Drowsy Emperor

Why is this even a topic? I'm pretty sure no one on the set cared about this detail when they were making the film. I don't understand how someone can obsess about an utterly irrelevant sequence in a children's movie. Its like the: is Deckard a replicant? discussion, utterly ignoring the point of the film to look for hidden meanings that don't make sense.

George Lucas is a smart man

Aw, man, DE, I thought you were better than that. In my defense, I didn't know what I was thinking at the time.

The US and Turkey did manage to conveniently use the russian s400 as an excuse to stop their meager "anti-Isis" bombing campaign. Not missing a beat there

He's talking about words with fixed meaning, and when he uses them to mean something entirely different, he comes across as an undereducated fool. Now tell me, why should I value the opinion of an undereducated fool? You can talk about the same issue using either scientific or colloquial terms, and while it is generally better to be precise the point of the discussion is to get the meaning across first and foremost. I have a degree in political science and even I find it easier sometimes to convey meaning with the terms used in the news, blogs and other informal sources rather than talk straight out of a textbook. Ergo things like "cultural marxism" even though the term is flawed, possibly nonsensical (even if its meaning and much of the reality it describes is correct). And in social sciences terms are a lot more fluid anyway, its easy to find ten different definitions of the same thing.

What's the point of arguing semantics. You know exactly what he's talking about. The current moral and political climate in Europe is tragic, and the absurdities of the incumbent powers and their ideology is leading to divided societies and general misery in a continent that could be a political and military superpower, instead of being a midget. This crisis just makes it obvious that Europe has no idea what it is and where its going, which is a far cry from a continent that used to decide where the entire world was going. You may not personally feel the effects of all these cumulative bad decisions, but once you do start feeling them it may well be too late.

Well, this refugee crisis has taken us places.

you said it mate

I don't think you will find any actual Western academics priding themselves on their moral relativism, but I may be wrong. Twitter is full of (nasty) surprises. What I don't accept is that Enlightenment ideals led to a complete breakdown of values, a dissolution of civic virtue, extreme individualism and hedonism, etc. You are making this connection, but haven't explained how it actually happened, so I can't very well examine it, let alone refute it. Similarly I could say it's the result of Judeo-Christian morality even though it very much means the exact opposite, because it's also in our past. I also don't need to point to the various strains of tyranny and oppression that nationalism and religion have been and are currently used to support. Going back to that is no solution. I'm afraid we are simply going to have to disagree on the weight that economic factors have. You insist that they don't really matter while making deeply misleading statements such as "much of Europe is still quite prosperous", to shift the focus away from facts and to ideology. But the facts remain: economic factors have historically been a major bullet point when looking at the causes of the instability of societies, migrations and wars. I'm going to stand by this explanation until you explain how a lack of nationalism has led to people "not wanting to reproduce", as opposed to not being able to or realizing that their offspring will most certainly have to live in worse conditions than they did themselves. I think you'll have a hard time defending the idea that nationalism and Abrahamic religions are necessary for population growth when humanity had been growing before those were invented, and cultures without them seem to be doing fine demographically. I don't know that current Western culture is "nihilist", but I'll concede that it's extremely individualistic and materialistic, while at the same time, millions are seeing their material ambitions go unfulfilled. Again, I fail to see how this is a consequence of Enlightenment beyond the suggestion that Enlightened ideas must necessarily lead to atheism. I guess it's hard to dispute the fact that the satisfaction rate of leading a spiritual life is close to 100% but that's only because people can only find it's a hoax after such life. The materialist/spiritual divide is a false dichotomy, though. Regarding the Stations of the Cross story. The mayor is a moron, like most of the self-professed progressives here. Still, these milestones had been paid for with public funds that were earmarked for investment and services. Instead, the other morons (conservatives), decided that this project was more important than the payroll of municipal workers that are owed up to 24 months worth of pay. This is by law a nonconfessional country. Public powers have no business getting involved with religious matters, majority or not. Muslims (and atheists, and...) aren't exempt of taxes as far as I know, so public money cannot be spent on this stuff. The Catholic Church already enjoys important (and exclusive) tax exemptions. They want Stations of the Cross? They can pay for them. If you're going to talk economy, then I'd like to see some persuasive arguments why a European native middle class family in 2015. can't afford to have 2-3 children and why a muslim family, whose prospects can only be worse, still has no qualms about making five or so children. I did not say a lack of nationalism has led people to not reproduce, rather the lack of a unifying idea. Christianity and nationalism aren't the only such ideas, but they were a strong integrative force. Without a cultural or religious imperative to reproduce, to have certain implied social responsibilities and a direct relationship between the individual and his state the connection between the individual and society gets so watered down that you get a situation in which everyone does as they please and that in turn leads nowhere. I don't think that everyone in the muslim world wants five kids. But everyone else is doing it and everyone else there thinks its good and therefore they do it. In Europe there is very little in the way of such pressure.

And they call me a fascist for saying the nation state is a good thing and that unchecked muslim immigration is a bad thing. In ten years they're all going to be saying it and I'm gonna be like

If we do; give us your reasons why we should. With you so far. Unsure the wrong ideas are related to your conception of "cultural marxism", though. I'm not entirely convinced "bias" is the word you're looking for. Or that the idea is inherently "liberal". Then again, I'm fairly sure "liberal bias" is one of those phrases, like "cultural marxism", that tend to be used as a shorthand for "the other" in certain circles. I also disagree with the assertion that there are no social pressures/consensus regarding the way one is supposed to live or goals one is supposed to have in Europe. You may think these commonly held goals are not meaningful (I most certainly do!), but that's orthogonal to the point. Regarding the economy. The usual argument for low birth rates is that parents in Europe expect every single child to be able to enjoy the highest possible living standards, eventually go to university and move up the social ladder. Since this is economically unsustainable, people don't make many children. On the surface the argument makes sense. However, when all is said and done, in most of the prosperous European societies there is enough money to go around to raise children. Certainly there should be no problem reaching at least the simple reproduction level of slightly more than two children per family. Yet there is. On the flip side, the comparatively poor muslim world can afford five kids per family and none of them are starving, without clothes on their backs or a roof over their heads. The point being: if the poor can do it, so can you - especially if your starting conditions are much better to begin with. On top of this indoctrination with "living standards" there is an ideological pressure in western societies that a large family is a bad thing. I call it liberal bias but there may be better terms. The arguments used are commonly nonsensical: "conserving resources", that its "irrational" and that "only the poor, uneducated people do it". But the UAE arabs are mostly wealthy and educated in European universities and they still make large families. And show little concern for abstract notions of resources and rationality. In fact, in that part of the world (and in many others), having a large family is seen as a sign of success and very desirable. Yet in Europe, both men and women scoff at it as though its something filthy - forgetting that their grandparents and their parents got through two world wars and untold misery on account of their expanding populations. Sure, there is some sort of societal pressure. But the society is fractured along many lines, and I'll venture that if you took five random people and asked them what's the best way to do things (from religion, to child rearing, to gender relations) you'd get sixteen different answers. In the muslim world there would be no point in asking the question in the first place because everyone more or less has the same cultural imperatives and expectations placed on them since a very young age. There is a point after which a "hands off" policy regarding "private matters" becomes a liability instead of an expression of freedom.

I like this guy

I disagree with the assertion that reproductive success is the only valid metric by which one can measure a culture's worth. It certainly isn't the only valid metric, but it points to a massive systemic problem because it shouldn't exist in a society that has optimal conditions for raising children. Regardless, blaming "cultural marxism" and the erosion of christian values and nationalism seems like a weird intellectual leap to make. Its not that much of a leap. If you presume that the economy isn't a problem (or at least not an insurmountable one) that leads to the inevitable conclusion that its psychological/in the realm of ideas. Christianity, like Islam places an imperative on reproduction, as fundamentally a good thing (which is why most muslim families, even the fabulously rich and relatively well educated UAE elites have 5-10 children, utterly wrecking the liberal bias that level of education is inversely proportional to family size). Nationalism doesn't really deal with reproductive issues, but its logical that expanding the nation is implicitly a "good idea". If you remove any sort of ideological imperative to reproduce, and not just reproduce - rather to live one's life in a certain way, with certain goals in mind (which Islamic societies have, but which Europe has forgotten) then you get a mass of scattered sheep with no sense of belonging.

I disagree with the assertion that reproductive success is the only valid metric by which one can measure a culture's worth. It certainly isn't the only valid metric, but it points to a massive systemic problem because it shouldn't exist in a society that has optimal conditions for raising children.

Quelle horreur! Oh wait, no, I'm totally not seeing how that's a bad thing. I don't think it's even a "thing" at all, given that it's an assessment which rests on, at best, a flawed understanding of Enlightened thought and what it brought. Yes, Locke did not seek to establish a "tradition" to replace Catholicism, because he understood that such a thing was same dog, different collar. He realized the damage that these time honored traditions did and was acutely aware of the blood that had been spilt because of them. His intent was not to do away with tradition or wash away the cultural identity of his time, rather the opposite actually: he merely wanted a way of living in society without bloodshed while allowing for these identities and traditions to be preserved, instead of having a dominant paradigm annihilate all others and rule essentially by imposition. For this to be possible, the law of the land was to be administered by civil magistrates which could not get involved with religious disputes, and religious authorities were to deal exclusively with religious issues, while submitting to civil authorities in everything else. Civil authorities in turn were to enforce a legal framework that was deemed universal regardless of creed (natural law). Those who sincerely suggest that Enlightened thought basically boils down to a sort of absolute moral relativism, simply don't know what they are talking about, if I may be so blunt. Anyone interested in this can refer to A Letter Concerning Toleration and go from there. Of course, a society built on these premises requires that its members understand its foundations rather than simply recite a bunch of meaningless mantras, and to think, rather than follow, for it to work. A tradition is by definition the exact opposite. Great when it works for you, not so much when it doesn't. The legacy of the Enlightenment is as much a part of contemporary Western identity as its Christian roots, and downplaying this is myopic and dangerous. Frankly it boggles the mind that defending these ideas would get one labeled a "cultural marxist". It's ironic and tremendously sad that the problems of today (and always) are blamed precisely on the philosophical current whose aim was to tackle them with as little fuss as possible... What it was originally intended to be doesn't have to correspond with what it actually is. Communism, an anti-authoritarian idea at its core led to a totalitarian state. Similarly, Enlightenment led (today, after a very long period) to a civilization without a compass or clear identity, that prides itself on its own moral relativism as its crowning achievement. And yet, even with all this prosperity (and much of Europe is still quite prosperous) and freedom, "grand intellectual tradition" etc. the native population doesn't even want to reproduce. Not only that, but it refuses to acknowledge that this might be a problem and has resorted to importing foreigners to "quietly" solve it. Economic excuses and blaming capitalist excess can only go so far, before one looks at the ugly truth - and that is that the current western (and eastern, as in eastern European) culture is nihilist and self destructive to its core. Anyway, you're from Spain. Explain this to me please: https://themuslimissue.wordpress.com/2015/11/28/spain-socialist-mayor-remove-cross-symbol-for-lack-of-respect-for-atheists-and-muslims/

Quelle horreur

You should know better by now Meshugger.

Their countries won't be a mess if not because of the west...the west who messed up their countries. Such as in Afhanistan, USA who supply the Mujahidden to fight Russia and then let them loose, you give weapons to mad men, then these mad men rule, what do you expect? Below is Afghanistan before ad after USA using Mujahiddeen to fight Russian. If the west don't intervine, Afghans won't bother to migrate to the west.... Below is Iraq before and after USA topple Saddam Hussein Western peoples are hypocrite...you claim you are better than anyone, it is just because you destroy everyone else Iraq before western intervention Following picture is disturbing and isn't material that should be shown to children Iraq after failed western intervention Picture shows Sinjar which was destroyed by ISIS and efforts to drive ISIS away them. Picture is near of one of many Yazidi mass graves who were killed by ISIS. War and tyrants never change. Another even more disturbing picture of Saddam's victims Moderators feel free to remove pictures in spoilers if they aren't suitable to this forum. God only knows what you're trying to prove. That Saddam's crimes are justification for turning Iraq into a failed state with a decade of war and destruction? Hell, its not even a failed state, Iraq and Libya have ceased to exist as states. It was never this bad in either of those two countries, even during the worst periods under their respective rulers. ISIS was spawned precisely because the territories of Iraq are suffering from years in a power vacuum and violence and out of the same soldiers the US fired post invasion.

Well for starters, you can observe Italy as how public institutions and schools consider not celebrating christmas to not enrage muslim refugees/immigrants... On another not I do remember a case from some Danish town, where muslim got majority in the town hall, and they outright remove christmas celebrations including a simple town sponsored christmas tree... But if you actually thought that this is a recent development you'd be wrong. What you're seeing is the apex of the Enlightenment movement driven to its logical conclusion. Enlightenment and the French revolution didn't just shed the dominion of monarchs and the church from Europe - they essentially severed Europe from all its pre-modern traditions. The war against religion in general and Christianity in particular is a process that has been developing for hundreds of years. So how is it that Christianity is "the enemy" and Islam seemingly gets a free pass? In the Enlightenment view of the world Christianity is part of the hated "ancien regime", a symbol of something barbaric and outmoded, usually tied to its most repressive moments (colonization, the Inquisition - as if nearly two thousand years of history can be summed up in a handful of extreme phenomena). Islam on the other hand is essentially foreign (therefore spared the contempt reserved for Christianity) and tied to post colonial "guilt" (as if special treatment today will somehow make up for the repression of ages past). And therefore you get the current situation. The entire explanation would make for a thick book, but that's how I see it. The crux of the matter is that the Enlightenment didn't create a tradition (its incapable of it) that people could integrate around, in fact it fought (and still fights) against such ideas. And Europe without Christianity and nationalism is nothing. Just a mass of atomized individuals united by nothing more than good living standards. Without knowing what we are, its impossible to formulate an intelligible response to the other. Hence treating Islam like just another religion and downright ignoring even the possibility that we may have a long term problem that can't be solved by throwing money at it.

A-ha, I see you approached this issue using logic. Let me help you out of with that

I don't know if all those police powers are really anything new. I've yet to see a political system that isn't authoritarian at its core. Sure, you can go around shouting things on the street in Europe, whereas in Tehran you'll probably get promptly arrested - but when push comes to shove, when a person or a group becomes anything resembling a threat to the established system they get censured, defamed, removed and ultimately, if need be, eliminated. In that respect there's no difference whatsoever between France, Russia or Saudi Arabia.

And that is pulp fiction. Has this supposed threat manifested itself anywhere other than in the media and in Breivik's one man show? Were are these fanatical right wingers blowing up Paris and London? However, right wing parties are a threat to the current political system. If we go from the hypothesis that we're nearing an another economic crisis and that the economy is "as good as its going to be" then right wing parties will inevitably take over from the current euro center, or left, or whatever you want to call it. You can see it in the way every other party in Sweden has united against the Swedish Democrats even though their (swedish) immigration policy is plainly a disaster. Yet they continue to push the agenda for some reason, as though Sweden's livelihood depended on it (which it doesn't).

Yojimbo was predictably great, I think Sanjuro is up next. Or Throne of Blood. Kurosawa spree incoming

That is when it starts. Or rather, when the end begins. I need to get me one of those fans like in the film, so I can smoke and contemplate how terrible the future will be while staring at it.