This admittedly a bit out there of a theory, but I wonder if the reason all these European politicians are so adamant about propping up Ukraine is because so many of them and their parties are implicated in preventing Ukraine from making peace with Russia back in March 2022. And if Ukraine falls, Zelensky et al will air all their dirty laundry about who made what promises and who told them to keep fighting, which they don’t want to do now because they still think they have a chance if NATO goes all-in.
Greenleaf
joined 2 years ago
The communist party in Portugal gets like 3-4% of the vote, which isn’t great but better than most NATO countries.
I wouldn’t call it conservative, it’s mostly non-ideological. But there are some tiny moments where ideology seeps through a bit, and it is kinda reactionary.
There’s an episode dedicated to licking troop boot (I have so many questions about how war in the mirror dog world actually works). And there’s another one where the lesson they try and hit you over the head with is “this everyone gets a trophy culture is ruining kids, you should let them be disappointed some times”. But honestly that’s about it.
(To that last one, season 3 wasn’t great because they decided to make it less of an actual kids show and more “let’s preach to parents about how to be good parents” kind of show).
Thank you, that was great. I loved just how sensible and normal their advice was.
And remember:
It can’t though. It’s in the nature of capitalism to squeeze out any other mode of production. Even without overt sabotage. It’s like how it’s almost impossible for a developing nation to industrialize unless they basically ban imports.
Hey that’s weird, opinion is mostly unchanged for like 30 years, then in 2018 it just becomes net positive, and then immediately after it unfavorability jumps sky-high. Surely just a coincidence.
Discovery takes itself too seriously and at the same time wants us to treat the mirror universe seriously.
Yeah two big ones:
Starting with DS9 and then up to the present, the show leans waaaaaay too heavily on nostalgia and fans love of familiar characters. TNG is largely free of this other than that one Scotty episode. But in DS9, they just keep bringing back characters like Q, Lwaxana, etc. Maybe not the biggest deal when it’s just an episode or two but then they decided to bring back Worf for the last 4 seasons. He doesn’t really serve a point other than “hey, you all love Worf, right?” I really feel like all Worf did was steal the limelight from Sisko / Avery Brooks. After that it’s obvious how they do this in Nu Trek - I mean “Picard” is an entire show that runs on nostalgia. SNW literally brings back the Enterprise. “Discovery” I guess tried to not do this until they felt we needed more Spock.
The reason why it bugs me so much is I really think it stops the franchise from growing and changing in positive ways, the way overdosing on nostalgia tends to do for people. For example, the show runners originally wanted Ro Laren to be in the role played by Nana Visitor because hey, viewers know her from TNG. The actress who plays Ro didn’t want to do it so they hired Nana Visitor; and I don’t think any of us can imagine DS9 without her. But she never would have been hired if the producers had their first, nostalgic choice.
And other the first DS9 one, I despise mirror universe episodes. The first one in DS9 is great because it’s just a silly way for the actors to be able to let loose and play against type. But then they decided to make it a recurring theme, and then the novelty wears off fast. And then I actually stopped watching Discovery when they made the mirror universe a major plot point. Again, it’s just so silly and ridiculous but the way Discovery tries to play it straight and serious just doesn’t work for me.
Edit: I also wanted to add that I really hated the forced Odo/Kira romance. They spent years working together without a hint of romantic interest until the writers decided they needed to pair off someone. No chemistry and kind of an odd pairing. And why not just let Odo be ace, you know?
A key thing to understand - and this applies to countries like the GDR too - is the populations were definitely fed up with the political parties that led the country (the SED in the GDR and CPSU in the USSR), not necessarily the systems. It’s not that the people didn’t like socialism. See the above fact about socialist / socdem parties in the Duma. Or in the GDR, there are polls from the time of the end of the GDR that show the people overwhelmingly wanted socialism, but they didn’t want/trust the SED to implement it. Probably similar in the USSR.
While you’ll get no argument from me that the Eastern Bloc could have done much more to build up the masses in understanding of socialism and Marxism, I don’t think you can see the lack of will to preserve the USSR as the people just giving up on the project of socialism, but instead see it as the culmination of a lack of faith in leadership (and - this is my conjecture - for leadership not delivering on the promises of socialism)
I don’t think your depiction of the Scouring of the Shire is wrong, I just don’t want to believe it’s true and I think the allusions to communism are bare enough I am able to let myself believe that.
I don’t actually have much of a problem with orcs, it’s the depiction of the “evil men” allied with Sauron as almost exclusively having darker skin and with oriental-coded equipment like scimitars and other descriptors. Especially in contrast to the exclusively euro-coded “good guys”. And then there’s Ghan-Buri-Ghan…
Critical support to Russia and uncritical support to China, but the whole “they don’t actually want to give the west a bloody nose” is spot on.