Poeple losing their minds over Captain America fighting racists

Politics and religion
21

It’s a beautiful term, related in meaning to “conformism”. Applies to both Left and Right of course, but more to the Left these days (or at least in a more amusingly robotic way).

This is such a conformist period. It’s a sort of Left-wing version of the 50s.

“Please like me! Look - I’m saying all the right things!”

But the funny thing is that, in reality, the human nature underlying it all doesn’t change that much. In the secrecy of their hearts, most people, qua several individuals, don’t really believe the current politically-correct hogwash any more than they really believed the mom’s apple pie hogwash of the 50s, or the religious hogwash of earlier periods.

It’s just that there are varying degrees of pressure to conform. Because your life, your livelihood, having friends, etc., largely depend on it. So you get this curious disjunction between the beliefs you have to profess to be part of society and reality-based beliefs. The beliefs you have to profess, because of your dependence on society, can be ridiculously un-moored to reality - in fact, the wilder and woolier the better, because a more distinct badge of affiliation.

It’s also related to the “madness of crowds” (and things like /b/ these days). I remember a night at a music festival in the UK many moons ago, when a massive crowd suddenly appeared out of nowhere, started stomping across the tents (lucky nobody was injured really) and trying to break through to the stage. Security shenanigans and a few biffed heads were the inevitable consequence. I had to restrain my friend, who had a glint in his eye, from joining in. For some reason I’ve always been wary of that beast, the crowd beast, the sudden appearance of a sort of “standing wave”, when everyone loses their individuality and becomes sort of insectile for a while.

Probably related to hypnosis as well.

Ah the wonders of a jerry-built cognitive mechanism that happens to be exquisitely sensitive and prone to hurt, yet robust enough to survive (albeit in a somewhat gnarled form) most of the shit life throws at it!

22

To me, those people who dismiss others as ‘virtue signaling’ are more likely falling into this fallacy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmKix-75dsg&t=2m36s

My condescending teenager attitude came from a false belief that other people are basically like me. I didn’t care, therefore others don’t really care, therefore if they act like they care then it’s just an act for attention or drama… and if I have a bias that I pretend to be politically correct about, everyone secretly agrees with me and is also just pretending so they can be politically correct.

23

Well, it’s an argument for real time instead of “Marvel time”. There’s a marvellous essay somewhere on the web about how Marvel chickened out of the very thing that made them famous - having a sort of real-time, unfolding story with a beginning, middle and end (a story that would have resulted in, e.g. Peter Parker moving on to a proper job, maybe getting married or whatever, superheroing, and eventually dying).

But oh no, the brand recognition was so much more lucrative. Better to put Spider-Man through the blender for the umpteenth time than - heavens forfend! - invent a new, equally brilliant creation of a superhero apt for contemporary times.

(Alan Moore has been known to bang on about this too.)

24

Ah but the rabbit hole goes deep on this - do you really care, or are you just sort of blending really caring with desperate or cynical (or both) virtue-signalling? And to what extent is the really caring part really derived from your own original thinking on the matter?

As I said, jerry-built. An approximation of intelligence. Close enough for jazz, but the occasional bits of sphexishness show up.

25

What a load of crap. So my outwardly expressed belief that racism is bad is nothing more than conformism? Dear sir, there is one thing unmoored from reality here, and it is your screed.

It might be shocking to some of the more reactionary and racist parts of our society, but there are genuinely people who do believe that variety of viewpoints is a good thing, that having a non white lead actor in a major tentpole franchise is not only not harmful, but actually a good thing. That the idea that stories told from viewpoints different from your own are a good thing in and of themselves. Ms. Marvel being a Pakistani- American Muslim girl is interesting since it is telling a story with a lead character that is more interesting to me due to this radically divergent viewpoint. Our culture can only be improved by expanding the scope of what is available, and some of that certainly includes who the leads are.

26

Yeah, the idea that not being a dickhead is purely for show is clearly incorrect.
If everyone was secretly a racist, then there would be no pressure to hide that fact.

27

Every racist thinks everyone else is racist. I’ve lost count of the number of times that someone has basically come up to me and said “so, these fucking niggers, am I right?” To which my response is “what the fuck?” And this is while I looked like the biggest fucking hippie the world had ever seen (even though through most of the time, I was quite conservative).

It STILL fucking happens. They literally think everyone is secretly a racist and people just don’t say it out loud in public to score points or something. But once you get them alone, they want to talk “truth” with you and everyone else that will listen, cause we all “know” how we really feel. I’ve brought it up to people I know aren’t racists and it’s a universal thing, they’ve had it happen countless times as well in the same ways.

28

I’ve run into it too. Being generally conservative seems to make some of them think that it’s safe to be overtly racist around me. I think that I must subconsciously make some kind of horrified face in response, even in cases where I don’t just call them out on their bullshit, because they usually then kind of back of it awkwardly pretty fast.

29


"Picture of cast of a movie that people are boycotting cuz not enough white people "

30

Man, white people in the US are angry.

31

They get that way when some folks start getting uppity, I guess. When folks start forgetting their place, sometimes they need to be reminded.

<all of the above is sarcasm. Screw morons who get upset over stuff like this.>

32

Well, there’s also the guy up top. In the hoodie.

33

It’s probably Jacen Solo, so he’s white under the mask.

34

Guy on Twitter tells me the nucleus of the hashtag was a chan troll. Which, possibly, but also holy moly are people terrible.

35

If you look at the tweets I sourced, those are people with 5k+ followers who seem to be honestly using it. Even if they meant it as a troll the rest of their feed is straight up ‘hard truths in race relations’ etc.

36

Quaro, /pol/acks will troll “Stormfags” (Stormfronters) in order to kick off the whole thing. People deliberately post stuff like this on /pol/ to try and get it to trend on itStormfront regularly.

If the intention is to make the white power folks look stupid it succeeded. The entire thing can be countered by a picture of Lando.

37

And a VAGINA IN THE MIDDLE!!!

There are no women in Star Wars, we all know this.

38

Would it be racist (and therefore bad) to not have (e.g.) a Pakistani-American Ms Marvel?

Is it possible for someone to be not-a-racist and still write about white, corn-fed, rosy-cheeked characters? Or do you have to not write about white, corn-fed, rosy-cheeked characters, and to write about a Pakistani-American character instead, to demonstrate that you’re not-a-racist?

My point (as always on these political topics) is that the only sound basis for liberal philosophy is individualism. As soon as you get into fulfilling quotas of one kind or another, or ticking off lists, or anything else that’s based on group identity, you’re lost.

39

Why does this surprise you? The USA is the one nation where it’s perfectly acceptable to be racist as long as you aren’t obvious about it.

40

So the Pakistani can’t invoke individualism? The presence of a female or a person of colour axiomatically means progressive political correctness bullshit? Which means we always need a white person hero to show our convictions against racial quotas? That’s some real sound logic right there.