#now the government is even WORSE and so is the refugee situation since they're now coming from everywhere

[oathtorn]

// sometimes I think about how many times in bg3 you get conflicts that don't have an objectively "best" outcome. I think about freeing the 7000 vampires, for example. Freeing them is the ethical thing to do, because they are all innocent victims, but it remains true that leaving thousands of vampires loose, even in the underdark, is a bad bad idea. Not only are they traumatized people, but they're predators who have only their instincts to help them survive in an unfamiliar land that isn't exactly bountiful in terms of wildlife. If they don't do well, they'll die or be slaughtered, and if they do they'll ruin entire communities or ecosystems, depending on whether they feed on people or animals.

#i was thinking again of that line minthara says about how the patriars should have the refugees work for them and have them defend the city #and tav is like 'um that's slavery you're describing?' #and she's like 'call it what you want but would you rather have them die of starvation stuck outside the city walls?' #and i mean the player doesn't have much to say in that matter but there is still a complex situation being presented with no easy solution #because bg has been the destination for refugees for a long time already #like it was already in a state of crisis after the descent when many people who could not return to their homes #massively started to arrive to the gate #right when their duke was gone and left the city without a ruler and the military without a leader #now the government is even WORSE and so is the refugee situation since they're now coming from everywhere #it is painfully true that the guild is still the only truly functioning organism in the city #and they're also having trouble with the absolute #like bg objectively doesnt have the space or the means to sustain the refugees #the patriars may #but in the end gold cant feed a family either #but eating the rich does sound like the most sensible option still- #ooc #the only objectively good ending i think is if you could leave the githyanki egg with lae'zel #also i think of the quest zevlor gives for killing kagha #which sounds like a sensible option when he says it but it prompts the grove massacre #but you can explain it to halsin and he understands that they forgot their principles and attacked defenseless refugees #and you merely defended yourself and them #then again if you look in the right places you can see dialogues suggesting that the refugees are indeed damaging the grove #like chopping trees without the druid's consent #so. #yeah i just have a deep appreciation for some aspects of the game's writing #that show there often isn't an objectively best choice #and you are just doing your best with the information you have and what your morals dictate

[zoueriemandzijnopmars]

The Dutch political situation explained*

*to the best of my ability

So, our government collapsed last week and today our current prime minister has declared he will quit politics after the coming elections. So things have been happening and I thought, maybe some non-Dutch people saw some things in the news or on their dash and maybe some Dutch people who do not follow politics are also confused so it might be good to try and break it down. (And I'll try to stay objective)

Why did the government collapse?

That's a good question to start with actually. On the surface it's because they couldn't agree on a migration policy. The largest party, the VVD (right-wing, but if this was the USA it would be centre let's be real. Y'know what, see the figure of the Dutch political landscape at the bottom, they're right-wing but not conservative), which is also the party of the PM (Mark Rutte), apparently suddenly came with extra demands for how refugee families could be reunited and the Christen Unie (CU, a centre-left Christian party), the smallest party of the coalition, felt like they could not agree to these demands. The four coalition parties (others were D66, centre-progressive and CDA, centre-right Christian) are said to have together decided to let the government fall.

However, it is a weird thing to fall over, they have (had) much bigger crises and differences of opinion. These 4 parties have been together in the previous government as well and they almost finished their term, they fell over the Kinderopvangtoeslagaffaire (that is a real word) a few months before the elections were planned to happen. In short, the government had branded some innocent families as frauds, and demanded back a lot of money, resulting to them getting very large debts. Over the years it was discovered that non-white families were much more often targeted than white families and that the government had also known for years those families were innocent but tried to sweep it under the carpet.

All this to say that even though they resigned after all this was discovered, most politicians came back and it is actually still going on, the families are still not fully compensated. I can name about 4 more crisis that they should have dealt with but they (the VVD mostly) chose migration as the hill to die on. It was speculated to be a campaigning thing by Mark Rutte, but him resigning today seems to negate that.

Why is the PM resigning such a big deal?

Mark Rutte has been our longest serving PM ever. He has been PM since 2010, this was his 4th government. This means he’s about the only PM children and many young adults have known (I can personally only vaguely remember the previous PM and no idea who was PM before him). This also means our politics of the last 10 years have been dominated by the VVD. Because there have been many scandals during the years many people were totally done with the VVD and Mark Rutte. However we also knew what he was like.

I personally think the VVD has been getting a lot of votes the past years because some people liked Mark Rutte as PM and all those people will have to figure out who to vote for now. It is quite a weird idea to me that we will actually get a new PM, and a bit scary because while I didn't like Rutte, it could definitely have been worse.

So what about the coming elections?

There are more parties looking for a new leader. The current leader of the CDA has also said he’ll quit and it is unclear what the leader of D66 will do. The two largest left-wing parties, PvdA and GroenLinks have been working together more and more the past few years and they want to do the coming elections as one team, but their members first have to vote on the plans and if they agree it is unclear who will lead this. However, as you can see below, we have quite a lot of left-wing parties, which as a result are none of all very big, so it might be interesting to see what will happen if there’s suddenly one big party to vote for.

And then there are 2 other factors. Firstly, the BBB (right-wing, farmers’ party) became the largest during the provincial elections last year, while the coalition parties lost. Will people also vote for them during the national elections? And if they become the largest who will they be willing to work with in the government?

The last factor can be really important or be absolutely nothing. There’s this guy called Pieter Omtzigt, he was a member of the CDA, but they fought within the party and he decided to become independent. Now, he is quite popular, during the last election he alone got enough votes to theoretically fill 5 seats in parliament, and became well known because he was one of the main politicians trying to figure out the truth behind the Kinderopvangtoeslagaffaire (there it is again). However, it is completely unknown what he will do, will he stay in politics? Will he start his own party? (He doesn’t have much time for that anymore.) Will he join another party? (The BBB? Update: He said he will not join BBB) We have no idea, but if he decides to stay in politics it can become very interesting.

And this was my break-down of current Dutch politics. I hope it cleared some things up for some people. The main point is that everything is quite insecure right now and that it will take a while before we get a better picture, with the politicians all firstly going on holiday, it might take a while until we'll know when the elections are going to be and who we will be able to vote for.

#it was also nice for me to put everything down #though I did curse my decision to do it in english because these are not topics i usually discuss in english #also isn't it nice to write about the main players in current dutch politics and not mention the pvv or fvd even once I loved it #dutch politics #dutch #the netherlands #I made on original post #politics

[luna-rainbow]

the general cop out of TFATWS

Saw this fantastic thread pop up today but since this post would be talking about everything else apart from Bucky, I thought I'd start another post.

TFATWS brings up very complex issues and some very dark themes. Unlike Black Widow which by and large does it well, TFATWS does not give these issues the complexity they deserve. It wants to be a political show, but it shirks away from actually giving those issues the gravity and depth they deserve.

1) Racial injustice

My particular issue with the racial injustice theme is that the MCU does not actually align with the real world. I mean half the world has just come out of non-existence, that messes up the social psyche in major ways - so this is not the same as the post-Floyd US we know in the real world. Especially to people living outside the US, we're going to need a little more than a bank and a police scene to show us exactly how racial injustice pervades the MCU America to the point that Sam/Sarah denounces the country multiple times, particularly as it had never been established as an issue before this series (again, only lightly touched on in Black Panther). It is also a missed opportunity to actually educate people outside of the US why racial injustice in the US is a problem that needs the world community's support. Go hard and go deep. Make it without a doubt that Sam could've gotten a loan if he was white - just need a passing comment that someone else in the same situation easily got a loan. Make it clear that in the MCU world, there are also unjust deaths in custody which preferentially affects BIPOC, and this problem has become bigger because the lack of resources has driven up petty crime. Talk about BIPOC being passed over for opportunities, which are going to be massively limited in the post-Blip world. Talk about how people can't get jobs, can't go to college, can't go to school because the colour of their skin pushes them down the list of priorities. Which brings me to...

2) Post-Blip mess

This is criminally glossed over in the series, with a lot of handwaving lines about "the GRC" and "things were better before the Blip". Again, show/tell us the horrors. There won't be enough food and water. There won't be enough housing or accommodation. Don't show us refugees living in clean European mansions. Show us overcrowded, poorly constructed, unhygienic refugee camps (see below picture from Syria). The world's population doubled overnight with no increase in infrastructure. You're going to have a LOT of displaced people literally on the streets. Crime will soar, deaths and illness will soar, and overall dissent will soar.

3) Resource allocation

Even in a world that hasn't had to deal with half the population disappearing then returning within a short time frame, we are having issues with vaccine inequity. Here's a recent JAMA article about this very issue:

Approximately 1.2% of the global vaccine supply has been received by low-income countries and just 14% by lower-middle-income countries, which account for nearly 40% of the world’s population. In contrast, more than half the US adult population is fully vaccinated (...)

Vaccine inequity is driven by insufficient supply and unfair allocation. Powerful high-income countries prepurchased sufficient doses for their entire populations, sometimes twice the number needed. In contrast, COVAX, a global initiative to procure and equitably allocate vaccines, failed to secure enough doses even for its modest goal of covering 20% of lower-income country populations this year. Pfizer, for example, agreed to sell COVAX only 40 million doses, and had delivered just over 1 million by mid-May.

Now extrapolate this across all resources, including food, fuel, medicines, materials, manufacturing machinery etc. For example, recently parts of northern Chinese cities went dark for days in the middle of a freezing winter because the power grid didn't have enough coal to run. This is going to be made so much worse when the population had suddenly doubled. Greedy corporations will want to capitalise on the sudden surge in demand. Large numbers of people will be dying from all of these reasons, and if the GRC is driving the inequity by unfair allocation of resources, people are within their rights to protest or push for change.

4) Police/Government corruption

It's a fine line that separates a terrorist from a revolutionary, and TFATWS shied away from portraying the gritty reality that would have made Karli a real heroine in this post-apocalyptic world. This is a particularly missed opportunity because Karli's story isn't even set in America, and even as someone who doesn't keep up much with world news I know there are ongoing issues of military/government driven brutality going on throughout the world, which would be many times worse post-Blip because the population will become more expendable.

For anyone interested, here's China's forcing sterilisation/contraception in Uighurs. Here's Myanmar military shooting young people posting Tiktoks of pro-democracy songs. Here's China (again) arresting staff at a pro-democracy newspaper in Hong Kong and driving it into closure.

Get into the dark side. Tell us how the GRC is colluding with corrupt governments. Tell us about the slavery that has shot through the roof because human labour is now so cheap. Tell us how governments are banning their own people from having children because of overcrowding concerns, and how the GRC plays into that propaganda. Tell us how corrupt powers try to censor these issues from getting to the media, and how the GRC's musclemen (like Walker) are unknowingly or intentionally used to silence people who are trying to fight for their right to live.

5) "I believe we can do better"

Maybe because I'm more a doer than a talker, but I'm still trying to recover from the cringe caused by that speech. Again, I don't blame Sam for either this speech or his talk with Bucky in episode 5, I can only lay the blame at the writers who clearly weren't interested in any of the practical ramifications of what they're writing.

Firstly, establish what they were doing wrong (see above, and there's lots more that could be added with just a cursive research into world affairs). Second, "The only power I have is that I believe we can do better" is a terribly avoidant reply when someone is pointing out rightfully that the issues are complex. This is a time when people want solutions, not just nebulous ideas. I mean, who doesn't want things to be "better"?? But you haven't established the why or what and now you're just handwaving about the how.

Point out what they're doing wrong. Talk about equity in resource and opportunity allocation. Tell them how their policies are driving crime and death and corruption in lower income countries. Offer to be on the Council as a representative for the layperson. Sure, committees might not seem very superhero-like, but other heroes have sat in on international meetings with politicians with success - Nat, Tony, T'Challa to name a few.

I know it's easy to use the excuse that "they tried to pack too much so they can't address all this" and I agree to an extent. But by taking the handwaving cop-out route with these heavy issues, it undermined several scenes that should have held more emotional weight.

#tfatws critical #tfatws meta #rants #tfatws #the falcon and the winter soldier