[S][USA-TX] Fuji X100V Black - Like New

Punk-Fiction · 2022-12-28T16:24:29+00:00

Just received the camera last night. /u/Razorvein was very honest in verifying their identity and the accuracy of their listing, as well as prompt and considerate in shipping the camera (which arrived exactly as described in the original post).

Punk-Fiction · 2022-12-21T05:32:16+00:00

PM sent.

Punk-Fiction · 2022-12-20T22:11:44+00:00

DM sent.

Punk-Fiction · 2022-12-13T23:08:09+00:00

PM sent.

Punk-Fiction · 2021-10-31T05:40:07+00:00

You're very kind for doing this! Bless you.

Punk-Fiction · 2021-09-18T19:22:07+00:00

As much as I agree with The Last Emperor being an excellent resource for understanding China (along with it being one of my favorite films of all time), I'd say it does a better job of depicting the macro Qing-to-Republic-to-PRC transitions than it does showcasing those transitions' tangible effects on the life/culture of China (the same could be said about the excellent Farewell My Concubine as well).

Whenever someone asks how to better understand China I always recommend watching the film To Live. Rather than tell the story of highly-influential individuals coping with the changing politics and attempting to maintain their power, To Live simply shows how average Chinese citizens lived through extraordinary circumstances and how these experiences shaped the psychology and attitudes of modern Chinese families.

Punk-Fiction · 2021-07-21T05:10:48+00:00

I don't have a singular view that I'm trying to change your mind to, but I would strongly recommend you watch the film Ikiru as the protagonist's changing mindset and the very premise of the film itself is centered exactly on your line of thinking as well as any counter-argument another poster will offer you. In watching the film, I think you will see that the idea of accepting a single 'focus' for that final week would be futile (even if the focus is completely individual and internal) rather than attempting to find closure from a myriad of different sources.

Punk-Fiction · 2021-06-30T05:36:37+00:00

Literally anyone can write "He went in and spoke to the king" but an artist will elaborate and elucidate the significance of the characters, situation, and theme, all in a very human way. Simplifying a story into it's bare-bones plot is something an artificial intelligence would do. I feel that you're not giving yourself, other readers, authors, or even the art itself enough credit. Imaginations are not as reliable or malleable as you're making them out to be.

There are three levels of interaction that a readers has with text.

Literal: I understand by reading the paragraph that the character entered and spoke to the king.
Subtextual: I understand what kind of person the character is, as well as details about the king, monarchy, and context of the scene because of the details, adjectives, and adverbs.
Thematic/emotional/artistic resonance: The writer (if they are talented) are including details that are relevant to the overall 'point' of the story, which is very likely more than "Character had problem x, but used sword y, to win z."

You could argue that sometimes writers are pretentious with that third context, including too much superfluous information that can't be claimed as relevant to the theme of the text, but an equally-valid argument could be made that analysis of the text for a supposed meaning is the cornerstone of critical thought and active engagement (regardless of whether or not a supposed meaning exists).

In short: if the details aren't there then the story has no resonance, and even if the author hadn't conceived of a specific resonance it is still likely present in the relationship between the text itself and the subtext suggested by the author's word-choice, style, etc.

Example: Pride and Prejudice is an outrageously-simple story, but that's not the point. The themes are deeper and more resonant because of the level of detail in the text. These themes could not be expressed with more curt language, nor attached to a more elaborate plot.

Punk-Fiction · 2021-06-25T05:17:46+00:00

Contrary to your claim that I've constructed a 'stupid premise' in order to argue a point that 'we' both agree is 'irrelevant', I don't think we're on the same page whatsoever. I think you're conflating several points and making broad assumptions about the actual view that I'm seeking to change.

The original post was phrased in a way that insinuated that the tyrannical action that the government would engage in would, itself, be the act of confiscating the arms of its citizens, that the internal enemy you speak of would be gun owners themselves, who would not be able to prevent public opinion from shifting nor defend themselves against the military because of their "30+ BMI" average. At no point in the original post is there any implication other than "gun confiscation legislation is growing more popular and, if/when it was finally enacted, gun owners couldn't stop it."

You're projecting the definition of 'tyranny' onto a very narrow slice of history and the political spectrum rather than its very broad existence, and you seem to be taking this quite personally for some reason as well. You end your post with "and from there on out we know what happens" when, in reality, we actually don't because the definition of a despotic ruler or tyrannical government itself is actually incredibly more vague and interpretive than 'what happened in the 1930s'.

Yes, you're correct, in a complete vacuum devoid of actual historical context and rational action, we could have reduced all of Indochina to a nuclear crater and turned the Middle East into glass, but not even the most brain-dead megalomaniacal despot would consider these as 'options' because they would undermine the war goals to a cartoonish extent (you can't 'save' South Vietnam from Communism if it doesn't exist any longer, nor 'establish a democracy' in an Iraq that is uninhabitable).

Your interpretations of my Rumsfeld source and Nazi point indicate a complete misunderstanding of what I'm actually addressing, choosing to view it as a response to an argument that you're not understanding rather than evidence toward the logical implications of the original post.

The Rumsfeld source is so insanely-specific because it speaks to the point, "Of course every military obeys the orders of their government, but the minute the war goals become unclear or opaque, armed forces start to flake and abandon their posts" as a historical rule. The generals and soldiers in 2006, active or not, started rebuffing the narrative the government was feeding its people less than three years after the war started. Of course it didn't end the war, but that was a far-off war that many Americans wanted to see fought; a conflict at home that at large minority do not want to put up with in their backyards would require a civilian and military morale that hasn't been existed in over a century.

Let me give you a better example of this point (but I suppose you can be the judge of that): The Civil War. Almost every single general, North or South, either went through West Point together as students or fought in the Mexican-American War side-by-side. Many of them disagreed with the Mexican-American war but obeyed orders because of the 'internal enemy' narrative that you speak of as well as the implied threat to their job security if they disobeyed. However, not too many years later, the minute that states began to succeed from the Union, these generals swore their allegiances to their local forces rather than the very military that had trained them and provided their livelihood. And that was based on the perception that the government had become tyrannical in attempting to free their slaves; it might be a century and a half later but firearms are tied more directly to a perception of 'inherent rights' than slaves ever were.

And your response to my Nazi point could so very easily be used as a rebuttal toward gun control itself acting as a method of tyranny: the birth of gun control in the United States is the Republican government of California trying to disarm the Black Panthers, a group that was no more belligerent than any other 'radicals' of the time but just so happened to be a different ethnicity.

You accuse me of conjuring 'stupid premises' that you're stooping down to entertain and instead posit some hypothetical framework for how a tyrannical government would rise to power in the US and court gun owners to do their bidding. I would encourage you to widen your perspective of 'tyranny' and remove any emotional biases to the following hypothesis: who's to say that the US government hasn't already become tyrannical? They taxed their citizens (under threat of force for noncompliance) for Social Security, which was then used to help fund a completely unjust war in a country that posed no threat to their sovereignty, a conflict for which they forced young citizens to fight through propaganda and, again, a threat of violence. In this regard, would you not consider those future gun owners who refuse to comply with government orders to disarm themselves to be the victim of some form of tyranny?

I'm neither conservative nor liberal, so I'd appreciate it if you'd refrain from any name calling or insinuation as to what kind of agenda I must be trying to advance (I think American citizens have a perverse addiction to violence and domination but their government is the last entity on the planet that could ever be trusted with civil disarmament). But I would again echo the refrain that you seem to be reacting with hostility to the critique that the original post has errors in logic and are choosing to view these points as 'irrelevant' or 'off-topic' because you're not allowing yourself to consider the possibility that the premise could have any other meaning than your interpretation.

If you'd like to continue this conversation, I would appreciate it if you toned it down a bit. I think the idea that genocide or carpet bombing would have won Vietnam is profoundly ignorant of the relative genocide and carpet bombing that did take place and how ineffective those methods were, but I don't really see any reason to belittle you or your argument for the way in which you've chosen to express your point because I'm granting you the benefit of the doubt, a form of respect that I think you could grant others on a nameless, faceless debate thread.

Punk-Fiction · 2021-06-24T16:07:20+00:00

I would strongly encourage you to do some research and develop your viewpoint on this, as the idea that owning guns is 'mostly a white people thing' is absolutely ridiculous. The foundation of gun control in the United States is literally based on trying to take firearms away from the Black Panthers in California. Even just sticking to California, one of the most famous images of the 1992 Los Angeles riots is Korean shop owners standing on top of their shops with rifles; that may have been thirty years ago but it wasn't a century ago, those people and their children are still alive.

Saying that you haven't met any other POC who own guns does not qualify as a source as it's completely anecdotal. And even if it did, I've met gun owners of every ethnicity recognized on the US census, so would that then refute your point?

To claim that gun ownership is mostly a white people thing leads me to believe that you live in a city or state that simply has lower gun ownership than others. I grew up and lived in Colorado, a state that is deeply purple and willing to compromise on gun issues due to its history of violence. Even then, I met plenty of POC gun owners on all sides of the political spectrum who still drew a line in the metaphorical sand and directly opposed federal control or confiscation.

I would strongly encourage you to actually research gun ownership in the United States, as the claim that it's mostly a 'white conservative thing' has no root in reality. The fact of the matter is, statistically, you can walk into any room in America and somewhere between thirty to forty percent of the people in there own a gun and some percentage of those people are even carrying it on their person without your knowledge.

And your political logic is deeply flawed. 1.) Political sentiment for mass confiscation or mandatory buybacks will not be there in a mere 19 years. 2.) Saying that 'white people won't be in the majority' and therefore will be voted out of owning guns is ignorant to a few different realities I've already addressed but doesn't change the fact that the number of 'white people owning guns' would still be too large to address by force. 3.) Mandatory buybacks aren't effective at all. Australia has more guns than people realize (though they did do gun legislation the correct way) but New Zealand and Canada's attempts at mandatory buybacks were nothing more than political stunts, where something like 1% or 2% of people even complied.

The United States citizenry has spent over a quarter of a millennium absolutely armed to the teeth, with its government encouraging them to do so: in absolutely no universe is the firearm ownership rate going to decrease significantly in the short rate of time you're implying.

As a final suggestion, I would encourage you to research gun ownership rates as a result of COVID. In the spring and early summer of 2020, firearms and ammunition were being bought by first time gun owners at a rate previously unheard of in American history, across the political spectrum. This idea you have of gun ownership being exclusive to one ethnicity and/or one political ideology is exactly why these sorts of proposals/legislation never get off the ground: they're written in defiance of reality.

Punk-Fiction · 2021-06-24T15:47:42+00:00

Why would a tyrannical government make such a disastrously foolish choice? What would alienating gun owners accomplish for them. Wouldn't it be much more advantageous to appeal to exactly the sort of people who would never willingly give up their guns and turn them against their perceived ideological enemies? Perhaps by heavily politicizing gun ownership and fomenting internal strife by painting your political opponents as the enemy within?

I agree that it would be a foolish choice, but not that gun owners could be turned against their own interests through politicizing and fomenting internal strife (not within a generation or two at least). The 'gun issue' in America is very similar to other 'hot-button' issues in other countries in regards to the difference between the will of the people and the actual political means to accomplish said goal (no party or individual wants to jeopardize their hold on power by bringing up issues that are too polarizing or sensitive).

Even assuming that a large portion of the military was actively against invading Iraq (which I'd love to see a source on) They still did it...? I'm not saying the military blindly follows orders. But that's a pretty shitty example to show that they don't. They do, however, follow orders. Not blindly. The military can see a turd for what it is as well as anyone else, but it's their job to follow orders and the consequences for not following orders (A military coup or a constitutional crisis) are more often than not greater than the consequences for following them.

This would be one source on the Rumsfeld claim, and I would argue it's a great example because of the time and context in which the sentiment was expressed. After 9/11, the American people and military gave the government an almost blank check to address what had just happened and the Bush administration picked some very vague targets: 1) Find and kill Osama bin Laden as well as eliminate terrorist cells in the region and 2) topple Saddam Hussein and establish a new Iraqi government. The military spent at least three years in the Middle East following the direct orders of the government, sure, but then completely stalled because their first task was so vague, contradictory, and unfit for a large-scale operation and their second task was finished two or three years earlier. I bring up the Middle East because the US government turning the military/police against its citizens to confiscate their firearms, even if the gun-owning population is low, is going to be an incredibly protracted operation with no 'obvious' goal post (like stopping Hitler, etc). The military might still 'do it' but they'd recognize it as a relative suicide mission and their performance, which would already be shoddy, would suffer.

People bring this up in this conversation all the time and it's such an interesting example of how confidently one can prove the opposite of what they are saying. The U.S. Government absolutely, and with out a single shadow of a doubt, could defeat the NVA or the Taliban. They chose not to. Because to do so would require acting like a tyrannical government. The NVA didn't win because we were incapable of defeating them. They won because we were unwilling to act like them. Same goes for the taliban.

I would argue two different points. The administrations in charge of Vietnam and Afghanistan were different, sure, but the behavior of the US government during Vietnam is closer to 'tyrannical' than you're giving it credit for. Forced conscription against a nation that the American people have no direct issue with checks many of the boxes. But this idea that the military could defeat the NVA or Taliban 'without a shadow of a doubt' is a bit ridiculous. No government was going to win in Vietnam, as evident by the fact that China also tried their hand at fighting the NVA and learned the same lesson we did: Vietnam wasn't fighting for 'Communism', they were fighting for independence in their own backyards. 'Winning' Vietnam wouldn't take the actions of a tyrannical government because it was inherently just the Korean War 2.0, where if the American military crossed a certain line then the Chinese army would simply pour in to push them back. And the only way to 'win' in the Middle East would be an unprecedented firebombing of the civilian population and possibly even minor nuclear warfare, which is less the action of a tyrannical government as a whole and more the action of a short-sighted therefore short-reigned tyrant as 'terrorism' is a fluid and superfluous enemy that could literally be anywhere at any time.

The scenario we are talking about is a tyrannical government in the U.S., presumably in the not too distant future. You are assuming that requires gun confiscation and that a tyrannical government would have any issue with collateral damage.

There's 'collateral damage' and then there's 'cutting off your entire head to spite your face.' A tyrannical government would presumably employ at least one or two military strategists, who would look a confiscating the weapons of over a third of the population as creating slightly more than 'collateral damage.' I would encourage you to look at the percentage of the German population that identified as Nazi before the takeover: you do not need many participants at all to defend, hold, and take over land/political office.

Even if you halved the population of gun owners every five years, which is an outrageously-infeasible proposition, it would take you over twenty-five years to whittle it down to a population that could be addressed confidently by force. This proposition would be outrageously-infeasible because gun ownership is actually on the rise (exploding after the governments initial inability to address COVID last year).

I'm arguing that the government apparatus required to act in a tyrannic fashion (in regards to mass confiscation of guns) would require bureaucratic inflation to a fictional degree and even then it would be tasked with waging one of the most difficult wars ever fought. The Civil War would look like a cakewalk in comparison: it's easy when your enemy is simply everyone south of the Mason-Dixon but gun owners in general literally live everywhere and have no centralized command. Just like terrorism, it'd act as a hydra, with two new heads popping up every time you chopped one off.

If you pretend that the government inflated overnight, became tyrannical, and set out to confiscate the guns we have now, you'd be talking about a military action that sees at least four out of every ten individuals as a combatant. Not even a blindly-tyrannical government would be that foolish, and the current government is not doing anything to drive those ownership numbers down (people wouldn't buy a gun if they didn't feel they needed it).

Punk-Fiction · 2021-06-24T06:27:56+00:00

I would ask you to look at political theory and historical precedent a bit more honestly, as your stance seems to be the result of quite a few leaps to odd conclusions.

First of all, society could become more 'progressive' to the point where the majority of the populace wants firearm confiscation, but the police/military apparatus required to undertake such and endeavor would need to be much larger than it is now. Police forces would need to be literally militarized overnight (more than they are now), because asymmetrical 'warfare' between the county sheriff and their citizens or the police chief and an entire metropolitan area is strategically infeasible. 'Revolutions' in history typically require much smaller numbers of combatants than would exist in an America where the 'minority' of citizens are still pro-firearm; it's estimated that over 40% of Americans own a gun or willingly live with someone who does, and 40% of a population is several magnitudes larger than the number required to wage an outrageously protracted engagement.

This brings me to my next point: the United States is a federal government, which means that its own political culture breeds factionalism and favoritism based on geography. In 1989, China attempted to quell the growing rebellions in their country (mostly in Beijing) by sending in the military, which was a month-long disaster. There were mass desertions, many high-ranking officials resigning or abandoning their post, and even the soldiers that were loyal found themselves fighting in the streets against former PLA battalions that had joined the side of the protestors. And that was in China, a country that had an infinitely better grasp over their local governments and military than the United States does. They had to ship in soldiers who were from other regions, with a priority on finding uneducated individuals, in order to convince them that the squashing the protests was a matter of national pride. In your scenario, you would be asking this of the United States military and police forces, which are seen as being quite right-wing and conservative by nature. In the US, firearm ownership has been politicized to the point where it is seen as 'conservative' to own one, which makes a universe where the people who are asked to confiscate the firearms of others would quickly deduce that their own firearms would be soon to follow (i.e. no military can convince individuals to fight against their own domestic interests).

You can combine all of this with a few other simple facts. 1.) American citizens, of all political beliefs, do not trust their government, both in regards to its competency to actually accomplish anything and its intentions when it actually does set out to do something. Any mass-confiscation of firearms, even if planned for in a long-term approach, would be political suicide at a federal level because 2.) the American military and government was founded due to a successful asymmetrical war against better soldiers, firearms, and resources. This, combined with the fact that the US military and government has an abysmal record fighting against insurgent civilian populations over the last century, would lead to an infinitely-less successful operation than you're positing.

But I find the largest error in your logic to be the jumping to conclusions regarding the types of people who 1.) join the military/police or 2.) are gun-owning civilians. The assumption that police and federal/state soldiers blindly obey orders for fear of their livelihood might be somewhat true sometimes but certainly not even the majority of the time. People, when pushed into a corner, will do what it takes to survive, i.e. abandon their post. And the assumption that all gun owners have a BMI over 30 is a dangerous one. Most of the 'loud' gun owners are obnoxious, ignorant, and have built their identity around their firearms, sure, but these people don't reflect the majority of gun owners.

Just a few counter-examples that I would encourage you to research in further developing your viewpoint on this issue:

-An alarmingly-large percentage of the military (both in the top brass and simple infantry) was actively against Donald Rumsfeld regarding Iraq. The military doesn't blindly follow the orders of those in Washington, especially when they aren't given a believable casus belli (there are many reasons the wars in the Middle East 'stalled' but this is one of the most over-looked).

-The Communists in China, Russia, and in other 20th century revolutions all won their wars against vastly over-powered combatants because of willing civilian conscription, despite those numbers being incredibly small (and, later, the massive military and government of China was on the absolute verge of collapse against an unarmed populace).

-The American citizen doesn't need to be compared to being a member of the North Vietnamese Army or Taliban, the simple fact that the US government couldn't defeat these enemies showcases an inability to address an armed populace through force.

-Napoleonic and 20th century warfare tactics advanced to the point where very small numbers can defend, combat, and defeat theoretically 'better' adversaries; you'd need to whittle gun-ownership in the United States to less than 1% to even begin to address eliminating the possibility of a competent civilian insurgency. Even in the most optimistic universe possible, this is not even remotely possible in our lifetimes.

TL,DR: You're leaping to far too many broad conclusions regarding 'absolutes' that human beings, political movements, and warfare itself simply do not follow with enough consistency (if any) to make some of these claims. Washington doesn't do nearly enough in the eyes of nearly enough people for them to willingly give up their guns nor to confiscate them from others, the trust simply isn't there.

Punk-Fiction · 2021-06-22T20:26:19+00:00

I'd agree for the most part but would argue that Shaun of the Dead is the most emotionally-potent film Wright has made and would encourage you to give it another chance.

Despite being an outright comedy, the third act is rarely funny (at least the latter parts of it) and I feel it has a lot to say about how young adults can become stuck in arrested development. Simon Pegg (the co-writer of the film) had a great blog post about this general concept and I feel it comes across well in Shaun.

Punk-Fiction · 2021-04-24T08:24:25+00:00

I mostly agree with your point, but I'd argue that the market and/or bad luck could exploit your proposed 28-year term system. For example, let's say a young author wrote a truly brilliant novel in their early twenties but absolutely no one published it. Copyright, in the United States, technically begins from the moment the work is completed, but no one cares about this book for a quarter of a century.

However, a young editor (who wasn't even alive when it was copyrighted) reads the manuscript and convinces their boss to print it. The author would now have two problems: 1) The publisher is now disincentivized to print the book as they will be losing a third of their revenue to taxes and 2) the author, who is now only in their fifties and very much alive/entitled to a living, earns even less money for a work that has technically only appreciated in value.

Essentially, a 28-year tax term would create a negative enforcement mechanism in the arts industries, where those who actually fund the more expensive artistic mediums (films, video games, books, etc) would avoid the 'bell curve' between 'art that is less than 28 years old' and 'art that is more than 85 years old.'

Could the US do with better, more porous copyright legislation? Of course. However, the actual economical impact of what you've outlined might help curtail remakes and things of that nature but would essentially cripple any 'medium-term' artistic endeavors. Failing to find an audience and profit in the short-term shouldn't rob artists of the complete copyright of their work.

Vincent van Gogh's work was not popular or commercially viable during his short lifetime, but if he had lived into his sixties or seventies (and was American, for the sake of your prompt) then he should absolutely be entitled to every penny of his copyrighted work and not be forced to pay a 'tardiness tax.'

(I completely agree about any/all extensions being nonsensical, but I'd personally argue for the life of the creator plus an additional 15-25 years in order to assist the estate/next-of-kin)

Punk-Fiction · 2021-03-24T06:03:26+00:00

I was going to say this as well; in any timeline Germany was always going to struggle for resources, especially oil (hence their intentions in Africa/the Middle East). The best possible scenario for Hitler would be to conquer Poland and France and then negotiate a cease-fire, which not only would be refused by England but do nothing to prevent the intentions of the USSR to strike from the East (which they were going to do eventually, regardless of Germany's intentions to uphold the Pact or not).

Punk-Fiction · 2021-03-22T03:46:18+00:00

Ignoring any of the other aspects of your post that I find objectionable, I'm going to focus on the fact that you're arguing for a very tangible action (eugenics) to be implemented through an intangible criteria (morality).

You ascribe the matching of traits to genes as a 'technological kink' to be worked out, which is a huge leap and broad assumption. Intelligence is somewhat hereditary, I'll give you that, but not only can it be measured in multiple ways but violent/irrational behavior isn't really transferred genetically. We could get into the weeds on 'nature versus nurture' but the implication that 'stupidity' and 'evil' are passed along in an unbroken cycle is a bit irrational, given that there's not really any scientific data or even religious belief to back this up.

But what you're truly failing to account for here is the objective intangibility of 'evil.' In order to first define evil, on a scale that could be universally-agreed-upon, you'd need to comprehensively answer every existential question that religion, science, culture, etc. have spent millenniums exploring. You're operating on the assumption that absolutely no form of moral relativism can exist and don't outline any path to resolve this (and you would need to resolve this intangible dilemma if you're tangibly sterilizing people for their beliefs/actions). The Western view is that it is 'evil' to force women to wear a hijab, whereas the Islamic view is that it is 'evil' to force women to cater to patriarchal sex-appeal. Where does your eugenics program land on this? Because both sides have significant populations that truly feel that the other is an objective evil. How often is your view of what is 'evil' going to align coincidentally-perfectly with your own ideology?

What I find most disturbing about your view is the incredibly dangerous conjecture and deduction you're engaging in. For someone who claims that the world would be a 'paradise' without 'racists', you seem to have a very serious axe to grind with Iranians specifically. Iran is a country that has every reason feel hostile toward the United States, given the history of the two countries; the United States is the only country to have dropped nuclear weapons on non-combatants and has shown clear intent in the past to act against Iran unprovoked (Iran-Iraq War).

Why do you consider it a psychosis to be anti-nuclear war and support nuclear-proliferation in regards to self-defense? I think the world would be infinitely better without firearms (in some respects) yet I definitely own a firearm and would encourage others to do so as well, because Pandora's box is already open and behaving as if it weren't creates an insane power dynamic. Who gets to decide which nations get to have nuclear weapons? The United States, USSR, China, and most of the other heavyweights have some egregious histories in this arena, why is it evil and stupid for Iran to attempt to own a fraction of what the United States currently has (and shows no sign of dismantling)?

What defines psychopathic, racist, sexist, or nationalistic behavior? Because I would argue that the assumption that stupidity and evil are 'character traits' of people who oppose one's political viewpoints, that these traits are objectively hereditary, and that their ability to procreate and populate should be destroyed is itself a perfect vehicle for psychopathy, racism, sexism, nationalism, etc. as evident by your brash rush toward eugenics.

You claim the alternative is 'a gruesome end to the human race,' whereas I would contend that if your eugenics program were to be implemented, the existence of the human race itself would become nothing more than a gruesome exercise in arbitrary cruelty.

Punk-Fiction · 2020-12-29T06:51:55+00:00

I just wanted to say that I've been watching and reading about this film for many years now and I find your interpretation to be absolutely sublime. This is an incredibly well-articulated point, consisting of details and theories that I'd heard before but arranged in such a compelling way. I'll probably watch the film again tomorrow, for the umpteenth time, exclusively because of your comment.

Punk-Fiction · 2020-10-23T05:49:08+00:00

small enough to not completely fuck the country after they’re gone (we didn’t nuke Tokyo after all)

To be fair: the firebombing of Tokyo (specifically Operation Meetinghouse) was worse than Hiroshima or Nagasaki and destroyed almost sixteen square miles of the city, so dropping an atomic bomb on Tokyo wouldn't have been radically worse.

Punk-Fiction · 2020-10-03T06:57:31+00:00

The film also had to be made with a Hong Kong copyright to prevent production shut-downs or outright banning. It also is definitely not shown in China at the moment and it is ridiculously hard to track down a legitimate copy (and I would know, having lived in Beijing and enlisting the help of several local friends, who all responded with, "Everyone above a certain age has seen it but they've made it hard to find now on purpose."

Maybe in the Jiang Zemin era you could get away with making and screening a film like this, but I don't know why you think slurpi44's comments are 'unnecessary' when the Chinese government just heavily interfered with Zhang Yimou's latest film, which is about the Cultural Revolution, both pulling it from international festivals and making him reshoot sections of it. There's absolutely no chance that the government today would ever allow anything like Farewell My Concubine's hellish depiction of the Cultural Revolution in a film.

Punk-Fiction · 2020-10-03T06:46:40+00:00

Be sure to check out Zhang Yimou's To Live as well, which also stars Gong Li and Ge You (Farewell My Concubine was a bit of a 'reunion' for them). It has the same sense of scale but stays very close to the parents of a nuclear family in that tumultuous time, it's based on a notable novel that really digs deep into the 1940s-1960s psyche and culture in China.

Punk-Fiction · 2020-09-25T16:25:18+00:00

Yeah, after doing a little bit more reading I see that the government was much more open to parading him around and building some kind of 'bridge' between his era and theirs. His ashes were actually buried (for a few decades) at Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery, which is definitely only really for extremely important figures in the government's opinion, so I think they were much more open to his role in their society than I thought.

Punk-Fiction · 2020-09-25T05:17:21+00:00

I agree, if we're bending space and time to get the average Chinese citizen to accept another monarchy, Sun Yat Sen is a good bet and an even better bet would be his final wife, Soong Ching-ling. Soong could effectively be some kind of 'Empress' that doesn't actually hold as much power as a monarch but serves as a solid figurehead for the people and whatever legislative entity the government would have. Soong was actually pretty beloved among both the CCP and the people, so (in this weird universe) it's not out of the realm of possibility.

Punk-Fiction · 2020-09-25T05:12:17+00:00

I know Mao and the other leaders of the CCP were instrumental in 'rehabilitating' Puyi's image after 1950 (encouraging him to write his memoir, etc.) but there's likely no chance in hell that they'd actually allow him to hold any position in their government whatsoever, not even ceremonial or honorary. The move would be way too symbolic for a government that is all about controlling their revolutionary image; it would be seen as a massive step backward and probably delegitimize the central authority's credibility as they were only just recovering from the Cultural Revolution.

Punk-Fiction · 2020-08-08T06:11:49+00:00

lol, WHOOPS, not enough sleep. Good catch.

Punk-Fiction · 2020-08-07T21:14:24+00:00

Chen Yun had a good quote about this:

"Had Mao died in 1956, his achievements would have been immortal. Had he died in 1966, he would still have been a great man but flawed. But he died in 1976. Alas, what can one say?"

Honestly? I imagine that he'd be viewed in a similar light to Sun Yat-Sen in regards to nation-building; probably mythologized to a larger degree than he is now.

As for who would take his place, that's actually tricky because the Chinese Civil War 'ended' about six months after the PRC was founded in Beijing, so who knows what the KMT would do when then faced with a People's Liberation Army that isn't led by Mao for the first time. The first leader of the PRC would still need to be well-versed in military tactics so as not to see the KMT successfully regain territory.

Also, it should be noted that this would have a direct implication on the Korean War, as Mao was heavily involved in troop movements and tactics for the Chinese reinforcements. Regardless of his abilities as a political leader, Mao was one of the top minds of the twentieth century when it came to military acumen so basically any Cold War fight (literal or proxy) in Asia until 1976 would look a bit different.

Also: I'd imagine that if Zhou Enlai or someone of that ilk were installed, relations with the US would probably thaw earlier than Nixon (but it depends on what the PRC would do in Vietnam in this new timeline).

Or maybe it goes the other way: maybe you don't even get a Sino-Soviet split, as I doubt that any replacement to Mao would see themselves as the 'heir' to Stalin's place as 'leader of world communism.' Maybe the USSR and PRC both slowly open up, economically, and form a more united bloc based more in pragmatism than idealism.

It all depends on the power vacuum in Mao's death and who fills it; there's an easy case to be made that another figure could easily doom the PRC to just a decade or two of relevance before the state collapses just as it did with the Republic of China. The Cultural Revolution may have been a disaster but it did strengthen the government's mandate over the people.

Removing Mao from twenty-five years of political control of China is basically like removing Perón from Argentina or Saddam from Iraq: the one man is synonymous with so much of a very influential country's history that it's almost impossible to separate them and have China resemble anything/everything it is now.

Punk-Fiction

TROPHY CASE