Makes you wonder about tech oligarchs who read scifi and always misinterpret it. Rather than warnings of unbridled power, they seem to view stuff like 1984, Snowcrash, Dune, etc as guides.
Alex Blechman (@AlexBlechman) tweeted:
Sci-Fi Author: In my book I invented the Torment Nexus as a cautionary tale.
Tech Company: At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from classic sci-fi novel Don’t Create The Torment Nexus.8 Nov 2021
Fantastic video. Thanks for the recommendation!
To these narcissist everything that enables them to sit on top while the vast majority of people is miserable is unfortunately work as inspiration.
Many of them actively seek to replace most people with robots; but they will keep a few humans as pets and slaves to sate their egos.
Don’t forget “Animal Farm” and “A Handmaids Tale”.
At long last we have created the torment nexus from the classic sci-fi novel “Don’t create the torment nexus”
Reminds me of the time Tom Morello made a political statement and magats got into a huff, saying that he is a musical artist and should stay out of politics. My favorite comment online was “What machine do they think they were raging against, the toaster?”
Printers are worth raging against, I could get behind that
I’d live with PC Load Letter instead of this timeline
I’d prefer a printer over the system we currently have to live with though.
honestly, you could make a good argument for a personal penile meat grinder over the system we have now.
At least you can put the printer in the trash without issues.
You can unplug them without issues, turn them off without issues, use the neighbours one without issues; it’s a long lost, really
Reminds me of that video of magats rocking out on RATM Killing in the name of, having absolutely no idea what the song is about
Some of those that work forces
Are the same that burn crossesah, the cryptic lyrics were too opaque for the conservative brain
They just assumed that’s who the song was for. Killing in the name of God doesn’t automatically register as bad for these folks.
I mean… didn’t you know only the Demonrats burn crosses? It’s obvious!
/s
Conservative Politian: When did RATM get political?
Tom Morello: Tell me what song in our catalog you don’t think is political and I’ll remove it.
These are the traditional american values I support.
In 2022, Snider tweeted about the use of the song by right-wing activists, "ATTENTION QANON, MAGAT FASCISTS: Every time you sing ‘We’re Not Gonna Take It’ remember it was written by a cross-dressing, libtard, tree hugging half-Jew who HATES everything you stand for. It was you and people like you that inspired every angry word of that song! SO FUCK OFF!
All the cool people of history are woke.
In November 2023, after the October 7 attacks, Snider was asked if he agreed with Israel soldiers using “We’re Not Gonna Take It” as a battle cry. He replied, “Oh, hell yeah. You know what? Israelis, the assault on the Israelis, people are losing sight of something. People saying that, ‘Oh, the response is gonna be too intense for what happened.’ Well, you don’t get to decide on the response when you do heinous things to civilians. You don’t get to say, ‘Oh, that’s enough, that’s enough retaliation.’ No, it doesn’t work like that. When you cross that line, you’re burning people, you’re slaughtering people, you’re raping people, you’re just killing people, after what happened at that festival you don’t get to say, ‘Okay, your revenge can be this much.’ No. Payback’s a mothereffer. And I come from that school. You cross that line, you know… shit’s gonna happen. Sing it out, boys.”
Everyone’s problematic
Valid criticism, but how does he feel today? Because on October 7, I was pretty supportive of strong retaliation, too.
Then I saw what Israel actually did, which was far beyond a military response on military targets. It wasn’t long after they started that they lost my support. I can support the concept of justice, I can’t support genocide.
I don’t know how he feels about that today, but it is possible that his feelings in November, immediately following the attack, changed after the atrocious response. I think a lot of peoples’ did.
Yeah I agree for the most part. I can’t find anything about him retracting this comment in the aftermath though. Maybe he did.
Playing devils advocate for Snider, November 2023 was right after October 7th and I don’t think there were nearly as many people pointing out and shouting about the ethnic cleansing Israel was using the attack as an excuse to partake in until we got into 2024.
Indeed.
I know “Well, you don’t get to decide on the response” certainly aged like milk, but I think folks in 2023 could be forgiven to be thinking “IDF is going to strike Hamas and Hamas brought them on themselves” as the wanton collateral harm largely wasn’t on folks radar at the time. Some folks with more nuanced understandings sounded alarms and were dismissed, but having to respond to that situation mere weeks after October 7th… That’s going to be a tough scenario for most people to come out looking ok.
I think that response was more insightful than he realised. Every Extremist planning something should take into account that the reaction might be much more than anticipated. But that also goes for the people doing the reaction. Israel likewise can’t control what people’s reaction to their actions will be.
Only naive people and people who had no clue what they were talking about. In 2023, israel had been a settler colonialist genocidal ethnostate for half a century already
Naive is right. I knew straight up anarchists that somehow didn’t know the score RE Palestine until they started digging after 2023.
Honestly that was me too, I was also for squashing Hamas until I saw that this turned into genocide.
But his implied question is deep, what amount of retaliation is the correct or maximum amount? Not just in this case, but any case.
Well, for Israel, they have a deep-seated teaching of their culture that straight up tells them what is the appropriate amount of retaliation: it’s called the Torah. All these “ultra-Orthodox” people in the Kinesset should know what their Bible says about retaliation. “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” This law actually is intended to place limits on retaliation in that one is only owed what has been taken–with many rabbis seeing it as a means for financial compensation. As I understand it, in places like Egypt (where, according to tradition, Israel’s forebears were exploited workers, basically slaves) had an unbalanced legal system that allowed for disproportionate retaliation (“you took my eye? Well now your family is dead”), especially as applied for aristocratic types. But the Torah was presented as universally applicable to every Jew.
So, leveling Gaza is disproportionate retaliation according to the very law they claim God Himself gave them.
That’s the eternal question. Too much retaliation isn’t just immoral, it’s tactically foolish. You horrify your allies and incite revenge. Too little on the other hand and you don’t deter.
While I think we should have gone harder in punishment to the active members of the axis governments, I think the post WW2 rebuilding is probably best. Leaders and propagandists are targeted and punished and there’s a period of hardship, but you help them rebuild while pressing them towards a less destructive attitude towards you.
The only way to kill your way to peace is to kill everyone. Real peace requires creating an environment where enough of both sides want peace and violence isn’t worth it.
in that case, the same thing from.the other side though. That attack was just retaliation. How long do you continue with an eye for an
eyeface? Blowback…The only sane outcomes is to say doing more of the same will lead to worse atrocities and do something different. All this is retaliation is going to do is make it worse.
look at the Iran thing, lot of conservatives say they’re worried Iran will build a nuke and sail it into Manhattan… why are they worried about that ? what is it they’ve done to Iran over many decades that they think that’s a possible retaliatory outcome ?
It’s pretty obvious innit? Targeted counter terror operations. Use the considerable power and expertise available to the government to bring those responsible to justice without demolishing the whole country. Like America should’ve done (and eventually did) with bin Laden, instead of invading the countries next door for over a decade.
I mean that’s what I would do, but to answer more broadly, I think the maximum amount should definitely be constrained to what is legal.
Oh fuck. I thought I liked him. Turns out he’s a hypocrite :(
There’s a long list of people. He’s nowhere near the top. He has time to realize his mistakes, apologize, and get on board in a genuine fashion.
Here’s hoping he does realize. But somehow I haven’t seen that with anyone so far who was defending the Israeli crimes against humanity in Gaza and elsewhere. Everyone decent so far has been able to both condemn Hamas AND the genocide of the Palestinians.
It’s almost like the situation in the ME is exceptionally nuanced and no amount of armchair discussions on social media are going to explain or resolve it.
I’m saying this as a non-Jew who married a Jew and had 3 kids with her.
Condemning settler colonialism is pretty simple. Maybe you’re overthinking it?
Nobody cares who you married, and I’m saying this as a mischling jew.
I listen to a lot of Jewish comedians, does my opinion count?
Depends how many of them are named Jerry Seinfeld, I guess 🤷🏻
Is one of them Herschel Shmoikel Pinchas Yerucham Krustofsky?
And believe it or not I agree with you but that said it’s not so cut and dry and if you were Jewish you would understand that much.
And being clear no one cares that you’re a mischling Jew, and I’m saying this as a Canadian.
I guess it depends on what concepts you are willing to let go of. If you think Jews have some kind of holy right to land occupied by other people, yes, things are goig to be complicated because you also want to protect your ability to think of yourself as a good person, and that precludes you from supporting ethnic cleansing and genocide
If, on the other hand, you see Israel as a settler-colonial project no morally different than the Dutch in South Africa or the British in North America or the Spanish is South America or the Belgians in the Congo, it becomes a much easier ethical calculus.
There are plenty of Jews who view Israel as the latter, and the fact an identity “makes things complicated,” points to self-interested decision. Just like being white makes the concept of removing barriers to employment by black people “complicated”, or being a man might make supporting female rape victims “complicated.” The fact that a choice might not benefit a group you identify with is not an argument in favor.
And, yeah, nobody should listen to “as a mischling jew.” That’s 1/4th Jewish.
Personally speaking they should pave over the entire ME. No one is showing they have the maturity to live there so take it away from everyone.
That said, not possible lol
Plenty of Jewish people interpret the slogan and promise Never again to refer to all genocide, not just that committed against Jews. Israel has been committing human atrocities for a while now, but under the authoritarian Netanyahu administration, they’ve burned the nuance right out.
Israel has become the monster it was once afraid of, and once promised never to be.
Israel has become the monster it was once afraid of, and once promised never to be.
I am sorry to inform you that it never promised that. On the contrary, from its outset Zionism has been a colonial project fundamentally premised on the displacement, dispossession, and ultimately genocide of the Palestinian people.
The language of colonialism hadn't gone out of style yet when they started, so Zionist writing in the 19th and first half of the 20th century was much clearer about it:
[It is the] iron law of every colonizing movement, a law which knows of no exceptions, a law which existed in all times and under all circumstances. If you wish to colonize a land in which people are already living, you must provide a garrison on your behalf. Or else – or else, give up your colonization, for without an armed force which will render physically impossible any attempts to destroy or prevent this colonization, colonization is impossible, not “difficult”, not “dangerous” but IMPOSSIBLE! … Zionism is a colonizing adventure and therefore it stands or falls by the question of armed force. It is important to build, it is important to speak Hebrew, but, unfortunately, it is even more important to be able to shoot – or else I am through with playing at colonialization. - Ze’ev Jabotinsky
See also Jewish Colonisation Association, Palestine Jewish Colonization Association, Jewish Colonial Trust, Zionism as settler colonialism, …
Note also that from the beginning there has been strong Jewish opposition to Zionism, starting with opposition by Jews who were living peacefully there and wanted nothing to do with the project.
The situation in Gaza is not nuanced. There’s a genocide happening there - the single worst crime possible. There’s no nuance, it’s as extreme and clear cut as it is possible to be.
Talking about it on the internet is important, because ideas can spread.
This isn’t about Jewish identity. It’s about a state committing genocide on another state.Sorry to fire back at you like this, but I really don’t know what you’re trying to achieve with your comment, and it didn’t make sense to me.
What is nuanced about shooting starving children in bread lines and bombing hospitals? Please enlighten me.
There are many, many, many Jews that feel their culture and their right to exist is under attack and the actions are justified and those walls they have built are there for good reason and exist over hundreds if not thousands of years of persecution.
This in no way makes it right and I agree with you, but we need to acknowledge the conversation comes with a history that is extremely loaded and I’d argue many of us are not in a position to fully cover the nuance.
I love the anger I get back for simply stating this.
feel their culture and their right to exist is under attack and the actions are justified
And I feel like I deserve a harem that sucks my dick every hour. That doesn’t make me nuanced, it makes me a dumbass. Pretending like the history matters at all is just a way of justifying evil actions to yourself.
Why is it impossible to discuss important things with people who act like fucking children? Maybe because they are? 🤷♂️
Anyways neither of us are solving this problem so I’m dipping out of trying to have a discussion with a dumbass. Your words not mine.
That’s fair, and I’m sympathetic to that fear and that concern, but for all the nuance of how it got to this point and why there’s still too much support, I do think that the reality as it has become has removed all nuance from the situation as it currently stands.
Israeli soldiers are engaging in genocide with all the gleeful torture and killing that is associated with the crime. They need to be stopped, leadership needs to be punished, and the everyday people need to be deradicalized.
A lot of people’s anger at the calls for nuance comes from the fact that we keep being told there’s nuance and that we need to be sympathetic to israel as they commit horrifying crimes and not only is nothing done to stop them, people in western nations are being prevented from stopping our governments and institutions’ assistance to them.
Jew 1/2… I am too half muslim half christian
Just like “Born in the USA”.
And fortunate son… The amount of people who completely misinterpret the song about the rich senators son not needing to go fight in a useless war while you’re drafted to go and die is too damn high.
They thought the guy dressed in drag while singing “were not going to take it” was on their side? WOW
I guess they saw him battling with Tipper Gore back in the day and, being unable to escape their bifurcated sense of politics, assumed he was on their side.
Media literacy final boss are MAGAs. Same goes for some Christians praising Take Me to Church as a song of worship. You see this also a lot with video games and superheroes. No, Batman would NOT be on your side and games like Fallout have ALWAYS been political.
Batman is a billionaire beating up environmentalists. Sounds pretty MAGA to me.
There’s a comic arc where Batman tries feverishly to get rid of his fortune not through philanthropy but really by selling and giving away everything. The system is so rigged that he is still stupidly filthy rich by the end of it all and the systemic inequalities and corruption make it so that all his money is being squandered and used to further abuse victims instead of helping. So he ends up beating up people in a black suit anyway, as the only real way to fight corruption.
Also, there’s a literal supernatural curse over the city anyways. It will always be evil and corrupt.
Where did the supernatural curse come from?
It depends on the universe and story arc. In one Batman is literally fighting a god that lives as a bat at the core of the city. One has an evil warlock from 40000 years ago sleeping under the city. My favorite one is that there’s a literal portal to hell in Arkham’s basement.
literal portal to hell
Where’s my Batman/Buffy crossover? I just want to see Alfred and Giles talking.
Rich people, probably.
Yeah although usually it’s Superman they’re obsessed with anyway. Usually they like to complain that the current iteration is too woke, even though it’s exact same character from the 1960s
Batman can be viewed as a violent force of the status quo and if you fry your brain with post 9/11 propaganda you could even get the stupid idea that this is a good thing. Looking at you, Frank Miller.
But the idealized or, to be even more pretentious, platonic idea of Batman is everything but.
No, Batman would NOT be on your side
Neither would Punisher, despite the bullshit thinblueline skulls and that stupid orange-diddler combover variants.
Gerry Conway (RIP) literally took back over the book specifically to have Punisher threaten a cop for using his symbol. “You don’t do what I do. Nobody does. […] If I find out you are trying to do what I do, I’ll come for you next.”
I’ll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies
Emphasis mine.
For some songs (like “We’re not gonna take it”), only knowing the chorus explains why many people might miss the point. “Take Me to Church” doesn’t even offer that saving grace.
Maybe they listened to one of the covers that seemingly obliviously changes the line to “the shrine of your light”
…of course that would be a thing. What’d they make of “so you can sharpen your knives”?
I don’t think the people who do things like that actually pay attention to what they’re doing. It’s like a subconscious reflex for small-time Christian singers, or something.
Who are these people? They don’t read the bills they sign, no rudimentary understanding of music, and they talk about it as such like it’s normal.
The answer is they don’t care. Facts are a plaything for conservatives.
What matters to them is power - and for that you don’t need to be right, you just need to be convincing. That’s why they engage so much in misinformation, blatant ragebait, etc…
They’re fortunate sons.
It ain’t me
The kids from your high school who weren’t popular, but were obsessed with popularity.
That’s 85% of the teen movies ever made.
Like their bible, it says whatever they want it to say even if it says the opposite of what they say it says.
Honestly, though, that’s really fun to do in any argument.
Somebody else: “No, ChatGPT is really helpful and useful.”
Me: “You can’t trust a dang word from those chatbots. They’re liars, all of 'em. Says so in the Bible!”
They’re the salt of the earth, you know, morons
They are rewarded for pretending to know what they are talking about, and they are chosen for their loyalty. Zero awareness or intelligence.
Many of the people that make it into politics are there for the sake of power. Governance and whatever political sports team they wear a jersey for is secondary. That’s how you get varying levels of knowledge about what a government is/does, none of the application for it, and lots of political theater. There are a few that actually care and legitimately try, but they’re so booooooring and lame and no one actually wants to hear news coverage over legislation. Media and politicians care about actually cool things like that one outrageous thing some other politician said or some vague inactionable speech about why you should elect them.
Make Politics Boring Again!
Empty husks of human beings, willing to say whatever the people with the money want them to say
Probably the same idiots that believe rage against the machine went woke at some point in their career.
Like Star Trek. As opposed to growing up in the woke Petri dish and living there until woke turned into a political word.
It’s not that they don’t listen. It’s that their brains aren’t built to think critically about anything. They are built to obey, but they’re also narcissists.
That’s why conservatives go wild for Trump. From the conservative’s point of view, Trump lets them FEEL LIKE THEY ARE OBEYING by doing whatever they want.
He doesn’t just give them permission or cover to be awful; Trump makes these people feel like they’re helping him when they do shitty and selfish things.
(This is also why they love cops who hurt people and soldiers who commit war crimes. They get to vicariously OBEY while also BREAKING THE RULES TO FEEL GOOD. Best of both worlds to them, like taking an upper and a downer at the same time.)
I guess that makes conservatism a social speedball.
I think you have it backward. These people are all “independent free thinkers” who think the same thing Fox told them to think.
They don’t want to obey; they’re Confederates! They’re rebels and cowboys and other term for rugged, free individualists. These people, who have been robbed of even the ability to think, let alone do, by themselves after decades of propagandizing and near-nonexistent education. They feel like they’re flipping off the establishment. That’s why MAGAs kept talking about “drain the swamp”, because they thought “far right” was just a new angle to attack more decorous politicians. They aren’t helping Trump out of some unctuous, perverse desire to be stepped on. They’re helping Trump because they’re too dumb to release that their party IS the establishment.
Ah yes, conservatives. The same guys that have no idea what machine is being raged against.
This was always my favorite. Seeing conservatives say things like, “I loved you guys growing up! Why did you change?” And it’s like, they’ve been pretty consistent their entire career silly guy
They thought they were raging against just the school principal or the fax machine.
It’s group identity shift conflicting with memory, I think. Group identity did allow agreeing with “you guys” 20 years ago, but now it doesn’t. It’s hard to choose in favor of things you liked and against your group.
I’m from a completely different country and all, but 20 years ago my sister had a friend from such a family that she mostly was interested in Christian versions of all the same art, Christian fantasy, Christian rock, it’s strange. At the same time Harry Potter was allowed, and, eh, USSR nostalgia too. Now the former wouldn’t be, I think, and the latter has turned into something almost national-socialist, nothing cool there, in such groups. (OK, this might seem more contrast than it really is, honestly for such people USSR nostalgia even then had such traits, even a bit before I was born probably.)
The dishwasher, obviously.
The printer, it’s the printer
PC load letter… what the fuck is that?
Inability to understand and interpret parody and satire is a conservative trait which transcends cultural boundaries in my experience.
This is almost as bad as thinking RATM was on their side. I say almost, but holy shit, how do you listen to one of their songs without comprehending or even thinking about a single line of the lyrics. Actual dementia
“Bulls On Parade? Bulls are basically donkeys with horns, so clearly its talking about democrats.”
“Know Your Enemy? Well I know my enemy, liberals!”
“Some of those who work forces are the same who burn crosses? Hell yeah!”
“I like burning crosses!!!”
Clearly that’s talking about the radical left. Who else would possibly burn a cross as a symbol of their movement than the godless radical left? It’s obviously a Christian song.
We’ll fight the powers that be, just don’t pick our destiny
A big part of MAGA mythology is the notion that the country, even with Republicans in charge of all three branches, is actually run by a sinister cabal of deviants and assorted non-WASPs. “Fighting the powers that be” is what Trump is here to do for them.
'cause you don’t know us, you don’t belong
…not hard to find a MAGA reading for that line either.
Other songs about America that conservatives have grotesquely misunderstood:
“Born in the USA” Bruce Springsteen “American Woman” The Guess Who “Pink Houses” John Mellencamp “Independence Day” Martina McBride
“Fortunate Son” as well
“Killing in the Name Of” by Rage Against The Machine.
Conservatives be like: “I don’t understand what the problem is. Killing people in the name of Christ is one of my favorite things to do.”
Not a song, but I always loved how some conservatives thought “The Colbert Report” was an anti-progressive show.
Indepenence day wasn’t really misunderstood, right? Like, there’s not even any undertone or wordplay in that one, it’s literally just ‘momma burned down the house with daddy in it because he was an abusive asshole.’ No tongue-in-cheek, no sly wink with the emphasized word… how the fuck did that one sneak past anyone?
I can kind of see some of the others, since in true good artist fashion there’s a lot of words to the song that people wouldn’t even catch, but independence day is one of those really easy, every word is heard songs.
That would require listening to more than just the chorus, which appears to be a bar too high for at least half of the population.
To be fair, yeah … it really does. And it’s not just limited to conservatives.
My girlfriend and her whole family were listening (and singing along with!) “Pumped Up Kicks” and they were still shocked when I pointed out to them that it’s a song about doing a school shooting.
There are a lot of people out there who really do just turn their brains completely off when listening to music.
(I don’t know how to do that. Which is probably why I greatly prefer music without lyrics, or music in a foreign language I don’t understand.)
Would you call fortunate son ‘subtle’ in its criticism? It still strikes me as bizarre how Trump and his guys could have ever thought of using this song.
Not really subtle, but it’s different, right? With fortunate son, there’s this weirder dynamic where you have to actually string the entire thing together to gather the meaning. I would say unless you went and asked someone to repeat the lines to you after the song is over and tell you what they meant, they would never really ‘get’ what the song is saying.
I was going to reply to the uwu pawb about that, but it’s really difficult to put it into words. There’s something about a really catchy song with really good flow and rhythm and melody and composition that does sort of turn your brain off. It ‘bypasses’ the logical language part of your brain’s comprehension and just gets you grooving. If I were a bettor, I would put money on it being the same reason that people with stutters can often sing without issue: it’s the same part of the brain (Broca’s area, if you want to pull out my neuroscientist days) that issues the commands to the muscles of the mouth and tongue and such, but the area that is directing Broca’s area is different (there’s an area called Wernicke’s area that is really heavily involved in the comprehension of language; it’s on the left side of the brain, while a great deal of your musical appreciation bits are in the right side of the brain [and I’m definitely getting far out of my knowledge base here, it’s been a great while since I did brain and specific tasks]). If you just listen/sing to the music, and never pull it up out of the memory banks and into your ‘logical’ part of the brain, you’ll never really engage with the meaning of the music/song.
Anyway. I don’t know quite how to describe it, but like nicki said, if you just sing the chorus of independence day, you’d probably not get the song’s imagery, but the verses are more straightforward and easy to comprehend in mcbride’s song than in creedence’s. I’m just more surprised about it being misunderstood than fortunate son, I guess, more than I’m totally surprised.
Conservatives just going off of vibes thinking songs about hating conservatives mirror their feelings of hatred towards minorities.
There could be a song called “kill all the fascists” and republicans would still think it was a song for them.
