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Cake day: June 23rd, 2023

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  • What does that mean though, “anti-war party,” “anti-war politician”?

    Did your “anti-war party” stop being so because they’d ended the war we were in? And if so, wasn’t that a good thing, for those with an “anti-war” outlook?

    Back in the late 1930s, I’m pretty sure America’s “anti-war party” was mostly isolationists and some Nazi sympathizers. It was FDR, one of the most progressive Democrats ever elected to the office, who led the country to war back then.

    If your entire political belief system is based on avoiding war at all costs, you deny yourself any real-world context in exchange for that purist ideology.

    Those who are anti-war above all else lose everything they have and everything they stand for, the first time someone (anyone!) else decides to threaten them with war. The first time that someone sneak-attacks their Pearl Harbor, or crashes planes into their Twin Towers, or whatever else.

    Maybe war is like abortion (in this singularly metaphorical political sense). Nobody ever really wants it to happen, and most people do their best to try to avoid it for themselves and others. Yet sometimes, despite everyone’s best efforts, it ends up being the safest and healthiest way, sometimes the only way, out of an untenable situation not completely of our own making.

    I’m not arguing that World War II was a “good” war and that W. Bush’s Iraq was a “bad” war. That may comport with my personal beliefs, but my real point is that everyone has their own personal beliefs. Everyone has something that is most important to them.

    If you say that war is never justified for any reason, then you are also saying that your call for pacifism is more important than whatever the reason for the war may be. Not just more important for you, but for everyone else too.


  • Good point!

    For the sake of accuracy, Hulu is owned by Disney which also owns ABC, as well as ESPN, Marvel, and Fox Entertainment (but not Fox “News”).

    Meanwhile, a couple years ago, CBS and Viacom merged to become “Paramount Global” which owns both CBS and the Paramount (streaming) Network (obviously) as well as a slew of cable channels including Showtime, MTV, Nickelodeon, BET, Comedy Central….

    And as noted, Comcast owns Universal which owns NBC. Their streaming service is “Peacock,” which has yet to demonstrate that it can compete against Disney’s Hulu (or CBS’s Paramount).

    This may soon change, however, as licensing agreements expire and corporations begin to run their own content exclusively on their own networks. Disney-owned content will stream on Hulu, Universal-owned content will stream on Peacock, and Paramount-owned content will stream on Paramount. Same goes for all their respective cable TV channel subsidiaries.

    This consolidation in media ownership gives more power to the corporations to compete against one another in the emerging streaming-service market, but it also takes power away from the people who create the content. This is a big reason why the screenwriters and SAG are on strike.

    I’ve been trying to do my part by watching reruns of The Nanny in demonstration of my support.