[CW: violence/gore]. As the title suggests, is there a left case to be made against ultra-violence in video games? I'm thinking mostly about MK11 and MK1 fatalities, as opposed to less gratuitous and less hyper-realistic violence--in Dark Souls or something. Whenever this topic is brought up, other factors usually take up the oxygen in the room: People might immediately think of family-values conservatives, such as the Media Research Center, who act like wet-blankets towards entertainment. Or we think of nerdy Joe Lieberman, who showed the 1993 Sub-Zero spine fatality to Congress (lol). There was Hillary Clinton who decried the Grand Theft Auto franchise, and the host of rightwing politicians who blamed Doom for the Columbine shooting (clearly as a way to absolve gun legislation from any culpability). So this is what I mean when I say that the conversation on video-game violence has been ceded entirely to these dudes, as opposed to something left spaces can discuss without sounding like squares or censors. This came to mind after I was reading about the video game designer who developed PTSD after working on Mortal Kombat 11. His dreams became excruciatingly violent, and his day-to-day was interacting with coworkers studying medical anatomy and watching videos of slaughtered animals. That can't be good for anyone. I guess what I'm asking is: should leftists see this as harmless fun, or something problematic? And, will photo-realistic Fatalities exist in the communist future?

Maybe the solution is to stay off Twitter, but it's very disturbing to see the normalization of slurs happening in real time on there. White people saying the n-word with approval, the return of saying "gay" as a pejorative, lots of casual racism against Indian men, using the r-slur to describe something seen as stupid. I don't know whether this is a larger cultural lurch to the right, or whether it's mostly attributed to Musk's elimination of quality control and monitors on the platform.

I thought that during the 2020-2024 interim the Democrats were supposed to be building someone up for the next generation of the party. To no one's surprise, they've been doing exactly fuck-all for four years - but, for insiders who actually care about the party's future, who are they hanging their hat on? Voters' confidence in Kamala has tanked; Cuomo was maybe their man until the sexual harassment charges hit (side question: how was he able to skate on the nursing home scandal?). But anyway, who's the next empty neoliberal they'll run in future elections?

... and the whole expansion is a poison swamp?? Jk, although From Soft should just commit to the bit and troll us all.

The studio has seen the success of mainstream movies about consumer products, such as Air (Jordans), Barbie, Blackberry, Flamin' Hot Cheetos, Tetris, and the new Pop Tart one. They also figure that The Social Network took home some Oscars, so what the hell... Now they've hired you to write and direct a movie about Reddit and the average Redditor. What is the story about? Who's in it? How do you depict the cursed site?

I never watched it, but I've heard about this show both in passing and in "left spaces." Are any of these things true about it? Thanks.

--It is too on the nose with its social commentary. --The criticism it makes is obvious. --The subjects it tackles are low-hanging fruit of the digital era. --It is the stupid person's idea of a profound show. --Something about it being British led to more dunks on it. --The reason it entered left discourse in the first place is because it had potential as a critical text, but ultimately failed at it.

Anyone care to return to the early-to-mid 2010s and share memories or hot takes about the phenomenon of cyber-attack and disclosure? It was rad that WikiLeaks disclosed emails showing that the US State Department was lowering the minimum wage in Haiti. At the same time, it is telling that WikiLeaks was always more interested in targeting governments than private corporations (its alleged Bank of America leak was a big dud, for instance). What's the deal with that? Meanwhile, I also wonder what demographic composes Assange's support today. Left-libertarian? Finally, the last I heard from Anonymous was during the George Floyd protests in summer 2020 when they released a video about the MPD. I know these aren't like solid structures to build your politics on, not least of which because Anonymous grew out of 4chan, but I was wondering what to make of it all.

From about 2004-2008, it seemed like the political battle lines were being drawn around Christian fundamentalism and the (professed) moral standards of straight, white, suburban, and Republican attendees of America's mega-churches. Obviously this was largely because GW Bush was a born-again Christian, and he gave religion an even stronger national platform than usual. He even claimed to talk with God, folks. The Iraq War was his "crusade," Congress threw the brakes on everything to intervene in the Terry Schiavo case, and there was a widespread aversion to stem-cell research. Meanwhile, the anti-Bush libs fought on the culture-war terrain against religion, producing for example the book and documentary With God On Their Side (2004), the 2005 book American Theocracy, the 2006 documentary Jesus Camp, the 2008 Bill Maher movie Religiulous, etc. I remember concern at the time over Congresspeople's apocalyptic beliefs that Israel must be protected for prophetic Biblical reasons. (This has re-emerged a little bit recently because of the genocide in Gaza).

After Bush left office, it seemed like this entire terrain of the culture war evaporated. No crazy fundamentalist in office, no concern over religiosity in America. So, I was wondering what this means in hindsight. Christian religious fundamentalism had its moment, but does that mean it only rose to prominence because annoying libs, media elites, and the chattering classes talked about it with respect to Bush? As in, they were snide about it, because haha, Bush is legitimately a dumb-ass? If so, where did the 2004-2008 left enter into this debate? Clearly they're not supporting Bush, so they must've linked arms with libs to say that the Moral Majority-flavor of Christianity was bad.

But: what characterizes the left's interpretation of religion now? Have Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Bill Maher, Cenk Uygur, and Reddit Atheists made the criticism of religion irredeemably cringe? Does the left not care about religion anymore as one of the fronts in the "war of position" against the bourgeoisie? If so, is that because things like Occupy and Sanders' democratic socialism, which were nascent and unthinkable in 2004, steered lefty concerns towards a more material direction? Or, has the left viewed religion as incidental and co-optable in the struggle towards a classless society?

That's a lot of stray questions, but I had been thinking about this for awhile and wanted to get the random thoughts down.

(If you're not on twitter, good for you, and you can ignore this). For everyone else: What's the deal with this annoying turbo-lib, Will Stancil? I don't know if this guy is getting DNC money or what. But he seems to be everywhere in "the discourse" now, quibbling about rent, inflation, wages, and line graphs. His message is that the left's pessimism is not commensurate with the reality of Bidenomics, and that economic conditions are good, actually. His logic is to then support the Democrats, who are looking out for us.

I keep seeing responses to his posts that say he has read the graphs wrong, that they're misused, and that he ignored other--more damning--graphs, etc. He then replies by saying it's his critics, in fact, who've misread the graphs (which is happening in a current fight he's in with Nate Silver lol). But my question is: a small uptick in wage here, a small drop in inflation there, maybe ketchup is cheaper... isn't this all moot anyway? We know that capitalism and imperialism form labor aristocracies at one pole and slums at the other pole, and that sure, wages can go up, but as Marx says in Capital, "the profit of capital rises disproportionately faster."

So something can be subjectively true and objectively false at the same time. Wages go up, but the whole system is rigged against us proles. If you miss the big picture as Stancil does, then you're left ignoring the vast disparities in wealth that capitalism has wrought. I mean, fuckin' a, even mainstream news reported that the ten richest people doubled their wealth during COVID. It's been known that there's something like $15 trillion stored in offshore bank accounts, untaxed. Meanwhile there is something like 1 billion people consigned to live in slums around the world. Anyway, I'm just irked by the dude and wondered why (a) he wasn't getting ratio-ed on twitter, and (b) no one was making this bigger picture argument about wealth disparity--at least that I noticed. Most of the dunks were limited to his misinterpretation of data.

The content of CushVlogs often veers into religious commentary (the most recent one especially). Why do you think Matt is so invested in it? I'm wondering if it's due to one or more of the following reasons: Americans are uniquely religious, so trying to divine anything about their politics requires interpreting their faith. Or: Part of being a revolutionary is believing in a prophecy that an ultimate goal will be achieved one day--a goal there's not much concrete evidence for--and in this way the revolution is faith based. Or: Studying religion comes with the territory of being a history buff (things like Luther and the Hundred Years War midwifing capitalism onto the world stage, etc). Or: Matt is obsessed with his mortality and is more and more curious about the big "Why are we here" questions. The reason I ask is because I don't hear much analysis of religion in left spaces now, and I think there's somewhat of a vacuum left by the Bush-era /stem cell-era libs who would call out jesus camps, televangelists, and mega-churches. (Like, that part of the culture war was deemed over by 2008-09)

And then we never heard from them again? The Dems were like, "oh no, blame that damn Parliamentarian who you've definitely heard of before, and who has a totally legit position that overpowers everyone, especially Harris and Biden." That was great.

(I apologize in advance if talking about the podcast is discouraged. I don't know if that's a joke or if most hexbears feel that way). But anyway, next month marks the two-year anniversary of George Floyd's awful murder. Listening to the show in the summer of 2020, and later reading some stray commentary on this site, it seemed like the podcast kind of whiffed it on the protests. But idk, is that fair to say? I believe they participated in some marches in NYC, but I also remember Matt saying that "defund the police" was dead-on-arrival as a slogan, because cops will always be around as long as capitalism exists. I also remember there being a pretty rancid take about "working class" cops in a Taibbi episode, as well as an episode that dunked on a racial sensitivity/workplace training book. Fair enough about the capitalism opinion, and the book, which was no doubt written by a rich neolib that lacked any material analysis. I understand that CTH is a news commentary/comedy/dirtbag show co-hosted by white people, so it's not going to be the best resource on racial theory. I also understand that a big part of CTH is entertainment. But I'm curious if you have thoughts about Chapo's reaction to the 2020 protests. And thanks for sharing them.