We have a big problem with the way the media reports on the national debt. It’s unclear if they don’t understand how federal debt works, if they intentionally write about it in the scariest way possible, or some combination of the two. Let’s start with a passage recently published by NPR: I don’t doubt the …
To really understand how fickle a party’s political alignment can be, we must first study the history of the parties we have today. It is too easy to look at the parties over our lifetime and see them as an unmovable monolith, but that’s not the case in the long run. In the Trump era, …
The History of America’s Political Parties and How to Fix Them Read More »
Final Fantasy VII Remake is shown through the eyes of Cloud, a pro-capitalist mercenary formerly employed by Shinra, who has just been hired by an anti-capitalist freedom fighter group fighting to save the planet from the Shinra Power Company. Cloud is stuck in a mode Mark Fisher calls capitalist realism. He is trapped in an …
Social stratification exists within Midgar on two dramatically different tiers. The lower class lives on the ground under eight large plates blotting out the sun. Instead of sunlight, the underclass lives under artificial lamps that mimic the sun for the slums where they often lament they have never seen the sky. The air in the …
What about the politics of Midgar itself and its characterization? The first question to ask is whether Midgar has a government. This is a particularly tricky question because, as I remember, the word government was used in the script exactly once and even when the word was used, it wasn’t entirely clear if the character …
One way of looking at both Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy VII Remake is as video games that attempt to answer the question; What if Oil was Magic? The game frames this magical essence, known as “mako,” as the actual lifeblood of a living planet. In doing so it creates a larger metaphor for …
In 1997, I was a politically unaware child… That was also the year the revolutionary Final Fantasy VII was released. It was at least 2000 when I first played it, so I just thought it was cool and edgy as a lot of the deeper themes went straight over my head. Back then, the original …
Stop me if you’ve heard this one: “What do you get when you cross a mentally ill loner with a society that abandons him and treats him like trash?” Oh, you know that one? Well, then I do not have to warn you that this article spoils key moments of Joker. In creating this cult …
Minneapolis just took a step shocking many in this country. They’ve voted to disband their police department. And while many cry “iT wIlL bE aNaRcHy!” (I wish, but we’d have a long way to go until we reach anarchy. Maybe instituting democracy, perhaps?) it’s not exactly what people tend to imagine. According to Steve Fletcher, …