darthelmet

We like to think we have rule of law, but in practice that is a fairly flimsy concept that ultimately depends on how many people in power are willing to adhere to it. Something could be against the law, the Supreme Court could rule that it’s against the law, (although with all the right wingers they stacked the court with, even that’s not gonna happen often.) the legislature could object, but at the end of the day, if the executive instructs the government workers to do something and they’re willing to do it, well… they can do it. So the politics of those government workers ultimately determines what can and can’t be done. And since those workers are downstream of appointments made by the executive… they’re likely to agree with them. And we see that bear out especially in the military and law enforcement agencies. The culture of these institutions is fairly right wing and the people in them have demonstrated a willingness to follow illegal orders and commit some truly heinous acts, even if they rationalize it as “just following orders.”

It’s not just under Trump either. The government has been acting in ways that violate our own laws for a long time. Every war we’ve been in since WWII has been an illegal act since they were never formally declared as wars and many of the things done in them have violated various international humanitarian laws. Police have straight up killed people without trial and were protected by their fellow officers and the government. And of course now we see ICE agents be more than willing to commit crimes to pursue this anti-immigrant agenda, whether they are just following along or they’re also ideologically committed to this.

So yeah. The answer can be anything as long as he find enough amoral right wingers or pushovers to staff the administration.

Unfortunately this is the movie. So it's longer and we have to pay for it.

I think this sub may be wrong. There are some stupid questions.

Man now I can’t watch Seinfeld anymore? Why people got to do this?

We can all lie and give some cultural sites that you should totally go see but... food. All my real suggestions are food related. If you're not from the immediate surrounding area, you absolutely have to get at least one slice of cheap pizza. Not from a fancy tourist place. Just literally find some random thing on a corner selling it for like a dollar or two and you will have the best pizza you will have had in your life (again if you live outside of the NY metro area).

After that, look to see if there are any street food festivals happening. Might be some interesting stuff.

There are quite a few touristy restaurants in the middle of the city that are going to be expensive and crowded, but they can still be fun to go to once if you don't mind the cost and can get a reservation.

For actual activity suggestions... highly dependent on what you like. Museums? Parks? Shows? They're all there, it just depends on what you want. I guess one recommendation in that regard is that if you want to see a broadway show and are willing to be flexible, there is a ticket counter in Time Square that you can go to day of to get discounted tickets for a show that day.

Not Christian, so take it with a grain of salt, these are just my observations:

These are people who thought that public schools not actively supporting their religion was the same thing as religious persecution. If "woke" stuff represents their shrinking influence over public life, then a government being "anti-woke" lets them go back to asserting themselves over others, or at least not having their views challenged. So even if the leading guy isn't a moral paragon of their religion, the fact that he's giving them permission to go back to their old ways is probably good enough.

Also, not really relevant, but the last bit about the Pope is funny to me. Most American Christians are Protestant. Evangelicals specifically are Protestants. While it probably isn't a big deal anymore, tensions between WASPs and the more recent Catholic immigrants from Italy and Ireland were a feature of early to mid 20th century politics. It was actually a pretty big deal when JFK was elected because he was Catholic. So I really doubt Evangelicals care much about the Pope other than when he happens to agree with them.

The same way people go on knowing their president is a war criminal. We're so far past the line that this doesn't even register.

It just depends on what classes you need and when you get access to registration. I got lucky some semesters and managed to craft a schedule where nothing started before noon and some semesters where I was dying because I had a class at like 8am.

If you ever feel like your job is meaningless, remember that there are people who are paid to be marketers.

Because I don’t think sticking my head in the sand is good either. Besides, it’s not just abstract far away things that are bothering me. A lot of what depresses me in my personal life is connected to the broader problems we face as a society. I kind of can’t ignore that if I want to make sense of my own life. That doesn’t stop it from feeling hopeless, but the alternative isn’t really an option even if I didn’t care about others.

That’s the neat part. I don’t. I’m depressed as fuck.

Was Idiocracy written by a time-traveller?

I’m always a little irked when people say things like this. Art is a product of its environment. It responds to what it’s seeing in the world and talks about it through abstraction, extrapolation, and embellishment. The world Idiocracy was created in already had these problems. The movie just turned that into a comedy with enough distance from real life for people to laugh at.

To the question: I think it just speaks to the lack of opportunities we have today. The American Dream was always a lie, but there was at least a period in the post war years where it was somewhat accessible to a relatively larger part of the population. The US was still an industrial economy. It was building new things. Now all that manufacturing is being done in poorer countries and now our economy is largely based on rich people shuffling money around and skimming off the top while the rest of us serve them to get the scraps.

When success looks like a Wall Street investor making money from doing nothing and failure means barely being able to afford to have a home and feed yourself, it’s no wonder people are dreaming of finding a way to make an easy buck.

But going back to art looking at the reality it exists in, this isn’t super new either. Look at the movie Wall Street from 1987. The movie revolves around a Wall Street broker who is the son of a union airline mechanic. The father is working in a productive job, but despite the union, isn’t exactly living in luxury. The son, in pursuit of this ideal of success, works in a job that leeches off people like his dad and to advance his career further he starts doing insider trading. So the parasitic criminal gets grossly rewarded while the hard working guy stagnates. And of course by the end of the movie, the son’s greed ends up almost ruining his dad’s job before he finally tries to make things right at great cost to himself.