Facts and civil discussion are so yesterday. Every good, correct thinking person knows that hyperbole, rage and wishes for a painful death are the only correct responses to mean spirited, evil (pick one or more: racists, homophobes, misogynists, islamaphobes) haters who do not embrace our tolerant and loving attitude toward those who believe exactly what should be believed.

Though you would know that by now, Amy.

How do you defend the indefensible?

“If the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the law and the facts are against you, pound the table and yell like hell” ~Carl Sandburg

You forgot transphobia, Jay. Why are you a transphobe?

I mean, what would the argument be? "Hang anybody male without a trial"?

He could take a page out of Che's book: we can have your trial tomorrow, but we must execute him today.

It's sick thinking -- authoritarian culture thinking -- that one is not allowed to question the party line. ~ Amy

After watching HBO's Chernobyl, it was especially interesting reading comments by former Soviet scientists who said the main mistake the series made was in having a Soviet scientist who knew the physics the Soviet Union didn't want them to know.

"The problem is not just that Khomyuk is a fiction; it’s that the kind of expert knowledge she represents is a fiction. The Soviet system of propaganda and censorship existed not so much for the purpose of spreading a particular message as for the purpose of making learning impossible, replacing facts with mush, and handing the faceless state a monopoly on defining an ever-shifting reality."

The writer, on whose book the movie was based, noted the hard part about interviewing people for the book was that they hadn't been told the story yet. They didn't know how they were supposed to talk about it because the state hadn't told them yet what the story was.

"It was the system, made up primarily of pliant men and women, that cut its own corners, ignored its own precautions, and ultimately blew up its own nuclear reactor for no good reason except that this was how things were done. The viewer is invited to fantasize that, if not for Dyatlov, the better men would have done the right thing and the fatal flaw in the reactor, and the system itself, might have remained latent. This is a lie."

This is what happens when you create a system in which dissenters are accused of having "the IQ of a Republican" and "dysfunctional genetics" - a system in which the accuser holds all the cards.

"The final episode of “Chernobyl” also contains a scene that encapsulates the Soviet system perfectly. During the trial of three men who have been deemed responsible for the disaster, a member of the Central Committee overrules the judge, who then looks to the prosecutor for direction—and the prosecutor gives that direction with a nod. This is exactly how Soviet courts worked: they did the bidding of the Central Committee, and the prosecutor wielded more power than the judge."

Is this what we want on our campuses? Is this the system we want standing in judgement of our children?

All the above quotes are from the New Yorker article:
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/what-hbos-chernobyl-got-right-and-what-it-got-terribly-wrong

I haven't seen Chernobyl and won't; I despise how its simplifications and excisions have been accepted by viewers as history's best record of the events.

It's like accepting Road Runner cartoons as our best explication of desert physics.

I despise how its simplifications and excisions have been accepted by viewers as history's best record of the events. ~ Crid at May 11, 2020 8:31 AM

By viewers perhaps. However, there are a number of well-written books on the subject. Books should always outrank movies as "history's best record of events."

For the most part, the HBO miniseries is being credited with being reasonably accurate, albeit with the usual (and banal) simplifications and embellishments inherent in creating a marketable celluloid version of real events - i.e., Midway, Titanic, Blackhawk Down, Dunkirk, Argo, etc. I specifically excluded Pearl Harbor from that list because that movie was so inaccurate that it borders on parody.

Where HBO seems to do well is in its various depictions of the crushing bureaucracy of the Soviet state (any socialist state, really) - in Chernobyl and in the earlier Citizen X.

It's nearly impossible for us, as Americans, to realize how compliant and passive citizens of socialist countries were (or are) in the face of the inevitable and intractable bureaucracy - hence the need for a defiant, almost American, character.

It's almost a compliment to be insulted by such an obvious idiot. What you wouldn't want is for someone that ignorant to agree with you!

"You have the IQ of a Republican"

Well, yes, I do. Thank you so much for the compliment.

It is curious that the ACLU thinks the Title IX new rules mean that a different standard is being applied to sexual harassment than to other kinds of harassment. The new rules restore standard protocols such as written charges and legal council. Is there some other type of harassment that does NOT apply standard legal protections? If there is, then this also needs fixing. What a strange argument.

"You have the IQ of a Republican"

Which one? A classically liberal Republican, a social-conservative Republican, or a fiscal-conservative Republican?

Remember that William F. Buckley, George Will, Barry Goldwater, and Nelson Rockefeller were Republicans. Ben Carson (pediatric neurosurgeon), Victor Davis Hanson (historian), Thomas Sowell (economist), and Bobby Jindal (Rhodes Scholar) identify as Republicans today.

So, what gives with "IQ of a Republican" remarks? A July 2019 article in The Guardian might provide some insight.

The survey, published by the thinktank More in Common as part of its Hidden Tribes of America project, was based on a sample of more than 2,000 people. One of the study’s findings: the wilder a person’s guess as to what the other party is thinking, the more likely they are to also personally disparage members of the opposite party as mean, selfish or bad. Not only do the two parties diverge on a great many issues, they also disagree on what they disagree on.

This much we might guess. But what’s startling is the further finding that higher education does not improve a person’s perceptions – and sometimes even hurts it. In their survey answers, highly educated Republicans were no more accurate in their ideas about Democratic opinion than poorly educated Republicans. For Democrats, the education effect was even worse: the more educated a Democrat is, according to the study, the less he or she understands the Republican worldview.

“This effect,” the report says, “is so strong that Democrats without a high school diploma are three times more accurate than those with a postgraduate degree.” And the more politically engaged a person is, the greater the distortion.

What could be going on? Bubble-ism, the report suggests. Even more than their Republican counterparts, highly educated Democrats tend to live in exclusively Democratic enclaves. The more they report “almost all my friends hold the same political views”, the worse their guesses on what Republicans think.

So do they believe in sticking with their own? No. When asked in a Pew survey whether it’s important to live in a place “where most people share my political views”, half of conservatives and only a third of liberals agreed. Although in principle more tolerant of political diversity, highly educated – and mostly urban – Democrats live, ironically, with less of it.

> there are a number of well-
> written books

More people watch TV than read books. And having found a TV show they enjoy, especially with that one actor they like, they're carry the screenplay in their hearts to the grave. Books can be relatively audacious with truth.

Pointing out that movies are composed at enormous expense and with great skill to identify and flatter the presumptions & feelings of an audience doesn't diminish this enthusiasm.

Remember Amy's adoration of Mississippi Burning?

Having a 4- or 5-to-1 ratio of good experiences to bad can help us overcome the negativity bias in our brains.

Sadly, I can't maintain that ratio on Twitter, so I try and avoid it.

More people watch TV than read books. And having found a TV show they enjoy, especially with that one actor they like, they're carry the screenplay in their hearts to the grave. Books can be relatively audacious with truth.

Pointing out that movies are composed at enormous expense and with great skill to identify and flatter the presumptions & feelings of an audience doesn't diminish this enthusiasm.

Remember Amy's adoration of Mississippi Burning?

Crid at May 11, 2020 2:05 PM

Firefly? The series, not the movie. It’s my bible.

Conan: I think it much more than likely, in fact I am nearly certain, that someone in the engineering profession knew about faulty rod design at Chernobyl.
We have the same situation repeatedly in our own country. Junior personnel know about the situation but are unable to make a change. After all, somebody built RBMK rods that way.

Crid: How like you to not know anything about something you condemn.

I am actually in the profession, and those of us who have seen it like Chernobyl quite a bit. Especially the courtroom description of the meltdown.

You all may not know that filming was done on location at other real reactor plants of that type. It is a treat to see the method of construction used in various Soviet projects.

_
Reading the details about the death of Vladimir Komarov is frightening. Everybody in the Soviet space program knew the Soyuz 1 space capsule could not withstand re-entry, but no one was wiling to risk the wrath of the government by scrubbing the launch.

Even Komarov himself knew. However, he also knew that if he refused to go up in the unsafe capsule, his friend, Yuri Gagarin, would have been sent in his place.

The recently-released CIA recordings of the intercepted radio transmissions from Komarov's re-entry are brutal, even in Russian.

There was too much national and political prestige tied up in this flight for it to be scrubbed. The individual doesn't matter in a collectivist system and is easy to sacrifice.

> How like you to not know anything
> about something you condemn.

The critiques I read faulted the political superficiality of the teevee show convincingly, but even then: Whatever your pretense to expertise, I'll never find your taste in movies instructive.

Were you expecting your adoration by strangers to be consequential?

The critiques I read faulted the political superficiality of the teevee show convincingly.... ~ Crid at May 13, 2020 8:22 AM

Can you link a few? The ones I read were mostly complimentary on its political / bureaucratic point of view. I wouldn't mind reading a point of view that said it got things terribly wrong, and how.