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This person fundamentally misunderstands and misinterprets almost every facet of urbanism and cities in the 21st century. It's absolutely incredible how willfully ignorant and purposefully dishonest this article is... the neurosis and cynicism is oozing from the page. The whole thing reads like someone attempting to veil their own depression, frustration, and anger at their own life in a bunch of pseudo-facts and floppy rhetoric. The amount of times the author tosses in 'cultural marxism' when he runs headlong into a mental wall and can't find anything meaningful to say would be hilarious if it wasn't so depressing.

His reason for why cities are experiencing a renaissance and are desirable places to live for educated millennials?

>"[they] move to the big city.... in order to extend this infantile and adolescent lifestyle."

His evidence being that they want to get fucked up at festivals and hook up with people. What an incredibly intelligent and cogent analysis.

News flash, buddy: cities have been engines of innovation since Plato and Socrates bickered in an Athenian marketplace. Millennials couldn't possibly be moving to cities because of their role in fostering human achievement, or how they spur innovation by facilitating face-to-face interaction, or how they attract human capital and sharpen it through competition, or how they encourage entrepreneurship, or how they allow for social and economic mobility in ways that other places just can't match? It couldn't be because of their booming economic opportunities, or how they spur artistic innovation?

Nope, it's just because people want to have fun and have sex. Actually, so what if that's true? Why is it so bad that people are increasingly choosing where to live on the basis of pleasure as well as productivity? People like amenities and things to do-- theaters, restaurants, festivals, et cetera. Would you rather live within a few blocks of a dozen restaurants, a movie theater, music venues, and parks, or would you rather have to get into a car and drive 30 minutes to reach even one of these places? An increasingly prosperous world will continue to place more value on the innovative enjoyments that cities can provide, and that's not a bad thing. This doesn't even touch on the fact that the educated millennials who are enjoying these amenities are gainfully employed and are net producers of economic output and essential services (law, health care, research, tech, design, schools, banking, et cetera). Their jobs help each other and help others and the city at large.

This entire rant sounds like the dusty, envious frustrations of a person that feels they've "missed out" and is desperately trying to justify their place in the world in whatever way they possibly can.

Whoever wrote this abysmal, sad excuse for an article should pick up this book and see what actual evidence-based research says about the history of power of cities.

ok so we at least agree now that he is saying something in his movies and that they are worthy of being ranked in literature rather than the dross?

so who is making equally worthy, interesting, engaging and thought provoking films from 'our side'? what non-violent films will any of my friends agree to watch? I mean personally I thought Ben Kingsley was brilliant and have watched the entire three hours probably ten times maybe? and that's still only a fraction of the time i've dedicated to lectures, documentaries and study courses on the real Gandhi but i'm the converted, i'm already a progressive leftist peacenik poetry loving literati type - and yes i'd love if everyone would come join me because i really am very loney... the reality however is that to debate with society you need to engage with society, even if i had the money and talent to make films like Kill Bill in which the goodwill activists use Satyagraha to resist the corporate villains people would say it's terminally dull.

and yeah i don't know about inglorious bastards, personally i thought it was taking the piss out of jingoism but i could be wrong. i must admit it was my least favourite of his films and i've only seen it once, maybe if i saw it again i'd be able to talk about it better.

He uses violence in exactly the same was as Shakespeare, i mean the first scene of Romeo and Juliet for example with the thumb biting and the stand-off, that raising tension which underpins the entire play and sets both the pace and narrative even before you've met any of the main characters - it's the same dynamic used with Pulp Fiction, likewise the Kent's eye scene in King Lear very similar literary importance and device as the Reservoir Dogs ear scene.

Violence has always been used literature, it's in everything from Spencer's Fairye Queen to Tolstoy's War and Peace - talking of which here's a fascinating book on the subject with the same name, http://www.amazon.co.uk/Violence-War-Peace-Anthology-Anthropology/dp/0631223495

You simply can't say that because something contains violence it's no good, that's far too simplistic a way to approach literature.

That sounds amazing. If you can, let me know when you finish. You can show me drafts too if you want. This book might help you understand drawing comics/manga better. https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Comics-Invisible-Scott-McCloud/dp/006097625X

You mean the kind the Tea Party uses on a regular basis?

Yes, this is a thing. At least these conservatives are honest about their debt to Saul Alinsky and the New Left.

Have you checked out the reviews for his book? They are amazing and /r/iamverysmart.

Here you go

If you've played the game, its interesting to read about what he noticed and what he got out of it. If you haven't played it, the entire game will be spoiled

I like recommending the book The German Genius by Peter Watson to people. It is easy nowadays to forget how absolutely overwhelming Germany's cultural dominance used to be.

To put it in Civ5 terms, Germany was on top of the culture victory race until the World Wars happened.

About the writer, a woman called Megan Fox:

>Megan Fox is a freelance reporter, columnist, and author of two books, Fighting for My Children's Future, a PJ Media compilation about the benefits of homeschooling, and Shut Up! The Bizarre War that One Public Library Waged Against the First Amendment, about the harrowing lengths government bodies will take to silence public criticism.

On a tangential note, I have a friend who's most likely in her forties who says that she was homeschooled from somewhere in elementary till high school graduation. The side effects of such an upbringing, according to her, resulted in underdeveloped and crippled interpersonal skills, which in turn led to a few conflicts with some of her ex-friends.

Also, thanks to her upbringing, she was homophobic before she snapped out of that was of thinking.

I just hope she's doing fine right now. Trump's administration has a way of screwing many people over.

In the book Tribe, Sebastian Junger says that an Apache interviewee insisted he refer to them as "American Indians" rather than "Native Americans." Different people have different preferences. https://www.amazon.com/Tribe-Homecoming-Belonging-Sebastian-Junger/dp/1455566381/ref=pd_sbs_14_t_0/160-7427488-3304434?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=1EEG1RQ01TV3V5DQ23EP

>What is it with these types and war metaphors?

War Is A Force That Gives Them Meaning

Are they equating criticism with actual book burning? The logical gaps are so big it's hard to follow.

>Where they burn books, bodies will soon follow.
Time and time again this has proven true. From ancient Greece to 1940s Germany. Only this time it's digital media.

Yeah dude that totally happened in America before, they burned so many bodies.
Ignoring the physical/digital and ACTUALLY BANNED/NOT BANNED differences that only an idiot would dismiss, of course.

It's more used in the context of groups who represent extreme, theocratic, repressive perversions of Islam. Or at least it used to be used that way. By some people. It's more of a racist dog-whistle these days.

Actually, years and years ago, Andrew Sullivan turned the term around by coining the term "Christianist" to describe the same sort of extremist theocrats representing perversions of Christianity:

> If we are to call John Muhammed a religiously inspired terrorist (and I think we should) then we have to call Rudolph a Christian terrorist. I propose a new term for those on the fringes of the religious right who have used the Gospels to perpetuate their own aspirations for power, control and oppression: Christianists. They are as anathema to true Christians as the Islamists are to true Islam. And they have to be fought just as vigilantly.

Andrew actually blogged about it a lot, and it was one of the major themes of his book The Conservative Soul. One of the core ironies of the term is that a Christianist is much more likely to use the word "Islamist" than the average person is.

I'm actually reading through a book about the Antebellum Period right now called Northern Men with Southern Loyalties. It's a really fascinating and infuriating look at how desperate the soon-to-be-Confederate States were to not just protect, but expand slavery and how the Democratic Party of the time became entirely beholden to their interests.

The Slave owners that ran the South didn't give two shits about "states rights", they wanted to turn the country into a slave nation and expand the institution as far as they could. Between the Compromise of 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the attempts to grab land from Latin America to create more space for slavery, and the Dredd Scott decision, they were willing to use as much power as they could to protect slavery. And that's before we even get to secession.

Those are the people these idiots are supporting when they go on and on about race wars and state's rights and the Civil War.

I don't know about outright "denial" outside of fringe circles, but it's not uncommon to see folks engage in mental gymnastics to downplay the legacy of imperialism, chattel slavery, etc., or even attempt to turn it into a "good" thing. Think about it:

• "Other cultures engaged in slavery, too! Why all this focus on American slavery?" or garbage like White Cargo
  
  
• "Hey, I'm of Irish/Slavic/non-WASP descent, and my ancestors were just as oppressed, but you don't see me complaining!"
  
  
• "Hey, we 'civilized' them! Without us, they'd have no railroads!"
  
  
• "Racism would go away if it wasn't for 'race hucksters' like Al Sharpton and we just all ignored it!"
  
  
• The naive but earnest belief that passing anti-discrimination laws somehow reverses the racism that is so deeply ingrained in society it's embedded at the cultural level

Actually, Leftists (not to be confused with progressive liberals. I'm sorry, but yall are left of hardcore reactionaries, but not "the Left") have often been vocal supporters of the right to self defense, because police torture and murder "undesirables" has been pretty much the main reason modern policing exists. It's not an aberration that police execute an African American every 28 hours, and gun control will do nothing to stop police militarization or brutality. And that is a far bigger source of violence than the AK sitting in my locked chest.

https://www.amazon.com/Negroes-Guns-Robert-F-Williams/dp/1614274118

y'all really need to learn some people's history. I know this'll fall on deaf ears, because American politics is about performance and aesthetics, fueled by denial--see how the anti-war movement that elected Obama became very copacetic with his administration's expansion of mass murder oversees. As long as it's not a Republican doing it, it's not a serious issue, apparently, which is why y'all support the war criminal Hillary Clinton (along with the bankers that tanked the economy and turned millions out onto their asses).

But in the vain hope that someone here will maybe reconnect with our once-proud and independent Left tradition, I leave a link.

>There is no denying that Islam's 'prophet' and leaders throughout history were Islamists.

You really think Muhammad would have written his Ashtiname declaring that he would protect the St. Catherine's Monastery if he was your version of an Islamist?

>After all, a white man makes only 83 cents for every dollar an Asian makes. Because of the hard work and work ethic of Asians, of course, but we'll just pretend that this is 'racism' the way you SJWs always do when wage gaps are discussed.

Oh, so you believe that by virtue of my ethnicity, without having seen any of my capabilities or my skills, that I'll be better paid than the average white person? Hey buddy, I hate to break it to you, but that is racist.

>I explain it as follows: he's an idiot.

Right, so an idiot made his way to the top of the Anglican Church. That's very plausible. /s

>Which is what happened in Cologne, Brussels and Paris.

Not even close to being true.

>Little thought went into that question. If you knew Islamic history and theology, you'd know that death for apostasy is the orthodox position. It does not follow that it has to be implemented in every single country.

Oh, so Muslims are allowed to have a variety of opinions? That's an interesting shift from what you were saying previously - because if they are allowed to have a shift in opinion, what's the point of banning them from entering the west?

>Besides, you got your history wrong. The Greek works were translated into Arabic by those actually speaking Greek, the Christian minorities.

If you read this book, you'd know that you were the one wrong here.

>if you think terrorism is the only problem with Islam. It isn't.

It's the problem you've focused on with "you have a pile of dead bodies." And yes, while Islam contains bigotry, the same can be said of almost any religion, including Christianity. Does that make Christians more predisposed to being bigots? Of course not. The same can be said of Muslims.

>Again with the simple-mindedness. You can reject terrorism (which is never advocated by any of the holy texts of Islam), while approving of the forms of violence that are advocated, without inconsistency. Come on. It's not that hard.

First off, Jihad isn't even a pillar of Islam. Secondly, even "Jihad by the sword" is the one that is considered the least important by several prominent scholars today.

Are you sure you know Islam?