Recently, The New York Times had a piece which asked the question of whether there is something wrong with democracy throughout the world? Countries with democratic forms of government have been sliding toward authoritarianism. Even in places once thought “stable” have seen the institutions thought to be the protectors of liberty and freedom be undermined, with significant portions of the population losing faith in the threads which bind the society together. In Plato’s Republic, the ancient philosopher considers democracy to be one of the worst forms of government. In his view, democracy will devolve into an anarchy of freedom, with segments of the populace pursuing selfish ends instead of the common good, governance by fools and eventually give rise to the worst form of government: tyranny.
Given the polarization of politics, we live in a country where the major ideologies can’t seem to agree the sky is blue or water is wet, so both sides live and believe in their own versions of reality that dictate reactions to “facts.” It is in this unyielding inability of some to accept two and two make four which has created the current situation we experience. The idiots who sit on TV and the morons who write opinion columns will decry the lack of bipartisanship and blame “both sides.” But what is the virtue of finding common ground with stupid people who can’t find the switch to turn their brains on? What is the virtue of reaching compromise with people who think two and two equal five, to make an agreement saying two plus two is four and a half?
At the end of the day, it’s still shit.
This got me to thinking about the point of no return in any conversation, relationship or societal bond. At what point is it just too much to continue trying to reason with people who can’t be reasoned with, and have no desire to have a reasonable discussion? The most prominent conservatives and Republicans, just like their base, don’t want to compromise. They don’t care about what we think, because we’re liberal baby killers and sexual “deviants” who are going to hell anyway. So why shouldn’t we recognize the other side for what they are? Call stupid stupid and instead of going through the motions of good government bullshit with the non-right non-honorable non-gentlemen, just treat them out of the same hand in the way they treat others, giving no quarter if and when power is retaken, instead of trying to have a dialogue.
And, overall, the situation reminds me of trying to have a reasonable discussion with trolls when it comes to entertainment and media, where the arguments are over subjective bullshit and there’s no way to cut through it beyond ignoring the stupidity. Two of the biggest franchises in science fiction, Star Wars and Star Trek, have recently gone through fan backlashes against what segments of their bases who see changes and differences in form as a betrayal of the material’s legacy. While there are criticisms to be made and an argument to be had, sometimes the hate boils down to wasted time trying to shine light for people who refuse to see.
From James Whitbrook at io9: (WARNING: slight spoilers in the blockquote below)
Both The Last Jedi and Star Trek: Discovery have been met with a certain level of fan backlash. Mostly, this has been driven by a belief that these entries into their respective, venerable franchises have chosen to eschew what came before and do something “new”—something that, in the detractors’ eyes, goes against the ideals of the older material that defined each series. Additionally, a small but vocal contingent of both properties have turned to trollish seething over the fact that Discovery and Last Jedi feature prominent characters who aren’t straight white men, but that’s a whole separate, depressing thing.
For Star Trek: Discovery, a lot of this backlash has centered around Jason Isaacs’ Gabriel Lorca, the distinguished but extremely rough-around-the-edges captain of the U.S.S. Discovery. Callous, abrasive, arrogant, and a warhawk, Lorca was presented as a morally grey and “gritty” captain that didn’t always manage to be a perfect representation of Starfleet’s scientific ideals—and, shockingly to some, didn’t always want to be.
The Last Jedi, meanwhile, encountered a similar response because of its portrayal of Luke Skywalker. Unlike the idealistic hero fans had anticipated Rey meeting when she finally handed over the Skywalker family lightsaber to him at the end of The Force Awakens, the Luke we encounter in The Last Jedi is a haunted, changed man. He wasn’t going to take on the First Order and save the day, he was weary, scarred, and bitter—not just at his personal failings in training a new generation of Jedi Knights, but at his discovery that the Jedi Order wasn’t the perfect, heroic institution he thought it was.
The essence of a thing is what it is said to be in respect of itself. Aristotle said something along these lines about 2,400 years ago, and it’s a fundamental aspect of metaphysical arguments about identity. When someone defines a thing as a thing, it’s predicated on associating a collection of qualities and characteristics which are unique to it. Ever get a feeling things seem off and aren’t what they should be, whether in looking at an antique that’s not really an antique or reading a story about well-known characters done poorly? Well it’s because on some level it doesn’t match the qualities either an individual or society has associated with those things.
This becomes problematic when it becomes irrational. What is Star Trek or Star Wars? For some, they’re myths or visions of worlds we either would like to come to pass, or a tale which speaks to the stuff of legends and heroes. For some, their affection for the material is personal, and an identifying aspect of who they are as they grew to adulthood. And, because of this, any attempt to change, modify or add in a way which goes outside the lines of what they see these things to be in their mind becomes blasphemous.
And those lines can be set for the stupidest of reasons. Like seeing a TV show as being a He-Man woman haters club, which happened last year among the Rick and Morty fanbase, after female writers were added to the show’s writing staff.
From James Hibberd at Entertainment Weekly:
Many Rick and Morty fans already know the brilliant Adult Swim animated comedy shook up its writers’ room boys club for the ... third season, and now have a gender-balanced writing staff. But while [the] episodes have received the usual raves from critics and most fans, there has also been some ugly online backlash against the show’s newest team members. The second and third episodes of the season (the Mad Max trope-busting spoof “Rickmancing the Stone” and the gleefully bonkers “Pickle Rick”) were credited to two of the show’s female writers (Jane Becker and Jessica Gao), who were then harassed on Twitter and even had their personal information put online (a.k.a. doxxed).
We spoke to executive producer Dan Harmon (who co-created the show along with Justin Roiland) about what went down.
“I’m on a Twitter sabbatical, so the last thing I saw about that was [the Reddit thread detailing the harassment], and I’ve seen the tweets they’ve sent to the female writer,” Harmon says. “I was familiar going into the third season, having talked to Felicia Day, that any high-profile women get doxxed, they get harassed, they get threatened, they get slandered. And part of it is a testosterone-based subculture patting themselves on the back for trolling these women. Because to the extent that you get can get a girl to shriek about a frog you’ve proven girls are girly and there’s no crime in assaulting her with a frog because it’s all in the name of proving something. I think it’s all disgusting.”
Continues Harmon: “These knobs, that want to protect the content they think they own — and somehow combine that with their need to be proud of something they have, which is often only their race or gender. It’s offensive to me as someone who was born male and white, and still works way harder than them, that there’s some white male [fan out there] trying to further some creepy agenda by ‘protecting’ my work. I’ve made no bones about the fact that I loathe these people. It f—ing sucks. And the only thing I can say is if you’re lucky enough to make a show that is really good that people like, that means some bad people are going to like it too. You can’t just insist that everybody who watches your show get their head on straight … And I’m speaking for myself — I don’t want the show to have a political stance. But at the same time, individually, these [harassers] aren’t politicians and don’t represent politics. They represent some shit that I probably believed when I was 15.”
So … think about this for a second: What is the “identity” of an American? Well we’re currently in a struggle against 40 percent of the country who either think the term doesn’t encompass various brown people, or are at least comfortable being associated with people who believe this way. And the arguments with them are usually predicated on trying to reason with fools, and basically struggling against the same stupidity as above, except about much larger issues than whether Starfleet unforms or starship displays match the low budget greatness of the Classic Coke Star Trek’s 1960s production design or the motivations of fictional characters.