Even before Trump was elected, and mayhaps even before Obama was, I had this idea that American politics was becoming too polarized for the differences to be reconciled through the democratic process. I had this idea that the reps and the dems will become increasingly at odds with each other, and the only possible way the problem would be solved would be by having the proponents of the two clash with each other in increasingly violent ways. The end result would be both sides realizing this is stupid, and coming to terms with each other after the spike in political violence.
Now, I expect 2020 to turn bloody in the US, thanks to this ever-increasing radicalization from the left. They are locked inside their echo chambers and refuse to even consider their opposition on the right may even have a point, instead of being evil alien nazis in everything they do. They've already had, what, 5 or 6 terrorist attacks on various US government facilities this year? And I do think it's going to get worse as soon as the 2020 election draws near.
My only hope now is that the increased radicalization and resultant violence will result in people waking up and moving away from the crazies and their nonsense.
Secondly, I'm honestly not sure why this comes as a surprise to you? Stop and consider a moment about human psychology and who's underlying values are more broadcast by media and academia. Right wing values are not very commonly portrayed in a good light in media or academia, meanwhile, left wing values are strongly broadcast and reinforced in those realms.
What this means is that the majority of the right wing is constantly under social, academic, and media pressure of left wing values. This means they are constantly having to question their own values and are constantly exposed to other values. It is next to impossible for someone to actually be in a pure right wing bubble in the west. Schools, TV shows, movies, colleges, and numerous other sources tend to penetrate even the most isolationist of the right wing societies in the west. This proves a... well... conserving element to right wing values in the west, after all, they keep having to constantly question their values and hearing criticisms of them, which helps ameliorate radicalization.
Meanwhile since the 80s and 90s, you've seen a massive growth in left wing dominance of academia and media. This means that people who are left wing are rarely exposed to right wing criticisms of their ideas. Further the criticisms they ARE exposed to tend to be from further left. Media is no help here either, as there are a LOT of subconscious left wing ideals underlying a LOT of media. Think about the old children's TV trope of "having to save the summer camp". Who are they saving it FROM? Invariably it's some business either developers or loggers. How frequently are businesses portrayed as villainous in media as compared to forces for good? How are the deeply Christian typically portrayed? How easy is it for a person to grow up in a left wing echo chamber and never even know it?
All this adds up to a much stronger left echo chamber effect in the west than a right wing one. One must go out of their way to find right wing media, and it's been this way since the 80s. For as much as people decry the "right wing media echo chamber", people have to consciously enter and remain in it... while one just needs to not seek out right wing sources to remain in the left wing echo chamber.
That said, one of the reasons it does come as a surprise is that many sources within the left wing echo chamber explicitly claim to NOT BE PARTISAN. This is especially true of media sources. Yet when you actually do a meta analysis of how they report on topics, one can quickly find that they actually do hold biases. A really good topic to use to see the structural bias of a media source is to look at how it covers abortion and what terms it uses to talk about the various sides. Does it call people who are pro-legal abortion access "women's rights advocates", "Pro-choice" advocates, or some other term? Does it call opponents to legal abortion access "Women's rights opponents", "Anti-abortion advocates", "Pro-life advocates" or some other term? The mere choice of term can imbue bias into a report, stop and consider the following headline style statements:
"Women's rights advocates object to bill banning abortions after 20 weeks pushed by women's rights opponents"
"Pro-choice advocates object to bill banning abortions after 20 weeks pushed by Anti-abortion advocates"
"Pro-Abortion advocates object to bill banning abortions after 20 weeks pushed by Pro-life advocates"
When it comes to the verbiage and reporting what is going on... these sentences are identical. However, the first is very clearly biasing the discussion against the bill in question and those pushing it. The second is also doing so, save more subtly (people tend to respond more positively to "pro-" than "anti-" ideas) while the third version swings back the other way, biasing in favor of the anti-legal abortion stance.
Let's not get into a derail on abortion, I am using this as an example of how so-called neutral media institutions can still bias people in their "factual" reporting.
For people on the right, we've noticed these subtle biases in reporting for YEARS... and it ALWAYS swings one way. The left wing positions typically get labeled with nice sounding "pro-" something labels... while the right wing position will get labeled as being against those. "Pro-gun control" vs "Anti-gun control" (not "Anti-gun ownership" vs "pro-gun ownership" even though those terms would be equally accurate). "Pro-Choice" vs "Anti-abortion". You can go through many more topics and see this at work.
This is, for the record, termed "framing", and one of the thing so-called neutral media institutions are really good at is pretending that it's not a thing. They'll make a report that is entirely factual, but frame it in a way that clearly presents the right wing position as the bad one, and the left wing position as good. And then, when challenged on it, fall back on the idea that "all the facts are right, so we're not biased!"
This is endemic to western media, and has been for decades. The fact that the left wing has thus began to radicalize really shouldn't be a surprised. It's easier to remain in a left wing bubble, and the major media sources are frequently inherently biased in how they frame many political discussions to favor left wing policies and demonize right wing ones. Academia is shot through with left and far left activists and has been since the 60s and 70s, and our entertainment is also often frequently structured in such a way as to bias folks against right wing ideas by casting those right wing ideas in villain roles.
our entertainment is also often frequently structured in such a way as to bias folks against right wing ideas by casting those right wing ideas in villain roles.
I think it's safe to say that people didn't notice how asshole or oversimplified or accusatory those things were till now.
Though, being okay with lots of exposed female skin due to or in-spite of "Conservatives" eventually leading to NOT being okay with it to appease "Liberals" or specifically "feminists with body-issues and inferiority complexes" is something you don't exactly expect
That said this Left-Right Dichotomy's dumb and oversimplified and I think has been inWestern entertainment for a long time
Nope, English is the only truly global language. After that it is French and Arabic.
If you can speak English then odds are that you can be dropped down anywhere in the world and find someone that you can communicate with at least semi decently without much hassle. If you speak French then you can do a lot of Europe and Africa.
Arabic won't let you talk with locals in most of the world, but you can walk into any Mosque in the world (and those aren't hard to find) and be able to converse.
If you can speak English then odds are that you can be dropped down anywhere in the world and find someone that you can communicate with at least semi decently without much hassle. If you speak French then you can do a lot of Europe and Africa.
English is the standard language for aircraft control. All commercial pilots and aircraft controllers will be at leastspeak english at least good enough to convey technical information.
Spanish is up there too. Just about anywhere in the Americas you can find someone who speaks Spanish, and in raw number of speakers I think it's actually the second most after Chinese.
Spanish is up there too. Just about anywhere in the Americas you can find someone who speaks Spanish, and in raw number of speakers I think it's actually the second most after Chinese.
I am not sure, it might increase, but it seems the rate of increase is slowing down and there is going to be a reversal of the trend. Companies are getting woke to the fact being woke doesn't pay.
I thought it was instead that RT was laying off its workers
Also, correct me if I’m wrong but wasn’t part of Monty’s original script something that actively said that there would be no Yuri? Because it would be more “Nakama” between the girls
The fanfic community looks pretty Pro-This change in dynamic....then again I was pretty sure most fanfic makers are SJW or Anti-Anti-SJW to varying degrees
Will Isekai go away? No. Isekai has been a genre of storytelling since at least 1889* and one of the most success children's fantasy series of the 20th century functionally falls into it as well**, and the advantages it gives to telling a fantasy or science fiction story are numerous, since it makes learning about the world and how it works a much more natural part of the storytelling process.
It may become less common certainly, storytelling tropes move in and out of favor as people embrace them and then get tired of them, and isekai stories have probably started to reach that point. But they will always be around.
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* Story about a modern person ending up in a fantastic place and upending it with modern technology and ideas, overthrowing local powers by using their more modern knowledge to awe and supplant them? Isekai, or "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court". Look, when Mark Twain wrote, and possibly originated, a genre, you ain't getting rid of it.
** Small groups of children end up in a fantasy world, make major world changing events occur, overthrow governments, rescue princes, help create the world, help end the world and numerous other adventures... Isekai or "The Chronicles of Narania"? When C.S. Lewis wrote what would now be called isekai and numerous children are exposed to the fantasy genre via his works... you ain't getting rid of it.
Will Isekai go away? No. Isekai has been a genre of storytelling since at least 1889* and one of the most success children's fantasy series of the 20th century functionally falls into it as well**, and the advantages it gives to telling a fantasy or science fiction story are numerous, since it makes learning about the world and how it works a much more natural part of the storytelling process.
It may become less common certainly, storytelling tropes move in and out of favor as people embrace them and then get tired of them, and isekai stories have probably started to reach that point. But they will always be around.
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* Story about a modern person ending up in a fantastic place and upending it with modern technology and ideas, overthrowing local powers by using their more modern knowledge to awe and supplant them? Isekai, or "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court". Look, when Mark Twain wrote, and possibly originated, a genre, you ain't getting rid of it.
** Small groups of children end up in a fantasy world, make major world changing events occur, overthrow governments, rescue princes, help create the world, help end the world and numerous other adventures... Isekai or "The Chronicles of Narania"? When C.S. Lewis wrote what would now be called isekai and numerous children are exposed to the fantasy genre via his works... you ain't getting rid of it.
Actually Isekai is an offshoot of Portal Fantasy, which is the genre that I believe you're thinking of, which only recently gained popularity thanks to Sword Art Online. Examples of the latter in anime include El Hazard, The Vision of Escaflowne, and InuYasha. Whereas the former includes Overlord, Log Horizon, and The Rising of the Shield Hero.
The major difference between the two seems to be that, in Isekai, the other world tends to work on RPG logic, and often the person from our world gains some sort of ludicrously overpowered ability in the transition. Even Re:Zero, which is supposed to be a subversion of Isekai tropes, ends up making the main character functionally immortal, and gives him the power to go back in time and redo events over and over again, until he manages to survive them.
In Portal Fantasy, meanwhile, you usually arrive in the other world exactly as you left ours, and your only advantages in the beginning are what you brought with you; either knowledge, a more modern code of ethics, or whatever you happened to be carrying at the time (hopefully a gun).
Yeah, modern Isekai looks more to be a sort of Power Fantasy or the opportunity to treat the new world you’re in like a game where you are constantly maxing out abilities and stats
The abilities Isekai MC’s get are more “Gamer-esque” rather than something like “Figure out how creative you can be with the ability to be made of rubber or something rubber-like and figure out how many and what sort of constructs you can make out of magma”
May not be Isekai, but there was that one edgy sort of self-time-traveling MC who had the ability to “Heal people” whilst taking their pain into his head.....his “healing” ability somehow translated to him gaining the ability to imitate or gain others’ abilities
Word from the Boot. Interesting as this digression into discussion about Isekai and such is, it is off topic to this thread. Please continue the discussion elsewhere (I believe there is a thread about Isekai already)
Secondly, I'm honestly not sure why this comes as a surprise to you? Stop and consider a moment about human psychology and who's underlying values are more broadcast by media and academia. Right wing values are not very commonly portrayed in a good light in media or academia, meanwhile, left wing values are strongly broadcast and reinforced in those realms.
Conservatives also have a better framework for dealing with ideological opponents and being out of power in government. I have my suspicions that conservatives grok how government institutions and separation of powers are supposed to work, whereas liberals have gotten used to thinking of the federal government as a gumball machine. Just vote in the right President, and he will give you what you want. If he doesn't, take your case to the courts and some wise and enlightened old farts in black robes will grant your wish.
That said, I don't have any surveys to back my hunch up.
What I do know is that even the fringe parts of the Conservative Right have a better understanding of when political violence is appropriate, and are much more restrained than the Left has been. There's a phrase in the gun rights community, "Soap Box, Ballot Box, Jury Box, Ammo Box." The idea is that you have freedom of speech, free and fair elections, and a functioning court system. When all three are denied to you, then it's time to cowboy up.
Nobody liked Obama, and a lot of people were convinced that our court system was lost, but you never saw the wave of political violence that we're seeing from the Left now that Trump is in office. The Conservative Right just organized, agitated, and voted.
People who are really into woke stuff make up at most 8% of america's population thats a market of about 24 million people at most. Its also a market that purposely alenates every one around them, and is shrinking because of that.
I predicted that the comedians would be the first people in entertainment to snap and revolt, other celibreties will come soon. So there will still be woke stuff but its not going to be as dominant.
