#just think its an aethetic choice:3

[cheeseli]

TV GIRL REF?!

The colours were completely different in my computer I dunno what happened here :')

[evilelitest2]

Do you know of any good resources on how and why Reagan won? He seemed to have a lot of resistance from the Republican old guard and all four of my grandparents absolutely despised him. But he somehow won with what sounded like was a very unpopular platform, and I don't understand exactly what happened.

I mean most electoral histories will have you covered, are you looking from a cultural perspective or an electoral perspective, or just a general overview of the 1980 election?  Personally I recommend the book “Backlash” on the larger reactionary movement of the 80s which is in no way relevant today...

But in short there are many reasons why Reagan won, many of them depressing familiar today

1) Ronald Reagan was an actor and was a really charismatic speaker, specifically he was very good at seeming friendly, approachable and non condescending.  It was extremely easy to understand Reagan’s message if you weren’t paying attention and he didn’t seem like some sort of elite who understood policies or knew where Cambodia was on a map, because he didn’t either.  With the possible exceptions of JFK, and OBama, Reagan is likely the most charismatic president in the last century and that makes a big difference in the election

2) Jimmy Carter was a bit of a mess.  I love Carter and I think he is one of the most moral people to ever be president (judging on a scale) but...his administration was extremely chaotic, inept, and really bad at messaging.  

3) Reagan cheated.  At his most famous debate with Carter, it turns out Reagan’s team had actaully managed to get Carter’s debate plans before hand, so Reagan knew exactly what Carter was going to say which is why Reagan seemed so invincible in the debate

4) The Economy.  Due to a wide variety of reasons including but not limited too the fallout of the Vietnam War, the OPEC oil crisis, the natural eb and flow of the market, and the failure of Kenysian economics meant that when the 1980 election was happening, America was in a pretty bad economic place.  Unemployment was high, inflation was spiraling and for many white people it was the first time they had ever experienced an economic downturn

This wasn’t really Carter’s fault, just like the economic boom in the 80s wasn’t really Reagan’s fault (though the initial crash certainly was) but that is how it was perceived.

5) The Failure of Kenysian Economics.  Now when I say “failure” i don’t actually mean “this is a bad system” Kenysan economics got us out of the Great Depression after all and lead to the largest economic boom in US history.  However they aren’t the end all, especially when politicians running things don’t really understand what they are doing.  So while they aren’t nearly as awful as the Free market economics that would follow, people were becoming disillusioned with the prior economic model

6) Vietnam.  Oh dear god Vietnam.  Reagan would be the first president who didn’t preside over Vietnam in any way, which meant he wasn’t tainted by the total fuck up that was that war.  America was still reeling from losing our first major war to a small nation that nobody had heard off before they started to kick our ass, and the battle over Vietnam has basically torn the country apart.  A huge amount of people felt pissed and humiliated over the defeat, and rather than question why we went to war or the morality of our tactics, blamed protesters and leftists for not supporting the war enough, a stabbed in the back myth if you will.  Also Vietnam was a Democrat fuck up, Republicans weren’t in power when it started under JFK and LBG, who collectively created the horrific circumstances of the war.  The republicans who oversaw it were the comparatively (to Reagan) more ‘moderates” of Nixon and Ford.  So American both felt humiliated and weak from looking a major war to a people we saw as inferior and was blaming everything associated with the left for it.  Reagan’s “Make America Great Again” message was extremely attractive to a lot of people, and since he didn’t have anything to do with the war, you couldn’t blame him for its failure.  

7) The Soviet Union.  The presence of the USSR hung over every US election since Woodrow Wilson, but after Vietnam a lot of Americans felt like the USSR was winning.  This was ironically utterly untrue as the Soviet Union would collapse only 11 years later, but the perception in America was that the US had been defeated by COMMUNISM and needed to get our groove back for round II.  And Reagan was by far the most aggressively confrontational anti Communist president we have had since FDR, so much so that he accidentally almost triggered a nuclear war and destroyed all of civilizations...whoops.  But that is what American wanted back then

8) The rise of the religious right.  For most of the 20th century, while religion was certainly a thing which effected politics, the US political landscape was largely secular, religion being evoked more than it made its own demands.  But due to rise of the Counter Culture movement, religious folks sort of went into panic mode and suddenly conservative fundamentalist Christianity was one the rise.  And Reagan embraced them 100%, leading to the fundementalist cancer that lives with us to this day

9) The death of the Counterculture.  At the exact same time as the Religious Right came into power, the group it was opposing had largely collapsed.  I mentioned this before when talking about the civil Rights movement, but once overt legal segregation had been outlawed, what was left were the far more serious, complicated and unclear problems, which lead to a lot of hippies burning out, falling into infighting, declaring victory and going home, or turning to more radical and largely ineffectual approaches.  And since so much of the counter culture was linked to to its fashion and aethetic, as the Hippie style/music/clothing/demeanor became lame and uncool, the causes behind them were seen as uncool as well.  Also the most dedicated leftists quickly turned to auto cannibalism and spent more time fighting each other rather than focusing on their enemy a dynamic which the left can always be counted on (cough what happened to Counterpoints cough) 

10) The larger cultural backlash.  America as a whole was feeling threaten by the left, and by extention the progressive made for women, racial minorities, and sexual minorities, and was pushing back against them.  The 60s and 70s was a moment of sudden shocking change which took the old guard by surprise and they didn’t know what to do, but once the left had burned themselves out a bit, the Right was able to reorganize, refocus their efforts, and remake their arguments to reassert the oppressive systems they so valued.  And for a lot of Americans who were passively bigoted, the incredibly fast pace of change got them scared and they sought comfort in the return of the familiar.  Again Reagan wasn’t just an actor, he was a cowboy actor from shitty kitch family films.  And as we’ve seen before in terms of Whitelash or Male Fragility, fear of losing privilege can get people to vote against their own interest (cough union workers cough)

11) America was facing a big choice.  After WWII, we were basically the only major nation with a good economy, which we were able to turn into a great economy, and had an over 20 year post war high.  But other nations started to compete with us (most notably Japan) and our status as the singular nation started to be threatened by the EU, India, China, Latin America, and our own changing history.  For the first time, Americans started to realize that maybe, not right away, but eventually, we would just be one nation among many again, rather than the only superpower.   Simultaneous, the threat of Climate change first started to be noticed, and Americans started to realize that maybe we should tone down the materialism, the consumerism, and the reliance on fossile fuels.  Carter infamously wore sweaters in the white house to save on gas and put solar panels on the roof, which was seen by many Americans (idiots) as weakness.  

Basically we had a choice, we could either 

A) Prepare our nation for the transformation period we were going for, and slowly start to move off oil as our economy changed and we had to make adjustments for it 

or

B) FUCK THAT.  THIS IS AMERICA AND WE DON”T COMPROMISE FOR ANYTHING.  YOU KNOW WHAT...LETS BE EVEN MORE RECKLESS

Americans were asked to choose between accepting an uncomfortable reality or embracing a comforting delusion.  

12) The Iran Hostage crisis.  This made Carter look weak internationally and everybody knows that America looking weak is worth destroying our own internal economy.  

13) The Democrats were in the middle of a civil war.  The Civil Rights movement and the Great Society had torn the democrats apart which means Carter was never really able to get his own party to obey him like the Republicans did.  WHats worse is that the aftereffect of the Vietnam War had basically crippled LBJ’s Great Society Program, meaning the Democrats were really chaotic

14) Finally, it is important to remember, the Democrats had held power from 1932 all the way to 1980s, the US was kind of a single party state for most of the century, and a lot of people were pretty sick of them.  Corruption, incompetence and hypocrisy are around in every party and the democratic congress in particular was widely hated, so the Republicans felt like this new exciting thing, something which could maybe bring a new era in America.  “Its morning in America”

And of course, Reagan was in many ways what white America wants, a giant self congratulatory message that lets us avoid dealing with real issues....

[impossibleleaf]

Clueing for looks

Season 3 and season 4 in a nutshell.

I think that we can widely agree on one thing: Sherlock is slow. Like, Mary and he admit it in HLV and TST respectively. We are shown something but what we see says the complete opposite.

"Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts." ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

I think that by the later half of HLV, Sherlock is twisting facts, knowingly or not, to suit his theory.

The detective work is to disregard his rambling and to watch with a critical eye what is presented in front of us. Only by confronting his deductions with the facts will we be able to consider the veracity of what he’s saying.

In this post, we will only focus on HLV. S4 will be for another times.

Several points will be adressed:

How did she get in Magnussen’s office?

What happened when she came?

Did Mary save Sherlock?

1. How did she get in Magnussen’s office?

Long story short, we don’t know. Sherlock doesn’t even try to tell us how she did it. We don’t even know how she knew Magnussen would be there. She was on sex holidays, remember? How did she know Magnussen would be here if that was a spur in the moment thing?

If that is indeed a spur in the moment thing, that means luck and most importantly, no planning. She couldn’t know if he’ll leave before she enters the office.

We’ve got the script of course but...

His eyes, raking round the room, details pinging at him - then one of the windows, the curtains blowing. He steps over, pulls the curtain back. The window is open, a giddy view over London. Someone has climbed in!! He looks down, the plunging drop, the cliff face of glass and steel. How the hell ... ?? A word now floats on the screen ... GYMNAST.

So she pulled a spider like in TBB? Then why did they decide to remove it? The GYMNAST deduction would have made us actually believe that it was Lady Smallwood. But this script is full of contradiction in itself and if we take a look at the set...

No curtain, no broken glass and more importantly, unlike this moment-

I don’t see how anyone could open any window. The windows are an aethetic choice in HLV, there is no visible way to open them.

So what can we conclude with what little intel we have?

There is no obvious way to enter the room other than the normal way aka the door.

2. What happened when she came?

The seat is warm and Sherlock deduces Magnussen was sitting on it. But if Mary had come, knocked Janine and his security guard, I’m pretty much sure he would have knocked the seat over in a hurry to escape. But no, everything is in its proper place. If Magnussen really wanted to escape Mary, he would have turned his seat not in the direction of the unconcious security guard (and as such a Mary attacking him) but on the opposite direction.

Mary completely went to Magnussen’s chair but the configuration implies that it probably wasn’t him. The only logical conclusion to draw is that she was sitting on it.

3. Did Mary ‘save’ Sherlock?

JOHN: I phoned the ambulance.

SHERLOCK: She phoned first.

Here, a little breakdown.

We loose sight of Magnussen for a moment, it doesn’t take a genius to assume he is trying to reach something while Mary isn’t looking. What else can it be but his phone that is right at his left?

Now, in the ‘totally fake because if it’s true then Mary is evil and killed me’ we have the little beauty:

Magnussen was totally reaching for his phone

And there was light coming from his phone because it calling someone. If this is 100% fake, a simple retelling of false facts there is no reason to do this. 

But if we assume that this is the “true” version:

Magussen is still reaching for his phone. This part doesn’t change, he is still doing the same thing and even if we can’t see his phone at the same moment there was light we have no reason to think this would have changed. The queer thing would be that Magnussen somehow changed what he’s doing.

Now, who could he be calling? Pizza Geronimo? At the point, only two options are viable: the police for his own murder or an ambulance in hope that’ll save him. 

Magnussen phoned the ambulance. We have evidence at the very least that’s what he is doing. If we assume that the rest is true, Mary took a phone that was already calling the ambulance.

He even has very good reasons to do so:

If he wants to use Sherlock Holmes as one of his pawns for his chain of pressure points (and own Mycroft), Sherlock is not allowed to die. Magnussen must make sure that he survives;

there is no way for him at this point to know he isn’t the one about to get shot. If he wants to survive he must maximize his chances to survive a shooting, like making sure an ambulance wins a few precious minutes to bring whoever is shot in the hospital.

The question then is this: did Mary tell the operator what happened or did she end the call?

First version shows that Mary has no phone in hand. It’s only when John points out the whole ‘phoning the ambulance’ that he mentions the call.

Except she’s just taken the phone and she has already an operator. She’s not even composing 999, you already hear the dialing, which means that someone has already composed the numbers and pressed the green button.

You also never see her bringing the phone to her head, considering how she’s even holding it and seems to intently look at it, if time was against them, she would hurry. But no.

At that point, if we trust nothing but our eyes and stop listening to Sherlock and use our heads, everything points out that Magnussen phoned the ambulance and Mary ended the call.

Either you accept considering the facts at hand that the probability that Mary didn’t phone the ambulance exists and is strong, or you acknowledge that we have a faulty retelling of what happened and, in this case, everything including Sherlock’s speech about Mary saving his life falls apart. The whole ‘Mary saves my life’ story has no basis and no leg to stand on.

CONCLUSION:

At the point we’re in, not only do we have to acknowledge that Sherlock’s retelling of events is faulty, we are forced to acknowledge at minimum that the opposite is extremely more likely.