Oh sweet, enjoy!
Discussion
And enjoy them I did!
Both of them were good movies to watch.
Daniel Day-Lewis was brilliant in both. Has a truly unique way of presenting his characters. One of a kind for sure.
But the political undertones in GoNY were super interesting for a politics nerd like me.
Great. Possibly the greatest ever actor. Unreal performance as Bill.
GoNY especially got me thinking about the issue of conscription more seriously as a political issue.
The war, based on what I've read, was supposed to be about freeing the slaves. But conscription itself is a form of enslavement, which defeats the entire purpose. All that death and destruction in the name of freeing the slaves while enslaving people in the process? I'm not sure this fact should be overlooked.
And considering that they also printed a lot of money during the time, increased taxes, created a new class division where if you paid a certain amount you can avoid being drafted, I think lessons can be learnt from this by people advocating for radical social changes and reforms.
I wonder if there was a better way. That's the question. I agree with the fact that slavery is illegal no matter what the legislated or custom-derived law says. But if the means pursued contradict the ends, then the whole movement opens itself up to scrutiny, and might end up causing problems down the line.
Ever heard Tom DiLorenzo on Lincoln? Lincoln was a real evil bastard. Destroyed the constitution for his war, which was really about taxation, not slavery. Dominic Frisby is great on that, how the south was like ~1/4 of the population but paying ~2/3 the taxes, some extreme ratio. It was a tax slavery revolt by the south.
Oh yeah I've heard Tom talk about Lincoln.
The psyop is UNREAL. The American intellectual establishment has concocted a story about Lincolm in such a way that criticizing him would make people think of the critic as a racist supporter of slavery. It's truly insane.
You know it's seems crazy to me that I've had arguments with different people from both sides of the 'right-left' spectrum about their darling heroes.
A strong argument can be made that Che Guevera, Hitler, Xi Jinping, Modi, Nehru, Indira, Netanyahu, Maduro, Castro, Lenin, Obama, Trump, Batista, Franco, Stalin, Mussolini, Mao are all grifers.
One can go a step further and make a case that even darling heroes of 'classical liberals', like Milei, Thatcher, Reagan are grifters.
I think when God is the ultimate ideal and natural law and reason forms the basis of what you think is right and wrong, no man or woman is above criticism, including yourself.