I would like you to explain how Captain America and Superman are reactionary.

I mean… c’mon. Captain America is low-hanging fruit - the correlation between Captain America and actual US behavior in the world essentially writes itself.

Superman is a far more sophisticated representation of US-style liberalism - but, just like liberalism itself, that doesn’t make Super Cheese any less of a reactionary.

However… we can talk about the individual politics of these characters all day long - and we’d be missing the entire point of the metaphor in it’s entirety.

The problem with the “super hero” genre is not the individual politics of the characters concerned - it’s with how they normalize and justify the concentration of power in the hands of these exalted individuals.

In other words - the problem is fundamental.

He doesn’t understand the core themes of superheroes,

I think he understand them perfectly, because…

Zack Snyder is an Objectivist

It’s all liberal media, Clyde.

Liberalism is the status quo… that’s the media you’ve been watching all this time, and that includes all the (so-called) “conservative” media, too.

but student terrorist movements were largely left behind in the 70s

The left has never left the use of force in the past - it is as available to us today, and as thoroughly justified, as it was in the 70’s… 1570s, 1870s or 2070s.

The willingness to use force doesn’t distinguish between a left and a (supposed) “far left” - the left is not a mirror of the right, and there is no leftist equivalent to a far right (which is purely distinguished by it’s proximity to, willingness to control and/or operate the state machinery of violence).

It’s not about spots on a silly “political compass” infographic and never has been.

By American standards, the Stop Cop City people are a ‘far left’ group;

That’s not “far left.” That’s just plain old bog-standard left - whether in the US or anywhere else.

action against Stop Cop City has been pretty brutal.

Again… just common-or-garden variety treatment the left has always received from the forces of the status quo - nothing “far left” about it.

There’s no such thing as a “far left” - and it’s critical that we push back on these kinds of propagandistic framing devices liberals love to use to demonize the left and provide cover for the right. I don’t think leftists realize how powerful and dangerous this basic type of propaganda can be.

Nicely done.

If Batman was real today, he’d be Donald Trump.

That’s what these (alleged) “super heroes” really are… idealized, ubermensch-esque metaphors for the actual power wielded by the rich and privileged.

In fact, I’d say that Batman is the ultimate Objectivist wet dream - he perfectly personifies the fascist (as Batman) and the capitalist (as Bruce Wayne) in one person. Even Ayn Rand’s creepazoid ancap sugar-daddy “heroes” didn’t manage that.

I used to… but now I don’t.

Such “equally opposing forces” are purely media creations - there are no such things in actual politics. For instance, there is no such thing as a “far left” - it was purely created by liberal media to be a neat (but entirely fictional) “equally opposing force” for their shitty “both-side-ism” narratives.

We have lots of space here… unfortunately, it’s also the only thing we have enough of.

Whoosh.

Dude was intense but literally built an empire in his industry by himself.

ROFLMAO!

I hear shoe polish is toxic… you should rinse out your mouth every now and then.

Nope. A lot of them pretend to work, though.

People use smartphones to pass the time?

I have no idea why people think chickens look stupid when they walk… to me, the way they walk just looks like the way they walk. And the prospect of a T-Rex being that alert and agile is pretty terrifying.

Not sure about that paper - it recommends ocular irrigation (with water) for OC gas… the exact thing you mentioned hurting so bad in your first response. The thing to remember here is that a lot of the discourse on this doesn’t distinguish between the use of a liquid to flood particles away from skin and membranes through it’s kinetic action (possible with CS gas and very necessary with white phosporous) and relying on the chemical properties of the liquid itself to bring any kind of relief.

I was going to say radicalism (as a political concept) refers to the practice of looking for the root causes of society’s ills as opposed to merely fixating on (if we’re going to be charitable about it) superficial ones as reformist and reactionary politics would have us to do, and this makes radicalism an inherently left-wing thing and something reactionaries (and most of their reformist allies) will take extreme measures to prevent - including completely handing the state and it’s repressive apparatus over to reactionaries (ie, what we call fascism today).

But you know what? This…

Radical is just further left than reformer.

…is, so far, the only half-way decent response I’ve ever had to this in about five year’s time - so I’m just going to leave it as is.

I mean I guess I could use the Victoria 3

Is that one better than the cheap one CNN (and you) are using?

Should you be using terms if you don’t actually know what they mean?

TLDR - somebody writes a wall of text about “radicalization” without understanding what the term radicalization even means.