I'm not going to spend this week's post on a long message or argument; next week's post will have just that sort of thing, so you won't be waiting long. Instead, I'll echo what Black Pigeon Speaks says below, and that will be sufficient. Happy New Year, folks.
And as for next week's post, here's a hint: it's about killing the dominance of urban centers over the countryside- something folks in Illinois, Minnesota, etc. know too goddamn well.
Today is Christmas Eve. Today is a time for family and celebration. I will do that, and I hope that do you do the same. Get together, maybe exchange presents (I do), have dinner together as a family, and enjoy the spirit of the season as intended.
So no, I won't go on at length about anything today.
Next week is New Year's Eve, so I will spend that post on a review of the year about to end, so come back for that. Merry Christmas, everyone, and thank you all for a fantastic year at Empire Must Fall. If there is any past topic you'd like me to expand into a book, drop a note in the comments.
This past weekend, Disney and Lucasfilm released The Last Jedi into theaters in the United States. As of this post, the audience reception is so poor that it's now the worst-regarded film in the history of the franchise. Meanwhile, the critics proclaim its brilliance and the marketing campaign continues to push the film's presence into every last little corner of American life. This disconnect cannot be ignored, and it's time to get into what's going on here.
George Lucas deliberately melded mythology with the popular fiction he enjoyed as a youth to create a fun science fiction adventure film, but by using mythological structure he also create a new popular mythology that took of two generational cohorts in dire need of one that heretofore would've been a meld of Christianity and the civic pseudo-religion of the Enlightenment West. That cohort took the mythology and ran with it, in large part because George used fundamental truth in his mythology.
Lots of folks in and out of Hollywood think they get mythology. They don't. The few who do, however, are dangerous because they understand how film and television work in particular, and how media in general work, so they comprehend what media can do to shape mythology- and with it, the culture of a nation.
As I said this past week at my main blog: Mythology is the narrative that a nation tells itself to itself about itself and the world it dwells within. It is the heart of religion, and therefore inherently religious, because religion cannot fulfill its lawful function within a nation without it.
Why the mythology talk? Because of the power of the medium being discussed.
As I said the other day on Twitter: Nothing in film or television is accidental. If you see it in frame and on film, then they want you to see and hear exactly was was there. They signed off on it, all of it, so what you see is all on them. The only difference is who is most to blame.
Everything you saw in The Last Jedi got signed off on by Lucasfilm CEO Kathleen Kennedy. The main films are that important to Lucasfilm and Disney's strategy that such high-level oversight and control is going to be imposed, and therefore responsibility falls ultimate to their feet. Yes, they want to push merchandise and other tie-ins to maximize profits and all that, but that's not the top priority for Mouse Wars.
The top priority is to take control of the culture. The reason is to spread Social Justice meme-diseases. The tell is in how the Mouse Wars films--all of them to date--have undermined the Lucas mythology at every turn, replacing the Superversive mood and tone with degenerate, subversive frauds. The degradation of the Original Trilogy's story, the accomplishments of the heroes, and the violation of the established mythos regarding The Force follows a pattern, an old one, that many people notice but may not recognize as such.
Anciently, when a conqueror completes a conquest one of the things done to cement control and establish dominance is to change the mythology of the conquered nation. Their heroes get degraded, their deeds defiled, and the conqueror's heroes supersede them in all ways- often with ease. To the generation surviving the conquest, this is insult added to injury, but left unchecked the generations that follow will accept this degenerate mythology as normal- and if the conqueror is wise, they leave an out for the subjects to go all the way and buy into their control. It's the mythological equivalent of killing a man, taking his wife for oneself, and slaughtering his children by her before seeding your own to both remove loose ends and make her accept the conquest as inescapable.
What did we see with The Last Jedi in particular? Not only was just this thing done to the existing heroes and tales, but to we--the audience--by degrading and violating our expectations of how our own mythology works. The incompetence in telling the story AT ALL is also a deliberate violent act of conquest.
It's large-scale, long-term gaslighting, and the Thralls of Empire do it because it's worked before- and unchecked will work again. The SJWs know it, and the tell is in the media reaction to the negative reception of this film; lots and lots of shaming and guilt-by-association going on right now, all of it as fraudulent as the rest of the Fake Journalists doing Fake News every day.
And we are NOT without recourse. Walk away from the Mouse. Do not pay for anything Mouse Wars. Do not give attention to anything Mouse Wars- not the films, not the TV shows, not the books, not the games, NOTHING AT ALL. They hate you. Stop funding them.
Instead, remember the mythology that is true and pass that on to your descendants. A nation's soul is in its mythology, so as long as that endures so shall the nation because it shall find the will to endure the worst long enough to come out the other side and thrive once more. If you can't be the hero that gets songs sung about them at gatherings great and small, then be the singer that spreads that lore at those gatherings; sometimes, you can be both- do that if you can. The enemy knows the importance of Narrative Warfare. You must too, if you want your culture and nation to survive. The Hero's Journey is the ONLY Journey.
Here's all the "I Fucking Love Science!" frauds summarized by the Gadfather himself.
— Gad Saad (@GadSaad) December 10, 2017
There it is. Your Skepchicks. Your Atheism Plus. Your Bill Nyes, and so on. All of them, in one post from Facebook captured on Twitter. They're not doing science. They're doing Science! as Narrative Warfare, and that's why they are nothing more than double-talking crooks (and worse) what need to be used to demonstrate the way pressure works on the human body- by being run over with a tank, repeatedly, using the treads. You can find even more examples by following New Real Peer Review on Twitter, but keep your booze handy; the bullshit is thick in Academia.
Sargon of Akkad brought forth another episode of "This Week in Stupid", and this episode is all about the God-Emperor's recent bantz on Twitter regarding the Aloha Snackbar bullshit in the United Kingdom.
Look, Trump is fucking brilliant here. Allow me to quote a wiser man who sees what's going on here:
So, cut to the chase, what was Trump doing with these tweets?
First, let’s just establish what he was NOT doing:
Winning the hearts and minds of radical Muslims; making liberals love and respect him more; getting nice coverage in the Guardian and the New York Times; persuading Never Trumpers that they might have misjudged him; winning over Theresa May and the rest of the faux-Conservative political class.
No. Trump doesn’t give a damn for any of these people. (And who can blame him?)
Instead he was sending a message to the people he cares about: all those ordinary people out there, not just in the U.S. but in Europe and beyond, who are shocked, appalled, scared by the way their countries are slowly (or quite quickly in the case of some countries, Sweden, for example) surrendering to Islam; who feel betrayed by the pusillanimity of their political leaders and let down by the failure of most of their media to report on the rapes and the sexual grooming and the violence being committed disproportionately by Muslims, both immigrants and home-grown radicals; who feel unable to speak – except in embarrassed whispers – about their fears about being stabbed or machine-gunned or blown up or mown down by yet another jihadist simply for the crime of going about their daily, Western life; who bitterly resent being tarred as Islamophobic or xenophobic or uncaring when all they want is to be allowed to live their life in peace in a country whose traditions, laws and cultural values remain the ones they grew up with and which make their homeland worth living in.
These are the people Trump was reaching out to with those tweets.
As for the rest – all those politicians and media types and cry bully activist groups – they just fell into Trump’s trap.
Trump wanted them to react in the way they did. It was part of his strategy. If you don’t understand why – if you’re one of those “sophisticated” analysts who persists in persuading yourself that Trump is just an idiot, in the way the same people used to say about Ronald Reagan – then, again, I recommend you spend time reading Vox Day’s book.
The God-Emperor is not stupid. He is not foolish. He's a goddamn genius, and he knows his enemies better than they know themselves. It's why he can play them like fiddles. This usage of Twitter demonstrates his mastery of them time and again, but that's not what makes him as effective as he is. He understands that the media is nothing but narrative, so he tells them the stories he wants to get out there; he is a master of the Frame Game, and I cannot understate that fact.
While you're going on about ISIS and muslim rape gangs in the UK, you're NOT paying any attention to what Trump's doing with and to the Saudis. Not one of his covert operations have leaked, and only one man out there has figured out how or why this is so- Thomas Wictor.
That respect is well placed.
— Thomas Wictor (@ThomasWictor) December 4, 2017
Trump and Sessions took part in STRATEGIC DECEPTION.
"Raving Donald" complained bitterly, which allowed Sessions to work in peace.
It was strategic theater.
Ha. https://t.co/6OjdNbq35U
The President of the United States is not a simple media magician. He makes the greatest magicians of stage and screen look like a child still working out basic card tricks for holiday parties. "4D Chess" is a meme, but it's not far off the mark. As Wictor laid out, he got several of his loyal allies in perfect positions to work for the good of the United States through the exploitation of the Fake Media via fake scandals great and small alike. Now in secure spots, those allies effortlessly execute his agenda while he keeps unwanted attention away from that via his media manipulations.
The result? Things like Saudi Arabia's internal coup, and their recent pivot into attacking the very Wahabis that they are infamous for supporting. Things like giving Russia the cover needed to intervene in Syria, China to come in against North Korea, and put the Mexican cartels in trouble- not to mention all of the anti-pedophile efforts quietly going on with little press coverage.
He doesn't need to be perfoect. He just needs to be the man required at the time necessary to allow the rest of us to make Empire Fall. I am grateful every day that he is President; we actually have a shot at averting a civilizational collapse thanks to him.
