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Yeah why care so much about the fetus when you will throw its life away once its actually born?

>I genuinely don't know what that means.Commercialized? Politicized? Become the obsession of an older generation? Meh, she's of an older school of writers.

Well, during the 2016 election cycle, many people started using stupid Harry Potter analogies (think "Trump is literally Voldemort" and the like). This lead to the proliferation of the phrase "read another book". Eventually, Rowling stopped being favored by progressives, who were the primary group making these analogies IIRC, and so, other things were chosen. Mainly, but not exclusively, Marvel movies.

Though I'd actually say this falls more under the trend of accusing everything you don't like of being "literally just like" whatever piece of dystopian literature you're the most fond of, I guess as a sort of spiritual successor to The Hunger Games in this regard? It seems more like Nineteen Eighty-Four, however; just instead of "like the Soviet Union, but worse, and British", it's "like Islamic Iran, but worse, and Christian", albeit with a bit lighter of a backing from personal experiences.

However, I'm sure most people are/were relying on the Hulu adaptation, instead of the original book. I'm not sure how faithful an adaptation that is, and I'm sure that, by way of making the setting much more readily accessible, it's at fault for getting it into the hands of people with extremely simplistic worldviews. You know, the "Trump is Voldemort" types.

Now, this makes me wonder two things:
1) What would happen if Nineteen Eighty-Four were to get a modern, episodic adaptation?
2) Why, despite having its most recent adaptations be on BBC Radio, has Nineteen Eighty-Four and its concepts stuck around so heavily?

A possible answer for the second question is that, by coining simple terms for some more complex concepts, Orwell made it easier for people to identify these things. And people using the terms to identify and call out such things caused the terms to spread, in a way similar to Internet memes.

Or, to put it another way: while things usually aren't "literally 1984", many of the concepts explained within are broadly applicable to governments and society in general.

Going to say my piece here instead of the rat infested chan-hole of the meme page.

Okay. Let's pretend the second amendment isn't even being though about here. It is interpreted to require the highest scrutiny to make regulations on and the individual right is uncontested.

Taking away the second amendment isn't going to fix it. nothing individual is going to fix it. The school shooters are an epidemic of the long-term effects of neoliberalism. The second guilded age wealth distribution, destruction of the safety net (in particular mental health, the stigmatization of all mental health due to the far right turn of the 80s (not saying the US was ever… good), and let's just go ahead and say it every policy that went through Reagan's wonderful near-fascist, near-feeble mind, took root and we are seeing the toxic fruit. School shootings are just one fucking part.

The populists are right, it's because these kids have no hope. Combined this with the quirks of masculine gender politics (what it means to 'be a man') and just basic cultural items like "protestant work ethic" and demonizing collective action makes something frightening happen. The math is so far off these people believe they are acting rationally.

The same policies that are going to create water wars are currently driving lone wolf attacks. It isn't even hard to see. But the focus stays on gun control or health care or whatever because, if we actually want this to change, it's gunna be hard.

Texas has a strange system of valuing things, basically they value more the whims of the free market over human lives. They are Pro Life in name only.

>Harry Potter analogues

I'd like to point out my last response to the complaint that people have a limited cultural pool to draw from: Stop banning books, and have a culture that varies education and has a greater diversity of books. One can't complain how many people become illiterate when a whole country celebrates anti-intellectualism (adminstration after damned adminstration), and public arts are underfunded.

As the saying goes "you reap what you sow."

I read the Handmaid over a decade ago, I was pleased that they actually covered something other than superheroes. If people didn't read it, it's a pity. It has depth, critisizing theocrats (obviously) as well as feminists who allied with the church (for the anti-sex stance), but more than that it made readers take the point of view of someone who actually has to suffer such a system. It's one reason I was enraged by the casual and almost disconnected view some took on the abortion debate here.

I mean, if I decided to reference something more nuanced and less "pop culture" about the subject of religion in society like, say, Montaigne, would it even matter? It's a meme site after all.

EDIT: Shouldn't the average American have "Lord of the Flies", "To kill a mockingbird", or anything by Kurt Vonnegut or John Steinbeck ingrained in them?

Gun control is and has always been ceding responsability for personal safety from person to police.

Selling it requires convincing people of trust in the police being able and above all willing to intervene in the favour of the innocent in all cases.

In America that trust has never been healthy but after George Floyd and the mishandling of the subsequent riots it's at an all time low.

To the american far left it proved All Cops Are Bastards. To everyone else it proved the cops wont come if your local politician approves of the criminal; they will abandon you and your property to the mercy of the mob, while conspicuously upping their own security.

After the last few years the required trust in the police is good as dead, thus gun control is good as dead.

I personally still blame racism and the far right for this shooting not really guns per se

I don't think it's about racism, from the information given, no manifesto, his targets etc…

Plus, there's one other reason: there wasn't the same response as with Buffalo. There wasn't the "same crowd" here of people who tried to play it down, like last time.

Apparently there was bogus conspiracy on twitter, but no one repeated it here, so there's no reason to complain about it here.

There's some criticisms of the police going around apparently, a Mom had time to drive 40 minutes, get arrested, get away and get into the school and save her children

"UVALDE, Texas residents voiced anger Thursday about the time it took to end the mass shooting at an elementary school here, as police laid out a fresh timeline that showed the gunman entered the building unobstructed after lingering outside for 12 minutes firing shots."

Background checks that aren't done, intelligence services who knew the Buffalo guy was a risk and did nothing, security guards that were absent, police in fancy equipment who stood around outside and treated parents like rioters. The pattern of these two shootings is a lack of enforcement. Well, that and the rampant mediatization possibly encouraging these shooters, which isn't mentioned at all in all these articles.

What's the point of measures and laws if they don't do anything, and a widespread discussion makes shootings more attractive for those who want the notoriety? It's just a mess.

For the upteenth time gun control does not mean banning all civilian guns
it means having reasonable restrictions on guns

And when "reasonable" restrictions on guns doesnt work will it stop? No, it never does the next step will never be the final step, merely the justification for going further and further.

It's prohibition running on salami slicing mode because the structure of government doesnt allow the desired massive leap the "sane" nations it trumpets took.

Let it go unimpeded and you will eventually end up where the "sane" nations are; dead eyed police officers laying out rows of confiscated screwdrivers and butter knives in Public Relations campaigns to further restrict the ever more innocuous and improvised, as well as distract from thier failure to deter human ingenuity in the field of violence.

The only ones benefiting will be criminals; secure in the knowledge that the physically weak are incapable of meaningful resistance.

Workplace safety for the mugger and the muderer.

wait I thought you were talking about the racist guy there was actually another one?! wtf is happening to the USA? this level of masacre aint normal at all, not even for a third world country I WOULD KNOW

Man…imagine how much the 2030s and 2040s will suck lol at least I might not be alive to see 2050 and beyond….

As always you go for the slippery slope

A shooter in Toronto was foiled by the police, so it's just Texan cops who are cowards.

Bounties on women, failing energy grids, brutes as officials, the same cunts who opposed aid to New York for Hurricane Sandy ("God's will on the city of sin"), but were happy to ask for aid when they had their own natural disaster. The same ones who also were at the forefront of "intelligent design", climate change denial and Bush's War on Terror (yeah, I remember the choice things they had to say about Europe).

If there's an American Taliban, these guys are the equivalent to the Saudis, all that money and they use it to make things worse.

To use the same delicacy some Texans have used to describe other places:

What a shithole.

However, I have a feeling that with the massive mistakes/lies that have been made by Uvalde's police (seriously, both 'sides' can hate them), focusing on them is almost a distraction.

Probably much better than giving the shooter more publicity by going over them instead, there's already been a bunch of copycats popping up in the news.

As always you dismiss slippery slopes even as our societies keeps finding itself at the bottom of those previous generations were urged to dismiss as fear mongering.

All the more ridiculous in this case as many of the advocates of the next step down that slope are open in thier idolizing of nations that jumped.

I say to you from the bottom of that slope that there is nothing of value down here but a redistribution of grave spaces, from villians to victims.

Well I am just glad we can all FINALLY agree, left and right, that policemen are the fucking worst and need to get their shit together.

Incompetent, often corrupt AND cowardly, it's a dang shame, and I am not just talking in the USA.

Seriously they would rather have kindergardeners die than risk getting shot, it ain't looking good all around.

yep, the police suck

yep, the police suck

Yeah, that thin blue line's not looking too hot.

I got nothing the USA is in a grim place

And it's looking grimmer and grimmer by the day as racist theocrats seize power in the halls of power and in the Supreme Court, while their victims are left to pick up the pieces.

And it's looking grimmer and grimmer by the day as racist theocrats seize power in the halls of power and in the Supreme Court, while their victims are left to pick up the pieces.

Any country will look terrible if you only ever dwell on the negatives.

So, the school of Kiel, Wisconsin ended a Title IX investigation of a transgendered student bullied by their peers over bomb threats against the town itself, including the school, public library, and city hall.

The terrorists won.

They started a title IX investigation… over 14 year olds refusing to use pronouns.

Well, I guess it's thematically appropriate that a situation started with a stupid and evil overreaction should end with a stupid and evil overreaction.

Yeah, this whole thing is goddamn stupid. On one side, you have people using Title IX, which has a documented history of being used to violate due process rights, to compel the speech of teenagers, and on the other, you have people so mad about that stupid bullshit that they resort to bomb threats.

Maybe No was on to something, there's clearly something in the drinking water making tons of people into morons who can only think of doing the most extreme options.

It's June 4th. Happy Fuck the CCP day, everyone.

动态网自由门 天安門 天安门 法輪功 李洪志 Free Tibet 六四天安門事件 The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 天安門大屠殺 The Tiananmen Square Massacre 反右派鬥爭 The Anti-Rightist Struggle 大躍進政策 The Great Leap Forward 文化大革命 The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution 人權 Human Rights 民運 Democratization 自由 Freedom 獨立 Independence 多黨制 Multi-party system 台灣 臺灣 Taiwan Formosa 中華民國 Republic of China 西藏 土伯特 唐古特 Tibet 達賴喇嘛 Dalai Lama 法輪功 Falun Dafa 新疆維吾爾自治區 The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region 諾貝爾和平獎 Nobel Peace Prize 劉暁波 Liu Xiaobo 民主 言論 思想 反共 反革命 抗議 運動 騷亂 暴亂 騷擾 擾亂 抗暴 平反 維權 示威游行 李洪志 法輪大法 大法弟子 強制斷種 強制堕胎 民族淨化 人體實驗 肅清 胡耀邦 趙紫陽 魏京生 王丹 還政於民 和平演變 激流中國 北京之春 大紀元時報 九評論共産黨 獨裁 專制 壓制 統一 監視 鎮壓 迫害 侵略 掠奪 破壞 拷問 屠殺 活摘器官 誘拐 買賣人口 遊進 走私 毒品 賣淫 春畫 賭博 六合彩 天安門 天安门 法輪功 李洪志 Winnie the Pooh 劉曉波动态网自由门

Did you know that largely the protests were pro-Leninist, protesting against the westernization of the economy. It's why the day before you had soldiers showing civilians that their magazines were empty. It's entirely possible tank man throught he wasn't in any actual danger.

Oh and there were tons of foreign investors watching the massacre from hotel rooms. There's… no detail about the event that doesn't make it more fucked up

I am deeply uncomfortable about corporations being so willing to bend over to such fucked up regime.

You can't even argue "it's for inclusivity and diversity" because they go out of their way to delete gays and minorities to please China, it's not progressive it's just fucked up

Because they're exploiting China's social credit system to maximize profits in China.

>the protests were pro-Leninist
That doesn't sound quite right. What's your source?

Marjorie Taylor Greene says anyone who is opposed to Christian nationalism is a domestic terrorist

My fellow Georgians, please vote this bitch out of office.

I knopw it can happen, but I have the horrible feeling they won't because propaganda convinced them Gilead is the only place they can feel safe in… I'm scared and tired.

>Gilead
We're talking about a woman in a position of high government. A crazy one, but still. Find a more appropriate dystopia.

I swear, "literally The Handmaid's Tale" is just "literally 1984", but for terminally online leftists. And there's never even the dignity to try and tie things to concepts in the original work.

Point two in the list of demands of the students was to undo the liberalization and free market reforms of the reopening economic plan.. There's a direct quote from an official saying that the students are patriots and not revolutionaries, but holy god damn fuck is it hard to refind quotes because of the, you know, decades long campaign of primary source elimination. It appears to be communication between Premier Li Ping and Gorbachev.

Limited privatization, power delegated to local elected councils is pretty damn late Lenin. And you can argue that the non-murder of students while in an authoritarian framework is much more Lenin than Mao

And complaining about the 'Handmaid's Tale" seems to be the hallmark of the terminally online whatever you are.

Seriously, this is the third time now about books in this thread, but in this case, you really haven't read it all, have you? I don't know about the series, but in the book, this part shows:

>We're talking about a woman in a position of high government. A crazy one, but still. Find a more appropriate dystopia.

No, it's actually extremely appropriate, some of the worst/numerous antagonists in that book are other women, in fact a lot of the 'Commanders', those in power are too removed to be involved in the more petty cruelties.

You lecture without foundation. How does the illiterate lecture the limited?

Since we're only fixated on one book, what other books on the decay of society would be good to bring up?

"Brave New World" is also mainstream, and it's probably more accurate of the West.

If we're talking so much about the decay of society or dystopias, "A Canticle for Leibowitz" and "We" should be public domain, and free. There's a quote I like and may have butchered which went: "The sun will rise tomorrow, but that's a not a prophesy, it's simply an observation on the order of things".

Especially valid considering we're seeing countries go through their rise and fall periods.

The "Neuromancer" was the origin of all the talk on cyberpunk recently. There's a whole bunch of other imitators and Philip K. Dick made a career on books like that. If anyone read a good cyberpunk book, I'd give it a try.

"The Plague" by Camus and the "Cancer Ward" by Solzhenitsyn are also interesting in mixing up plague and authoritarian politics, what with the times we live in. They're dense though, so I don't know, try 'Pathologic 2", it's a game not a book, but it captures the atmosphere well enough.

Yeah, "Brave New World" is much closer to the West, being a book about hedonism and dangerously soul-dfestroying it can be.

Gilead though is closer to the GOP's dreams of a discount White Iran. Maybe that's why terminally online leftists like using it so much

So, two points here:

1) The information that I can find seems to suggest the polar opposite about point two of seven. That is to say, it was for the government to admit that its campaigns against liberalization and "spiritual pollution" were wrong. They were also ardent followers of late General Secretary Hu Yaobang, who was known for his pro-Western stances and criticisms of Marxism (though he wasn't inclined to entirely abandon it).

2) Premier Li Peng refused to negotiate with the protestors out of principle. Out of all the highest-ranking members of the central government, he was the most aggressively in favor of responding to the protests with violence. He was the one who declared martial law in Beijing. To me, this suggests that either your purported quote was false (it is the internet, after all), or it was a lie he told to Gorbachev. Or you're misremembering. The only potential source I've found that could contain such a quote is in Czech, so…

That interpretation to point 2 would be… spicy to say the least. The non-Marxist perspective that protests against bougie liberalization is "third way" populism. Don't think intellectuals wanting more government transparency is going fascist.

I think you misread: it's the government that was against liberalization, and point two was for the government to admit that its campaigns against liberalism were wrong. The protestors were generally in favor of liberalism, campaigning for things such as freedom of speech and following the lead of a politician who was reviled within the party for his support of liberalization.

@Gilan:
Dune Series – Which is a wide critique of over-bureaucratic society that has led to humanity being technologically, culturally, scientifically, and politically stagnant while depending entirely on a single resource to survive, which in of itself was built on the innate desire to have safety, order, and fear. It also criticizes charismatic leaders and how easily people flock to them, often building the mythology around the leader to reinforce the worship of the leader.

I do feel like we've started entering a form of cultural and political stagnation. Even our technology is more or less just making existing products more efficient, smaller, faster, more powerful, while increasingly distant from the myriad of people that interact with it: robotics, ai, for example. Culturally I feel like it's not just the US but much of the world is stuck in a loop of status-quo or the conservatism disguised as avant garde or novel, this is especially true of art, literature, and music.

As far as worshiping leaders, well we can see it constantly on the right (disturbing adoration of Trump) and the left (disturbing adoration of self-described socialists like AOC, Bernie Sanders), and the near total trust in establishment politicians by a large segment of the American population. But it's not just politicians: I fear we are very prone to adoration of activism and activists, and the last few years have been a shower of grifters exploiting people with good intentions for personal gain. (looking at you Breadtube, BLM).

So much of my generation is so willing to give up so much of their freedom and liberty for the hope that they can get some temporary safety and sense of calm. I don't blame them, it was a generation that grew up with innate trust in authority figures guiding them through all manners of life.

I guess such idol worship is a consequence of Americans' inability to organize. They have to rely on the White House and it's a mess at this point. We Canadians are barely any better, but even then we're just patting our back at this point.

@Chewybunny

I'm actually a big fan of Dune, I made a big mistake in forgetting it. Thanks.

It's an alien world far in the future where cultural drift has made men almost unrecognizable to us, but it's also a world which has stagnated and regressed culturally to a feudal, guild controlled state. Worse than status quo, I think it's gone backwards and then morphed into something unrecognizable.

There's barely any rights of men, where rampant genetic manipulation and mutation has put into question what's even a men. The very concept of men has been made a mockery with the ghola and the less said of the Bene Tleilax, the better.

More than just bureaucracy, it's the economy, it's a guild system focused on a single resource which makes everything else cheap in comparison. There's a reason why dictators which endure do so on the back of resources and it may ironically be a proponent for free trade, because the various guilds and power-holders keep things stagnant on purpose. Monopolies can be harmful.

I think that the Emperor actually breaking these power holders is better, but you've pointed out the trap of 'charismatic leaders', and he actually made things worse in a way. The only excuse given was magic.

Beyond just bureaucracy and authoritarianism, I think another issues is the mysticism. How can progress or research be made when prophesies and magical thinking is the order of the day, because there's actual magical powers? There was even a jihad against computing (for good reason), but it still means a self-imposed fear of research.

I think it's an inter-generational problem, because I'm also not sure of which generation we're talking about. The current world seems to be a reaping of the greed of the late 20th century, we're just living in the consequences.

@Gilan
(spoilers for anyone who didn't read)
Dune Messiah the sequel revealed what Paul ascending the throne was like. The visions that Paul saw in the first Dune book (which the recent movie actually shows) come to fruition, and there was a Jihad across the entire Imperium leaving 61 billion dead, and total sterilization 90 planets. 40 different religions were wiped out along with their worshippers. Paul becomes deified but he cannot commit to the Golden Path he saw – the necessary steps to ensure humanity' survival. In God Emperor of Dune, his son Leto II does however commit to the Golden Path, where he turned the entire human Imperium into an absolute state of blissful status quo. It was written that while people had their needs met: shelter, food, basic life amenities, the arts, culture, science, etc were all strictly restricted. That's why he was known as "The tyrant". He did "allow" some technical innovation to occur making them think that they were doing it underground, but he was watching the entire time. For 3000 years Leto II kept humanity in such extreme stagnation that the urge to break out became instinctually unbearable. Simultaneously he kept the genetic breeding alive. Creating a humanity that cannot be tracked by prescience. When he died, that pent up energy that he restricted for thousands of years exploded into what was known as The Scattering, where billions of people began to explore, innovate, and scatter across the stars beyond the reach of the old imperium.

Frank Herbert was a hardcore libertarian, he questioned authority, authoritarian figures, governments, monopolies, any institution that maintained power over humanity. But he also penned some deep wisdom regarding the patterns in human history and the uncomfortable truths for people who try to tie themselves to a particular political ideologies, left or right. The Imperium controlled humanity through a strict social order, even war between the great houses was extremely regimented to avoid collateral deaths. technology was tightly controlled due to the fear of AI. the entire imperium in of itself was controlled tightly by it's dependence on Spice. Every institution in the imperium was so tightly controlled that any interruption would risk total eradication. But he also critiqued how religion (bene gesserit) could enslave humanity, and later on how sex also enslaved humanity.

Ultimately, Herbert's entire series prioritized and celebrated freedom above all else.

>I think it's an inter-generational problem, because I'm also not sure of which generation we're talking about.

I'm an older millennial, who grew up in the 90s and early 2000s. I can speak to what I witnessed and remember about my upbringing and the upbringing of my fellows, but also from similar stories I read a lot online about similar upbringings. We are a very coddled generation, making dealing with hardships much more difficult, but we are also a generation that has had the largest trust in authority. Interestingly while a majority of Millenials preferred bigger government
They have abysmal trust in Congress, the Presidency

But look at the trust in the military and the police. Granted this was a 2015 poll.

I really wish policemen weren't so cowardly, like I know I am generalizing but….I mean they seem cowardly what else can you call the last police response to the school shooting

Is there a name for the very specific branch of libertarian and pseudo-libertarian speculative fiction, where something insanely off the rails conspires to reduce humanity to a diminished state (Rand: everyone got stupid for reasons, Heinlein: children became the mafia and were immune to laws, Herbert: Spice and theocracy fucking everything up, Hubbard: psychology is evil aliens) and either the plot or setting are involved with reconstructing humanity into its new form?

It's like a weird mirror of -punk and it should have a name

I mean you'd have to include 1984 and Farenheit 451 amongst many other books that are effectively in the same vein. All those genres discuss a degraded state of man, often the degradation is a result of a dystopian society. Effectively -punk usually applies to a setting where the characters are often victims or dredges of a dystopian society trying to overcome something. Also punk, as a political and artistic movement has it's roots in libertarian though going into a further extreme of anarchism.