Learning about Fred Hampton and Salvador Allende, who they were, what they accomplished, and what they were trying to achieve, was the watershed moment for me. Learning how the USA crushed them with such unrepentant enthusiasm shattered a lot of the narratives I’d internalized and allowed me to confront my biases and assumptions and move beyond them.
That whole story is quite the intense read. Thanks for sharing!
I can’t sit my pets down and explain to them what chemo is or that they’re going to have an invasive surgery and may get better afterwards. All they know is that they love me, but they’re in pain. You may question it for a long time afterwards, but if they’re miserable and don’t understand why then keeping them around is more for your benefit than theirs.
I’ve spent way too much money getting care for a sick, young cat because I knew the pain would be temporary and they could get back to their bonded half and recover quickly and I’ve had to put down a dog that could have lived a few more years because their dementia had become so bad they were confused and lost constantly, even when in the same room as I was.
Compassion and love are always important, but you can’t explain to them why they’re in pain, only save them from needless suffering.
I knew something was off about all the Little Dark Age edits I’ve run across on YT but I never looked into it. Fucking nazis.
The aborted SEAL mission prompted a series of military reviews during Mr. Trump’s first term. They found that the killing of civilians was justified under the rules of engagement, and that the mission was undone by a collision of unfortunate occurrences that could not have been foreseen or avoided. The findings were classified.
Fucking ghouls.
That isn’t to say that the show has any kind of extra-personal analysis, it doesn’t. The show is rooted in and based on liberal vibes based non-analysis. It understands that there is something wrong in the American culture that produces people like Walter White, filled with cowardice, impotent rage, greed, and pride, but never thinks about analyzing how, why, or what is wrong with American culture. So the show falls back on intra and inter-personal analysis. How Americans abuse each other because they can’t address their actual issues because of pride and cowardice.
The Wire does a much better job of analyzing the larger picture, even if it is also a fundamentally liberal analysis. But as much as I love The Wire it doesn’t foment the white-knuckle tension and rage as well as Breaking Bad does. But that mostly comes down to storytelling style I think. The Wire plays out very realistic while Breaking Bad uses Tarantino-esque hyper-reality as dramatic flair to heighten the narrative.
Anyways this is just rambling now. I like the show a lot, for a lot of reasons but mostly for the drama and cinematic flair of it all, not because of its biting criticism.
That all said I did have issues watching it the first time. I had to stop in the middle of season two because I hated Walter White so much. But when I went back into it with the understanding that Walter was the antagonist and Jessie was the protagonist I enjoyed it quite a bit.
I’d have to disagree. The whole show is about how Walter allows his pride devour his life. He’s too prideful to accept the handout from his former business partners. He gets a taste of being powerful and good at something, something he felt was stolen from him by said former business partners, and his pride feeds on it.
The show only wants you to root for him in the first season. By the second season Walter is the antagonist and Jessie is the protagonist.
As Walter’s ambitions become more grand and his pride grows and grows he eventually gets got, all his mistakes and failures finally ruin him.
The last episode puts this plainly. Walter rescues Jessie not to help Jessie, but to try and clear his own conscience. He only does it so that someone, anyone, looks at him fondly. Since he destroyed his family that just leaves his protégé.
Then he shows his true colors by crawling into the lab, his place of contemplation and pride and destruction, and finally dies.
Walter White is a man only to be pitied and reviled. Chuds look up to him because of course they do, they can’t understand that the show is mocking them and showing them that their own arrogance and pride destroys everything around them. Almost every time Walter is “badass” is when he’s abusing others or he’s lying. He’s the definition of a coward and paper tiger.
You’re supposed to hate him, not love him.
In my vast expertise of reading a few books and listening to probably too many podcasts about the event it seems to me that Allen Dulles was the ringleader, but JFK and his brother speedran pissing off all of the most powerful and well entrenched political factions in their short stint in power that Allen didn’t have to try very hard to keep things under wraps and convince the rest that they’d profit from it not being an issue.