mock the common practice of users listing preferred pronouns, denying the gravity of the Covid-19 pandemic, posting election fraud conspiracy theories, refusing to show support for Black Lives Matter, and implying that being a right-wing conservative today was like being a Jewish person during the Holocaust, Disney finally did the right thing.

“Jews were beaten in the streets, not by Nazi soldiers but by their neighbors…even by children. Because history is edited, most people today don’t realize that to get to the point where Nazi soldiers could easily round up thousands of Jews, the government first made their own neighbors hate them simply for being Jews. How is that any different from hating someone for their political views,” read her now-deleted Tik Tok post.

While Carano did return for The Mandalorian season 2, which wrapped just before the Covid lockdowns that seemingly triggered the actor’s toxic views on social media, Disney decided that it had seen enough. In a statement released on Wednesday night, a spokesperson for Disney said that Carano’s “social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable.” The spokesperson also confirmed that Carano “is not currently employed by Lucasfilm and there are no plans for her to be in the future,” effectively putting an end to her time on The Mandalorian and Star Wars. Deadline also confirmed that Carano and her agency UTA have parted ways.

Two days later, Carano doubled down, announcing a new movie project with alt-right pundit Ben Shapiro’s conservative website The Daily Wire. She will develop, produce, and star in the movie, which will release exclusively to the site’s members, according to Deadline. Carano dubiously framed her next move as “a direct message of hope to everyone living in fear of cancellation by the totalitarian mob.”

But while Carano may see herself as a rebel fighting for the right to claim “freedom of speech” no matter how hateful or downright false her posts, there are also plenty of Star Wars fans who are relieved to see her jettisoned from the universe they love. While Disney should still be held accountable for how it failed John Boyega and Kelly Marie Tran, actors of color who faced racist attacks upon being cast in the Sequel Trilogy, and who were sidelined as the trilogy progressed, the company has done a much better job of late of showing where it stands on the issues. The company stood in support of The High Republic show host Krystina Arielle after she faced similar attacks. By firing Carano, Disney and Lucasfilm have taken a clear stance not only against bigotry but the kind of dangerous rhetoric that has become pervasive among a small but loud minority of the fandom (although I’d hardly call them actual “fans”).

THR learned from a source close to Lucasfilm that the studio had been “looking for a reason to fire her for two months” and that Carano’s Holocaust post was “the final straw.” According to the outlet, Lucasfilm had previously planned to have Carano star in her own Mandalorian spinoff, potentially Rangers of the New Republic, and considered making the announcement during its investor’s day event in December before that idea was scrapped due to her social media posts.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Does Carano’s firing mean that this is the end of her character’s time in Star Wars? While the end of Cara Dune’s storyline in The Mandalorian season 2 teased that there would be more to her journey as a mercenary turned New Republic marshal, for the moment, that adventure seems to have been cut short. That said, some fans are already wondering whether Cara’s life in the galaxy far, far away could continue without Carano.

A few people on Twitter have suggested that the character should simply be recast, with Lucy Lawless already positioned as a frontrunner among fans. The Xena: Warrior Princess and Battlestar Galactica actor and activist would be more than a suitable replacement for Carano and the kind of talent the Star Wars brand should want to work with. Not to mention that Lawless would bring the energy, grit, and physicality needed to play a tough-as-carbonite brawler like Cara.

Let's make #LucyLawless the new and improved #CaraDune! #TheMandalorian @Jon_Favreau @dave_filoni pic.twitter.com/xuqqM3SOea

— 𝕂ℝ𝕀𝕊𝕋𝕀𝔸ℕ 𝕆𝔻𝕃𝔸ℕ𝔻 (@kreshjun) February 11, 2021

But as nice as it is to dream of Lawless or another fan-favorite performer taking on the role of Cara Dune and continuing her story, Star Wars has traditionally been averse to recasting its characters to the point where the franchise would rather paste a questionable CGI version of Mark Hamill’s face on another actor’s head than cast someone new to play a younger Luke Skywalker. (Sebastian Stan, for example.)

Not that Lucasfilm hasn’t tried recasting before, such as when it brought on Alden Ehrenreich and Donald Glover to play pre-Original Trilogy versions of Han Solo and Lando Calrissian in Solo: A Star Wars Story, but that movie was a box office failure for the studio. While there are many reasons why that film failed, a few fans might tell you it’s because Harrison Ford and Billy Dee Williams weren’t in it. If history tells us anything, it’s that there’s a section of this fandom that does not like change.

That’s not to say Disney should go out of its way to pander to viewers who are resistant to change. Big franchises like Star Wars need to embrace change to stay fresh and better reflect audiences. And Disney certainly shouldn’t prioritize people who would be mad if anyone but Carano played Dune on The Mandalorian or Rangers of the New Republic. My point is that Disney would likely save itself a lot of grief by not doing anything else with the character at all. There’s no doubt that the path of least resistance for Disney would be to phase out the character completely, giving her a quiet off-screen exit, perhaps coupled with some brief exposition in season 3 regarding where she went. Done.

Is that fair to Cara Dune and the fans who see themselves in her? Cara quickly became a fan-favorite after her debut on the Star Wars live-action series as a fierce gun-for-hire who’s not quite a hero and is as prone to violence as Din Djarin but who will ultimately choose to do what’s right. Many have lauded Cara for the ways she breaks away from the “traditional mold” of female Star Wars characters who have come before, both in terms of her morally gray motivations and her buff appearance, which, as fans of The Last of Us II‘s Abby will tell you, remains a rarity in our entertainment.

Read more

TV

How The Mandalorian Gave Fans a Different Kind of Star Wars Story

By Lacy Baugher

TV

Why The Mandalorian Was Always Destined to Meet Luke Skywalker

By Ryan Britt

Unlike Leia, Cara is a former Rebel shock trooper from Alderaan who didn’t immediately fall in line with the New Republic, preferring the chaos and danger of living in the Outer Rim than joining up with the new galactic government, which she felt wasn’t doing enough to quell the ever-present threat of the Empire that had destroyed her home planet. She preferred to brawl in cantinas and make her own way in the galaxy sans an official allegiance or badge, a lifestyle rarely lived by Star Wars‘ women — at least on screen. (In that way, Cara has much more in common with breakout Marvel comic book character Doctor Aphra.)

Sure, some of these traits began to change, but the show took its time developing Cara’s character, and by the time she did join the Republic’s law forces in the Outer Rim, it was after she’d witnessed many of the atrocities committed by what was left of the Empire. And even with the badge, she did some things on her own terms, like helping Mando and friends rescue Grogu from Moff Gideon.

To many, Cara has been a unique character worth following for years to come, whether it be on more seasons of The Mandalorian or in an eventual spinoff. Fans could perhaps still get that opportunity off-screen were Lucasfilm to continue Cara’s story in the books or comics, as it has with many other characters for over 40 years. It might just take some waiting.

But the mere fact that many fans want to see Cara’s story continue without the toxic presence of the actor who originally brought her to life is a testament to the power of the character herself. Like the best Star Wars characters, Cara seems to have staying power, and perhaps she deserves to outlive Gina Carano’s time with the franchise.

To The Mandalorian‘s credit, there are many other great female characters to look forward to on the show, including Bo-Katan Kryze (Katee Sackhoff), Koska Reeves (Mercedes Varnado), and Fennec Shand (Ming-Na Wen), who will actually star in The Book of Boba Fett later this year. (Please bring back Frog Lady, too.) They’re fantastic characters with their own motivations and stories, and I’d love to see more of them in season 3, but not all female characters are interchangeable and the other women in The Mandalorian’s world cannot replace Cara’s unique contributions to the show. They cannot simply “fill a spot” left behind by the last female hero, a character who was one of our first introductions on the show.

There’s perhaps no obviously right answer or course of action when things are still so raw and production is moving quickly on the next year of Star Wars stories. Does keeping Cara in Star Wars also ultimately mean that Lucasfilm is acknowledging Carano’s legacy with the franchise? Maybe. But should a great character that people look up to and relate to be allowed to exist beyond the bad decisions of an actor or its creator? Probably.

We only know this for sure: if you never see Cara Dune again in Star Wars, you only really have Gina Carano to blame.

The post Gina Carano Was Fired from The Mandalorian, But Should Cara Dune Live On? appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3ahfyuC