/lit/ - Literature

>>12647256
MD isn't even wrong either, it's true that in fact people do have an ideology. it's just that policy isn't his forte either, and it's basically what Hitchens had been writing about for decades. plus he's sitting right next to a guy with a fatwa on him who has pretty good non-ideological reasons for being suspicious about an Iranian missile program.

i wonder if Maher had a backstage conversation with whoever it was that thought this would have been a good idea, or if he does it himself. arranging these panels is an interesting job and this is a kind of YouTube classic but it was probably awkward as fuck for Maher to actually sit through.

anyways here's the Harris/Affleck one also

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vln9D81eO60

minor ramble begins:

i actually enjoyed Affleck-as-Batman, btw, i thought he did a good job presenting Bruce Wayne in an interesting way: as a sweaty and paranoid crypto-fascist that would have been a Left take on Frank Miller's own take also. to present Batman as a tormented and slightly unhinged Defender Of The Polis from an alien threat (in this case, Superman) was actually not a bad plot, and Harris kind of projected some of his own fears and grief about all of this into the role, which was otherwise a piece of rather forgettable schlock. he's not as good as Bale's Batman, no doubt, but this was a take on Is Batman Fascist that was actually quite sympathetic and interesting.

if you let Frank Miller do Batman, Miller channels his own feels for Fascist Batman unironically, and you get what you get: The Dark Knight Returns, which is absolutely fucking awesome, and Holy Terror, which is not (although the art is always good). but Affleck Batman gave you something quite unique: a *believably* fascist Batman, and one which was more believable for it being Affleck himself in the role, rather than whatever stereotype you might have cast if you wanted something like Starship Troopers, so on the nose as to be cartoonish, if that makes sense.

the best criticisms of Leftism actually come, imho, from the Left themselves: Woke Jeans, or (this is my theory, anyways) Annihilation (total deconstruction is not liberating, it is death to the world). with Affleck Batman it's the same thing, i think, in a way.