American liberals spent YEARS fighting anyone who suggested racism was still alive in america.

The standard line was that racism was a Southern trait, while Northern and Western liberals had somehow expunged themselves of the habit. At the same time, you had liberals from the Carter era onward bemoaning failures within the African American and Latin American communities to integrate properly. It was always the minority’s fault for failing to conform. It was never racism among liberals that widened the divide.

Even to this day they won’t attribute racism in explaining ice’s actions. In fact most didn’t care how many people died at ice’s hands until white people got shot in the face.

You can run this all the way back to the LA Riots, easily enough. Nevermind the anti-Muslim racism of the post-9/11 era, the Obama-era backlash to civil rights movements during Occupy and then again during BLM. It’s always and forever the minority’s fault for objecting to oppression. People of Color are never sufficiently civil. They don’t respect the norms. They want special favors. They can’t be trusted to argue in good faith. They’ve got dual loyalties. They’re not real Americans.

Even when you have Obama or Harris on the fucking ballot, you need them or their proxies effectively apologizing for their blackness and denouncing anyone of color who doesn’t agree with their neoliberal politics.

In summary, americans, and yes american liberals are deeply racist, selfish and uneducated people.

I don’t think they’re uneducated. All too often, I’ve seen racism taught - implicitly or explicitly - as justification for the modern social order. They’re educated in bigotry. They’re trained to think like this.

TIL, my grandparents were white.

I heard Reza Pahlavi is wildly popular in Iran right now and Iranian locals are enthusiastic about seeing the Shah returned to power. Is this true?

What’s the lie about Ukraine?

Yaroslav Hunka scandal leaps to mind. But farther than that, it was the same old “it’s not going to be a quagmire”, “it’s not just about propping up the US arms industry”, “we have to fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here” line we’ve been hearing in every international theater.

Even the bit about Trump being “Putin’s Puppet” falls apart on any amount of historical interrogation. Trump was selling anti-tank missiles to Kiev as far back as 2018, three years before the Donbas invasion. He’d laid a bunch of sanctions on the country the first year he took office.

Then, as soon as Biden took office, he’s the one weak on Ukraine, according to the GOP.

Both parties egged their own supporters on by insisting the other party wasn’t Pro-Ukraine enough. Both parties insisted the other faction was “Communist”. Both insisted the other was a fifth column, trying to disarm the US from within. It was always and forever bullshit.

The whole piefied channel is a mess. Lots of spam from the community as well.

There’s just too many things to support.

The endless feud over “How hard should we cheer for Ukraine” really required some good news coming from the Ukrainian front. And we’ve run out of Ghosts Of Kiev to cheer for. Absent a Biden Regime willing to cut Zelenskyy billion dollar checks, a Ukrainian defense force that’s running on anything other than mercenaries and unwilling conscripts, or the odd comedy-style Prigozhin march on Moscow, does anyone want to tune in for another edition of “400 people dead, Russia advances 10 meters” headlines?

Really doesn’t help that Jeff Bezos is firing reporters on the front-lines of the war zone, either.

I haven’t noticed any anti-Ukraine sentiment and have seen plenty of news and updates on the ongoing situation.

We’re seeing similar news voids around Gaza, the newest failed efforts at regime change in Iran and Venezuela, and Trump’s clumsy groping of Greenland. The US economy is teetering and everyone’s waiting with baited breath to see if there’s another big market crash, which will curtail all our foreign policy adventures for the foreseeable future.

So it might just be the vacuum created by an enormous AI sucking sound that you’re noticing.

The guy in the comments calling you a tankie

If you’ve got standards, sure.

But “Paddington 2 is just as good as Tron 3” leaves me questioning your rubric.

Right has the far better perspective.

Two compelling critiques of the latest Zootopia film.

Oh come on. Jason got it this time? Jason figured it out?! This is a real low point. This one hurts.

“Yes, but it was all done from a Linux terminal”

“Pearly gates are right this way, M’Lord.”

I guess I just really, really hate Harry as a protagonist

If Rowling had just stuck to sports YA novels about wizard high school, instead of sticking her withered claw into politics, I doubt anyone would have more to say about Harry Potter than they’ve said about Luke Skywalker.

after the fifth one, I can barely remember anything that happens in them, outside some biggest plot points.

It’s just crazy to introduce “The Three Big Magic Items That Change The World” in book 7. Like, you haven’t finished playing with the Seven Evil Relics That Keep Voldemort Alive and you’re already injecting this other shit? Save it for a different series.

Compared to how I can still fairly well recall what happens in books 1-4, and mostly 5 as well despite there being more time passed after reading them, the contrast is huge.

The first three movies are, in my opinion, really nice happy little Christmas movies. Been watching them on and off since I was in high school. So the plot is burned into my brain. I honestly think books 2 and 3 are the peak of her writing. Genuinely really good kids stories. Fun antagonists. Clever riddles. A few twists at the end.

And then she blew up in popularity, and the whole franchise went off the rails. Ah well…

Moral of the story, never let a good author write a fourth book.

Literally “the pre-destined future leader who just needs to walk forward and automatically wins”.

What’s his biggest hurdle through the entire three-book adventure? Picking which hot princess he’s going to marry? Politely asking some ghosts to defeat half the Dark Lord’s army in an unwritten side adventure? Literally walking up to the Black Gates of Mordor and telling the Eye of Sauron “Made you look”?

Come on. The most difficult fight Aragorn has in the entire epic adventure happens in the first half of the first book.

I’d argue Harry is way worse than both Aragorn and Rand Al’Thor.

That’s fine. You’re entitled to your own opinion.

What qualities does Harry have?

Naivete, isolation, and confusion that gives way to optimism and comradrie in Book 1. If you ever read any Roald Dahl novels, he’s got much of the same youthful curiosity and compassionate cheerfulness of James from the Giant Peach and Charlie from the Chocolate Factory.

Much of Harry’s early personality is informed by his struggle to understand his parents and his parents’ friends, picking up and discarding their habits and traits in pursuit of self-actualization (Book 3/4/5, in particular, have him latching onto Remus Lupin and then Sirius Black as idols, only to lose them and himself in turn). Over the course of the series Harry’s initial optimism is poisoned by cynicism and hatred, frustration at the failure of his elder peers, and ultimately a depressive death spiral. He matures, discarding the childish qualities of the early books and adopts more mature (often toxic and reactionary) views and motivations by the end of the series. As a case in point, Book 1 Harry would have happily joined SPEW, while Book 5 Harry considers it an annoyance. I’d say Harry’s arc really peaks in Book 6, when he uses black magic on Draco Malfoy and Snape has to rush in to save him. He’s gone from a cheerful, generous, naive little kid to a battle-hardened child soldier.

Like, if I was to really describe Harry’s story progression, that’s it. Its a look inside a child that’s forced to fight a war for survival. You get a similar (abet much better written) character trajectory for the Animorphs. But to say nothing is going on with the central character? That’s blatantly rage-bait.

Also my suspicion that book 6 is the last book that Rowling had more than a few token notes on. By book 7, you can really feel the ghostwriters crowding in and WB taking a heavy hand in editing/finalizing (although it’s clear they’ve been around since book 4). Forcing a Disney-style happy ending on a wizard civil war betrayed so much of what Rowling had set up in the early novels.

It’s a generic critique of any fantasy novel protagonist. Potter isn’t any more of a Mary Sue than Aragorn or Rand Al’Thor.

And “The plot was bad, I don’t even remember what happened”. Bro, what do I even say to that?

The story wasn’t so bad that it failed to sell tens of millions of copies in dozens of languages.

From the first to the last page of this pile of rags he is a wizarding Mary Sue with near-infinite privilege and the personality of an oyster.

I disagree.

As a matter of fact, what even is the biggest character arc in that story? I don’t remember much

:-/

Trick or Treat!

¿Por qué no los dos?