The real story that no one really picks up on is that the GOP is now basically indistinguishable from the Obama Democrats of 2008 - 2012. The "realignment" is more like shuffling chairs around the same center. The GOP "right" moves "left" toward the "center" & the DNC "left' moves "right" toward the "center" -- you get Republican Gay Marriage & "The Interfaith Community" & you get Democrat Dick Cheney & "Defending Democracy" If you think of the "uniparty" as being the commonalities between the two fictitious "parties" -- then what you see is a consensus built between the two over time. They resemble each other more & more-- the differences are less & less apparent. People don't have any issue voting Trump & also full Democrats under that-- or voting Harris & also full Republicans under that.

"Mathematics is the language of God xD"

Close but no, it's actually Music. Mathematics is just a way of transcribing music into a two dimensional form. Matter is in fact Music. Matter is just a vibration. The whole cosmos is actually VIBING. I was thinking about Kojeve describing Historical Time as distinct from "Cosmic Time" & "Biological Time" etc. The notion of "The end of history" is more like "the end of a subplot" within a larger plot, like the end of a particular movement in a symphony. It doesn't mean "nothing changes" -- it means that the rhythm has switched-- it isn't that "The music stops" -- it's that it accelerates, a Time takes on a new rhythm.

Superman to me is most primarily about immigration into America just prior to World War 2– a more naive vision of America— where Batman is about America as it actually is— its corruption being endemic to itself, rather than being an “alien threat”

https://twitter.com/murakami_coast/status/1857128656990359956

Superman is about being Jewish & America is the land of tolerance that must be defended as is against alien threats to normalcy.

Batman is about being Protestant & America is a haunted hell world that we seek to turn into paradise.

This is actually what New York / Gotham is like & the environmental groundedness of this iteration of Batman is why it’s superior to every other iteration.

https://twitter.com/batsource1/status/1856818429891940520

New York is wet— constantly puddles, wetness, water dripping in the underground train platforms. This is a key plot point— the sewers, the rain, the fog, the overcast sky. A cold rain— most days.

The Penguin is a more interesting foil than the Joker for this iteration of the Batman, considering it’s a more “grounded” & realistic depiction of Batman than the Nolan-verse etc. The Penguin & the Batman are both primarily motivated by *recognition* in the Hegelian sense— but in completely inverse ways. The Batman is recognized impersonally, as an anonymous popular noble at war with corruption— while the Penguin is recognized personally, as a corrupt “populist.”

Batman’s mother is dead— the Penguin’s mother is living-dead & effectively a doll. This is their relation to recognition— for the Batman, personal recognition is an impossibility— he is rather seeking recognition from Right, in the abstract, from the authority of the dead father etc— he is like a priest in this way. The Penguin is seeking false recognition, he can dress a prostitute as his mother & have her say “I recognize you” & this for him is enough.

Usually the Batman is most directly contrasted with the Joker & Two-Face— but the Penguin is a more interesting foil in this way. The Joker & Two Face are generally contrasted in terms of “succumbing to corruption” as if possessed by it due to some sort of traumatic experience— but the Penguin is born a monster. The Penguin is not motivated by vengeance, but by a desire for recognition as a “man of the people”— a desire for respect, class, status. This is actually the more vital source of corruption (run of the mill sociopathy) than a psychopathic thirst for vengeance.

The first Batman film deals with vengeance, but with the Penguin, the Reeve’s verse implies the next iteration will be dealing with CLASS.

In terms of CLASS— the Penguin is the perfect foil to the Batman. Their trajectories are completely inverted— from the penthouse to the gutter, & from the gutter to the penthouse. Batman “goes down to the people”— while the Penguin “goes up” on a ladder of death. The Joker is a great foil for a “right wing Batman”— but the Penguin is a greater foil for a “left wing Batman.” The Joker is just an anarchist, but the Penguin is a popular ignoble. The Joker just blows stuff up— but the Penguin gets the lights back on. Nobody would have a parade for the Joker— maybe a riot— but this iteration of the Penguin could become the mayor!

The funniest irony in American politics is that the libtards think JD Vance is a ruthless fascist when he's actually a bleeding heart liberal humanist, & that someone like AOC is a bleeding heart liberal humanist, when she's actually a ruthless fascist. Trump says stuff like "The world is an ugly place. Everyone is out for themselves. You have to watch your back." & that is what is required for actual charity to occur. The Libs say stuff like "It's about being a DECENT HUMAN BEING" in order to justify their ugliness.

I read “Look Back” by Fujimoto today & enjoyed it, but it seems like he has the same weaknesses in all his works— which is what I’d call a lack of patience— he doesn’t let things develop slowly— the tempo of his works are too fast, out of what feels like a frustration with the form— they are “efficient” but not quite sublime for this reason. Compared to someone like Oda, who really takes his time— this is perhaps a generational issue in art, with the younger generations less willing to produce the “slowness” of time, instead compressing time, the way time passes scrolling the internet rather than the way time passes offline I also read the latest Daniel Clowes this week “Demonica”— & they are roughly the same length, but Demonica has that slow pace of older comic book artists— lots of room to breathe— no timelapses, but time jumps to new solid bricks of time— the story is much more expansive, has many more characters, compared to the two in Look Back— all of them characterized better, just a much more mature work of art— but obviously lacking the sort of mass appeal Fujimoto has

With the right wingers split between mourning a squirrel & celebrating a Navy Seal’s threats to turn young men into his concubines— I consider Nabokov describing Hitler as “sentimental” rather than “sensitive”— these are not “sensitive young men”— they are adolescent sentimentalists. Sensitivity is about understanding the other— it is a form of self-abolition— to be sensitive is to “step outside of yourself”— to be sentimental is rather to enter further into yourself, & to refuse to recognize the other in any manner. The sentimentalist is a monomaniacal narcissist.

Trump has a sort of Chinese temperament like the Republicans of the late 19th century— he seems to want to replace the spoils system with a meritocracy (“They should have to take tests.”) — this is why Garfield was assassinated. One moment of humility in his Joe Rogan interview that won’t be considered humility— he describes that being an outsider to Washington made him open to being roped by “neocons & bad people” like John Bolton. I think this is true— Trump has good instincts, but has no way of understanding the machinery of empire he is enwrapped in, & so he actually thinks IRAN is trying to kill him

I have a very fond memory of being 15/16 & listening to this album (& this song particularly) over & over & weeping to myself alone. Slowcore autumn is about the tragedy of reaping in the harvest. The most somber part of the year.
Winter is less "somber" than it is "bleak" -- there is a difference. Somberness has a sort of wistfulness to it, a romance, but a tragic one. Bleakness is so overwhelming that tears start to become manic laughter. In Autumn you realize you will starve to death, in Winter, you do.

It’s funny to me how American libertarians are just realizing that commodity-money was sublated by fictitious capital (ie: credit-money) — this is something most “marxists” in the west don’t even realize— but then, their solution is just “return to commodity-money” which is fundamentally impossible “A bank-note is nothing but a draft upon a banker, payable at any time to the bearer, and given by the banker in place of private drafts. This last form of credit appears particularly important and striking to the layman, first, because this form of credit-money breaks out of the confines of mere commercial circulation into general circulation, and serves there as money; and because in most countries the principal banks issuing notes, being a peculiar mixture of national and private banks, actually have the national credit to back them, and their notes are more or less legal tender; because it is apparent here that the banker deals in credit itself, a bank-note being merely a circulating token of credit.” -Marx

The more in my life that I read F Scott Fitzgerald & Ernest Hemingway & TS Eliot, the more I wondered why they are considered equal to James Joyce, Wyndham Lewis, & Ezra Pound. It's like the midwit consensus on English modernist literature in that time. They literally all knew each other & hung out, many stories about all these interactions... Read: "The Dumb Ox: A Study of Ernest Hemingway" by Wyndham Lewis in his collection MEN WITHOUT ART.

It's very funny stuff.

Then read Hemingway's description of Wyndham Lewis as "the nastiest man he ever met"-- even recounting about how he talked with Gertrude Stein about that "nasty man" -- because Lewis had said of her: "Gertrude Stein's prose-song is a cold, black suet-pudding.... Cut it at any point, it is the same thing ... all fat, without nerve."

The greatest critic of that era of literature wasn't much liked by its greatest mediocrities.

Philosophy is a sickness you have from language & literacy, the therapy for it is a sort of “antiphilosophy” which discloses the fact that “philosophical problems” are in reality non-problems, or only seeming problems. Once you have overcome the sickness of “philosophizing”— you just live, but now unburdened by a disease You can also just sing songs though. There’s nothing special about “the philosophical path” aside from its appeal to rhetoric. You don’t argue with a song— but if you want to argue yourself out of arguing with yourself, you’ll choose philosophy probably

I’ve learned that “emo music” really just means heavy use of shit like minor 7s add 9/11s sus 2/4s etc. I just really like dissonant chords, a normal C chord doesn’t do it for me I need the Cmaj7. Miss me with the f major I want the F6sus2. This is all I understand of music theory. Punk bands generally just played power chord rock progressions in standard keys— even hardcore bands were just playing power chords— but emo is when they start using more avant garde power chords, like the three string Sus2, so you can stay in the same position, do a bass melody with the chord changes, & a counter melody on the high strings hitting 9s & 11s. This is where you get the “jazzier” math rock & midwestern emo type of sound.

Rewatching LOST & it becomes apparent how much of the basics of writing televisual drama has been completely lost in the streaming era. They used to make 20+ episodes a season, each episode balancing at the least an A & B plot paralleling a flashback plot related thematically to the A/B plot, sometimes even having a C plot, each episode moving character progression forward as well as the overarching plot of all the characters together— sure, the camera work is basic, it’s pretty barebones in terms of sets & locations etc— but it’s so solid on these fundamentals in a way that just isn’t done anymore. It’s profoundly competent. You couldn’t organize a production like that anymore. You’d get 8 episodes & two years later 8 more episodes. They had 20+ episodes coming out EVERY YEAR FOR 6 YEARS. LOST is always a monster-of-the-week story— sometimes the monster is Sawyer, & sometimes it’s that Sawyer is far sighted & has a headache, but every episode there is a new microconflict that has to be solved & wrapped up by the end of the episode— each episode had to be able to stand on its own in this way

The literary scene of the late 19th century in America is the wildest shit that nobody cares about anymore. You have Ina Coolbrith, Joseph Smith's niece & the "Sweet Singer of California"-- one of the "Golden Gate Trinity" -- alongside, Bret Harte, the internationally famous writer of "Gold Rush Tales" & "Condensed Novel" collections of parodies of famous authors at the time, such as "The Haunted Man" (a parody of Dickens' Christmas Carol, ""I see a child," said the Haunted Man, gazing from the pages of the book into the fire,—"a most unnatural child, a model infant. It is prematurely old and philosophic. It dies in poverty to slow music. It dies surrounded by luxury to slow music. It dies with an accompaniment of golden water and rattling carts to slow music. Previous to its decease it makes a will; it repeats the Lord's Prayer" -- hilarious)-- & of course the third part of this trifecta: Charles Warren Stoddard, the homosexual catholic convert writer of Melville inspired travelogues of Polynesia & various other confessional novels, whose lover, Francis Davis Millet (a translator of Tolstoy, an accomplished painter, ultimately dying on the TITANIC)-- he may have also had an affair with Yone Noguchi, the Japanese author & poet.

If you even scrape the surface of any of the late 19th century American poets & authors, you find out that they all knew each other, wrote each other letters, wrote parodies of each other, etc. These figures also begin to bleed directly into the foundations of Hollywood-- many of their works being adapted into silent films in the 1920s etc. Truly the most interesting period of American History is the post-Civil War period, what I like to call "The Second Republic"-- which dies in the First World War, as the foundations of the American Empire of the 20th century come into being.

If you think about it, Joker & Joker 2 really emerge from Todd Phillips having a personal correspondence with John Wayne Gacy, & funding his first student film by selling John Wayne Gacy’s art. The serial killer anti hero that emerged in the 70s in America— it’s really about how a normal society would address this with something other than a sort of perverse adulation. The Joker seems to represent exactly this in the national psyche— as with John Wayne Gacy, there was the truly pathetic person, a miserable man who was abused & molested his whole childhood. But he’s “the killer clown”— & this perversion, the pathological sociopathy & narcissism that is also a consequence of abuse— this is still, perversely, celebrated, because at base, this is the natural product of our society. The Serial Killer as Killer Clown is a uniquely American pathology. If John Wayne Gacy is a serial killer, why isn’t Joe Biden? Joe Biden has killed far more children. In the Joker 2, the Joker’s responsible for a few murders, from the first film, which he ultimately regrets (ie: is revealed to have regretted the entire time). He’s a pathetic character who is continually used by others as a means for them to be “entertained” by him in some manner. Is this not what molestation really is? Being forced to be an object of another’s entertainment? When he says there isn’t a Joker— there’s only Arthur Fleck— this is the ultimate truth of the story— he’s just one guy, who is ultimately discarded, the moment he ceases seeking to amuse others. It’s a great “Joker Origin” series, because it implies that all other iterations of “the Joker” are people who idolized “the Joker” without ever knowing Arthur Fleck. The “canon” joker origin story is kind of unimportant & has always been a bit of a weight upon what the character has since become. A If this film is accepted as “canonical” (which DC does NOT want, as you can see a conspicuous absence of any DC related marketing of these movies)— then “the Joker” that Batman fights is never the “real Joker”— but just another copy-cat Joker, a dime a dozen. The real Joker, ie: Arthur Fleck, was killed by the cult of “the Joker.”

The Joker that we know today really comes from the 1970s & onwards. So setting it in the 70s is accurate. The 1960s Joker is a harmless prankster lacking the psychological characterization as a foil of Batman, which is what develops through the 80s & 90s into the most successful iteration of the Joker in Heath Ledger’s Dark Knight performance.

I think the implication of the film is about “entertainment”— how is it that we’ve come to be so entertained by criminals? The 70s is also when you get gangster movies etc. Censorship was effectively dismantled & entertainment went from Musical Theater Hollywood into “gritty hollywood.” The pornography industry also explodes in the 70s etc.

What else happened in the 70s? America became a completely financial dominated society that celebrated ruthless gangsterism quite openly. The 70s is perhaps best represented as the nexus of a mass lumpenization. Deindustrialization begins in the 70s, & you enter a society organized around, explicitly, exploitation. Not production, but exploitation. The “exploitation cinema” of the 70s.

I think this is more what he was going for— a way of making a movie about a John Wayne Gacy Joker— set in the exact time that serial killers became fetish objects of the american psyche. Nothing like this will be made again— this was an odd time when Warner Brothers & DC were in complete disarray. They had to make a sequel because the first one made so much money. Todd Phillips squeezed every concession out of them to make this. Everything will pass before a million test audiences. This one? On the rider, no test audiences & final cut control. Todd Phillips made exactly what he wanted to make with a budget he’ll never get again. You have to respect the audacity to even make this movie. It’s way better than the Joker taken in isolation. As a double feature, it is improved, & will probably garner some sort of cult following in the future just because it’s such a singularly strange thing that exists now indelibly. No one wants to really talk about it, but I think there’s a lot to say about it.

Was Joker 2 good? Probably not— was it interesting? Yes. There’s much more to talk about with a movie like this than a “good movie”— there are very good parts of it, & I think that the broader “point” of the movie is interesting— but would I watch it again? Probably not. It was at least better than the first one.

It’s kind of a return to really really old posts of mine when I was adamantly against “thinking about politics at all” but now I have returned after having thought through the entirety of politics.

https://twitter.com/bff379/status/1842263028378570796

When I was 20, in the year 2014, I identified as completely “apolitical” beyond concern for politics at all & trying to practice something more like a religious or mystical understanding of the cosmos— but the political kept imposing itself on me— I was in college at the time, & my very existence was “political” & every day I had to navigate “politics” in discussing literally anything— it took me then 10 years to arrive back at that

I say “I like Mao” & Americans think Mao is Hitler but worse, as if Mao was just a genocidal maniac set on killing as many people as possible. But Mao is actually just really funny & relatable, a primary school teacher who read many books & found himself thrust into his decisive historical role. & you can’t even explain this to them, they cover their ears. Mao Zedong in the American Imagination: “It is I, Mao Zedong, the most evil man in human history. I want to destroy all goodness & replace it with badness. Time to kill, personally, as many people as humanly possible if not more (with the help of the demons I control). I am Satan.”

Everyone is right about everything but not always in the way they intend. For instance, all incorrect statements are true with the proviso that the statement is prefaced “It seems to me that”— then it is true. To say “you are wrong” is more accurately “you have been misguided”— the wrongness is rooted outside of the rationality implied by the statement, the wrongness goes deeper than that, to the way of being of the speaker (as a perfect delusion is perfectly rational & can bw self consistent). You ask “why does it seem to you that way?” & we are now in ad hominem territory— “well I read XYZ & it said” etc.