So I actually wrote my dissertation about this and it’s not just that the Department of Defence (there’s an office in the Pentagon dedicated to liaising with Hollywood productions), but they effectively have a strangle-hold on how Hollywood portrays the US military since the DoD give permission for producers to use military hardware, without that permission the cost of filming sharply goes up and films end up extremely over-budget. So the producers can either drop any critical elements at the DoD’s discretion, or continue with a film which will barely be released at all and will never make its budget back.
Any American film which involves the military, know that the DoD probably signed off on it, or were directly involved with. Films like American Sniper and Zero Dark Thirty had a heavy government influence, the latter to falsely justify the methods the CIA used in finding and killing Osama bin Laden, which included torture.
It’s why the military figures are always the heros and there will never be a Hollywood film which is critical of the US military because of this. Just remember, whenever you see the US military in a Hollywood movie, it’s exactly what the Department of Defence want you to see. It’s not being hyperbolic when these types of films are called propaganda.
I feel like this would be a slippery slope towards making it illegal for people to choose to not vote.
that’s already how it is in australia
That’s just so fucked up. 😦 Do certain medical conditions exempt you?
?????? why is it be fucked up to have compulsory voting? that’s the way it is in most democratic countries? it’s a part of being a citizen, like paying taxes and obeying speed limits? the fine for not voting is only like $50 and because of the compulsory voting law, our country bends over backwards to make it accessible: it’s always on a weekend, lasts most of the day, and is set up at schools and community centers so there’s one within easy reach of almost everybody. you can also mail your ballot or vote early if you’ll be out of the country on the day. like, IT’S EASY TO VOTE, and the penalty isn’t even that ridiculous. i don’t understand why the usa doesn’t have this, except obviously it would make it harder to literally stop minorities from voting.
I think we Americans tend to forget that a lot of other countries don’t actively work to make it harder to vote.
Adding to this here, in Australia you don’t have to vote. Or, more precisely, there’s no way they can tell if you ruined your ballot. You have to turn up, get your name marked off, but you can put a line through the ballot if you don’t think any of the candidates are worth voting for. Or do this:
Or this:
Or this:
You have get your name crossed off (if you don’t want to wear the fine), but you don’t have to make your vote counted if you’re opposed to it.
And it is so, so easy to vote. Stuck at work or on holidays? That’s fine. Do a postal vote. Stuck in hospital? That’s fine. They’ll go to you. Stuck in an old people’s home and can’t get around? Again, they’ll go to you. It’s amazing to me that it’s so hard for so many Americans to actually vote. If you make it compulsory, than at least the government is obligated to provide you with the means to vote.
And look, I get it. Sometimes I don’t want to vote either. But I suck it up, I walk three minutes down the street, and I hope that this year they’re selling lamingtons again. Oh, and I buy a democracy sausage, which, even if all the candidates suck, makes the effort of turning up pretty worthwhile.
it’s not compulsory because those in power are glad people make it so easy to fuck them over. if you stay home you’re doing them a favor, and if you’re ruining your ballot you’re too. the only message you’re sending is ‘i don’t care about my future or about the future of others’.
Until she convinces me otherwise, I assume that her emotional reaction to a situation is disproportionate to my opinion of what level of emotional reaction the situation calls for. Basically, if she’s on eight, I assume the situation is really a six.
I cannot think of a man with whom I have ever shared negative feelings who did not make it obvious, however hard he might’ve tried to hide it, that he is going through this mental process.
And
yes, if you’re a man reading this and thinking, “Oh no, but she’s told
me her negative feelings and I’ve responded by asking her questions
about why she feels that way, does she mean me???” Yes, I mean you. I
mean all of you. I am calling all of you out for this right now. No, I
don’t want to have a private conversation about it, because I’m done
with that emotional labor. If this describes you and you’re still in my
life as a friend or partner, assume that I have accepted this sort of
microinvalidation as the cost of doing business. But my acceptance of
reality doesn’t make it any more *acceptable*.
one of the only men I’ve ever known who doesn’t do this is my therapist, and he’s literally paid to tell me my feelings are real and valid and justified
Okay, let me tell you a story about Hillary Clinton. She first made national headlines when she was something like 22 and the student graduation speaker at Wellesley College. Now Wellesley is the most famous women’s college in the United States and at the time when women were not admitted to most of the Ivy League it was considered one of the top schools in the country for a woman to attend. She used her platform to eviscerate the sitting Senator of Massachusetts, a Republican, for his support of the Vietnam War. To his face because he was on the stage with her.
She was identified as a future leader of the Democratic Party from when she was in her early twenties. After law school at one of the top law schools in the country she was hired as a staff worker on the Watergate Commission. Now everyone in American politics in 1973 knew that the young people who worked on the investigation of Richard Nixon’s criminal activity were the future leaders of the Democratic Party.
And from that moment, in her twenties, the American right decided to try and destroy her. As an aside the right has spread unfounded rumors that she was fired from the Watergate Commission, the man who claims to have done it never had the authority to fire her and she worked on the commission until it closed down only leaving when all the staff at her level left, but facts have never gotten in the way of a good demonization of this woman.
She was one of the leading advocates for abused children and legal aid for poor people in the country in the late 1970s and 1980s when she was living in Arkansas and the narrative about her then was that she was the demon feminist who was masterminding letting children “divorce” their parents. Because apparently there is never a circumstance in the minds of those on the right that a child might need to be emancipated from their parents or that children’s rights might be independent of those with the most power to control and abuse them.
When her husband was running for president she was attacked for her looks (and for the looks of her at the time twelve year old daughter). Her career as a lawyer and as a law professor was used against her and the reason we have a “first ladies cookie recipe contest” every presidential campaign is because she had the audacity to say she was busy having a career and not baking cookies. By the way this humiliating exercise is one she won both times when her husband was running and the magazine didn’t think that perhaps when she was running for president this little 24 year old personal attack exercise against her should be retired when she was making history. Bill submitted the same recipe she won with in the 1990s.
And then the investigations started immediately.
She lost several hundred thousand dollars in an investment scheme and she was accused of insider trading.
A personal friend committed suicide and she was accused both of having an affair with him and of killing him.
She was routinely accused of sleeping with … basically any female friend of hers. Because making someone a scary lesbian wasn’t yet out of fashion in the mid 1990s.
She was attacked for trying to keep her family together as she was humiliated daily on national television.
And she was attacked for being mad at her husband as she was humiliated daily on national television.
They even attacked her cat because proper presidential families have dogs and it was clearly her witchcraft familiar.
The Republicans in congress have been launching fishing expeditions against this woman for the last 22 years and that’s not even counting the smear attacks that started in the late 1960s. Today the Republicans in the House have spent more time and money investigating the attack on the embassy in Benghazi when she was secretary of state then was spent investigating the attacks on 9/11. Ignoring that attacks on American embassies have occurred under every presidential administration for the last six decades and there were far more of them under George W Bush and for more people died in them under Ronald Reagan.
Oh. And she was mocked in the late 1990s for daring to say there was a vast right wing conspiracy against her and her husband. Because a woman should never acknowledge … you know… a provable fact.
So of course the average American voter has trouble distinguishing the truly horrific facts about Trump from the noise about Clinton. We’ve been fed a steady diet of it for 45 fucking years with the express purpose of making sure this woman was never president of the United States.
The fact that she is going to be anyway isn’t a condemnation of my country. It’s evidence of how strong and smart and resilient Hillary Clinton is.
Worth nothing that the email thing the Republicans are trying to hang her with? Her Republican predecessors (Colin Powell) set up their email the same way. The previous Republican president’s staff used a private server. This is literally “It’s OK If You’re A Republican” (IOKIYAR) in action. And the emails that are under investigation were never hacked. The Wikileaks crap is from the DNC hack, not from the State department.
The paid Russian trolls are still pushing the evil lesbian thing, btw, but the memes have shifted to paint her as a pedophile lesbian, because just “lesbian” isn’t enough to scare people anymore. And Trump keeps bringing up her husband’s infidelities because everything that happens in her life is somehow her fault (she stayed, so she’s a bad mother. If she’d left she’d be a disgrace who didn’t stand by her man).
Considering how many liberals dislike, disapprove of, or are suspicious of Clinton, it turns out devoting thousands of man hours and an incredible amount of money to discredit someone can be pretty effective! (Misogyny helps too.)
shealwaysreads 