There is no reason to refer to an individual person as "they" or "them." The English language doesn't work that way, and we should not allow its rules to be rewritten illogically by tiny pressure groups with giant media megaphones.
Indulging this "they/them" nonsense destroys language and our ability to communicate - which is, of course, the ulterior motive behind all this. Bizarre insistence on using the lunatic Ezra Miller's "preferred pronouns" makes news reports about him incomprehensible.
Trans fascists are on firmer ground inventing new pronouns to add to the language besides "him" and "her", but that runs into the problem of them adding dozens of weird inventions that most people don't understand - which again destroys the coherence of language.
It's no surprise that people who want us divided, conquered, demoralized, and perpetually at war with each other would attack our common language, our ability to communicate and reason together. Of COURSE they want us to hesitate before we write or speak, fearful of punishment.
Do not surrender language and meaning to totalitarians. There is nothing oppressive about using clear language to convey facts and discuss ideas. The oppressors are the ones using compulsive force to make language comply with their ideology because they can't abide dissent. /end
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Mixed feelings about Netflix's "Sandman" as an O.G. reader of the books. It had an uphill climb for longtime readers as an adaptation of a story that was already a near-flawless fusion of prose and visuals. Probably more successful with viewers new to the tale.
You always have to wonder which audience these adaptations are made for, particularly with the craze for adapting comics, which were already a visual medium. Some of Marvel's early success was doubtless from the gee-whiz factor of seeing stuff like Iron Man come to life.
With Iron Man, Marvel made the character approachable to non-comics fans, but also gave existing readers the spectacle of both the improbable superhero rendered realistically, and his human alter ego played by an actor at the top of his game. Audiences new and old were pleased.
The tax code is a great example of how Big Government is inherently corrupt. It's a gigantic hairball of rules and exceptions no honest citizen could possibly understand, so most of us can be squeezed for "crimes" we didn't know we were committing, whenever the State pleases.
The tax code pretends to impose all sorts of high rates that no wealthy person actually pays, because they can afford good accountants, and they can adjust their behavior to minimize tax exposure in ways the Little Guy cannot. It's a fundamentally corrupt system.
The political elite gets to simultaneously burble about taxing the rich, AND complain they aren't paying enough. The burden of taxation flows onto the middle class, to a far greater degree than they realize, thanks to hidden and pass-through taxes.
The IRS scandal was the birthing cry of a more feral, arrogant, hyper-politicized bureaucracy. The important takeaways are that it WORKED - President Obama's grassroots opponents were subdued for the duration of his re-election campaign - and no one important paid any price.
The sinister genius of Feral Government is that action is swift, while accountability is very, very slow. It took years to sort through the IRS scandal, and nothing ever really happened to the masterminds, but for a few crucial months, dissidents were kept out of the election.
The IRS scandal was an example of how the "discretion" of political operatives in the bureaucracy can nullify or reshape the law. It was simply a matter of choosing to enforce certain policies against politically targeted groups and slow-walking their appeals.
The Left gravitates to bizarre causes like trans fascism because they provide opportunities to use gigantic amounts of coercive force against ordinary people. Compliance with the trans agenda "justifies" the most oppressive speech codes to be found outside China and Russia.
It's a deliberate inversion of natural law, which says laws written in accordance with human nature require the lightest burden of enforcement. Instead we have unnatural law, which unleashes maximum force against 99.99% of the population at the whims of tiny, extreme groups.
The massive use of both government and private force to compel obedience from the public is a feature, not a bug. Have you ever seen a wokester express reservations over the amount of force required to impose his vision on the public? No, they're *gleeful* over it.
Smart Republicans in the midterms and 2024 election will hammer the point that every item in the Democrats' toxic agenda assumes YOU, the people, are the problem with America - and indeed the world. Their "solutions" all make the American people smaller and poorer.
Abortion? You stupid hicks can't be trusted to debate or vote on the issue. Gun control? Crime is caused by law-abiding citizens and their lousy 2nd Amendment. Free speech? You can't be trusted with it. Climate? We'll force you to buy electric cars and live smaller.
Every single item on the Dem platform is premised on the fanatical conviction that Americans have too much money and freedom. You live too large. You can't be trusted with inalienable rights. The biggest, richest mommy state in human history isn't big and rich enough yet.
"Nope" is a terrific movie where the whole is just a teeny bit less than the sum of the parts, mostly because some of the characters make hard-to-explain decisions - but those parts include some scenes of exquisite craftsmanship. Peele is a marvelous storyteller.
Some movies lately are about ostensibly thrilling subjects but they're snoozefests that could scarcely hold your attention from the smartphone, like "The Grey Man" for example. A lot of "Nope" is just a handful of people horsing around on a ranch, but it's captivating.
Solid camera work and acting are important to making a film riveting, but above all it takes storytelling, an alchemy of writing and direction that draws your attention into the tale, and the many smaller stories that spin up along the way, explicitly told or artfully implied.