#we live in a corporate fascism anyways

[nerdpoe]

if companies want you to have a bachelors so bad when you're already qualified via experience for a job, they should be willing to shell out to pay for that bachelors.

[transmutationisms]

i just read Against Exercise. i wanted to ask what you make of this sentence and the wider paradigm he gestures at occasionally in the essay:

Upon the desperate materialist gratifications of a hedonic society, commanding immediate comfort and happiness, we engraft the desperate economics of health, and chase a longer span of happinesses deferred, and comforts delayed, by disposing of the better portion of our lives in life preservation.

do we live in a ‘hedonic’ society? and does that framing shape his conclusions on in ur opinion? i have my own thoughts but am interested in yours x

ok i'm glad you asked because i find this sentence and this paradigm very irritating lol. i don't think he's the only left-ish thinker who's acceded to this type of framing (like i've complained about mark fisher pulling a similar move) but with greif there's a particular irksomeness to it because, even in the sentence you've quoted, we can see in the latter half how he contradicts his own idea of a "hedonic society"! if his thesis here is something like "the dominant cultural paradigm encourages instant gratification and hedonism, and the exerciser defies this edict by deferring their happiness and sweating it out at the gym instead" then, like, the obvious question here is, where does the impulse of the exerciser come from? does greif actually think the pursuit of fitness and longevity by physical exertion is some kind of counter-cultural move that reacts against, without acceding to, the demands of a "hedonic society"? if he does then it kind of undercuts the significance of the entire rest of the essay, lmao.

my personal answer here would be—and this is something greif dances around a few times but doesn't ever seem prepared to fully unpack—that the demand to have a fit and 'healthy' and long-lasting body is not at all contradictory to the demand to consume goods, and that this latter is more precisely what is meant by "hedonism" here if we are to use it in any useful sense. i think what greif is actually pointing to is the demand to shape oneself into, simultaneously, a valuable worker and an obedient consumer. in an immediate sense these two goals demand different things (say, 'going for a run' vs 'buying products') but on a more thorough analysis we can easily see how they arise from the same fundamental logic of profit-seeking. body fascism has never been just an aesthetic; what it promises to the state and the corporation is a population that is biologically managed and economically exploitable. i think this is true even in an imperialist economy like the united states that doesn't run primarily on production/export.

i don't know a ton about mark greif biographically but my impression is that he's kind of half-left at best, lol. certainly he's like, curmudgeonly in a way that is sometimes useful to mine (ruthless criticism of all that exists, &c) but i think in this essay and others we can clearly see how easily that attitude can slide into just a vaguely reactionary position when it lacks materialist analysis. like, frankly i think if we lived in a social context that actually had a commitment to ensuring hedonic pleasure that would probably be a better world. it's kind of similar to when lib-left types try to claim that we live in a world that has any serious degree of commitment to "the individual" when what they actually, usually mean is that we've been massified in a way that denies us social connection and material support from one another.

anyway: 'against exercise' was very mind-blowing to me when i first read it and i love to see someone staking out that position seriously; and there are elements of greif's analysis i think can be useful in an actually communist analysis. but i find a lot of cultural criticism (specifically that positions itself as counter-cultural without being explicitly communist) has a risk of just sliding reactionary, and i think this half-baked idea of a "hedonic society" is an example of that happening. curious what you think though!

[qqueenofhades]

Hi! Do you think there is a reason for this surge of success of right wing politicians and parties all around the world? Russia, USA, France, Italy, Tories in Britain… The strangest part is that I don’t think that that is what people want, it’s just happens. Weird.

Welp. I would be careful of saying that it's not what people want, because despite their prompt attempts to dismember and sabotage it for everyone else, most of the current crop of right-wing authoritarian semi-fascists came to power through democratic elections. I think there's a tendency among people who spend a lot of time in liberal online spaces to think that this is just an aberration or a result of just a few stupid people, instead of looking at how deeply the tendencies to authoritarianism, theocracy, and fascism are rooted in the human race at a primal level and have been for a very, very long time.

The unsettling truth is that a shocking amount of people are ready to accept far-right social attitudes and policies, as long as they are (or feel like they are, because they have been fed 40 years' worth of the noxious myth that Conservatives Are Good For The Economy!!) economically or financially stable. Of course, the fact that the conservative position on economics consists singularly of "give tax breaks to rich people and big corporations and make everyone else suffer" represents the success of this brainwashing, because your average person is still convinced that liberal/Democratic governments Spend Too Much Money On Things. By this, they often mean "programs that might help people who aren't white," because there is (surprise surprise) a HUGE amount of racism, white grievance, and white supremacy tied up in all this. Even the white people who would likewise benefit from Democratic policies won't vote for them as long as Democrats insist on helping non-white people too. That was literally the rationale cited in the attempts to stop Biden's student debt relief plan, which has temporarily succeeded because we live in a hellscape.

Anyway, when people feel existentially threatened, they tend to turn to strongman leaders who promise they can fix everything and easily identify the convenient Other who is to blame. This is one of humanity's oldest and worst collective habits and has never been kicked, despite the despair of historians like yours truly. The entire post-9/11 world is built on a sense of existential threat for the West that replaced the existential threat of the Cold War, and now we have plagues, economic crashes, wars, etc etc. Even if these factors are often the direct and deliberate result of right-wing authoritarianism, they are able to keep electorates swallowing the poisonous lie that it's those dirty liberals to blame and they are the only ones who can fix it, and that's why we are now in the exceptionally dangerous position that we are.

[seventyfishes]

Amerikan fascism

Fascism is here moment... but George Jackson i think correctly identifies the victory of the fascist-corporativist movement in the 1930s with the defeat of the organized communist and socialist parties (including the targeted assassinations of revolutionaries, disappearances... classic stuff). Including really innovative and dynamic social organizations, like the Communist Party in Alabama. "The movement's very existence validates literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin's observation that a culture is not static but open, 'capable of death and renewal, transcending itself, that is exceeding its own boundaries'". Fascism has been here a long time, and it changes its face all the time...

In the 30s there was a failed & small revolutionary tendency that was snuffed out; and capitalism, through its actors the ruling class, senses organized dissent and the potential awakening of the masses and contracts into a fascistic form (monopoly capitalism & person corporations). However, this is kind of second to the fact that there was actually organized dissent and some mounting mass consciousness... I keep going back and forth here but Blood in My Eye is reminding me that we are dealing with an extremely calcified system of economic and political domination.

But again, fascism is grafted onto hate already extant; there's something emotional necessary for capitalism to function... and white racial hatred is the mechanism Amerikan fascism employs. Jackson argues fascism employs science in order to combat scientific socialism. (Marx is a scientist people... as is Lenin... all great philosophers are scientists...). He means that more like in tactics, a la Mussolini bringing the cadre system to il fascio, but its also kind of literalized in the history of racial/ized science. There were KKK marches on the capitol in the 20s, and a rise of eugenics. A white socialists in Alabama in 1905 argued against the struggle against race & class on the basis that white people in Alabama were surrounded by "some eight millions of more or less civilized people, belonging to a race in a stage of evolution so far removed from our own that for aught we can see at present, assimilation must be impossible for an indefinite period." And the ruling class of Amerika really bought into that evolution shit as proof of concept of their own superiority, the inferiority of who they oppress...

Anyway fascism is so deeply embedded in our lives. That life, the life fascism dictates all but the elites have, is becoming more painful to a lot of people now, as it changes our ways in major forms. We are almost no longer required to believe we live in a participatory democracy; the mask of fascism is now fascism itself.

[muted5ilence]

Do you wonder if the rising prices and shitty economic and political and societal and environmental stuff as a whole is kind of just to do

Erm

I dont know terms well enough, but…

Weaken everyone who can’t afford it so only the elite few survive selfishly?

If you are weak you will eventually die off

If you are weak you wouldn’t be able to fight back

But this is why a bundle of sticks is so strong compaeed to a single stick.

But they’re making sure that bundles cant form. And even if we could, they use growing technology and destroying those sticks from the inside out to ensure those bundles can be broken. Every time. Without fail.

The longer it goes on, one of two things happens. One day these twigs will finally piece themselves together, and be able to overpower the technology that breaks them repeatedly

Or they all die, rot in the ground, to be consumed by the fungi and such that take the decay to keep themselves and their interconnected web alive.

Like the whole deal with capitalism at this point (which is why I’ve liked other ideals a little more when its combined for the BETTER) is that you take advantage of others for your own gain. Be unique enough to be successful to survive, but be smart enough to abuse those that are not smart enough. Eventually it perpetuates a cycle of stupider and stupider people, weaker and weaker, more compliant and complacent. That’s what work has always been, afterall. Which is what school was meant to teach. It teaches you to be compliant, to obey, to work and toil away with your life for meaningless grades until you die. The teachers dont benefit much beyond their meager pay. Students dont benefit because the system actively DENIES what they need to learn to FUNCTION. The only beneficiaries are the ones above ALL of them. The government and corporate entities that feed off of those stupid drones. Teachers, like many workers, are NOT paid enough to actually care, and are stuck being unable to do anything. If they tried to change things or speak out or do anything that might be considered manipulating the kids to believe smth specific, anything to get people to care, they could get fired and lose their lifeline. So they’re stuck in complying in order to survive.

This should not be how a society functions EVER, but it’s the BARE BONES ENDLESS CYCLE. Wars, revolution, etc etc. Every dystopia has this. I am reminded of the promised neverland.

We shouldn’t have to feel like we need to fight back against oppressors. You always root for the underdog because that’s literally how it works in society anyways.

I’m getting mixed up in my train of thought, hard to focus, but my point still stands. Flowers blooming in antarctica had made me break down over life. I want to die but I know I can’t. I can’t kill myself or let myself die. I care too much, I think. I can’t really tell inside my head, but I think some part of me (could be survival instinct, could be smth else) is just too stubborn. I can’t NOT have hope for the future!!! I can’t!!

I can’t stop myself from hoping things will be okay in the end, which is the only reason I can’t die. Because I need to live to see better days again. Despite the objective fact that there may never be better days in all senses.

Society sucks because people are just… selfish, close-minded, and disrespectful? Like in general? All things that have likely been cultivated BY the whole capitalist system.

Politics sucks because it became capitalist. And considering the whole Palestine genocide, I am pretty sure that capitalism is just as bad if not worse than communism at this point. Could be fascism but like I said before, I’m not great with terms. But its colonialism, too. Politics sucks because it’s ran by the elderly usually, or by idiots. I stand by statements I’ve made that experts should be the ones in charge. People who have done the research, have the knowledge, who care about it actively and always, SHOULD BE THE ONES IN CHARGE OF THOSE THINGS.

It kinda bleeds into the whole mental health issues that happen, because you have people who aren’t professionals saying that people dont have any issues. Inherently, those people must have issues of their own. But they have to be out of touch or selfish or close minded (which ig is related to out of touch) BUT ESPECIALLY disrespectful to do such things. And the only ones who can actively make things RIGHT with the people who HAVE the problems, say it with me… ARE PROFESSIONALS!!

Professionals, being people who were interested in the topic, did the research, learned the skills and have the knowledge, and actively care.

You are not a professional if you do not care. Then it’s just a profession. You are simply a worker at that point.

We are led by idiots. Not professionals. Perhaps professional politicians. But that just means professionals at looking good and appealing to others. Professional actors. Actors should not get that seat of power. You cannot act your way out of your genuine beliefs and behaviors—or even lack thereof. The fate of society should NOT be determined by a popularity contest, but even in school that’s promoted!!

I stand by my belief. Professionals in the specific fields of study should be in charge, and not the ones who haven’t done the research or put in enough work (like they insist the newer generations should do). This is an idealized and general series of statements from someone who doesn’t have in-depth knowledge of language: Historians should probably be in office in the way that they could be advisors. They know what has happened, how it happened, how it affects things, and how it should be avoided. Economists should probably be the ones in charge of how the economy goes, even though I’m sure they work more like commentators. I think just in general that a whole advisory council should be made of professionals. And you need someone who knows how to listen and critically think, who cares about society as a whole, to run the country if we follow a similar structure. Traditional checks and balances are not working!!!

I was told by my U.S. History teacher, a male history teacher that I enjoyed for the time I had him (before covid hit): Normal people should be running this country. But they wouldn’t want to.

It’s so fucking true, too. But like… have a council. Of professionals. Professionals IMPLYING that they care. Not workers. Workers leads to compliance, complacency. To a damn salary.

Have people who actively research things and always want to learn and keep up with those specific things, be in charge of those things!! They know more! And it should be because they fucking CARE!

If you want this stupid structure to work, with a president, then a qualifier should NOT be age. Obviously boomers are fucking stupid anyways at this point because they’re out of touch, stuck in the past. You need an open-minded individual, who actually has a heart, that can make the right decisions! Especially in times of crisis.

Please. Let it be that people who are stronger than I am are able to fight for these things. Fight for the good causes.

I’m not mentally, physically, nor emotionally strong enough for this. I’ve been sheltered. I’m cursed with so many mental issues from trauma and abuse and likely the ways my brain wouldve been structured anyways. I could never progress at the fast pace that is expected. And I am not strong enough to fight like I wish I could.

I am simply a dreamer. Someone that has been left isolated for so long that I can only think. About nothing, about everything. And I wish I could lose hope, that I could kill myself, but I can’t. I’m a coward, always have been. I could never set myself free in rebellion to fight. I would get killed by someone sent to do so. And you would lose another human life. Insignificant only when you consider humans as stock, a number in a category. But every individual matters, I promise you. I don’t do much, but I’d like to be a person who supplies hope.

(Seriousness aside, I’ve literally been called an “emotional support creature /aff”, and a “perfect friend”, so I am completely fine with this support role.)

Please… Let there be people who can understand such messages, and who are stronger than me. Because power has always mattered in societies. Don’t let money = power in the end. Money can change, because that’s what is valued in exchange. It’s all bartering. Please, do not let cotton and paper have a higher value than that of human lives. Houses have a higher value than human lives do in the current economic state. The VALUE placed on HUMANS and THEIR POTENTIAL should NOT be LESS than that of the OBJECTS MADE BY HUMANS

Break this system down. Make it bad for business if thats what they care about. And once one thing ends, dont stop. Keep forcing their hand. Make sure that the corrupt system used to overpower us is unable to do so. If you recognize they are making advancements to increase force used, I see no reason that we couldn’t do the same. Dont play games. Its not a game. It’s life. They will see it as a game because they are winning, they made the little game with a handicap in thei favor. Turn the tables. Treat them like a game. Show them it’s more than that. Show them that it is good to care. That they dont care, and they should.

Ideally no mass self-destruction lmao, ik they need workers to supply themselves and we are the workers, so dying would mean no more supply, but they have technology on their side as time goes on, so they still dont care.

You have to make sure they CARE. CARE can do good.

Have hope for a better future where people care. Dont stop caring. If you stop caring, you comply. If you comply, you die. Hope fosters care. Have hope. If you lose hope, you cant care, and that is quite literally why suicide rates get so high, isn’t it? A hopeless situation?

That is my message. My belief. And I have certain beliefs I will always hold. They are what keep me from killing myself, afterall.

Let Hope foster Care to work with Action to bring Change.

Its the ideal family system (/hj).

[whalleyrulz]

it is so frustrating to me how many people keep missing the very specific criticism of mattel and Straight Feminism within the barbie movie

i know it had to be kind of subtle about it to get past corporate brand approval but i keep seeing SMART people miss it

barbie spoilers below the fold

so the movie is like. super critical of gender essentialism and gender prioritization in societies. it's pretty blunt about it

one of the first things it does is show "hey all barbies are super happy but in this society that caters only to barbies, it sucks to be an aware ken, because life is shitty when you're not the Right Gender. we then see that there's a barbie that doesn't perform gender the Right Way, and she's also excluded from society and not allowed to be a part of things, only useful when people want a Weirdo, and everyone's aware they're treating her like shit as they explicitly address this. barbie also feels awful living in this society. addressing this makes her an outsider.

we then go to the real world where barbie learns oh shit, it sucks when you're not the Dominant Gender. ken gets excited because holy shit, a place where i can be valued, through the only lens i have been taught. during ken's learning of the patriarchy, we cut directly to a girl who, much like weirdo barbie, rejects gender norms and fitting into the gender essentialist cult. she directly calls barbie a fascist. this is correct. barbie is a gender fascist.

cut from there back to barbie land, where the patriarchy has taken over because nobody's been taught shit about equality, and it's making everyone upset. partially because the patriarchy just sucks, and partially because nobody fuckin wants this. we also meet more people who're siding with weirdo barbie, aka the only person who wasn't brainwashed by the new school of gender fascism. they're all queer coded. they all hate this. an alan points out alans have run away from this before. by "this" he means "a gender essentialist society" because the kens have never risen up like this. barbie is taught that it's actually okay to not fit in.

and then we come to the big finale, the big closer, and as the audience, we've been shown three times QUITE DIRECTLY that gender essentialist thought and a monogendered ruling system sucks and makes people feel bad. it's not a good way to live. for anybody. and what happens?

barbie, after basically being crowned the voice of mattel and gender essentialist feminism, says "i saw how inequality sucked, and actually the system where i'm on top is best." there's direct and blatant lines about how the kens want some degree of equality but that would get in the way of barbies having ultra fascist power. the weirdo barbie ends the movie saying "fine i mean call me what you will." the queerdo outcasts are sent back to the shadows. and barbie chooses the "Power of the Vagina," despite the movie showing that trans barbies exist, despite the movie joking that genitals don't matter, and she IMMEDIATELY has to go and see a doctor about it

like

it makes this point in such a blatantly cinematic rule of threes it can't be an accident

the barbie movie outright says that gender essentialist societies are Bad, and that mattel as a corporation is Fine with it, and that the mainstream brand of feminism that only accepts femme women as women is Fine with it, and that this is a problem that harms everyone

and yet every critical take i see is either "the barbie movie supports a shallow version of feminism" or "the barbie movie hates men"

i feel like i'm taking crazy pills or like i saw a different movie to the mainstream or something

anyway

barbie's such a good movie

[nokingsonlyfooles]

You know what's super fun for me? Annoying established, evil corporate producers of content and elevating smaller, less-evil, independent creators. So say hello to Brigitte Empire, who is fleeing the UK like I fled the US and could use your clicks (and engagement, and currency.

And while I have your attention,

Would you like to have a little chat about how and why the Right appropriates the language of the Left, hoping to render it meaningless?

What even is fascism, anyways? Well, right in that Wikipedia article, they quote Ian Kershaw, who says:

"Trying to define 'fascism' is like trying to nail jelly to the wall."

For those of you in the New World, he means "Jello." I call that "Jello," although it would be equally difficult to nail what I call "jelly" to a wall.

Holy cow, we can't even decide what "jelly" means, how in the hell are we going to define an endlessly-adaptable right-wing reactionary movement? A scary word with no meaning is basically a real-life fnord. Is there any point in trying to get people like that Other Author to understand that trans folks and Nazis are not roughly equivalent just because they'd all rather not be punched for expressing themselves? Isn't everyone's own, personal "fascism" equally valid?

No.

Do you know what a robin is? Would it surprise you to know that "robins" in Japan, Europe, and the New World are actually three different species of small, brown, red-breasted bird? The word predates DNA testing, it's just something we called birds that looked robin-y. And if someone says "I saw a robin," no matter the continent, you know about what it looks like.

That's your man, officer! I'd know him anywhere!

...er, and so is he.

..You know what? Fuck you.

You have a Platonic ideal of "robin" somewhere in the filing cabinet of your mind, and if the bird you have encountered seems close enough (unless you are an experienced bird analyst) it goes in the same file.

This also works for images and representative language. "Oh, J. K. Rowling has eaten a robin?" you might say. Even if you only read the words on Twitter and never saw the bird die, you know approximately what that would look like. "Well, I wouldn't put it past her," you'd decide. "Was the robin trans?"

Robins are gender apathetic. I am not accepting rational objections on this. I will fight you.

Despite the anxiety of conservatives and others who want everything to fit in a neat little box, that's just how language and the human mind works. It's blurry, inexact, and defining the nuances requires endless discussion. However, if this guy showed up at your bird feeder...

...you would not communicate this information to a friend by saying, "I saw a robin."

Similarly, one would not ordinarily respond to an image such as this one...

...by saying, "Look! Death-Eaters!" That is so far from the blurry definition you have in your brain, there is just no question about it.

So what has happened to the brain of the lauded, best-selling author who makes a living communicating information with representative language?

Well, this isn't a unique phenomenon. This is a calculated political strategy, much like firing a bunch of chaff out of the back of a bomber to foul up the radar. In order to get away with doing really bad things and not get called out on them, the Right likes to target the language we use to call them out and render it meaningless. They may do so by zooming in so much that you brain gets bogged down in the minutia and begins to wonder if anything is a robin, or by zooming out so much and including so many vaguely-similar things that you begin to wonder if everything might be a robin.

The end goal is to disrupt society's Platonic image of a robin to such an extent that nothing is a robin. A "robin" can become some kind of political construct with vastly different meanings among an incredibly polarized electorate. You may define it in lock step with however the authority figures you favour define it, in order to signal your allegiance. So when the T-Rex visits your birdfeeder again and you yell to your visiting family, "Run! It's a carnivorous dinosaur!" your racist aunt and uncle will stand stock-still in the middle of the yard and say, "Well, actually, it's a harmless little brown bird, and you libs are just... AAH! OH, GOD. HE'S EATING US! WHY?"

...but that's not usually how it shakes out. If conservatives got instant karma like that, there wouldn't be any conservatives. Our modern-day dinosaurs don't have to eat people, they eat power.

What actually happens is, your racist aunt and uncle show up to Thanksgiving with an AR-15 and mow down all the robins in your yard, because those dinosaurs are dangerous and they eat people. Then they vote in as many T-rexes as possible, to fight the menacing little brown birds. And if the T-Rexes should happen to nom a few of your little cousins, or take a limb off your aunt or uncle, all they have to do is blame the birds. It's super effective!

Get a human concept of gender, you little freak!

I can't tell you if Rowling is selling a meaningless, over-broad definition of "fascism" because she bought the lie, or because she cynically expects to profit from it, but it doesn't really matter. The ball is in play, and you're gonna get clocked in the head with it if you don't pay attention.

One of many items on the current conservative agenda is: Redefine "fascism" out of existence so we can call for genocides without getting compared to the Nazis all the time. Rowling is towing the party line by zooming out. A fascist movement, like the Death-Eaters, can include people who are tired of operating in secret and want to openly participate in society. It can include people saying that something you find horrifying and wrong is just normal and should be accepted. If those aspects of a political movement are inherently wrong (as fascism is), we don't have to make moral judgments about what those people want or who they are, they're just wrong. It doesn't matter whether they want life-saving medicine or to murder an entire culture - these things are equally bad because good people don't do fascism!

...And a billionaire author with multiple theme parks and a castle is doing a good thing by fighting the fascists. Even the children! Well, they're probably not fascists, they're children, they're just confused. They'll get better if we don't let them have fascist medicine, or pronouns, or bathroom access. Or they'll die, but that's not our fault. It's just those damn false-robins trying to confuse you too.

It feels good to be a persecuted underdog fighting for human rights, doesn't it? Conservatives love it too. In order to be included, they have to rip up the standard definitions of "persecuted," "underdog," "fighting," and "human rights," but it can be done. Language evolves - that's not a bug, it's a feature. Anything that evolves can be bred to a purpose, and you gotta take a step back and make a moral judgment of what that purpose is.

We bred these for bloodsports in the first place, we do not need more of them! They can barely breathe and they can only be born via caesarian! For god's sake, adopt yourself a hybrid or a mutt... Like "Latinx!" (I'm a sucker for the runt of the litter.)

I wish there were more we could do on an individual basis. The sad fact of the matter is that as long as polarizing the electorate keeps certain people in power and protects the status quo, a lot of messed-up stuff is going to happen. Breeding a malformed language that obscures information instead of communicating it is just one small part of this machine. I hope I've given you enough context to see how it works, and another reason to choose your words with careful consideration.

We can't kill the T-Rexes, but if we stay on our toes, we can Red Queen this fucked up situation well enough to keep communicating that they are a threat.

[drheartstealer]

From 1 Jan 2023, if you are a consumer in SHITHOLE, you will need to pay TAX on goods valued at S$400 or below (“low-value goods”), which are imported into SHITHOLE via air or post (“imported low-value goods”) and purchased from TAX-registered suppliers.

Currently, low-value goods which are procured locally are subject to TAX, while the same goods which are procured from overseas and imported via air or post are not. The change, announced in Budget 2021, is intended to achieve a level playing field in TAX treatment for all goods consumed in SHITHOLE, whether procured locally or from overseas.

Country censored because I’m ashamed of living here :)

FUCK, I’m gonna have to pay give the richass government even more fucking money? 

They already know that this tax isn’t going to benefit poor people, it’s a fucking regressive tax. If they wanted to tax rich people they shouldn’t tax low value goods, because guess who the fuck is buying cheap shit from overseas? POOR PEOPLE. People who can afford it don’t buy $3 T-shirts that feel like cardboard from Taobao.

And since they literally dont have disability or unemployment welfare it’s not like they’re giving much to us back either. They’re just trying to run the country like a corporation (hello fascism) and fuck the poor over, that’s what they are doing. In the meantime, the rich can easily go overseas and pretend their gucci or whatever shit rich people love they bought are used, especially since they don’t check flight luggages for taxable items anyway.

This means every little item I buy from China for cheap is going to be taxed. 

They want to squeeze every little drop out of the poor. Even Germany doesn’t charge tax for items below $25 on top of having welfare. 

On top of that this will make it shittier to pick up packages because everything is going to have to go through fucking bureaucracy.

Fuck the government. Level playing field my ass, they just want to eat us alive. And it’s not like we can do shit about it either, since it’s a fucking dictatorship :)))) 

I will literally marry the next person who promises to get me out of here, I s2g

[invisiblefoxfire]

Good lord I just saw a conversation where one person was saying that a certain gaming company is currently doing some fucked up shit, and another was countering that we don’t actually know for sure what’s going to happen and people might be jumping to conclusions before we have all the information, just a polite exchange of opinions. And then someone jumps in and says calling corporations evil (a word literally no one had used by the way) is actually cruel and wrong because you’re basically saying everyone who works there is a bad person and that’s not fair because most of the people who work there have nothing to do with these kinds of decisions.

And maybe that’s just a case of black and white thinking (they’re not able to think of a unit such as a corporation as being both bad on the whole but also made up mostly of good people, and therefore every label applied to the public-facing actions of the company must also apply equally to every person who works there). Maybe they’re mad because they work for the company being discussed and want their company to be good and perfect and can’t handle the idea that the capitalist overlords they work for might not be morally pure and take the current backlash personally for some reason. Most definitely I should have just moved on and not said anything.

But the autism gremlins wouldn’t shut up so I went back and politely pointed out that typically, when someone calls a company bad or evil, they mean the people in charge, not the individual employees who work there. My hope was that the angry person would realize they were getting angry at something that was never directed at them in the first place and chill out a little.

And someone else came in and said well you might not mean it badly but the people who work there and love their jobs are still going to take it that way, so you shouldn’t say bad things about companies. (Which is ridiculous - every person I’ve ever known who worked for a big evil company would be the first to tell you that the company is evil, but working there was their best option at the time. Even if they liked their job, they wouldn’t go so far as to say the company itself was “good”.)

At this point I realized no good was going to come of taking part in this conversation so I just left it at that. But a few minutes later the original critic replied with a link to a video about how the employees of the company being discussed are actually really angry at their company for the current shit they’re pulling, and how the company is also underpaying and overworking them, and I thought that was beautiful.

Anyway this just seemed like another example of “the internet is poisoning people’s minds and destroying the capacity for critical thinking”. All the purity culture shit, the rise of fascism, “callouts” (by which I mean mass coordinated attacks on people who have done one “problematic” thing that involve digging through their entire history looking for any hint of other mistakes and piling baseless accusations on them until they are bullied off of social media, not simply holding people accountable), the whole mob mentality, constant feedback loops of anger and indignation and fear, everyone’s emotions turned up to 1000% at all times... Black and white thinking used to be relatively uncommon, a sign of a psychological issue of some sort, but now it’s widespread, something people have been trained into. Something is either perfect and flawless (and criticizing it makes you a bad person) or it’s evil and bad (and finding any good in it makes you a bad person). Tribalist thought processes where if you’re part of a group (even if that group is an objectively evil company), that group can do no wrong and you must fight against anyone attacking it, because that’s basically the same as attacking YOU!

I don’t know where I’m going with this. I just miss living in a world where you could say “big corporations are bad” and not have people coming out of the woodwork to tell you how Problematic it is that you would say that about all the hard-working people who have jobs at big corporations because they need to survive. Just... go outside and touch some grass, I beg you. Turn off your phone for a while and take some deep breaths and maybe hug another human being or pet a fluffy animal.

[madhogthymaster]

Madhog’s Top 10 Games of 2022

Do you remember that popular coping mechanism that took root on the Internet in 2016? That time we were all shocked and appalled a Fascist demagogue was elected ruler of the so-called Free World? When some people on the more privileged end of the living spectrum came to the sudden realization that the Neoliberal sociopolitical establishment wasn't as "cool" as they thought it was, that the excesses of Capitalism begot the rise of Fascism, that Life wasn't "fair" under the rule of parasitic billionaires with the intellectual quotient of a 4chan forum? That last part is more of a recent collective realization but the point still stands. 2016 was a turning point for a lot of people, a fundamental shift in the manner by which they beheld the world around, above and below them. It was certainly traumatic to see the facade of Democracy crumble in front of our very eyes as History repeated itself. As such, new ways to deal with this experience had to be created on the spot.

This brings me back to my initial question: do you remember the trend of blaming individual years for how bad things were? This understandable yet profoundly flawed take that all of our deeply rooted societal maladies, the result of decades (if not centuries) of systemic injustices designed to keep the powerful in power, could be magically blamed to just one nasty solar cycle and not, say, literal human greed and widely platformed bigotry? I certainly remember it. I recall when "2016 was the worst year ever" and I remember when "2017 was actually the worst year" and I certainly have not forgotten how 2020 became the "ultimate worstest year" because of that pesky pandemic we all know and loathe. 

Afterwards, the trend just stopped. Its existence became moot as the world never truly left 2020: there was still a pandemic, there were still the same sociopolitical issues, the spectre of all out Authoritarianism still hung above us, more vile and dangerous than ever before, with a new war on the horizon and human rights getting stripped away little by little, piece by piece. It became clear that "X is the Worst Year" wasn't working anymore as a coping mechanism, that the dark times would not suddenly go away at the break of dawn and that every single day felt a little more bleak, a little less hopeful...

So, anyway, 2022 sure was a bad year, uh? It was quite terrible on almost every possible front to the point that the pandemic felt like the least of our troubles - and that is, indeed, saying a lot. However, I will tell you it was actually a great time for videogame releases. I mean, the game industry as a whole is still wretched and dehumanizing as all facets of our corporate-led existence but, purely in terms of interactive videoludic titles we could actually play and enjoy, 2022 was one of the better times. As such, I have endevoured to write my own completely arbitrary, subjective end-of-the-year list of games I have liked the most, according to my own personal sensibilities which do not, in anyway, reflect anyone else's taste and opinions. This ranking shall be only comprised of games I played, not games some of you might have played, and it will not be based on any "objective metrics" taken from "professional review compiling websites" that some people on the Internet take as the Word of God. Essentially, this is my list and I do what I want with it. Is that clear? Splendid!

As an addendum, most entries in this article will come provided with a link to my original set of posts, impressions and sporadic thoughts I compiled on the various subjects in review over at the "Free Speech" website.

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I am going to start this venture with the obligatory special mentions, titles that were almost good but didn't quite make the cut for different reasons. The "Close But No Cigar" category, if you will.

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Digimon Survive (Hyde/Bandai Namco)

The disappointment is strong with this one: it stings my skin, envenomates my bloodstream and slowly kills the inner child living inside me, his corpse rotting within the deepest recesses of my blackened soul. Poetic license aside, the latest interactive entry in the classic "Monsters of the Digital Persuasion" franchise is the evident produce of a much troubled history as it very much feels like its narrative is the confounding result of two distinguished directions clashing with one another in a bid to deny each other's existence. 

At its (gameplay) core, Digimon Survive is a perfectly fine, sufficiently engaging Tactical RPG, one that's uncharacteristically easy and accessible for a series usually lacking ease of access for newcomers. The tragic irony is that the meandering, messy, incoherent story of this game is decisively aimed exclusively at veteran Digimon fans: it builds itself off the original anime from 1999 and one's own nostalgia for it as a means to subvert expectations. It establishes all the familiar elements only to pull the rug from under the intended audience, to separate itself from the source material as much as possible, to take the franchise in a more perceived "mature" direction. That, in itself, was not the plot-destroying issue that plagued this game; what actually killed it was its bewildering decision to perform a 180° turn on its rug-pulling antics, place the carpet right back beneath our feet and pretend all of its tonal, thematic and narrative stakes made up to a point didn't matter. The attempted deconstruction of its own legacy effectively defaults to just a dull reconstruction of said legacy, thoughtlessly aping the happenings from the original show sans the necessary context to make any of it work. Whatever vision Digimon Survive might have had was systematically quashed by its unwillingness to commit to the bit. It's the kind of cope-out, faithless writing that I cannot condone. As the intended audience for this game, my heart weeps at the loss of potential.

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Unhappy Raccoon (XD Inc.)

In many ways, the bizarrely named Unhappy Raccoon is very close to be my favoured Roguelike Action game experience. It is stylish, colourful, fast and approachable in terms of its difficulty. Unfortunately, it's a mobile title what comes with a certain amount of predatory in-game purchases and, as such, I cannot in good faith recommend it to anyone. That is a crying shame for I would have pleasurably shilled money to buy it had it been a release bereft of such unconscionable features. It also would have not hurt being able to play it with an actual controller, I'll tell you that much for free.

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Sonic Frontiers (Sonic Team/SEGA)

(Link: read from bottom to top)

If I were a sodding believer of quantifying the value of Art through an arbitrary numerical score, then Sonic Team's latest "cute" effort would have been the embodiment of a 6/10 - and I am being generous here. It sports a solid core gameplay that lures you into its world with the promise of free roaming fun but it's ultimately burdened by too many terrible ideas, gimmicks and time-wasting nonsense to properly live up to its promise. My positive first impressions dissipate into unadulterated frustration as I am forced to stop playing a "Sonic" game I enjoy in order to herd a bunch of exploding critters, solve tedious puzzles or beat the world's worst pinball machine in order to earn "The Privilege" of fighting the area boss, all of which being close to unwieldy experiences at the best of times. The so-called plot isn't up to snuff, either. It's a title that feels simultaneously unfinished and overly designed, wrapped in a well-meaning yet misguided attempt to bring "depth" to its characters in a manner I would define as wholly unsatisfying. Its potential was limitless. Its execution, mediocre.

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Fasten your seatbelts and hold on to your unsolicited opinions, oh dear readers. The real list begins now.

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10) Lil Gator Game (MegaWobble/Playtonic Games)

(Link: read from bottom to top)

The most precious, adorable little gem with a deceptively clever shine to it. Lil Gator Game is built around a child's imagination as they play-pretend their way into a Zelda-esque adventure, with friends and strangers alike, in an elaborate scheme to convince their busy older sister to join. They waddle around wholesomely in a well-designed sandbox, wholesomely smashing cardboard monsters, talking to wholesome NPCs who are in on the "Lil Game" and generally exuding pure vibes of wholesomeness - with but a tinge of subtextual melancholy as the dreaded "grown up time" looms on the horizon. The strength of the conceit informs the execution of its themes, both mechanically and narratively. 

The core design philosophy aims to break down the formula of its obvious inspirations (classic Nintendo releases from both the past and the present) to their fundamentals, resulting in a title that both plays as a child's idea of a heroic adventure and it's actually about the making of a child-friendly heroic adventure, literally. In other words, it's a videogame about making videogames which is presented through the allegoric lens of the titular gator building their titular game with their many pals, learning how hard yet fun it is to create, and reconnecting with their sibling who inspired them with her own game-making skills. Moreover, it is a celebration of childhood, its fun memories associated with playing (or gaming, if you will) and how they all inspire us to make our dreams a reality as we grow older. It's an utterly delightful experience and I might have wept openly by the end.

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9) Beacon Pines (Hiding Spot/Fellow Traveller)

(Link: read from bottom to top)

We open on a dimly lit room, a dark and thunderous night, the perfect atmosphere to immerse yourself in suspenseful literature. As Luck would have it, there is a book on the table... The world in the said "book" comes to life, exuding an aesthetic of childlike innocence teetering at the edge of Change (the scary unknown, the adult realm) but still literally confined within the pages of Fate. Also, the animal characters are cute.

Beacon Pines is a branching path narrative game: it is presented as an old fashioned storybook with its setting sprouting into existence in the style of a Winnie the Pooh animation, lending credence to its Choose Your Own Adventure framing. This is, after all, a story about Change - as the narrator helpfully explains. Grounded in its thematic exploration yet increasingly more absurd as the stakes ramp up to eleven, the story does not have a single dull moment. You have yourself a solid Coming of Age tale juxtaposed to a Mid-Western town mystery. A classic recipe for gripping drama and comedy, in other words, enriched by its light choice-based gameplay to drive the point home. Did I mention the cast being cute?

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8) Evil West (Flying Wild Hog/Focus Entertainment)

(Link: read from bottom to top)

Do you find yourself in the mood for a cheesy yet gratuitously violent action game from fifteen years ago, which was in itself trying to emulate the energy of a Hollywood Summer blockbuster from up to twenty-five years ago? Do you think you would have enjoyed the strategic mayhem of DOOM Eternal more if it had a bigger emphasis on melee combat and it was in third person? Well then, the mad lads responsible for this next title have made a game specifically for you and it's about repelling blood-thirsty vampiric abominations in the old Wild West.

The plot is irrelevant, the writing is lackluster and the characters are flat but none of that is actually important. All that matters is the enticing gameplay, the crunchy action, the surprisingly luscious environments, being able to uppercut a guy into a wall of dynamite and the gallons upon gallons of gore. It's a viscerally good time.

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7) SIGNALIS (Rose Engine Games/Playism/Humble Games)

(Link: read from bottom to top)

An unrelenting descent into a realm of madness filled with horrors beyond imagination - and a savvy injection of android anime babes, for good measure. SIGNALIS is a queer diegesis of "polygonally scarce" stylized 3D graphics with a coating of pixelated artistry, shaded just right, dragging you down to a figurative (and somewhat literal) Hellscape of the Mind. A morose narrative conveyed through Mood, Atmosphere. The design sensibilities display a subtle understanding of Horror as a genre: instilling a sense of claustrophobia and paranoia onto the player by limiting visibility,  conjuring intrigue by revealing very little of its narrative and by fiddling with the sound design. The imagination is stimulated by the need to fill in the blanks, to find a sense of familiarity within the Unfamiliar, which in turn keeps you in suspense. It's the good old philosophy of "Less is More" competently applied to Survival Horror in ways I've not seen in a long time. I would best describe it as Ghost in the Shell meets Lovecraft in a John Carpenter's nightmare as told by David Lynch, all of which whilst still somehow being a Resident Evil game. 

Now, I wouldn't go as far as to claim this title revolutionized the recipe for both its genre or the concept of metaphorical storytelling but it does add its own flavour to it, one that definitely leaves an aftertaste. You will be plunged into a world of sensorial deprivation that makes you fear the Unknown... and, perhaps, even the Known. SIGNALIS is quite good, indeed, both as a tribute to PS1-era spooky polygons and as a standalone horror diegesis that elevates its source material. Well, except for the obligatory puzzles for they are quite obnoxious, as per tradition. Other than that, it's a gripping tale of terror and the best version of itself. If this prospect appeals to you in any way then I simply cannot recommend it enough.

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6) Inscryption: Kaycee Mod (Daniel Mullins Games/Revolver Digital)

(Link: read from bottom to top)

Developed by Daniel Mullins (of Pony Island infamy), this title was released last year to much "indie darling" acclaim and it is easy to see why. Mullins has a penchant for messing with the artifice of his medium of choice, deconstructing its foundations with layers upon layers of meta-text, games within games within games, which typically results in something memorable. If you already know what to expect from his creative vision then, in many ways, Inscryption is just more of the same soup: an explicit level of self-awareness, a conceit revolving on a specific gameplay loop that slowly expands and falls apart at the seams the more you explore it, to the point in which the world as we know it is obliterated. Right from the start, as in from the moment the game is booted up, one can tell something nefarious is at play as it coyly gestures towards a larger meta-narrative. You do not start a New Game, you "continue into a pre-existing save file", and that's merely the beginning. Like I alluded, I expected this loosely defined game to play out in a specific manner and, in a sense, I was not proven wrong about it. What's actually remarkable and unquestionably brilliant about it was the aforementioned core design loop, namely the deck building Roguelike experience that represents both the fictional and meta-fictional centrepiece of the entire onion-layered diegesis. 

I'm going to go out on a limb and state with the utmost confidence bestowed upon me by my status as a white man on the Internet that Inscryption's card-based gameplay is more fun and addicting than Slay the Spire's, on the principle that I can actually beat it! Even more impressively, Mullins didn't simply design the best electronic card game imaginable, he went and remade it several more times in the course of the same playthrough. His opus presents some prescient questions about the player's engagement with the interactive medium of videogames, our emotional connection to the text, the escapist and possibly addicting nature of it, how it all reflects back on our psyche. As such, what better way to drive the point home than to create the most engaging, addicting, all-around rewarding core gameplay loop imaginable?

As if to be proven absolutely right, the author released a free DLC titled Kaycee Mod, which is essentially more of the same excellent deck building action but with added features, challenges and unlockable items. The "story" from the main game might have concluded in decisive fashion but that shan't stop us fans from wanting to play it until our eyes bleed and our fingers drop, firmly proving our unhealthy addiction to it. I've got to say, that new mod coming out this year makes for the perfect excuse to include Daniel Mullins' little masterpiece in an article about the best videogames of 2022. I have no shame and I'm technically right. Hurray!

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5) Cult of the Lamb (Massive Monster/Devolver Digital)

(Link)

A functional, if somewhat uneven mishmash of Roguelike Hack/Slash gameplay with some direct, specific references to The Binding of Isaac and the Survival meets Tycoon Management Sim elements from a generation's worth of indie titles, yet its charm cannot be denied. In this game, you are a small critter tasked by a sinister god with a dubious agenda to take down all the other sinister gods with a dubious agenda, which is something you will only be able to accomplish by founding your own  sinister cult with a dubious agenda - as it was the style at the time. 

Its direction as well as its narrative, defined by the juxtaposition of "kid-friendly" aesthetics and cosmic horror, is evocative of a religious propaganda cartoon aimed at children, framing The Lamb as a heroic figure who fights the "Heretics." It helps contextualize the satire of organized religion, indoctrination, the sociopolitical use of Faith or a given set of beliefs as a means to gain and maintain Power - which can be easily applied to how Society operates at the highest, wealthiest levels. The way the player can "edit" and "upgrade" their respective cult may lead to the formation of a Fascist state controlled by Fear, a Capitalist dystopia, a Charlie Manson's murder hippie family or even a one-to-one recreation of the Catholic Church. Personally, I created a society where everyone is emotionally co-dependent to their beloved leader and are all too happy to work hard, pray and die in my name. When you step back and look at the big picture, the message of this game becomes distressingly poignant. 

None of the little animals recruited in the cult are characters, merely a means to an end, a form of sustenance (literally, in some cases) to be feasted upon in order to endlessly accrue power until the day they perish, or even beyond. Simply put, cult-like mentalities and tactics don't exist merely within factual cults... Anyway, it's a fun game! The Lamb is legitimately adorable. The combat system is solid and the simulation aspects are involved, as described. You should definitely play it.

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4) The Cruel King and The Great Hero (Nippon Ichi Software)

(Link)

As a more than worthy successor to The Liar Princess and The Blind Prince, this game holds a tight grip on my heart, squeezing it for every ounce of blood and feeling. Unlike the previous game in the "series", which was a snazzy puzzle platformer, The Cruel King and The Great Hero is a classic turn-based RPG with a cute gimmick to it: you take control of Yuu (get it?), a small, enthusiastic child who dreams to become a legendary hero - a real one, mind you, unlike the make-believe flight of fancy in Lil Gator Game. Yuu's parent is a big dragon who secretly checks on her to make sure she's safe and sound whilst adventuring. He even provides special skills to help her in battle once she "unlocks them." This all serves a narrative purpose as well since he's trying to teach her what it means to be a kind warrior but still worries about her wellbeing, understandably. It's the sort of diegetic synergy between gameplay and plot that enhances one's experience with an interactive text, you see... So, anyway, this game is the cutest thing in the universe. 

The deceptive simplicity of the artistic direction communes a deeper study behind the characters' presentation and their environment: a homage to illustrations from Western children's storybooks with its own twist. There is an understated insidiousness to the manner in which these adorable designs, drawn by hand, command such instantaneous affection on my behalf that cannot be expressed with words. Unlike said predecessor, the game has a much more ambitious scope and production but its narrative philosophy remains intact and focused. Cruel King plays around subversively with well-known fairytale tropes in order to craft an enjoyable, wholesome story for children and adults alike; it makes for a sort of "reverse-engineered" take on the Dragon Quest formula, I would say. The superb character drawings, the gorgeous background and overall aesthetics, the engaging plot as well as the gripping soundtrack, all converge together to form an emotionally enriching experience. In short, the game is neat. That's my review.

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3) Kirby and The Forgotten Land (HAL Laboratory/Nintendo)

(Link)

The experience of playing this game washes over me like a relaxing wave on the beach during a lazy summer day, unexpectedly stirring me up inside with childhood memories that are not mine. That is to say, Kirby and The Forgotten Land is so good it makes me cry tears of joy. I feel particularly drawn to the pink ball's universe due to its deceptive, duplicitous nature as both childlike and horrifying. There is a wondrous, nostalgic feeling juxtaposed to a much darker subtext. Parallel to a personal favourite of mine, Klonoa, it too lures the unsuspecting player with its bubbly cuteness, only to pull the rug from under them when it matters the most. Except, this title doesn't even bother to hide the existential dread beneath the narrative: the setting is literally a "colourful" post-apocalyptic, post-humanity world. The game only goes harder on it as it progresses. By the time you get to the final boss, and then the post-game final boss, and then the super-duper-ultra final FINAL Mega-Boss, the stakes couldn't possibly get more cosmic and the implications more dire. 

I shall now state in the strongest possible terms that Forgotten Land is a close-to-flawless, and long overdue, transliteration of the classic 2D "Kirby" formula into a 3D landscape, oozing with charm, personality and the most fun gameplay I have experienced all year - these were merely my first impressions after beating the first world, mind you! To call this the best, most enriching, most enjoyable 3D platformer I have ever touched would decisively sound like a loaded statement, one burdened by several asterisks. You could theoretically argue this game feels more like a very happy medium between Character Action titles such as Bayonetta and a core Nintendo IP of the precision jumping variety rather than a Platform experience in the "purest" sense but I am not here to indulge into that kind of hair-splitting logic. So, I will just proclaim once more that this is my favourite entry in the genre: the manner of onto-a-league-of-its-own videogame bonanza that leaves me reeling after almost breaking my controller during the last fight. 

It features the tight, polish gameplay and level design one would expect from a (non-Pokemon related) Nintendo release jointed with the darkly charming, unabashedly bizarre creativity HAL Laboratory brings to the table with its adorably gluttonous mascot and its many game-altering power ups. I love this title, sincerely and desperately. It's everything I have ever wanted out of this series but never knew I craved.

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2) Xenoblade Chronicles 3 (Monolith Soft/Nintendo)

(Link 1; Link 2) 

There is so much to say about Xenoblade Chronicles 3 and yet so very little time, so little light of day. I am going to take a page out of Monolith Soft and categorically refuse to bury the lead: this game is a condemnation of the Military-Industrial Complex, the endless machine of war sustained by the lives of those "who die for a cause." It's exemplified by the premise of genetically-engineered child soldiers made for the purpose of fighting in a senseless conflict which is perennially sustained by the literal life energy of the many people who die in it. War economy in a nutshell. This is not a spoiler as the game slaps you across the face with this commentary pretty much immediately. The second title in the series had the "courtesy" to lure you in with sassy cat girls and anime high jinks before revealing it was actually about Cultural Genocide. You simply do not get the luxury of ignorance with this entry. 

It also unmistakably points its righteous anger towards the sociopolitical establishment, the wealthy conservative elite, that's directly profiting from the Status Quo, keeping the world stuck in an aptly-named “Endless Now.” On that note, the villains of the piece are a gloriously detestable, pretentious and opulent bunch, the kind you just cannot wait to smack around in an epically orchestrated boss battle - which the game is keen to provide with a certain amount of glee. 

Thematic relevancy aside, allow me to emphasize how spectacular the “Xeno eXperience” can be! I am referring to the painstakingly animated, meticulously choreographed, expensively mo-capped action cutscenes that occasionally graced my astounded visage. There is nothing else that looks as slick and bombastic in all the land. The predecessor might have already set the benchmark for quality in that regard but the newest game takes said benchmark, shatters it with one finger and uses the sharp remains to stab God himself! 

As far the gameplay is concerned, it is the most refined and polished the series has seen thus far even if it still requires an inordinate amount of tutorial tips in order to grasp its basics.  A savvy combination of turn-based and real time elements make for both a strategic and high octane romp, one that requires your full concentration.

In essence, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is the rare diegesis that manages to excel at everything it sets out to be: it's a foundationally strong JRPG with a vast, gorgeous world to explore, an emotionally resonating plot, viscerally effective theming, well-written characters and all the big anime fight scenes your heart may desire. It shoots for the Moon and it doesn't just stick the landing, it incinerates several celestial bodies in the process. Under normal circumstance, this would have easily been my GOTY. Alas, circumstances happened to differ a tiny bit in 2022.

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1) Klonoa: Phantasy Reverie Series (MONKEYCRAFT/Bandai Namco)

(Link)

It was the year of 2009 and I happened to own a Nintendo Wii. I caught wind of the then freshly released-into-obscurity remake of Klonoa: Door to Phantomile, a title for PS1. I, much like a lot of people, had never heard of such an odd curio but I found myself enticed by its design choices, its 2.5D aesthetics, its peculiar style of side-scrolling platform mixed with original puzzle mechanics and, most importantly, its adorable protagonist. Armed with but a few spare coins and a healthy dose of curiosity, I purchased it on its release day. It changed my life. 

Later on, I hunted down the rare copy of the PS2 sequel Lunatea's Veil, a game that blew me out of every possible body of water on this planet. Several moons down the line, I bought the original first game as a digital download for PS3. Nowadays, I play it on my PSP whenever I'm overcome by a sudden wave of depression and every single time, I cry.  Every variation of these games provided its own unique, emotional experience. They have indelibly coloured my perception of videogames as an art form, what they can bring to the table in terms of narrative and theming. I am incapable of conveying through words how much these games mean to me and how much they have broken and rebuilt me from the ground up with each new playthrough. 

Klonoa is a multi-layered allegory disguised as a cute, Mascot Platformer from the late '90s. It uses genre expectations and its available language to pull the rug from the under the player, conveying a subtler thematic journey. It likens the idea of "gaming" to the idyllic memory of childhood and to the ethereal nature of dreams, which are all linked by their brevity and finality. The first game is about Nostalgia, the reminiscence to a time of childlike innocence inevitably broken by the specter of Change, part of growing up. Depending on one's read, it might also be about Trauma. The sequel takes everything that was established in the first one and builds itself upon it, bringing the journey to a satisfying conclusion. On the surface, it's a new story with new characters but that's, once again, part of the deception. If Door to Phantomile covered Childhood and the bittersweet, possibly traumatic memory of it, Lunatea's Veil is about what comes next: Adolescence, growing up, figuring yourself out and healing. These themes are brilliantly reflected both by the story and the settings themselves. Both games would work well as individual experiences (as they are both fun and engaging) but they truly achieve greatness when viewed as a unified piece, a masterfully made, emotional ride into the Dream of Childhood and onto the Wake of Adulthood. 

And now, you can finally experience them both in the newly released HD collection, Phantasy Reverie Series. This is my game of the year. This was always going to be my game of the year. It was preordained, predetermined, predestined in the moment, the second, its existence was made public in that one legendary Nintendo Direct. It didn't matter whether this was going to be a consistently good or terrible period for game releases, the mere fact that Klonoa was going to be included in the 2022 calendar makes this the best year for gaming by default. That is how much these titles, these stories, mean to me. The world is a slightly less awful place for having the fluffy boy in it. That is my final word on the matter.

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At long last, here we are: the end of the list, the end of the solar cycle. In spite of everything that's wrong within society, struggling under the thumb of Capitalism, having to endure the abusive aura of hypocritical “Holyday Cheer”, dealing with many blows Life throws at your general direction, you have still made it. You have survived. You are still you. There is still good to be found beneath the apparent hopelessness of it all. Just remember to hold on to what's most dear to you and please, for the Love of God, do not buy the Nazi Potter game. I will find you.

Happy New Year!

[fresh-widow]

The Preexisting Conditions

Demi-dogs and Republi-cats

Good cop bad cop-

It’s the same

One world order.

Pro fascism

It’s a great cure for

The Pandemonium.

Buy more stay home bot war

Big pharma fake phood are

The preexisting conditions.

All aboard the pandemic ship-

Everyone must do exactly the same

Or it’s just not safe.

One shot two shot red shot blue shot

Absolutely no guarantee.

Sign here_______________.

You’ve handed your life over to

A one size fits for profit corporation

Pre-absolved of any and all liability.

I’d pledge allegiance

To buy more shit but

I believe in vaccinations

I believe in vaccinations that actually work.

I think we should vacumn pack our minds

And seal everything in all the plastic

That we’ve been consuming anyway

I think there should be a spray on solution

Maybe huffing more Lysol

Would help us think of a better one

And what about Round Up

Isn’t it in just about everything?

According to the science

It’s benign, you can drink it.

It’s the secret ingredient in our food

and in our water

Blows holes wide open

In the gut

Mutating the brain.

I think we are are a selfish species

What about all the other species that have gone

Extinct because of our homosapiencentric selves?

Well,

What if we  fix the water the air and the earth first?

Stop poisoning ourselves,

And the plant and animal kingdom

That sustains all life?

Hail Science! We must

Mandate experimental  vaccines for children.

Ruining their immune systems for profit

So that the elderly might live to 110.

Lots more pills  to be sold

To keep the old

Frankensteins alive.

One shot- it’s not as effective as

Two shots. Whoops not good enough.

Three shots? Nah

A shot in the ass daily

Might do the trick and anyway,

The focus is just to get us

Back to to business as usual

With extra surveillance

To  insure the insatiable corporations

Get their extra share

Of mass destruction.

We are so conditioned

To unconvincing half truths and

Conflictingly statistical proof

Via sound bite brain washing blips

Big Science knows

How to keep people buying more shit.

There is only one idea to sell a seat

On the global airplane game.

Hurry up it’s a win all

Or lose everything kind of situation.

Humanity’s strained immune system

Was just discovered by the Frankenstein flu.

Can’t we just buy more shit

To make it all go away?

[transmutationisms]

HI really love your thoughts on stuff. do you think succession - as a tv show with a script - makes all of its negative statements negatively or positively? this is something im having trouble with, specially with shiv and the overwhelming misogyny. i understand its quite literally real life. but they know the importance of media as a statement that defines real life - its sort of meta, but the whole thing with whether or not calling mencken, knowing it would affect politics, is something that can reflect on the show itself. i dont think i fully agree with what they do to shiv in the way they portray the misogyny. it feels like a "and thats how it will always be" more than "thats how its been". idk. maybe I just hate misogyny and cant stand to see that. but everything is a statement. what do u think?

well in general i agree that, yeah, the show is more interested in satire and criticism than offering any kind of imaginative solution or alternative. so, if you want to watch something that suggests alternatives to logan-style misogyny (& i'd understand why) then i think you're going to be dissatisfied with this show. like, obviously even with logan gone, his influence still haunts the company and the family, and anyway the broader structures of capitalism and its use / exploitation of women were always much larger than logan alone. all of this also applies to how roman and kendall (& to a lesser extent connor) are punished for failing to live up to standards of masculinity; logan feminised kendall to punish him for business failures and derided roman for what he saw as a more innate femininity that made roman disgusting to him.

i actually think gender is a strong suit for the show. it's very deeply interested in how they each relate to standards of bourgeois masculinity and femininity, and how these strictures are confining and punishing (often literally, as logan used them as tools of his abuse). for shiv she lived up to some of logan's femands for an heir (her emotional repression, flashes of killer instinct) but was ultimately always doomed by the fact that logan saw her as permanently being his little girl, denied a body (bc this was less disgusting to him than thinking of her as a woman) and never the right fit for his corporate mould, even when she was trying her hardest to fit it. roman and kendall ofc pick up on this and the way her gender can be used in itself to lock her out of the upper echelons of power (a walking pair of teats, all the men got together in man club). but ultimately this is a dissection of misogyny and masculinity, not a suggestion for escape.

i have mixed feelings about the sort of ethical argument here. it is fair to say that succession has a fundamentally conservative ethos in the sense that the satire and snark angle is uninterested in offering solutions or imagining alternatives. it's grounded in exploring capitalism, fascism, the resulting gender politics, &c, and to the extent that it challenges these things, it's by portraying them as worthy of mockery. it's not a leftist political treatise. but like, i think there's a can of worms to open here in terms of asking how revolutionary a television show is capable of being simple by virtue of the medium. like, even if the content is radical internally, does is matter that the form is still one embedded in capitalist production, ie, that the show is a commodity on the same market? i identify the root of misogyny within the capitalist mode of production; how far is something made within these parameters capable of going in offering any kind of alternative? and also, do we care? like, am i watching tv because i'm looking for radical politics? again, this doesn't negate the critique of succession's critique. but i do think it's a bit... trite? to ask tv to be some kind of moral guide---particularly on a show where the premise is such that any 'challenge' to misogyny would still be constrained within the bourgeois world the characters inhabit.

[spearkarrier]

So on Disney...

I was born and raised in Florida, and #Disney is coming to my hometown and laying flat things that once were conserved by nature laws. Disney has always overshadowed my life. Disney is like a giant looming over you, but you don't completely notice until one day you open your eyes, look up and realize "there's this thing and it has control of parts of your life". I've seen Disney shut down a daycare because they had a character on the wall without paying for licensing. (Why not remove the character? Yeah I know. S'not the point. There was no litigation. It was just shut down. Imagine being a low income parent losing your job because suddenly you had no childcare thanks to Disney. As I've lost a job because of a petty person quitting on me literally in the morning I had to go to work, I can tell you it's devastating.) I myself have had items I make removed because they MIGHT be inspired by the big corporate owned things. Videos copyright struck because, even though the song was public domain, I sang it too well or something. I dunno. So #DeSantis taking away Disney's right to be a sovereign nation in my hometown? You better fucking believe I cheered that on. THEY ARE NOT A POLITICAL ENTITY. THEY ARE A BUSINESS but somehow get more rights then you and I? Disney clapping back? Of course they would. DeSantis clapping back at the clap back? Of course it would happen. This is the action more and more people have been shouting to see: some actual movement towards good changes instead of bitch bitch bitch. No one has won against Disney? At least he's gonna try.

Do you want to know what's fascist? LIVING UNDER A CORPORATE THUMB, BEING TOLD WHAT YOU CAN AND CANNOT SAY, DO, SING, ETC BY BIG TECH. Like Disney. And others. I know because I've always lived in fear of the echoes, and even watched my family fight for our land. I don't understand people who claim to hate fascism gloat and cheer that Disney is going to squash a guy who is standing up against one of the many elements of fascism - that btw was doing it as part of a tax-free ride. Things are a bit more expensive here in Florida - but we don't pay income tax and even have free healthcare (or at least we used to. Grew up on free healthcare. I gotta check to see if that fact still stands.) So making that multi-million corporation pay their fair share? #HELLFUCKINGYES

I like some Disney stuff - the Buzz Lightyear movie was a snore but anyway - but if I can't live here tax free why should this corporation get to do it... and influence the laws that dictate how I live? I don't care if you like him. I don't care if you think he's a twit. That isn't the issue, and it's childish to pretend it is. The issue is that corporations in America were given the same rights as real citizens, and they've been using that (and propaganda) to shape the quality of our lives for the worse for at least a generation if not two. Repeal the laws that give them immunity and see how quickly things change. Vote with your feet while you can. Repeal the laws that don't allow you to. The law has been used against us. I noticed it when I was 12. I don't know why some of you adults can't see it now. #fuckthecorporaterule Also, quit coming to my state. Y'all have the housing here so high I can't buy a home even with preapprovement. Go somewhere else or I'm going to sic the queen of gators on you.

[preppernewstoday]

Giovanni Gentile, an Italian philosopher, originally introduced the concept of "fascism". He stated that "fascism is more appropriately called corporatism because it merges of state power with corporate power." Benito Mussolini later claimed credit for the quote, but it is important to remember because it clearly outlines the main purpose of the ideology and not just throwing the label at people we don’t like to undermine their legitimacy. Although leftists often refer to conservatives as "fascists" today because they want to preserve western heritage and national borders, the truth is that fascism is deeply rooted within leftist philosophies. Mussolini, a socialist for many years and a party member who greatly admired Karl Marx, was an admirer of Marx. Mussolini departed from the socialists because they wanted to remain neutral in WWI and became a champion of a mixture of socialism, nationalism, which we now call fascism. Adolph Hitler, like Mussolini, was also a socialist admirer of Karl Marx. It's difficult to see where Marx, the communists, and the fascists differ from one another. A deeper sense of nationalism seems like one of the few points of contention. Marx thought that nation states were temporary and only for the ruling class. However, Marx noted that industrialists were erasing the borders of national countries anyway. Marx argues with optimism in the Communist Manifesto "National divisions and antagonisms among peoples are already starting to disappear, owing to development of the bourgeoisie and the growth of free trading and a global market, as well as the increasing uniformity in industrial processes and corresponding conditions for life." Marx saw the rise of corporate power as a useful step towards socialism. He noted that credit systems and joint-stock corporations (corporations), were: "The abolishment of the capitalist production mode within the capitalist production mode itself." This means that corporations are seen as tools for the eventual transition towards a socialist utopia and the end of free market capitalism. Again, it is clear that there is little in common between the political leftists and the fascists. Every form of Marxism or communism, socialism and fascism eventually leads to the same thing. All of these forms eventually lead to a globalist ideology and the erasure or cultural separation. Although the methods may differ, the end result is always the same. This may seem like a good thing. However, it can be deadly. Globalism cannot survive without a strong social dynamic. Globalism is not meaningful if people are able to choose better options or create different options for their lives. It is necessary to end the existence of choice. This is a behavior the political left fully embraces and will work with corporate oligarchs in order to make their ideal system a reality. The days of the anti-corporate progressive are long gone. They love corporate dominance but only if they promote and enforce leftist models in society. Mussolini's fascism was the source of corporate governance that leftists adore and lust for today. They share far more with fascists that they realize. The new fascism, a rebranded philosophy, is best represented by "Stakeholder Capitalism", a term used often by globalists at World Economic Forum and Klaus Schwab, the head of the WEF. Stakeholder Capitalism can be described as: A type of capitalism that seeks long-term value creation and not just short-term profit maximization for shareholders. Who are "all stakeholders" according to the WEF's opinion? Klaus Schwab says they are all human civilization now and into the future. SHC's goal is to have corporate leaders and globalist bureaucrats take responsibility for the whole world and not just for their employees and shareholders. These leaders would not act as individuals but as a group. SHC demands that all major corporations act in a single unit with a single purpose, and adhere to a single ideology.

One-Minute WEF Video Shareholder Capitalism – Benioff - It Works. As Klaus Schwab states: "The most significant characteristic of today's stakeholder model is the fact that the stakes in our system are more globally oriented. The environment, economies, and societies are now more closely connected than they were 50 years ago. This model is fundamentally global in its nature and the primary stakeholders are also. The inclusion or internalization of externalities and other factors in economic policymaking and corporate decision-making will be essential for every government, company and community. Because the planet is the centre of the global economy, its health must be considered in all decisions strong> The SHC concept is misleading on its face. It pretends that corporations will be held responsible by the public in a form of business democracy, as if the public can vote on the actions of corporations. It will be corporations telling people what they are allowed to think and doing, and corporations working with governments to punish those who disagree. This is the great trick: these unified corporations use the shields of "private property” and business rights to control society without any repercussions. Private property rights are a fundamental principle of conservatism as well as the US constitution. To interfere with corporate governance would be to violate one of our most beloved ideals. This sounds like a Catch-22 but it isn't. As we have already mentioned, corporations are fundamentally a socialist idea. They are created by government charter and granted legal personhood. They are not market entities. Adam Smith, who is the originator of most free-market ideals, opposed corporations as they are destructive and susceptible to monopoly. Corporations should not have the same protections for private property as regular businesses, as long as they are given protections by government such as monetary stimulus or bailouts. They are parasitic creations that are not part of the natural business environment. They would be removed from a society that is freedom-based to stop authoritarian outcomes. Stakeholder capitalism is also a very arrogant concept. It assumes corporate leaders are intelligent and have the intelligence and wisdom to take their roles beyond the business world and into the social and political realms. It has been done in many ways, causing chaos. However, open corporate governance is the ultimate goal and is not objective or benevolent. These are just a few examples of the political/corporate governance (fascism), in action. Big Tech social media censorship is strongly against liberty activists and conservatives. What about evidence of collusion between Big Tech corporations and government, such the Biden Administration or the DHS working closely to Twitter and Facebook in order to remove views and opinions they don't agree with? What about corporate leaders conspiring to eliminate conservative-based social media competitors such as Parler? What about ESG loans that are funded by corporate backers like Blackrock, or non-profits such as the Rockefeller Foundation that are globalist? ESG would be applied to all corporate loan practices. This would mean that all individuals and businesses must adopt leftist social ideologies as well as dubious environmental claims to gain credit. ESG is a monetary incentive that corporate elites use to keep other businesses in line. ESG may wipe out all political opposition to globalism within a generation if it continues. What about the Council For Inclusive Capitalism. This is the most obvious expression of open global fascism that I've ever seen. It involves money elites and politicians working together with the UN and religious leaders such as Pope Francis. Their goal is to create a single, centralized global governing platform that revolves around the same agendas as ESG and SHC. They also want corporations to be members of this new global council they call "The Guardians". This conspiracy is openly revealed.

Klaus Schwab makes it a point to emphasize that global crises are the "opportunity," which is necessary to drive the public to the arms of Stakeholder capitalism through a nexus point known as "The Great Reset." He believes that there must be widespread fear and desperation to sustain the SHC framework quickly. The globalists' timeline is shrinking, but it's difficult to know why. They have been ripping off the mask quicker than in the last decade. They are likely to be aware that if they move too slowly, the public will have enough time to defend them. To stop liberty-minded people hitting back, they will create distractions and scapegoats. They will aim at Russia, China, and useful idiots among leftists. They will target us at Russia, China, and the leftists. They will send us to war. They will call us terrorists and insurrectionists. All of this is irrelevant. It is important that globalists at top pay for the damage they have caused. Only after the head of the serpent is removed can we determine who is responsible; who were heroes, who were villains and who were the idiots. Only then can we truly rebuild our lives with freedom in our minds. -- About the Author: Brandon Smith edits the Alt-Market blog as well as The Wild Bunch Dispatch subscription e-newsletter. JWR highly recommends both.

[qqueenofhades]

Do you really hate this county? Or were you just ranting?

Sigh. I debated whether or not to answer this, since I usually keep the real-life/politics/depressing current events to a relative minimum on this blog, except when I really can't avoid ranting about it. But I have some things to get off my chest, it seems, and you did ask. So.

The thing is, any American with a single modicum of genuine historical consciousness knows that despite all the triumphalist mythology about Pulling Up By Our Bootstraps and the American Dream and etc, this country was founded and built on the massive and systematic exploitation and extermination of Black and Indigenous people. And now, when we are barely (400 years later!!!) getting to a point of acknowledging that in a widespread way, oh my god the screaming. I'm so sick of the American right wing I could spit for so many reasons, not least of which is the increasingly reductive and reactive attempts to put the genie back in the bottle and set up hysterical boogeymen about how Teaching Your Children Critical Race Theory is the end of all things. They have forfeited all pretense of being a real governing party; remember how their only platform at the 2020 RNC was "support whatever Trump says?" They have devolved to the point where the cruelty IS the point, to everyone who doesn't fit the nakedly white supremacist mold. They don't have anything to do aside from attempt to usher in actual, literal, dictionary-definition-of-fascism and sponsor armed revolts against the peaceful transfer of power.

That is fucking exhausting to be aware of all the time, especially with the knowledge that if we miss a single election cycle -- which is exceptionally easy to do with the way the Democratic electorate needs to be wooed and courted and herded like cats every single time, rather than just getting their asses to the polls and voting to keep Nazis out of office -- they will be right back in power again. If Manchin and Sinema don't get over their poseur pearl-clutching and either nuke the filibuster or carve out an exception for voting rights, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act is never going to get passed, no matter how many boilerplate appeals the Democratic leadership makes on Twitter. In which case, the 2022 midterms are going to give us Kevin McCarthy, Speaker of the House (I threw up in my mouth a little typing that) and right back to the Mitch McConnell Obstruction Power Hour in the Senate. The Online Left (TM) will then blame the Democrats for not doing more to stop them. These are, of course, the same people who refused to vote for Hillary Clinton out of precious moral purity reasons in 2016, handed the election to Trump, and now like to complain when the Trump-stacked Supreme Court reliably churns out terrible decisions. Gee, it's almost like elections have consequences!!

Aside from my exasperation with the death-cult right-wing fascists and the Online Left (TM), I am sick and tired of how forty years of "trickle-down" Reaganomics has created a world where billionaires can just fly to space for the fun of it, while the rest of America (and the world) is even more sick, poor, overheated, economically deprived, and unable to survive the biggest public health crisis in a century, even if half the elected leadership wasn't actively trying to sabotage it. Did you know that half of American workers can't even afford a one-bedroom apartment? Plus the obvious scandal that is race relations, health care, paid leave, the education system (or lack thereof), etc etc. I'm so tired of this America Is The Greatest Country in the World mindless jingoistic catchphrasing. We are an empire in the late stages of collapse and it's not going to be pretty for anyone. We have been poisoned on sociopathic-libertarian-selfishness-disguised-as-Freedom ideology for so long that that's all there is left. We have become a country of idiots who believe everything their idiot friends post on social media, but in a very real sense, it's not directly those individuals' fault. How could they, when they have been very deliberately cultivated into that mindset and stripped of critical thinking skills, to serve a noxious combination of money, power, and ideology?

I am tired of the fact that I have become so drained of empathy that when I see news about more people who refused to get the vaccine predictably dying of COVID, my reaction is "eh, whatever, they kind of deserved it." I KNOW that is not a good mindset to have, and I am doing my best to maintain my personal attempts to be kind to those I meet and to do my small part to make the world better. I know these are human beings who believed what they were told by people that they (for whatever reason) thought knew better than them, and that they are part of someone's family, they had loved ones, etc. But I just can't summon up the will to give a single damn about them (I'm keeping a bingo card of right-wing anti-vax radio hosts who die of COVID and every time it's like, "Alexa, play Another One Bites The Dust.") The course that the pandemic took in 21st-century America was not preordained or inevitable. It was (and continues to be) drastically mismanaged for cynical political reasons, and the legacy of the Former Guy continues to poison any attempts to bring it under control or convince people to get a goddamn vaccine. We now have over 100,000 patients hospitalized with COVID across the country -- more than last summer, when the vaccines weren't available.

I have been open about my fury about the devaluation of the humanities and other critical thinking skills, about the fact that as an academic in this field, my chances of getting a full-time job for which I have trained extensively and acquired a specialist PhD are... very low. I am tired of the fact that Americans have been encouraged to believe whatever bullshit they fucking please, regardless of whether it is remotely true, and told that any attempt to correct them is "anti-freedom." I am tired of how little the education system functions in a useful way at all -- not necessarily due to the fault of teachers, who have to work with what they're given, and who are basically heroes struggling stubbornly along in a profession that actively hates them, but because of relentless under-funding, political interference, and furious attempts, as discussed above, to keep white America safely in the dark about its actual history. I am tired of the fact that grade school education basically relies on passing the right standardized tests, the end. I am tired of the implication that the truth is too scary or "un-American" to handle. I am tired. Tired.

I know as well that "America" is not synonymous in all cases with "capitalist imperialist white-supremacist corporate death cult." This is still the most diverse country in the world. "America" is not just rich white middle-aged Republicans. "America" involves a ton of people of color, women, LGBTQ people, Muslims, Jews, Christians of good will (I have a whole other rant on how American Christianity as a whole has yielded all pretense of being any sort of a principled moral opposition), white allies, etc etc. all trying to make a better world. The blue, highly vaccinated, Biden-winning states and counties are leading the economic recovery and enacting all kinds of progressive-wishlist dream policies. We DID get rid of the Orange One via the electoral process and avert fascism at the ballot box, which is almost unheard-of, historically speaking. But because, as also discussed above, certain elements of the Democratic electorate need to fall in love with a candidate every single time or threaten to withhold their vote to punish the rest of the country for not being Progressive Enough, these gains are constantly fragile and at risk of being undone in the next electoral cycle. Yes, the existing system is a crock of shit. But it's what we've got right now, and the other alternative is open fascism, which we all got a terrifying taste of over the last four years. I don't know about you, but I really don't want to go back.

So... I don't know. I don't know if that stacks up to hate. I do hate almost everything about what this country currently is, structurally speaking, but I recognize that is not identical with the many people who still live here and are trying to do their best, including my friends, family, and myself. I am exhausted by the fact that as an older millennial, I am expected to survive multiple cataclysmic economic crashes, a planet that is literally boiling alive, a barely functional political system run on black cash, lies, and xenophobia, a total lack of critical thinking skills, renewed assaults on women/queer people/POC/etc, and somehow feel like I'm confident or prepared for the future. Not all these problems are only America's fault alone. The West as a whole bears huge responsibility for the current clusterfuck that the world is in, for many reasons, and so do some non-Western countries. But there is no denying that many of these problems have ultimate American roots. See how the ongoing fad for right-wing authoritarian strongmen around the world has them modeling themselves openly on Trump (like Brazil's lunatic president, Jair Bolsonaro, who talks all the time about how Trump is his political role model). See what's going on in Afghanistan right now. Etc. etc.

Anyway. I am very, very tired. There you have it.

[arcticdementor]

In a democracy, every vote is supposed to be equal. If about half the country supports one side and half the country supports another, you may expect major institutions to either be equally divided, or to try to stay politically neutral.

This is not what we find. If it takes a position on the hot button social issues around which our politics revolve, almost every major institution in America that is not explicitly conservative leans left. In a country where Republicans get around half the votes or something close to that in every election, why should this be the case?

This post started as an investigation into Woke Capital, one of the most important developments in the last decade or so of American politics. Although big business pressuring politicians is not new (the NFL moved the Super Bowl from Arizona over MLK day), the scope of the issues on which corporations feel the need to weigh in is certainly expanding, now including LGBT issues, abortion laws, voting rights, kneeling during the national anthem, and gun control.

…

As I started to research the topic, however, I realized there wasn’t much to explain. Asking why corporations are woke is like asking why Hispanics tend to have two arms, or why the Houston Rockets have increased their number of 3-point shots taken over the last few decades. All humans tend to have two arms, and all NBA teams shoot more 3-pointers than in the past, so focusing on one subset of the population that has the same characteristics as all others in the group misses the point.

I think one reason Woke Capital is getting so much attention is because we expect business to be more right-leaning, and corporations throwing in with the party of more taxes and regulation strikes us as odd. We are used to schools, non-profits, mainline religions, etc. taking liberal positions and feel like business should be different. But business is just being assimilated into a larger trend.

Corporations are woke, meaning left wing on social issues relative to the general population, because institutions are woke. So the question becomes why are institutions woke?

…

Through the lens of ordinal utility, in which people simply rank what they want to happen, we are about equal. I prefer Republicans to Democrats, while you have the opposite preference. But when we think in terms of cardinal utility – in layman’s terms, how bad people want something to happen – it’s no contest. You are going to be much more influential than me. Most people are relatively indifferent to politics and see it as a small part of their lives, yet a small percentage of the population takes it very seriously and makes it part of its identity. Those people will tend to punch above their weight in influence, and institutions will be more responsive to them.

Elections are a measure of ordinal preferences. As long as you care enough to vote, it doesn’t matter how much you care about the election outcome, as everyone’s voice is the same. But for everything else – who speaks up in a board meeting about whether a corporation should take a political position, who protests against a company taking a position one side or the other finds offensive, etc. – cardinal utility maters a lot. Only a small minority of the public ever bothers to try to influence a corporation, school, or non-profit to reflect certain values, whether from the inside or out.

In an evenly divided country, if one side simply cares more, it’s going to exert a disproportionate influence on all institutions, and be more likely to see its preferences enacted in the time between elections when most people aren’t paying much attention.

…

Here are two graphs that have been getting a lot of attention

What jumps out to me in these figures is not only how left leaning large institutions are, but how the same is true for most professions. Whether you are looking by institution or by individuals, there are more donations to Biden than Trump. Yet Republicans get close to half the votes! Where are the Trump supporters? What these graphs reveal is a larger story, in which more people give to liberal causes and candidates than to conservative ones, even if Americans are about equally divided in which party they support (and no, this isn’t the result of liberals being wealthier, the connections between income and ideology or party are pretty weak). Here are some graphs from late October showing Biden having more individual donors than Trump in every battleground state.

…

In the 2012 election, Obama raised $234 million from small individual contributors, compared to $80 million for Romney, while also winning among large contributors.

…

In September 2009, at the height of the Tea Party movement, conservatives held the “Taxpayer March on Washington,” which drew something like 60,000-70,000 people, leading one newspaper to call it “the largest conservative protest ever to storm the Capitol.” Since that time, the annual anti-abortion March for Life rally in Washington has drawn massive crowds, with estimates for some years ranging widely from low six figures to mid-to-high six figures. March for Life is not to be confused with “March for Our Lives,” a pro-gun control rally that activists claim saw 800,000 people turn out in 2018. All these events were dwarfed by the Women’s March in opposition to Trump, which drew by one estimate “between 3,267,134 and 5,246,670 people in the United States (our best guess is 4,157,894). That translates into 1 percent to 1.6 percent of the U.S. population of 318,900,000 people (our best guess is 1.3 percent).” Even if the two left-wing academics who did this research are letting their bias infuse their work, there is no question that protesting is generally a left-wing activity, as conservatives themselves realize.

People who engage in protesting care more about politics than people who donate money, and people who donate money care more than people who simply vote. Imagine a pyramid with voters at the bottom and full-time activists on top, and as you move up the pyramid it gets much narrower and more left-wing. Multiple strands of evidence indicate this would basically be an accurate representation of society.

Another line of evidence showing that the left simply cares more about politics comes from Noah Carl, who has put together data showing liberals are in their personal lives more intolerant of conservatives than vice versa across numerous dimensions in the US and the UK. Those on the left are more likely to block someone on social media over their views, be upset if their child marries someone from the other side, and find it hard to be friends with or date someone they disagree with politically. Here are two graphs demonstrating the general point.

…

There’s a great irony here. Conservatives tend to be more skeptical of pure democracy, and believe in individuals coming together and forming civil society organizations away from government. Yet conservatives are extremely bad at gaining or maintaining control of institutions relative to liberals. It’s not because they are poorer or the party of the working class – again, I can’t stress enough how little economics predicts people’s political preferences – but because they are the party of those who simply care less about the future of their country.

Debates over voting rights make the opposite assumption, as conservatives tend to want more restrictions on voting, and liberals fewer, with National Review explicitly arguing against a purer form of democracy. Conservatives may be right that liberals are less likely to care enough to do basic things like bring a photo ID and correctly fill out a ballot. If this is true, Republicans are the party of people who care enough to vote when doing so is made slightly more difficult but not enough to do anything else, while Democrats are the party of both the most active and least active citizens. Yet while being the “care only enough to vote” party might be adequate for winning elections, the future belongs to those at the tail end of the distribution who really want to change the world.

The discussion here makes it hard to suggest reforms for conservatives. Do you want to give government more power over corporations? None of the regulators will be on your side. Leave corporations alone? Then you leave power to Woke Capital, though it must to a certain extent be disciplined and limited by the preferences of consumers. Start your own institutions? Good luck staffing them with competent people for normal NGO or media salaries, and if you’re not careful they’ll be captured by your enemies anyway, hence Conquest’s Second Law. And the media will be there every step of the way to declare any of your attempts at taking power to be pure fascism, and brush aside any resistance to your schemes as righteous anger, up to and including rioting and acts of violence.

…

From this perspective we might want to consider this passage from Scott Alexander, who writes the following in his review of a biography of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The normal course of politics is various coalitions of elites and populace, each drawing from their own power bases. A normal political party, like a normal anything else, has elite leaders, analysts, propagandists, and managers, plus populace foot soldiers. Then there's an election, and sometimes our elites get in, and sometimes your elites get in, but getting a political party that's against the elites is really hard and usually the sort of thing that gets claimed rather than accomplished, because elites naturally rise to the top of everything.

But sometimes political parties can run on an explicitly anti-elite platform. In theory this sounds good - nobody wants to be elitist. In practice, this gets really nasty quickly. Democracy is a pure numbers game, so it's hard for the elites to control - the populace can genuinely seize the reins of a democracy if it really wants. But if that happens, the government will be arrayed against every other institution in the nation. Elites naturally rise to the top of everything - media, academia, culture - so all of those institutions will hate the new government and be hated by it in turn. Since all natural organic processes favor elites, if the government wants to win, it will have to destroy everything natural and organic - for example, shut down the regular media and replace it with a government-controlled media run by its supporters.

When elites use the government to promote elite culture, this usually looks like giving grants to the most promising up-and-coming artists recommended by the art schools themselves, and having the local art critics praise their taste and acumen. When the populace uses the government to promote popular culture against elite culture, this usually looks like some hamfisted attempt to designate some kind of "official" style based on what popular stereotypes think is "real art from back in the day when art was good", which every art school and art critic attacks as clueless Philistinism. Every artist in the country will make groundbreaking exciting new art criticizing the government's poor judgment, while the government desperately looks for a few technicians willing to take their money and make, I don't know, pretty landscape paintings or big neoclassical buildings.

The important point is that elite government can govern with a light touch, because everything naturally tends towards what they want and they just need to shepherd it along. But popular/anti-elite government has a strong tendency toward dictatorship, because it won't get what it wants without crushing every normal organic process. Thus the stereotype of the "right-wing strongman", who gets busy with the crushing.

So the idea of "right-wing populism" might invoke this general concept of somebody who, because they have made themselves the champion of the populace against the elites, will probably end up incentivized to crush all the organic processes of civil society, and yoke culture and academia to the will of government in a heavy-handed manner.

To put it in a different way, to steelman the populist position, democracy does not reflect the will of the citizenry, it reflects the will of an activist class, which is not representative of the general population. Populists, in order to bring institutions more in line with what the majority of the people want, need to rely on a more centralized and heavy-handed government. The strongman is liberation from elites, who aren’t the best citizens, but those with the most desire to control people’s lives, often to enforce their idiosyncratic belief system on the rest of the public, and also a liberation from having to become like elites in order to fight them, so conservatives don’t have to give up on things like hobbies and starting families and devote their lives to activism.