State of the Discussion

So, slightly spoilery comment here about stuff that exists in the movie, but nothing important that isn't in the trailer.

I really liked this movie, and it was everything I hoped it would be.

I liked they didn't waste time in this movie. It's _bam_, you know who Superman is, here's the current situation he is in, you know what the Fortress of Solitude is, look this version has robots, you know who Lois Lane is, here she is, they're dating, etc, we're not explaining any of this that the audience is assumed to know.

Which meant they had plenty of time to tell a story in barely over two hours.

They _also_ didn't bother with the backstory of the other heroes. Because, frankly, we don't need to know. Maybe we'll get movies with them, maybe not, I have no idea what is planned, but they're clearly setting something up for a Justice League movie, but both Batman and Wonder Women both conspicuously aren't there, presumably getting a movie of their own before everything ties together, which is basically _exactly_ how Marvel did it with introducing the big guns in their own movies with Clint and Natasha as side characters in those, then doing The Avengers. (And DC will also need one more member somewhere, if they want the League to be the traditional seven members. J'onn?)

Also, I really like they picked those specific second-tier heroes. Guy is deliberately annoying, Hawkgirl is just...put upon, and Mr. Terrific has always been a character that no one knows what to do with whenever Batman is around, because his gimmick is basically 'incredibly skilled athlete who is supergenius tech guy', which Batman lands almost squarely on except with more punching, so with Batman absent, he's actually useful. And frankly, watching him fight is fun.

Also, involving Maxwell Lord in that was genius. For those who only know Max Lord from Wonder Woman 1987 or from the Arrowverse, in the comics, Maxwell Lord has funded the Justice League before. He _also_ slowly was revealed to be morally gray, then an outright villain. And in an event that is infamous in-universe, had his neck snapped on live television broadcast worldwide by Wonder Woman because he was mind-controlling Superman and she had no other way to stop this. Unlike Bats and Supes, Wonder Woman does not technically have a no kill policy, but everyone sorta assumed she did, and doing this in front of the world was...shocking to everyone, including Bruce and Clark, and their relationship suffered after this.

I don't know if that's where movies are going, but I like that Gunn is setting up things far enough in advance, and also subtlety and quickly. It's _much_ than Marvel did of their future stuff, or DC has done. Those things would have paused and spent ten minutes on Lord and had some ominous stuff and whatever, and here it's just 'Hey, Maxwell Lord exists and is currently funding the Justice Book Club', and people can make that connection themselves...and who even knows if it will go that way here.

I’m significantly less likely to be critical of the use of the labels “fascism” and “fascist” than a lot of people here, but it is worth noting that this sort of American reaction to immigration predates the existence of fascism in its actual and conceptual forms. Immigration panics are as American as apple pie, if not more so. They’re a fundamental part of the dialectic of America: a nation of immigrants that periodically becomes terrified of immigrants.

I think my response to that would be 'the fundamental part of the dialectic of America has always included some level of things we would later understand to be fascist'. After all, Na.zis explicitly looked at the then-current American immigration laws when crafting their own laws about 'undesirables'. That's _in addition to_ our segregation laws.

But, let's look at the past at one of the biggest xenophobic panics. 1882 America was not fascist in general, but that was because the media was the entire thing pushing the massive dehumanizing sinophobia that resulted in decades of violence against Chinese immigrants and eventually lead to the Chinese Exclusion Act. And...things stopped there.

That setup just wasn't used by fascism because fascism didn't exist yet and no one understood how to use what was happening. No American politician was able to articulate a good theory of völkisch, get in front of the thing, lead it.

But I would argue that the second that American politicians had fascism to look at, to learn from, _all_ xenophobic panics after that point were fascist.

Even before WWII, in fact. Compare 1850-1890 sinophobia to the anti-Japanese xenophobia of the 30s, as fascism started to rise, both in Europe and the US. You have the American government saying 'no Japanese can ever be loyal to any other nation other than Japan' and claiming that second and third generation Japanese-Americans 'cannot become thoroughly Americanized'. (1)

That's fascist talk. Very fascist talk. Earlier sinophobia might have talked about how the Chinese are filthy and uncivilized, lacking all sorts of virtues, but they didn't actually talk about how they couldn't be American...probably just because they assumed they couldn't regardless, they didn't need to make that point. They weren't building an underclass back then, it was just a disorganized mass panic created to sell newspapers.

The second you get fascism even halfway invented, American _politicians_ are straight up using their terms in reoccuring American immigration panics...right next to _other_ panics they are running at the same time, panics we didn't have before, like the Red and Lavendar scares. Everything just blurred into one giant fascist mess of propaganda to create an underclass, a amorphous group of people who are not truly American and are part of a vast worldwide conspiracy to undermine the US, which lets them not only attack those people, but people defending those people. And they've kept using those terms.

So, yeah. Panics over immigration and immigrants is something America does over and over, and did before fascism, but not only did this help build the foundations of fascism, fascism then infected how American does it, to the point that every time it has happened since then, it has had overtly fascist overtones that weren't present before.

1. Oh, and not to make too much an analogy here, but we _also_ started putting them in camps without due process.

It was a rhetorical question. Obviously, we Jews should not believe them. There are more than a few Jews who are deluding themselves about this. They think they will be safe because they are one of the good ones that old the correct belief.

More in merely "anti-Zionist", "Pro-Palestinian" protestors in Melbourne, Australia lit a synagogue on fire during Friday evening services while 20 people were in it. Another set of protestors attacked patrons at an Israeli restaurant.

https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/article-860028

If Jews were to go about an attacking Muslim owned shops and restaurants or doing violence against people in Muslim related spaces because of Hamas than the Left would be screaming bloody murder at the top of their lungs. Now that the cosplay revolutionary left is engaging in direct anti-Semitism it is all denial. I'm sick of this. Why should we Jews believe them when they say they aren't anti-Semitic when they target random Jews?

Yes, like you, I'm sure that this will put the political turmoil to rest.

Nevertheless, it will blow over sooner or later. Within a year, I predict we'll all be talking about something else and will need to be reminded that any of this ever happened.

from your link: He said that the vandals, whom he described as “pro-Palestinian anarchists,” carried out the attack within a matter of seconds, “making intervention impossible.” Good thing it was a short event. Even better no Jews were harmed; He noted that the only staff members in the restaurant at the time of the attack were Greek nationals.

Those darned anarchists. When will the left get them under control?

I saw a comment on the twitters about how Gunn has a 10 Year Plan for the DCEU and my immediate visceral response was to make a joke about Soviet five year plans but then... you know what?

A 10 year plan is EXACTLY what DC needs.

We can look at Marvel Phase Five plans and wince at how there are SEVENTEEN FREAKING THINGS on it...

But you know what? They know that they're going to tell a story and it's gonna culminate in something and if you're driving from LA to NYC, you should know that you want to stop in Vegas and Chicago and make plans on what to do while you're there.

On top of that, I have had friends who are superhero-shy after the last two and a half decades and they've told me "Jaybird, Superman was pretty good!"

I remain skeptical.
But I am interested in seeing what appears on the horizon instead of scoffing at the very idea of doing so.

Does Netanyahu have an heir?

Like if he resigns or whatever, who is the top of the list to replace him?
Likud still? The New Right? Yesh Atid?

I've heard takes that say that Netanyahu is the only thing keeping everybody together and only by bombing the ever-living itshay out of neighbors (or talking Trump into doing it) and the second that he's gone, there's going to be a feeding frenzy like you wouldn't believe.

But, granted, that's a prediction that goes back to Sharon.

I prefer to make a broad statement that is pretty obviously (even trivially) true and see where stuff goes from there. Here, watch this:

"An abundance of Type I errors will eventually result in Type II errors due to cognitive biases from base rate neglect."

I've always been skeptical that there was a 'there' there with this, at least in the truly conspiratorial sense. Which isn't to say I doubt that Epstein himself was a sexual abuser of underage girls. The publicly available evidence, plus the conviction of his associate are enough to eliminate any doubt for me on that particular point. It would also not surprise me to learn that many of the elite people with whom he associated had some sense that there was something deeply and disturbingly wrong with this person. They just didn't care because he was rich and well connected or didn't see it as their problem.

Where I have my doubts is that there is some sort of list with names of people who also partook in the same sick and criminal conduct that he himself did and/or that if such a list exists, that it is necessarily credible. It isn't impossible of course but it also is a pretty extraordinary claim, and as they say, those require extraordinary evidence.

In terms of the partisan political dimension I agree with Saul. The Republicans started this and have been the most fervent and cynical fanners of the flames of conspiracy theories, particularly when they felt it would be helpful for them. Now they have to deal with the consequences.

It's become generally acceptable to criticize Bibi, at least among liberals, because it lets you avoid criticizing the Israeli government and military generally, or the Israeli public that overwhelmingly supports the government's, and Bibi's, policies in Gaza/the West Bank. "Bibi is the problem" lets you ignore that Bibi is a symptom.

In today's merely anti-Zionist not anti-Semitic, a Kosher restaurant in Athens, Greece was vandalized in broad daylight by Jew hating, I mean Pro-Palestinian, vandals. It is very clear that the anti-Semites of the left are using the guise of being Pro-Palestinian to harm Jews around the world and nobody in the Pro-Palestinian movement is interested in bringing them under control. Why should we Jews believe them when they say they are merely anti-Zionist?

https://www.timesofisrael.com/anti-israel-vandals-descend-on-kosher-eatery-in-athens-threaten-zionists/

I'm with Chris Hayes at this point. Pretty much everyone on the left assumed that the Epstein files were going to be basically nothing that we didn't already know. Specifically, exactly the same probably-can't-be-proven-in-court-and-would-never-even-make-it-there allegations about very powerful people, including Donald Trump. We mostly didn't care. The rich and powerful are already not subject to normal human laws.

But, um...something very strange is going on here. Breaking the base in half instead of just releasing things is...a choice.

There is something that Donald Trump very very much wishes to not get out in those files, and I can't imagine it's the stuff _we already pretty much know_.

What's worse than what we already know? Pretty impossible to say.

Well, I at least hope it's clear how the lawn argument, the scab analogy, and the "free stuff" argument, aren't convincing to me.

I mean, the lawn argument really shouldn't be convincing to anyone who doesn't think that their property is so sacred that anyone else even touching it without their explicit permission is a great personal offense, in which case, their individualism has reached seriously antisocial levels.

Satre's observation that anti-Semites are basically what we call trolls in the Internet age is relevant. One reason why anti-Semitism is thriving is that anti-Semites tend to be trolls and the Internet is a playground for trolls. There are outside events that are contributing to the anti-Semitism like Netanyahu putting all Jews in danger by his reckless actions and the inability of the Right and the Left to get their anti-Semites under control but the Internet being a troll playground is also a big factor.

2. I kinda hate the 'make the player' or 'make the player's mom' part of the broadcast for an entire inning... usually dreadful after exactly 1 exchange. NHL or NFL edits to capture something said in game? Ok.

That said, if you are a hall-of-fame pitcher talking to another HOF pitcher and giving him grief for not knowing what pitches you throw... and don't give two flyin' f's about whether you're bouncing pitches in the Allstar game? Under those parameters? Kinda funny.

Or if you're Manny Ramirez... I just assume you should probably mic him up all the time.

Netanyahu needs to go but he is going to remain in office and do whatever he can to avoid jail. It used to be somewhat acceptable to bribe bad politicians and leaders away. This is basically how Idi Amin, Pinochet, and Pol Pot were dealt with. These days it is basically considered unacceptable and political tribalism keeps too many people in power. Netanyahu is going to old on until the next Knesset elections in October 2026.

The thing is, for certain kinds of immigration, maybe it should be like that. The key question is whether it's been agreed upon via the only constitutional process we have to answer that question. I feel pretty comfortable that low skill labor from the poorer and more dysfunctional parts of the hemisphere will not pass that bar on any near term timeline, but who knows?

And that matters why exactly? We are here discussing national policies and politics. And these are national issues. So a national level of consideration seems appropriate.