We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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This is indeed the way to deal with attacks… turn them into a badge of honour D’Souza thanked the academy for the prizes, saying in a recorded message that “being dissed by you guys, this is absolutely fantastic.
“My audience loves the fact that you hate me.”
“The reason you are giving it to me is because you’re very upset Trump won.
“You’ve never got over it, you probably never will.”
– Dinesh D’Souza, as quoted in the Guardian upon getting four Razzies for the worst film of the year for his Hillary Clinton exposé.
This approach works equally well against both left and right.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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D’Souza, a controversial conservative commentator and author
Well, being a conservative he would naturally also be controversial for the Guardian. Unnecessary verbiage there.
The trailer for his Clinton film attracted controversy, over its use of racist imagery in portraying the 19th-century roots of the Democratic party.
It would of course not been racist at all had it portrayed the roots of the Republican Party.
“This approach works equally well against both left and right.”
I’m not so sure. I think the right welcomes the opposite viewpoint a lot more and genuinely doesn’t mind plurality. Especially when the right is winning. Communists for example add to tbe gaiety of the debate more than anything else these days. Whilst the left uses the opposite as a means of virtue signalling, I think it generally has a problem with opposing views existing. It sees them as ultimately an evil to erradicate through the improvement of everyone.
I am increasingly “accused” of being a cosmopolitan and a globalist by people on the ‘right’. I enthusiastically agree to the first and only qualify the second with “depends how you define ‘globalist’.”
Hollywood hates the truth – but Hollywood does not appear from nowhere.
Hollywood (and much else) is the expression of the universities and the education system – collectivism and Plato’s “noble lie” which is anything but noble.
Still, if D’Souza wants to get to peak outrage, he needs to incorporate “Awarded Four Razzies by razzies.com!” into his ads.
I’m not sure what criteria are used for determining the “worst” film. Probably there are no actual criteria; it’s just an “unpopularity” contest among those willing to shell out $40 to play. But I suspect D’Souza “won” not because of the quality of his film (which wasn’t great, but wasn’t terrible either; I’ve seen it) but because of its political content. On the other hand, Batman v. Superman undoubtedly “won” on the basis of actual cinematic quality (I haven’t seen that one, but the trailers were ghastly).
The complaint about “racist imagery” in D’Souza’s movie is risible: the roots of the Democratic Party are overtly racist. Jim Crow laws, black oppression during Reconstruction, the rise of the KKK; all are purely Democratic phenomena. The KKK itself was exclusively a Democratic organization from its start until very recently. The late Sen. Robert Byrd (Senate majority leader) was one of its high officials. But the Democratic party has tried to whitewash its violently racist history. D’Souza’s movie shines a spotlight on it, so of course it (and he) have been vilified by the left. There wasn’t much in it that I didn’t already know, but to most people it would probably be a revelation. Unfortunately, those who could most benefit from it probably will never see it.
Batman vs Superman is worse than the Ghostbusters remake? No fucking way 😆 🙄
“Batman vs Superman is worse than the Ghostbusters remake? No fucking way”
Another indication, if D’Souza’s award wasn’t enough, that the Razzies, once a bit of innocent fun, have now become yet another example of Conquest’s Second Law. Ghostbusters 2016 can’t be the worst movie of the year precisely because it became a cause célèbre among conservatives as the worst movie of the year. (Not least for trashing the original’s wonderfully pro-capitalist, anti-government, sentiments. One might almost think that this was the whole point…)
Can’t be seen to agree with those people, you know. Pretend you like it. Hey, Batman vs Superman was famously bad, too. Phew. Vote for it instead.
But, Laird, don’t you remember how, back in the early 1970’s, during one of the presidential campaigns, all of the Democrats and all of the Republicans became lost while traveling to their respective primaries, and ended up attending the wrong one, and thus the Democrat Party and the Republican Party completely exchanged constituencies, and so it was really the Republicans who did all of those horrible things to blacks?
(At least, that’s as clearly I can figure out the Dem’s explanation of how the party of the KKK, Bull Connors, and George Wallace now claims the mantle of Diversity Queens.)
Australia can outdo that! ‘The Fringe Dwellers’ is a film about Aborigines who (trigger-alert!) don’t fit in to the mainstream white society. One girl, trying to adopt white ways (Working like a white man, as someone in the film says about regular jobs), almost escapes the tribal society, but ‘falls’ pregnant to a black boyfriend. Will she keep the baby, and thus stay home in the township, or escape to a modern existence?
Cliche-spotters will have fun, as will token-counters!
Sorry, bobby b, I missed that episode.
Comrade Hippo, does that make you, in their eyes, a Rootless Cosmopolitan?
Actually Ed, just to see who gets the reference, I do indeed describe myself as a ‘Rootless Cosmopolitan’, even though I am not Jewish 😉
Suicide Squad and BvS are both dull. However Mad Max Fury Road was absolutely fucking dreadful, yet seems to be liked.
As with all things YMMV.
Wasn’t it Norman Tebbit who said something like, “Don’t judge a man by his friends, judge him by his enemies, I’m very proud of my enemies.”?
“Do you want more Trump? Because this is how you get more Trump.”
It’s somewhat bizarre that the Democrats now sort of pretend that the Jim Crow white supremacists were Republicans.
One can understand wanting to deny the historic connection between the Democratic Party and Southern white supremacists.
However, doing that elides the arguably heroic struggle of liberal northern Democrats to break that connection and fight racism within the Democratic Party. When Humphrey and his allies put a civil rights plank in the 1948 platform, they knew it could split the party, but they went ahead.
Challenging such a powerful faction in one’s own ranks for reasons of conscience was praiseworthy.
Contrariwise – while the Republican Party was always nominally sound on civil rights, in practice Southern Republicans also exercised a baleful influence. In the early 1900s, the feeble Republican party organizations in the South were very dependent on Presidential patronage, and therefore made themselves useful to Presidents at the national conventions (intra-party “pocket boroughs”, so to speak). In return, Republican Presidents refrained from any substantive interference with Jim Crow.
This discreditable history is also forgotten.
Sorry but I just don’t get the hate for BvS. I quite liked it (apart from the ‘martha’ moment), although not as good as ‘man of steel’. I find the Marvel movies pretty dull I have to say. Could have slept through ‘civil war’.