Sociopaths are not in control of society. Sociopath is Latin for "someone with a social illness". Basically it means people with autism, schizophrenia, ASPD and the like. Disorders that make it hard to fit in and follow the rules and get basic respect from others. It doesn't actually refer to a specific diagnosis because it's not a medical term. It's arguable that it was ever an English term.
exocrinous
joined 10 months ago
The Master Chief has massive psychological trauma from being a child soldier. That trauma has always been a central part of his arc, and whether the covenant's invasion justifies Halsey's actions in retrospect has always been a central question of the universe. The reason Halsey is kind of a Nazi is that she's implanted with a Geas by the librarian to follow in the footsteps of the Forerunners, and the forerunners sucked. Halo is concerned with big philosophical questions, and I like those questions, and none of the answers to those questions say fascism is okay.
The core thesis of Halo is "if soldiers were allowed to do whatever they want, they'd destroy the world". Halo 1, Chief wants to fire the ring and Cortana stops him. Halo 2, Arby wants to genocide the humans and everyone says that's a bad idea and then he gets genocided. Halo 3, Hood wants to do a heroic last stand on earth and everyone says that's a bad idea. Halo ODST, stop killing huragok they're slaves. Halo Reach, stop going down in a blaze of glory and carry cortana. Halo 4, stop putting your giant phallic ship before earth. Also the whole reason for the human covenant war is that Truth lied and started a genocide to avoid admitting that humans are gods.
Every single game is about soldiers and politicians making bad decisions based on violence, hate, and pride until a scientist or a smart person stops them and explains what's actually going on.
Cops can't solve bad driving. Fear of punishment is not an effective deterrent. We know this because we've done the psychology and looked at the numbers. Unsafe driving is an infrastructure problem. In my country, people leave enough space between cars. It's not because we have more police than yours, it's because we have safer designed roads. Every traffic accident that causes a death is an infrastructure failure.
Hobbiton is definitely capitalist or feudalist in some idealised fantasy manner. Samwise is employed as Frodo's gardener because Bilbo's dragon treasure made the Bagginses rich.
Tolkien was a wonderful man personally, but he struggled at thinking outside of the paradigms he knew, which were based on catholicism. Lord of the Rings is a fundamentally christian story in a lot of subtle ways that have had negative ramifications on the entire genre of fantasy in the decades since. I will say that Tolkien believed in the selfless, loving christianity that Jesus was talking about, and that's pretty good, but it's not perfect. It leads to blindnesses like the fact that the only governments present in Middle Earth are feudalism (hobbits, men, elves), theocracy (orcs), and just literally being one with nature (ents). Jesus may have said to give a poor man the cloak off your back, but by the 20th century those ideas had been filtered through Rome's horrible point of view and England's worse one. The possibility space for what a devout christian can conceptualise had been reduced, even when reading the words directly from the bible.
Anyway if you're curious about the more significant problems with Tolkien's worldbuilding, the big one is the racial controversy surrounding orcs that arose when people started moving an explicitly christian myth into realist settings, and to a lesser extent there's the "fallen empire" trope that I just find really annoying in everything except Halo and Warframe (this is because both of those games state that the fallen empire sucked and were destroyed by their own hubris, which is just so juicy. Those games are antifascist as fuck).
I would argue Gandalf uses not smooth talking, but fast talking. He does whatever he wants before the hobbits have even mustered up the indignation to say no. That's what happens at the beginning of the Hobbit. The book says most of the respectable hobbits hated Gandalf and only the children and the adventurous liked him, and nobody respected the adventurous hobbits all too much, Bagginses and their wealth not withstanding.
No, Sauron is the same character I meant to talk about. The master of Saruman. Sauron is a theocratic dictator, and Saruman is, politically speaking, a Bishop-Duke. His ideology must be the same as Sauron's because he serves Sauron. And Sauron implements theocratic dictatorship in Isengard and Mordor. Theocratic dictatorship, as you must be aware, is a far right ideology. And nazis are also far right, but I'm not sure why they're the topic of discussion.
Yeah but he had fireworks though
Tankies aren't leftists and Sauron isn't a tankie.
Liberals have a tendency to tolerate fascists more than is reasonable. They believe in granting fascists basic respect as serious political actors. They treat disagreements with fascists as intellectual debates with decorum and rules.
Joe Biden shouldn't have gone to the 2020 presidential debates armed with facts and arguments. He should have stepped up to the podium and said "this man is a murderer and deserves to be killed." It is the result of liberalism that this cannot be said in such a setting.
Yes, of course I'm doing more than voting to change politics. I'm a soulist, I'm also helping grow waylets and establishing mutual support networks and doing war against the gods. When's the last time you tried to destroy reality?
The government is an illegitimate state. We live in a dictatorship on stolen indigenous ground. Fuck Charles and fuck the government.