bleeding heart

double

But I think the number who self-label as religious is a majority. I assumed you were claiming that religious people are discriminated agaisnt by non-religious people...and I was wondering how that could logically be the case, since those with the power and wherewithal to discriminate in any meaningful way are themselves, by and large, religious people. Oh, sure...religious people are often misunderstood or unwelcome...but that's by certain community majorities...themselves usually religious. Again, i had thought you were speaking of non-believers discriminating or persecuting believers.

???

They're not a minority. And of the two groups, my understanding is that it's atheists who cannot hope to get elected. Mind you--to clarify--I don't feel that atheists are "persecuted." But the notion that Christians are persecuted is preposterous. It's saying that the majority of North Americans, including practically every single person with political power, is being "persecuted" by non-believers! It's a jaw-dropper, truly.

God hates them, obviously.

Seriously? All unsupported by evidence...and they're all you've got? after years of a Harper government? Man...it sound slike he's had it easier than most PMs. At any rate, people are going to have to start offering actual evidence, any time you say you're presenting...evidence!

For sure. Heck, I once worked at Walmart...and we were explicitly informed that "discussing our wages" with one another would be possible grounds for dismissal.

"Introduces"?

For the record, I was just playing. While I don't "support" adultery (only because it appears, in many cases, to be basically bad for you and your loved ones), I think as a society we're a little too salaciously involved with the personal (and completely legal) wanderings of public figures.

Jewish-Americans are, by a margin that is unusual in the world of demographics, Obama/Democrat supporters.

You mean the archaic theme of nobility symbolized by banging one's hagiographer?

Don't you support the anti-abortion, pro-death penalty statists....always?

? ?? Excuse me?

I think you're right. I'm searching my memory for any game-induced movie that's memorable. There might be one or two, I'm not sure.

The predicted "death of the left" was a common refrain in those years. That's good, for your mental health. Some right-wingers are intelligent and nuanced, others are...like Mark Steyn.

Not at all. Mark Steyn has something of a following, even when he's guffawing about an Iraqi detainee lying on the floor with a banana stuck up his butt. There's an audience for distasteful writing, and a large, mean sector of it has political sympathies somewhat aligned with your own, to be frank. . A popular sentiment in 1989, I remember.

If you mean Silent Hill, i haven't seen it. If you mean Resident Evil, then yeah...awful pieces of film trash. Epically bad.

Yes, but I think it's more often prevalent in horror (again: rarely from the filmmakers' particular artistic prescience, but rather as an element of the genre itself). Outside of explicitly political film (say, Election, or either version of The Manchurian Candidate) horror films remain (on an obvious, surface level, I mean) closest to the political and cultural fears and contentious issues....simply because fear is exactly what they are dealing with. So much has been made among film-wonks, and probably accurately, that the Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a direct result of the Vietnam War. The Exorcist is about, among other things, the "generation gap." These films are much more than these matters, of course, but the matters are components. The lesser horror films, even the bad ones, do something similar. The so-called "torture-porn" sub-genre has as its genesis (at least arguably) Abu Ghraib. I Spit on your Grave is unthinkable without the seventies' women's movement (whether the film is feminist or backlash-reactionary depends on your perspective, I think....either way, it's clearly there). Of course you're right, that we could name a thousand non-horror films and make many of the same points. No question about it. I only mean that with horror films, the contemporary currents of large-scale fears and anxieties rise directly to the surface, for better or worse.

That's silly. !!!! No.

I agree...but I think if the character development had been good, more of us would have appreciated it. That is, I don't think it's the fact of it, so much as that it wasn't especially good. And yeah, I think Boardwalk Empire is fantastic.

Obama is of "the left'? I think that depends what we mean by such terms.

I can't even guess. So I won't.

That said, I've never heard a single person--not one!--who didn't express deep disappointment about season 2. There's no justifying such dullness. If I want boring horror. I'll watch Paranormal Activity. However, the new season is really good so far, so I'm happy!

One of the reasons people enjoy horror is that it remains one of the better vehicles for exploring cultural and political subtext. Often, the subtext is unconscious, but it's always there. So if you think of George Romero's zombie franchise (to which the spate of zombie movies, and certainly The Walking Dead, owes practically everything), issues of class and capitalism are viciously satirized (the obvious vampire connection aside, what else are zombie films about than the logical end of rampant consumerism?). Even the crappy horror puts social and political ideas front and centre in the way that most entertainment does not...thanks precisely to its lack of subtlety, but also to the artistic usefulness of placing characters in extreme situations, so that the workaday and trivial become more obviously just that. (Compare to most romantic comedies, for example.) I have had some problems with the Walking Dead--especially the numbing second season, in which the essential banality of most of the characters become too obvious to ignore. But it has a lot going for it, in my opinion, especially in these first episodes of this season. Issues of political leadership (read: dictatorships) are becoming clear, and I think we're witnessing the breaking of the traditional family writ small here, as well. Also, honestly, the zombies are really cool!

Yep! It'll be fun--similar to Canadian elections, we'll have some drinks, and root for the Centrist wing of the Business Party over the reactionary wing of the Business Party.