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mybg3notebook · 3 years

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Astarion Analysis Summary

Disclaimer Game Version: All these analyses were made up to the game version v4.1.101.4425. As long as new content is added, and as long as I have free time for that, I will try to keep updating this information.

This will be a summarasing analysis integrating most of the main characteristics shown and proven in the post (Astarion Analysis)

Additional disclaimers about meta-knowledge and interpretations in (post)

The number between brackets [] represents the topic-block related to (this post), which gathers as much evidence as I could get.

Alignments are usually a topic of discussion since characters can be so complicated, that they are hard to put in some place on the spectrum. However, for Astarion’s case, it’s clear that he is an Evil-aligned character, like Shadowheart and Lae’Zel. Whether he lies on a Chaotic side or a Neutral one is a bit less important (personally, I believe this small shift is the most you will be able to change Astarion through the main game, but I will explain that in another post Astarion and Power -Part 2).

What is most important is to understand that we are analysing an Evil char, so his personality will lay in the negative characteristics. He likes all degrees of cruelty [3,6], violence [2, 13], and murder [2], having a particular taste for animal cruelty [4]. He finds this cruelty funny.

When it comes to animal cruelty, he has a broader concept of what’s animal than most Tavs would consider: he includes kobolds, goblins, and gnomes as such [5]. So all the cruelty upon them would be labelled, for his standards, as “animal” cruelty. This is why I specify he has a particular taste for this type of cruelty: he doesn’t only enjoy the death and torment of animals, but also of races he considers as such [5].

He has many racial biases [5] (hardly any char in Forgotten Realm lacks them): he only sees valuable elves and some humans (not all, since he despises the Gur) probably as a consequence of his backstory. Let’s remember that a group of Gur put him at death's door, forcing him into accepting Cazador's proposition. However, it’s also important to keep in mind he put himself in that situation with his corrupted magistrate role as a mortal (Swen’s interview).

He supports the most common biases about Tieflings and Gurs [5], and mocks halfling and Dwarven Tavs. He sees goblins, kobolds and gnomes as animals. Probably the list is broader, since all this information is what's present in the EA game at the moment.

Astarion as a character has a play of concepts with the duality animal/owner [14]. He speaks about choice as the element that separates animals from humanoids. Animals react out of instinct, thinking creatures choose to act. This speech doesn’t end with him claiming choice but being an animal desiring to kill. If in any other instance he would show a hint of empathy, one would be inclined to think his character is about the overwhelming reactions of a wounded animal installed by the abuse. But I hardly see it like that. He was twisted before turning into a vampire.

As such, he speaks about “survival instinct” [14]. With the little we see and can read in his approvals and disapprovals, he is looking for acceptance from Tav about his vampire nature, for the sake of survival. This character is an extreme survivalist. Astarion would care nothing about endangering or even killing innocent people to guarantee his survival. Once more, we see in the way he speaks about survival, the constant repetition of the symbol of “animal”.

He is greedy [1], no matter if what he gains is little or not; as long as it gives him a small reward (he hates to help for free), or if it causes pain, torment, or the death of the person he is interacting with, it’s enough. If Astarion doesn’t have a radical change in his background, we can be assured this greed comes from his past mortal life, when he was a corrupt magister to the point to double sell criminals to a local vampire lord and to slavers.

Manipulation [7]is the main characteristic in him. His words and mannerisms change as the game progresses, playing with the tones and the half-truth/lies he keeps saying. During his first interactions with Tav, Astarion is very careful in sharing his opinion about the events, —his judgements are always vague—while he tries to appraise Tav. This can be easily seen when he has no opinion about Kagha’s snake killing Arabella and playing an obvious mind game to Tav. For further detail check (Astarion and his Standards).

He is sometimes considered a prankster [3], but I prefer to call him Evil Trickster (pretty much like Shadowheart, who has trickster domain as cleric) who enjoys pranks to a higher degree of torment, ending sometimes with the death of the person in question. He enjoys, following this Trickster nature, the humiliation of people in general and outsmarting small people in particular [6]. He is aware that outsmarting powerful ones can bring consequences hard to deal with [7] (as he warns when Tav thinks about outsmarting Raphael), but applying all these torments to weak people is inconsequential, and therefore, enjoyable for him without risks.

We already stated that he enjoys the suffering of people [2,3], but he has a particular taste for the torment of the weakest ones [6]. The root of this pleasure for humiliating weak creatures comes from his desire for power. Astarion is a char deeply related to power [11], not as a goal itself (not power for the sake of power), but as a means to obtain revenge, and in the process, become a Master. I will analyse this aspect in another post (Astarion and Power part 1/ part 2).

However, I think it’s worth noting that Astarion’s descriptions of Cazador reflect not only his need for power but also his desire for that kind of power applied in a similar goal. Astarion despises Cazador’s obsession for power, but he has little problem to aspire to it. The obsession with any kind of power, especially the one given by the tadpoles which bend the will of people (mind control) [11], his paranoia, his constant desire to become master [14], his pleasure in cruelty and humiliation [2,3,4,6]… all these characteristics are very descriptive of Astarion too. Cazador and Astarion seem to be each other’s mirrors ( for more details check post Astarion and Power part 1/ part 2). .

Despite hating to be involved in anyone else's problems [9], he encourages and supports most acts of revenge [8,16], especially the ones against figures that can be interpreted as master. This will occur if and only if Astarion perceives the victim of such a master as a strong and resilient creature worth the trouble, i.e. Karlach [16].

He enjoys most Intimidation options you can pick [13], since they can result in the humiliation of a certain NPC, as a demonstration of power, or simply as elements for tormenting NPCs that would lead to murderous situations which are “funny” shows for Astarion. In general, most intimidation tags will be approved by him, except the ones that could be used to defuse violent outcomes.

All these evil pleasures can be considered as “the result” of turning into a vampire, but if we stick to what Swen has explained during the first demonstrations of the game and interviews before the release of EA, we know Astarion has been an Evil character during his mortal life. He was a corrupt magistrate in Baldur’s Gate, who fed the local coven of vampires with criminals. Being greedy, and trying to bite more than he knew he could chew, he sold this food into slavery to earn more money. As a consequence (directly or plotted by Cazador, we don’t know) he was attacked by a group of Gurs who almost beat him to death. Cazador appeared soon afterwards to grant him immortality with the curse of Vampirism. As we can see, he is not better than he was when he was a mortal elf.

A deeper relationship with concepts such as power, abuse, and victim will be explained in another post ( Astarion and Power-part 2). From Astarion’s brief background we can see that he has been an abuser in his mortal life. Due to his own actions, Cazador grasped him into his power and inflicted torment, humiliation, and violence of many kinds, for two centuries, twisting his personality into evilness even more than before (we also need to remember that not only torture may have twisted his personality, vampirism via Dark Desires causes a natural perversion of the persona as well). He now aspires to become more powerful, a reflection of Cazador himself, as a way to acquire his freedom. He wants power to be free [7, 11, 13, 14], and the power of mind-controlling others excites him [10,11] to no end, ignoring completely the cognitive dissonance of his own mind as an ex slave [12]. Although he suffered slavery in his own flesh, he is pretty apathetic (or even supports) slavery [10]. Some players may understand his narration of Cazador’s torments as a means to manipulate Tav, others, as a self-dismissal of his own traumatic experiences.

His story seems to narrate the story of an abuser who found a greater abuser and became a victim of the latter, seeking to return to a stronger power position (the greatest vampire of the world—description in Larian web page—). Despite suffering this abuse, that could be understood as poetic justice to certain degree, he never developed empathy for those sharing his condition. He cares little when he sees others in the same situations he had been ( for more details check post (Astarion and Power part 1/ part 2).

Some fans see that Astarion detests slavery, and he is just putting a show of a thick-skinned survivor, pretending that it does not affect him. I can’t see it with all what we see in EA. This “supposed” repulsive emotion should be a matter of narrative (we should see it in clear approvals or disapprovals as meta-knowledge), not a baseless imagination/wish of the player. We know that there are hundreds of resources to show hidden emotions in characters. Remorse or a desire to improve can be perfectly shown without being explicit, even when he may not be conscious of them. We can see how this is managed with Shadowheart, and we know there is something going on under her cruelty despite knowing little about herself (she knows less of her past and still yet we manage to see some degrees of goodness in her despite her evil inclinations).

So I don’t believe that Astarion has some remorse going on, because if it were the case, it has not been shown in any scene so far. To me, it makes much more sense for him to develop as a full evil character inside the spectrum of evilness. After all, and following the tradition of the mechanics seen in BG1 and BG2, a redemption arc of an evil char of this magnitude makes little sense (We can remember Edwin,Dorn Il-Khan, Sarevok Anchev, Viconia DeVir, Baeloth Barrityl, Xzar, or Hexxat, all evil chars whose development was always inside their evilness or showed, in few cases, a slight shift of it). But further details and reflections will be addressed in another post (Astarion and Power part 1/ part 2).

As a last detail, we can or cannot believe his statement of having lost his memories (he can perfectly claim it to hide his evil past from the main character to have a better manipulation of Tav) but considering Larian has kept most of the DnD vampire characteristics, I would like to bring awareness of a particular vampiric effect named Dark Desires (here). It’s the twistessness of the mortal-desires, which due to the fact that Astarion’s had always been dark, changed little with his vampiric nature, or just deepened in its perversion, and may cause sometimes the loss of memories (he was greedy and cruel before, now he stays the same, but darker and morbider.)

In short we can summarise Astarion as a moral bankrupt narcissist, a survivalist no matter the cost, a power-hungry character who wants to bend people’s will. He uses manipulation as his main tool, and enjoys violence, murder, and humiliation. Despite his slave past, he enoys acts of cruelty and torture on innocent or weak creatures. All his actions and words seem to ominously display a similarity with Cazador, as if his fate is to become the next Cazador.

This post was written on April 2021. → For more Astarion: Analysis Series Index

#astarion #bg3 early access #bg3 meta

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murfeelee · 6 years

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I just want to speak my piece and voice my hopes & concerns about the ideas for a new Sims Networking site.

Disclaimer: Despite the length of this long effing post, I know absolutely nothing about creating a website, or hosting, servers, or anything like that.

In light of Tumblr’s clear and present determination to kill its own website, many ideas are being proposed about The Sims community starting its own website. This would be a safe haven for simmers, where we can all share our content without fear of overzealous censorship and nefarious politico-economic stunts and power-plays.

Having different simmers presenting different platforms and ideas about how to get a simming network started is great, and I support anyone who pitches an idea. I don’t care who figures it out, just as long as someone does, and it’s good. But at this critical point and time what the community really needs is to not be splintered -- that’s what the problem is: that when Tumblr internally combusts we’ll all mass exodus and go our separate ways (to LJ/DW, Twitter, Blogspot, WP, etc), and we won’t all be in one place anymore. :(

There’s nothing wrong with having multiple simming networks, and having a selection of simmers-only social media outlets, not at all. We do that already, with sites like TSR & MTS, etc, that embrace content from ALL the sims games (1-4, etc), but where different preferences/standards/visions naturally lead to different websites doing their own thing separately.

But I think it’s time we as a community had one main home.

IMO, ideally, it would be one that functions like Tumblr did -- just Better and More Positive. ;) It would not be moderated by admins like the other sims sites, and instead the site runners would be there strictly for site support and maintenance. We’ve been moderating the simblr side of Tumblr all these years pretty okay -- aside from the abuse/neglect of the Tags (which I hope we could come to a more unified system with on a new site).

The new site could have all the image uploading/storage and other features we enjoy (Follows, Reblogs, Likes, Comments, IM, etc) but possibly even with an additional forum aspect, with rich text text threads & private messaging, etc. Is that at all possible?

The forum half of the site could have moderators, if only to keep the threads organized, but there would be none of that censoring crap that gets users warned/banned over stupidness like language, adult content, or my personal favorite: filesharing (especially when cc users rely on WCIFs and reuploaders to share content from dead sites and creators who delete their content for one reason or another).

I’d also love to see a return of more community events:

more Simblreen-like photo prompts & challenges for other holidays & seasons

more creative contests (like the one recreating real movie posters as sims images to get featured as new cc)

more visibility for machinimas (those mofos work HARD)

the return of sims magazines for fashion & builders & whatnot

Age and Adult Content Restrictions

The Sims is a borderline Teen/Everyone/Mature-rated game. It’s got sex and violence and crude humor and weirdness that isn’t really suitable for little kids. It's at each parent’s discretion what their kids are exposed to, but most simmers are either in their teens or older (I haven’t come across any 7 year olds playing this crazy game, at least.) As such, I don’t feel this new site should be censoring/blocking adult content and nsfw. Let the tags do their jobs -- even implement a Safe Mode & parental controls if you have to.

When it comes to what the age restrictions are, can’t y’all just have a captcha or one of those buttons you click that says you’re 13+ or whatever the age needs to be? And there are pretty cool captchas out there, too -- we don’t need something as crazy as what Thaithesims had (for those of y’all who don’t know, it was freaking nuts, trust), but there are others that ask a simple math question, or makes you to click the picture of the vegetable, or some Where’s Waldo looking thing to find all the bicycles or whatever the heck. Y’all’ve seen them, I don’t know.

Again, I don’t even know what goes into making a website, and determining what it can & cant support -- or AFFORD.

And that brings me to Money:

While it’s so exciting and heartening to see different ideas coming out now, honestly, it’s not gonna work when all y’all are all asking for money and donations. That’ll have us scrambling to fund & invest in a million different people’s ideas, until someone gets a site working that we’ll actually use.

Of course we know money is THE issue, and of course websites are Expensive AF™. But it would be more realistic for all y'all to get a site up and running, have us use it and test it out, and once the community gives it our seal of approval, then start doing donation drives to keep the site/servers funded. That’s the way fan-made ad-free sites with adult content like Archive Of Our Own do it; I’ve been subscribed there for years, and they make $100k+ every drive, it’s amazing. Sites like Wikipedia & the Wayback Machine no doubt make more. (Didn’t SimFileShare fund itself to get started? They use ads, though, which might force adult content restrictions like what’s happening with Tumblr.)

I wish I had the disposable income to give to ANY of these fantastic websites that I know and love, just to show my appreciation, but I’m dirt poor, so.... But I just feel that it really shouldn’t be up to users to fund free websites, because that’s hardly better than having to pay for subscriptions to join paid sites. I don’t even like pay for CC, or DLC, or even video games at full price. So any bid for money makes me suck my teeth a bit, frankly speaking.

In Closing:

The Sims community deserves its own space, to freely express ourselves.

The Sims is unique from any other game ever made, because simmers create the stories, simmers create the content, and simmers create the gameplay -- it’s not a linear pre-determined storyline, but a more or less open-ended open-world mechanism by which the gamer decides (and can create) everything from the characters to the plots to the locations.

We’re not just posting pictures on the official forums of our customized Lara, Shepard, Geralt, Arthur Morgan or whoever beating a level or discovering a hidden location. No. We’re creating our own characters and worlds and directives, and sharing art through images, storytelling, and custom content. And we’re sharing a bit of ourselves in the process.

Tumblr used to be the one place we could rely on to embrace our individuality, freedom of speech, agency, expression, and be part of a community that supported us and our content. I don’t want the Sims community to be fractured, and certainly not die out. Y’all have been like family to me, for the 5 years I’ve been on Tumblr, and for almost a whole decade now in the online Sims community -- 2019 will make it 10 years (which is a lot, for an antisocial psychopath like me). If Tumblr fails us, I won’t know where else to go, and it really saddens me. The Sims is a Lifestyle.

So I really hope y’all movers and shakers out there who know about web development can come together, figure things out together, and create a Better, More Positive space for us to enjoy playing and sharing our love of The Sims games.

#simblr #the sims #RANT ALERT #mini rant #murf is a derp

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whattheduckdude · 4 years

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Capitalism has won again.

I wrote a lot about the rules that media platforms themselves create. However, YouTube has a more interesting story about censorship. Of course, this video hosting has strict rules as well as other sites. For example, it prohibits videos and advertisements that contain information about the purchase of drugs, scenes of violence, calls to murder or content of a sexual nature. Nevertheless, even these rules, which seem to be spelled out in the legislation of many countries, are often violated without any punishment from YouTube. It is worth saying that content that obviously violates community rules is removed after a while. However, I personally have seen more than once videos with content for pedophiles (but not porn, because it would have been immediately blocked), as well as advertising of illegal in Russia drug sales service in the CIS countries before each video on this video hosting (it lasted for a month). But these are examples of classical censorship, which is present on many modern popular media platforms. On YouTube sometimes there are booms of the same type of content: when many channels start creating the same low-grade content to capture the media space and make profit. Such videos may not violate the rules of the site, but due to consumer dissatisfaction, many advertisers began to leave the site. Then YouTube, in order not to lose profits, began to delete all the videos and block the channels that were somehow involved in such booms. Thus, it is no longer YouTube, but advertisers decided what can and can not be shown on this platform. There are certain advantages to this — the garbage content was too annoying for many people, including me. The strangest thing YouTube did a couple of years ago was give people the right to decide what content should be blocked. Anyone could complain, and applications were checked by bots, not live people. The good goal turned into the destruction of popular channels by haters and the dissatisfaction of many content makers. It also affected the political situation in Russia: many opposition channels were blocked because of complaints from bots created by the government. Here, censorship violated not only freedom of speech, but also the sovereignty and inviolability of political life of a separate state. This can hardly be considered a good result of a "useful" innovation. To sum up, it is worth saying that YouTube has long ago become a capitalist conveyor in a bad sense. I do not support socialism, but true capitalism should not contradict itself as much as this site does. Since when does the platform decide who can violate the rules of the community and the laws of some countries, and who should remain silent? *link*

#youtube #digitalcensorship #censorship

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copiosis · 5 years

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The Best Future Hinges On You Doing Nothing

We're in a positive revolution. I know, it doesn't look that way. Often such revolutions are invisible. Doesn't mean they aren't happening.

The revolution will end when doing nothing becomes as valuable as "working your ass off". In fact, doing nothing will become so valuable, it will replace "working your ass off" as a success path.

Smart people are on this revolution's early edge. People like Facebook Co-founder Chris Hughes and Democratic Presidential Candidate Phenom and entrepreneur Andrew Yang are not only planning, but are vocal about implementing a basic income for all Americans. Don't get me wrong. A basic monthly income of $500-$1000 will not allow most people do nothing status. But it's a start.

Persuading Americans there's immense value in doing nothing is a long road. To get there, we gotta start somewhere. Even if Basic Income isn't implemented or Yang doesn't become president, post 2020 election America will know more about Basic Income than they ever have.

That conversation starts breaking down Americans' collective belief that working hard is the only way to success. The next to fall is the idea that Americans are free today. Both beliefs must go.

That's what this revolution is about.

And they will go. In their wake will come new ideas. Ideas including what people already know, but hardly see evidence of. Even though evidence is plentiful.

Doing Nothing Is Inspiring

People's best ideas come when they're doing nothing. Or, rather, looking like they're doing nothing. They're doing something. They're letting their insight and intuition heavy-lift. That's why inventors often come up with their best ideas in the shower, or making love or driving. Their "working my ass off" mode is off, making room for inspiration.

Doing nothing begets breakthroughs. But it also makes resource procurement easier than working your ass off. Funny thing is, even when you're working your ass off, your ass being worked off has less to do with progress than you think.

They say success is an 80/20 game. It's actually a 1/99 game. One percent of success comes from your effort. The rest is happens when you "let go and let god". I explained this analyzing Arnold Schwarzenegger's famous success speech in which he claims working your ass off is a prerequisite to success.

It's not.

The American Freedom Fallacy

Let's look at American Freedom next. Most Americans will probably say Americans are free. Some will compare American freedom to other countries. They'll say Americans are more free than any other country. That may be true. But varying degrees of non-freedom still are non-freedom.

In basic secular terms, Americans are as not-free as any other group. Freedom means being able to do whatever one wants – even doing nothing – with no negative consequences.

Recently, an American helped me understand how free Americans are. He gave an example of a street musician:

“A street musician is free to play whatever he wishes to, subject to panhandling or other ordinances (he doesn’t have a natural right to block my use of a sidewalk or street). I am free not to pay him if I see no value in his product.”

This is accurate of course. But it's not freedom. It does describe the way things are now. Which I call "non-freedom". Let's look at the dictionary's definition of "freedom”:

"Hindrance", "restraint", "not being subjected to a, or affected by (a particular undesirable thing)"...all these words point to the nature of freedom as it doesn’t exist in America.

A hungry person is not free. A sick person without healthcare is not free. An unwilling houseless person is not free. A person working a job they hate is not free. Not according to this definition. All these people are being subjected to or affected by an undesirable thing.

So is our street musician.

They are all hindered, restrained. They do not enjoy unrestricted lives.

How do Americans not get this?

Eighty-five percent of the world's population apparently hates their job. So at least 85 percent of humanity world wide is not free in this one dimension. It's fair to say most Americans are in that bunch. And that's just looking at jobs.

The vast majority of Americans are notfree. Because the vast majority of people on the planet aren't. We're not that exceptional.

Watery Poop Flows Downhill

If you're not free, you're damn sure going to make sure other people aren't either. Which is where I think people's disdain comes from. They imagine some guy sitting in his basement playing video games all day.

"If I gotta work, you damn sure better work too", they think.

Social pressure is like a fat poop rolling down hill in a brown stream of water. We all get caught up in it. Working. Losing our asses. And our lives. The whole thing stinking in the process. We've just been in it so long, we don't recognize the stench.

Natural questions arise when thinking about everybody doing nothing. Who will make things people need? Who will do jobs no one likes to do? How do you expect people to get their food, clothes, etc.? Someone must make these things.

These things can be made. And everyone can be free at the same time. Just because you can't figure how that is possible, doesn't make it impossible.

Capitalism and its version of “freedom”, which is really non-freedom, is extremely poor at figuring this out. That because it forces everyone to work. Why would it figure out how to free people from working when it depends on everyone working?

That makes no sense.

We need a new socioeconomic system. New ways of thinking too. I explain what that thinking sounds like in this recent 30-minute conversation.

Your Mom's Priceless Contribution To The World: You

For example, how much money did capitalism pay your mom for birthing and raising you? How about your dad? How about your grandparents? How about all the generations of people who came before you, without which you wouldn’t be here?

All those people provided you and the world with immense value. Were it not for who they were (not necessarily what they did, but including that), you wouldn’t be here.

And yet, capitalism’s non-freedom hasn’t recognized any of that value. Priceless value!

Multiply that by the 300+ million people in the United States. That’s massive amounts of value capitalism fails to acknowledge and reward. This value is worth something. And that’s just one area in which capitalism’s non-freedom fails. There are many, many others.

So when a person says “People are perfectlyfree to produce goods and services others do not value” they're going along with a system that fails to acknowledge and compensate most real, obvious value humans create.

It's impossible to know in advance the value a human, sitting in his basement somewhere, doing whatever he is doing. It's better to assume value is there. He isgenerating value. You not seeing it doesn't mean it's not there.

Nor do you or can you know what he might someday do after sitting there. So you can’t assess that persons contribution value. Well, you can, but you’d be wrong. Unless you claim the value is intrinsically, inherently high. Which it is.

I know that person’s value is inherent.

When a person offers something having immense value (who they are), but value society (and by extension people paid money) doesn’t value it, they risk losing things they shouldn’t have to lose: resources they need to thrive.

Some have said “Coercing others to pay for goods and services that they do not wish to pay for is tyranny.” By extension this person also would say, "coercing others to support people doing nothing is tyranny."

I 100 percent agree with people who say this.

But I wouldn’t use the word “tyranny”.

It iscoercion. And no one should be coerced because everyone is inherently free and of value.

Here’s where I would use the word “tyranny”: That a person must find something immediately “valuable” to others to do, instead of what they are passionate about, so they can get their basic need. That is tyrannical.

As a result of that tyranny, many, many potential Picassos, Gateses, Jobses, Musks, etc. get lost to waitressing, garbage hauling, and Walmart. Or they become drug-addicted sufferers. Why? These people know they have value. But society doesn’t. Unless they contribute as a cog within a narrow band of capitalist value.

Otherwise, they're "drags on the system.”

I'm changing that.

The Goal: No One Having To Do Anything

You're free not to pay that street musician. However, just because NO ONE at the time may see value in what he is doing, doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be afforded the necessities while he hones his music to the point where people value it.

We can have a future wherein you aren’t obligated to do anything you don’t want to do.Including giving your money to someone because you think their contribution is worthless. While at the same time, that person you think is producing no value, is producing value. As such, they can receive all the necessities they need. And that’s done in a way that leaves you (and everyone else) free.

That’s freedom.

See the difference between that and today? This is why I say people aren't free in America.

Your freedom would be impinged upon if the musician or a third party forced you to reward that musician. That said, a world is possible that doesn’t force you or anyone else to pay the musician. YET, the musician is “paid” and still gets his needs met.

We (America and the world) CAN pay people to become the best of who they are, without taking anyone’s money who doesn’t want that to happen. And it can be easy.

Some things to think about:

If you don’t want your money used to pay people to become the best of who they are, and we install a system that pays people to do that, but it doesn’t use any of your money to do it, why do you care?Why would you resist that? You don’t have a dog in that fight.

If society can make it easier for people to become the best of who they are and contribute in the way some of our best have, without that costing you or anyone else, don’t you think it should? Everyone could contribute their value more quickly if not having to simultaneously earn a living. But more than that, struggling is unnecessary in the future. What do you have against eliminating earning a living, when it’s possible to do so?

That's where the future is going. Facebook's Hughes thinks only people working should get a basic income. He's still stuck in the poop stream. Yang's showering off the stench. He thinks every American should get $1000 a month unconditionally.

I agree.

It's a good start. But we'll go much farther. We have to. That's what the whole revolution is about.

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nancydhooper · 6 years

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Randazza: Trump, Twitter, The NFL, and Everything

By Marc J. Randazza

The NFL says that players must stand (or remain in the locker room) during the National Anthem. No more "taking a knee." In the same week, Trump lost a case that says that the "interactive space" in his tweets is a "public forum" and thus he can't block people who criticize him. And, perhaps I did too much LSD in the 80s and 90s, but I see the two as intertwined. The real problem we have is that freedom of expression is the crown jewel in the American enlightenment, but that jewel is tarnished by the fact that our public square is increasingly privately owned. Privatization of the "public square" threatens to render the First Amendment meaningless.

We gotta fix that – or the First Amendment will only really exist in a few tiny spaces — "free speech zones" surrounded (literally or figuratively) by fences to keep the nasty stuff inside.

The NFL

The whole "take a knee" thing needs little explanation. Starting in 2016, some NFL players protested racial inequality in policing by taking a knee during the national anthem before games. The protests began with San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick who initially sat during the anthem. He then had a talk with Nate Boyer, a veteran and former NFL player, who convinced him that sitting during the Anthem was disrespectful. However, the two agreed that taking a knee was a more reverent way to get the same message across.

Personally, I find the whole thing rather ineffective. Take a knee, don't take a knee. Nobody ever changed their mind about how cops behave or racism or anything over an NFL player taking a knee. But that isn't the test for whether the speech has value.

I may find the protest foolish, but I respect the hell out of Kaepernick for doing it. I support any player who wants to do it. If there's one thing that is supposed to differentiate the USA from the rest of the world, it is our purple-mountains-star-spangled commitment to freedom of expression. The second most patriotic thing we have is the National Football League.

Don't start with me with baseball, a boring ass adaptation of a crumpet-eating fairy-assed game from England that is primarily played by Dominicans. Basketball? Yeah, we invented it, but at its core it is a stupid game. Sure, we're the goddamn best at it, and unless we're playing it against the Croatians, we're going to win 101 times out of 100. The Canadians may have a "football league," but it would more appropriately be called the NFL's recycling bin. No other country even tries to compete with us in football. It is America's game. So it goddamn ought to reflect American values, as best it can.

Allowing protest and dissent ought to be ingrained at a chromosomal level if you think that you're amber-waves-of-grain entitled to wave the red, white, and blue.

So fuck the NFL for this policy.

And let me slap you across the face right now if you're starting with a comment like "well actually the NFL is a private employer, so it can have any policy it wants." This morning, I downed an entire mug of espresso, and 10 minutes later I took a huge shit that knows more about Constitutional law than you and your entire family ever will.

This isn't about what the NFL can do, it is about what it ought to do.

And dammit, the NFL ought to let its players take a fucking knee if they want to.

I will go get that shit out of the toilet and throw it at you, as if I were a caged chimp, if you start with the "oh, the NFL policy is just like Nazi Germany!" If that's your view, then correct it in the next 3 minutes, or you get sterilized when I am dictator. No, no, no, no, you fucking imbecile. Sure, Trump has expressed his view that you should "get out of America" if you don't stand for the anthem. That is a dumb-ass-moron position. But, it is hardly the government extending its hand down and pressing on the scale.

Do you think NFL players should shut up and do their job? Ok, fair enough. But, what makes you think that an NFL player can't be a voice of moral leadership? Remember Chris Kluwe? Back before it was cool to say you were in favor of gay rights, Kluwe had the balls to stand up and voice his support (I respected him for that). Did it matter? I think it did. Kluwe doesn't say much now, except for stalking articles about me, whining about who my clients are. Whatever, Kluwe, start shit with me and I'll just have my friend, Mercedes Carrera, intellectually kick your ass again.

But back to the subject at hand: If you think that the players ought to shut up and do their jobs and keep politics out of football, then lets try that.

No, lets really try that.

In 2015, Arizona Sens. Jeff Flake (R) and John McCain (R) revealed in a joint oversight report that nearly $5.4 million in taxpayer dollars had been paid out to 14 NFL teams between 2011 and 2014 to honor service members and put on elaborate, “patriotic salutes” to the military. Overall, they reported, “these displays of paid patriotism [were] included within the $6.8 million that the Department of Defense (DOD) [had] spent on sports marketing contracts since fiscal year 2012.” (source) (other source) (other source)

The NFL took millions of dollars in propaganda money from the military. So the WHOLE FUCKING THING is one big ball of political propaganda. At least the kneelers are honest and open about it. You fucking rubes who stand up during the anthem don't even remember that it wasn't even a thing until 2009. And, can someone remind me who was president during 2011 and 2014 when we were shoveling barrels full of taxpayer dollars into the pockets of billionaires to make sure that the uneducated slobs in the stands were sufficiently reminded of the message that "America" means bombing the living shit out of people thousands of miles away?

So lets put a pin in that… millions of taxpayer dollars flowing toward the NFL for propaganda purposes. And lets add in the billions that the NFL and its teams get in taxpayer subsidies.

Twitter (and all of Silicon Valley) – the New Censorship

After the 2016 election, the Left freaked the fuck out. Quite honestly, none of us thought Trump could be elected. And the morning after, the Trump derangement syndrome set in. Nowhere did it set in more heavily than in Silicon Valley. So, the platforms immediately got to work making sure that they did their part to ensure that we would have a "blue wave" washing away our sins. They got to work banning anyone perceived as "alt-right." It started with literal Nazis, and then it continued to those who might associate with them, to others who simply harbored conservative views. All of this was under the opaque guise of "safety."

It was all bullshit, and we all knew it. If you didn't know it, you were willfully blind.

I don't have a lot of love for Richard Spencer's speech. I don't even like Andrew Anglin's speech, and I'm his goddamn lawyer. I do like Milo Yiannopolous, but that's beside the point. The point is that they started with speakers that would be easy to ban — speakers who lots of people disliked. And they proved that there wasn't a goddamn thing we could do about it.

And very few people saw this as the alarming move that it was. But, as Twitter, Facebook, GoDaddy, PayPal, Stripe, etc. all got into line — shaving off a large percentage of right wing speech, the left cheered. Yay! Maybe we can win next time! Yay Resistance! Go fuck yourselves — you're not a member of any "resistance" unless you just might get captured or killed — and you're certainly not part of any "Resistance" when you control most of the new public square, and you use that virtually monopolistic power to shut down debate.

The fact is, Twitter, Facebook, and Google are the new public squares, and that gives them incredible power. And they are using that power exactly the way a power-drunk dictator would use it — to try and suppress speech they don't like. If you're on the Right, you bemoan. If you are on the Left, you're probably cheering it (just the opposite of the tribal alignment on the NFL issue). But, if you're on the Left and you're cheering it, you're also probably the kind of person who would let a rabid chimp out of its cage if you thought it would tear off your enemy's face — not realizing that it will also turn on you and rip your face off, and your balls, and then probably sodomize you as it ate the back of your head.

Because one day, the CEO of Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, or Google is going to want to run for president. And then, you fucking idiots, they'll have nothing stopping them from suppressing any and all speech that supports their opponents. You'll have the equivalent of Silvio Berlusconi buying power by owning all the private networks.

A few of us see this danger. That's why I volunteered to work on a case for Jared Taylor, suing Twitter for banning him. Twitter filed an Anti-SLAPP motion, and we just got our opposition in. (Complaint, Memo ISO Anti-SLAPP, Opposition to Anti-SLAPP). The case went pretty well so far – if you want to read the transcript, here it is. At least one judge found that the suit has some merit — at least enough to move forward.

Naturally, many have criticized the case — especially since there are many who find Section 230 to be something worthy of religious devotion.

Section 230, for the uninitiated, is a law that was passed during the Clinton administration, which gives Silicon Valley immunity from virtually all lawsuits based on content provided by others. This is why you can post something obviously defamatory on Twitter, and even if Twitter knows it is defamatory and knows it is harming you, it can, and will, say "Fuck you, See 47 U.S.C. § 230."

Now when the Silicon Valley giants said "Fuck you, Section 230" in the past, it at least had some semblance of philosophical honesty in it. Until recently, Silicon Valley loved freedom of speech. The whole promise of the Internet was that we were going to see an explosion of diversity of thought. For a brief period, we did. Some of it was awesome — and some of it was not. We got more porn, more humor, more political engagement, Mr. Spock Ate My Balls, and we also got racist websites, sexist websites, and every other kind of scoundrel online that we could think of. But, we all expected that the marketplace of ideas would flourish. I would like to say it did.

Then came 2016.

In the lead up to the election and in the aftermath of it, the Left lost its fucking mind. Campuses went into overdrive banning speech they didn't like, and Silicon Valley gleefully followed suit. And we on the Left, who once hated corporations and hated the control they might have had over the market, cheered. (I didn't, but as a Leftist myself, I have to accept guilt for my tribe's sins).

Might Trump's Thin Skin Save Us?

Trump is the first "Twitter President." It makes me want to bash my head into the wall to type those words, but here we are.

He got sued for blocking critics on Twitter, and much to my surprise, a judge in the Southern District of New York held that Twitter is a "public forum" — well, at least in part. You see, she couldn't bear to actually rule that Twitter is a new public forum. I think it is. My view is consistent with the old Pruneyard decision. Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins, 447 U.S. 74 (1980). In that case, since the California constitution has an affirmative right to free speech, it could be interpreted as requiring private property owners to allow petitioning on their property, if it is a public space. This decision is not without its detractors. If you're a private property rights guy, you might hate this decision — because it does force a private property owner to allow speech it doesn't like on its private property. But, I think that if free speech means anything, it can't simply be the victim of progress moving the town square to an enclosed shopping mall, or even online.

The judge in the Trump case held:

we consider whether forum doctrine can be appropriately applied to several aspects of the @realDonaldTrump account rather than the account as a whole: the content of the tweets sent, the timeline comprised of those tweets, the comment threads initiated by each of those tweets, and the “interactive space” associated with each tweet in which other users may directly interact with the content of the tweets by, for example, replying to, retweeting, or liking the tweet. (Op. @ 41)

She had to rule against Trump. So, she created a new "public forum" limited to the comment threads in public officials' twitter feeds.

I think her decision is open to attack. I could see a pretty clean "Twitter isn't a public forum" decision. I could also see "Twitter is a public forum." But, this half-way decision is bullshit. Lets look at it this way: Twitter bans you because you make fun of Leslie Jones' face. Now you're banned also from the "public forum" of your President's tweets. If we were to analogize it, lets say there was a public park, designated for free speech activities. We privatize the area you have to go through to get into the park. The company that owns that area you have to go through just lets anyone go in and out. But, one day they decide that they just don't want to let anyone in who has ever been a proponent of legalizing marijuana, or who claims that there is a "wage gap," or who supports "Black Lives Matter."

Hey, it is a private property owner. Tough shit if they won't let you on their property. The free speech zone is there for you if you can maybe teleport into it.

So, the Trump decision is, perhaps, the crack in the wall. But, that leaves us with the NFL, and it also leaves us with the possibility that the 2d Circuit throws out this intellectually dishonest decision.

We have the power to break this

So what the fuck do we do?

The First Amendment is a wonderful thing, but what happens if the government just decides to give away all its public spaces to corporations and individuals who support its views? Don't laugh… in San Diego, the government let a huge crucifix go up on public land in a clear establishment clause violation. Federal court ruled against the government, so the government "sold" the little circle of land that the cross was on to a private group. Private group then kept the cross up on its land. That was deemed constitutional by a three member panel of the 9th Circuit.

So how do we fix it?

How about the First Amendment restoration act?

"No private entity may receive any governmental funds nor receive any statutory immunity unless it agrees to be bound by the First Amendment as if it were a government actor."

Why not?

Imagine if the NFL had to choose between receiving taxpayer funds or allowing its players to exercise their First Amendment rights. Imagine if Facebook had to choose between Section 230 immunity and incorporating the First Amendment into its terms and conditions.

Imagine if the First Amendment got the shot in the arm that it desperately needs.

Are there problems to be worked out here? You bet. How would I apply this to the comments section here, at Popehat? Maybe that's a bit too small of an actor to be subject to this Act? I've run this by some smart people — one suggested having it only apply to any companies that might be publicly traded or federally or state regulated. That way we would have just the giants, banks, etc. That might work.

What is clear is that what we have now is a road toward disaster. Because these private constraints on public speech are getting worse, more opaque, and more restrictive — and if we don't do something soon, we won't ever be able to get a handle on it.

And then you'll be left with a First Amendment that only applies in the gazebo in your public park, on alternate Thursdays.

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