Speaker 1: Meaning a live man like this, Man, you letting butterfly
flapin and.
Speaker 2: Wing dig down in a forest. Man, it gonna cause
a tree fall, letting five thousand miles away.
Speaker 1: Man, nobody seen nobody else. You don't mean no Man.
I'd luck you call the little story and you got
directed like that.
Speaker 2: Win Man over like a dang on the panel, man
matter Man?
Speaker 3: All right, Arch, welcome to the Jay Burden Show.
Speaker 2: How you doing Man, I'm doing fun. Thank you, Thank
you for having me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm excited to have you on.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 3: As I was telling you before we went live, I
had an episode on forty k more generally that just
last week did quite well, and literally probably three days
after Kevin and I had that discussion, uh, there was
a major update to the sort of infiltration of you know,
left wing politics into that hobby. So if you could, Arch,
I guess I should be a good podcaster and ask
you to describe what you do first. But then after that,
if you want what happened, right, what's the big deal?
What's everyone talking about?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 2: I started doing YouTube content to solid ten years ago
plus now because of the announcement of Total War Warhammer.
It's always been a huge fan of Warhammer and Total War.
Does that seem like the perfect opportunity to start talking
about this stuff. But I very soon became aware of
the political side of things, because this was, you know,
the twenty fourteen fifteens, et cetera, when most of us
began to become aware of the political shift that was
starting with in entertainment at large. And I decided quite
soon that this was something that wasn't going to stop.
It wasn't going to limit its to one thing. It
was going to try and infiltrate entertainment in general. So
I started talking about that as well, at significant personal
cost over the years. But well we're sitting here in
twenty twenty six with female custodies and I feel pretty justified,
honestly validated, even.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think. I mean, I I was a teenager
right during the whole gamer Gate thing, and so I
have a very distinct memory of the sort of before
and after. I've told this story before, Arch, but I
figured you'd get a kick out of it. I went
to university in seventeen and so, you know, right into
you know, the Burning culture War, and you know, I
was studying economics. I decided to take game theory, naively,
assuming that would be game theory, right, And what I'd
actually done is signed up for a course on the
critical theory of video games. So I was hot gamer
Gate at a collegiate level. A funny story, that's a
large part of the reason I ended up here. You
go through a course with an obese, actually purple haired
woman yelling at you about gamer Gate, and you're like, okay, well,
whoever you hate, I think those are my friends. And obviously,
you know, that was sort of the canary in the
coal mine. Many of these trends have been observed in
other hobbies, you know, similar thing has happened obviously to
anything that Wizards of the Coast owns. But forty k,
as we discussed in a previous episode, is structurally resistant,
you know, within the universe. It is illiberal, right, it
doesn't conform to certain of our our modern sensibilities. And
the specific issue is seemingly minor. Right, it's this desire
to turn factions that are male, right, entirely male, desire
to diversify them, right, desire to bring women into these
male spaces, as they would say. And the battles lost
a while ago, right, there was a. I can't remember
which one of the horace heresy books I tapped out
a long time ago, which featured one of these female custodies.
For those who aren't aware, Giant Royal Protectors, right, Giant Armor,
the best of the best, right, always been exclusively male,
and they wrote in to one of these books a
female character. Funny enough, arch As, I'm sure you're aware,
she is featured in the book and does bawling her
eyes out completely ineffectual, which is kind of funny. But
the big update is now they have little plastic guys. Right,
they have taken it down to that level, the thing
that matters, so to speak. So Arch if you could,
could you describe one why that matters? Right, Why this
is a significant change for the franchise, And two what's
the reaction been? Right? Who is celebrating? Who is upset?
Speaker 1: Well, there's quite a few layers to this.
Speaker 2: So this is very obviously so a political move into
games Workshop because the company that owns Warm of forty thousand,
that is Games Workshop, they have wanted to become a
woke company for quite some time now, and they have
met a great deal of resistance both from their fandom
and the franchise itself, as you mentioned, one forty thousand
is just not a very liberal friendly franchise. It is
explicitly inherently left wing. It begins by simply stating that
progress is dead. There is no progressivism in it, but
Games Workshop wants it to be, and they've been waging
an active war against their fans for quite a few
years now. One of the central parts of that conflict
was a man named Tom Mendelssohn, who was their community manager.
He was revealed a few months ago to have celebrated
the assassination of Charlie Kirk. I broke that story and
nobody else talked about it in the Warhammer community. Of
the commentators. Gainst Workshops suspended him and have still not
elected to fire him because well, they sympathize with his
point of view. And I stress that to make you
understand just how progressive the company actually is. They put
out a whole plan for female custodes, which, as you say,
is an all female faction, which began with a small
line in their codex, their rule book, which mentions a
female custodes, and it's very vague. It's just the pronouns
that give it away. This meant that a lot of
people back then were basically coping like, oh, this probably
isn't official rogue in turn, stuff like that. But this
was a part of Against Workshop's long term campaign to
introduce them boiling the frog on it. They later introduced
the female custodies in an animated short, and now like
a year or so later used models, which is essentially
the standard of canonization. When something has a model, it
is properly officially a part of the Warhammer forty K universe.
So that's why that was a big deal, because now
there's no more excuses nobody can trick themselves into thinking
that this isn't happening anymore. It is the most blatant
declaration of war in essence.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think that it's really what we're seeing
is a small product for a very specific type of person,
the kind of person who is both interested in painting
up in large armies of fictional soldiers and also in
a dark, illiberal future, right because there are you know,
a great number of war games, forty K being the biggest,
of course, But that was a product for a specific
type of person, produced by a specific type of person.
It came out of a very unique culture, right, the
English culture of the seventies and eighties, and that unique
flavor is what made it popular. But it's the exact
same mechanism you see in anything else, which is on
one hand, the tactical invocation of the wider audience. It's
sort of up for debate if they actually believe this
or not, because it has yet to materialize. But it's
idea that if we know jam in representation, we will
unlock this kind of secret, untapped audience for XYZ product.
It will become this kind of global brand. And look,
some of this is entirely that it's business sensibility. This
has gone from being a small to a very large company. Understandable.
But also you see these people who are sort of
derisively referred to as tourists, right, those who are simply
there because it is current thing, and when it is
popular but not in accordance with current values, they want
to pull it into line with everything else. And the
combination of these two yields a gray, neutral product, a
product of nowhere for everybody. And you can see this
in any number of things. Right. I'm not a big
like warhammer fantasy guy. It was never my bag for
a number of reasons. But the way that that world,
that sort of franchise, I guess you could say, was
very casually disintegrated and replaced with Ages of Sigmar, which
is vaguely the same thing, right, It's a medieval fantasy ish,
but it's completely stripped of any cultural really weight to
it at all. It again becomes another one of these
mass market products, and I think that that is additionally,
even a side from the politics, a big reason people
are unhappy about this because something that was unique, that
touched a very you know, specific subset, is being massified.
It turned into kind of gray cultural good.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's also the fact that when Warhammer, both Fantasy
and forty K were first introduced, this was, you know,
thirty eight years ago for forty K and even more
so for Warhammer Fantasy. Fantasy back then was actually quite formulaic.
You had the Lord of the Rings in essence, it
was hopeful fantasy. You had tales like Narnia and so on.
So Warhammer being sent in a very grim universe was
quite fresh. It's quite the deviation from things now. Most
of those, all traditional universes have either fallen out of
popularity or been broken into the attempt to, you know,
bring in the wider audience. This meant that forty K
and Warhammer had a great window there, particularly during the
COVID season, where a lot of people discovered it, and
a lot of people were kind of like, oh my god,
it's a war game, grim dark, brutal, something for boys
and men in an age where that was becoming vanishingly rare,
like even Star Wars was entering the full swing of
the Disney era back then, and so it appealed to
a lot of people, and it grew very, very rapidly,
to the point where it is now pushing on the
gates of mainstreameddness and it's about to break through. Like
I firmly believe that forty K will probably become the
next Star Wars, the next cultural phenomenon in entertainment. But
that has also drawn in the vultures. In this case,
Amazon and also games workshops desire to appeal to the
wider audience, partially for economic reasons. As you mentioned, though,
the problem with it is we've seen this happen. We've
seen Star Trek try it, Star Wars try it, countless
other entities. The wider audience doesn't exist, that exists the
casual audience. But the casual audience can never be appealed
to for long. They will simply go towards whatever is
currently popular, and they will stay with it for however
long it is popular. And then once they have managed
to reduce it to the gray, bored, turgid slop that
appeals to everyone, they will move on because it appeals
to no one. And this is one step in that process,
by taking what was an exclusively male faction that was
exclusively designed to appeal exclusively to males, and turning it
into a diverse faction, and well, damn the law in
the process.
Speaker 3: Well, and I think that the reaction has been very telling.
All of the usual suspects are out, you know, crowing
about the you know, the female custodes models. And what's
interesting is that they're they're casting everything as a cultural victory. Right,
we beat you, you can leave. Right. The idea is
it's effectively an invasion. Right, we found your thing, we
pulled it apart, we ruined it. Now you should leave.
And yes, you know, the the idea that this is
some sort of tolerant force, right, the idea that this
is some sort of battle for inclusion. I mean, that's
a tactical assumption. Right. They're stepping into that because it
gives them, you know, some sort of advantage. It's not real.
They don't actually think that. That's just a cope.
Speaker 2: Right, it's us and we've known it for a while.
Speaker 3: One hundred percent. So arch this is what we call
in the interview industry a softball question. Why can't you
just go somewhere else, to some other grim dark you know?
I guess you could say intellectual property, like I don't know,
a Trench Crusade, for example, right, another wargame with grim
dark aesthetics that's set in Oh, I don't know. Maybe
the an alternative history passed right? World War One inspired
with strong Christian imagery. Surely that is a bastion of
even if not right wing politics, at the very least
a political wargaming. So what say you to the to
the Trench Crusade question?
Speaker 1: I denounced this.
Speaker 2: Finally, Trench Crusades developers themselves have already come out and
stated quite publicly that they do not consider themselves to
be a Christian game. They believe the Christians to be
just as bad as the demons, and that there is
no objectively good side in a war between God and Hell,
so I consider them to be legitimately actually insane people.
Speaker 3: And for those wondering, right, this is more inside baseball stuff.
There was a brief exodus of people who saw forty
k going in this direction and said, you know what,
this might not be for me anymore. A trench crusade
which was initially just art. I can't remember the guy's name,
Mike something like very much talented Mike Francina, who is
a very talented artist. I'm not going to take that
away from it. And there was a game to go
along with it, this sort of you know, if you
can imagine a sort of like Eldritch World War One theme,
that's sort of what it was. And so many people
thought that this is my new place, my new replacement
for this hobby. And what they found is that the
invasion was done before they ever showed up, right, the
same sort of you know, political activists had found their
way there. And again, right, it's another way in which
these kind of traditional nerd hobbies have been completely and
totally subverted, right by these these sort of like political actors.
So at the same time, obviously there's the direct politics.
But there have been other people who aren't necessarily politics
or politically minded per se, who are leaving forty K.
We're no longer interested. How would you describe those people?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: What are the other objections that aren't necessarily directly political?
People have towards game workshop or this hobby.
Speaker 2: So this is where the problem of politics and law
comes in. So all law must in essence be viewed
as a form of rhetorical argumentation. You are setting up
a universe, and when you're setting up that universe, you
can invent anything you want, anything whatsoever. You can have
magical space toads, flying starships powered by the tears of
children if you so desire. It doesn't have to make sense.
But once you have created that universe, you must maintain
internal consistency to the best of your ability. Otherwise is
the argument loses its credibility. You're no longer making sense.
You're making a shit up. And that's why people are
leaving forty K. Even if they don't care about the politics.
They now look at a universe that can apparently change overnight.
Never before has there been any mention of female custodies
at any point. There have never been any art of them.
In fact, the faction has been specifically and explicitly described
as all male on multiple occasions previously. And when they
just change that, well, people now understand that the argument
is no longer solid, it is no longer internally coherent,
and that turns people off on a basic level. It's
not even about whether or not there should be custodies
from a political point of view. At that point, it
is simply you've changed the thing. I like, why did
you do that?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 2: Because politics? Okay, well I don't agree with you doing
that for politics.
Speaker 3: Well. And then the other part we need to talk about,
because this is relevant as well, is on one hand,
the intellectual property right, the fact that this is a
company which, for at this point, let's be honest, over
two decades, has been extremely jealous of the things.
Speaker 4: That they own.
Speaker 3: In my mind, really, the warning bells were set off
by I don't know what you'd refer this too, but
the launch of the Primaries right for those who aren't aware,
the poster boys of forty K are the space Breds, right,
and basically they launched a refresh. We're getting rid of
all the old stuff, bringing in the new stuff. Models
are bigger, the design is cleaner, more modern, whatever. That's
maybe a separate discussion. But what came along with it
was this massive ret con right which featured several things. One, obviously,
you need to buy more stuff. You need to buy
it now, you can't use the old stuff anymore, and
the economics of this certainly need to be addressed. But
also of going back to your previous point, was a
massive ret con right to how these super soldiers were made,
you know what the plan was all along, But also
there was this great secret plan right all along, right
that these new you know, extra super space marines. Okay,
fair enough, the Lord's stupid. But what with it was
this idea that technological progress has resumed, right, we are
no longer stuck in this kind of era of decay.
And it's a very core premise to the setting. So
you have and even like geez, it's been almost ten years, right,
which is kind of crazy to think. There was a
very conscious decision to discard the lore, to discard the rules,
to discard the thing that people liked, and drew them
to this setting or eight cash grab. And if you
look at the you know, bringing in the politics as
yet another cash grab. You certainly could. It's the same thing,
the idea that we are sacrificing the product to make
it more economically successful. What do you make of that transition?
Right the launch of primaries, because in my mind as well,
it also was a market move towards the kind of
you know, chasing after the whales, right as well on
the purchasing side. Do you see what I'm getting at
their arch?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So the primariest marines, they were probably first and
foremost an economic decision because they wanted to resell the
space marine faction, which was by far their best sellers.
The design also was an early indication that they didn't
quite understand what their setting was anymore. The old space
Marines could best be this described as crusading nights in space,
very bulky, very symbolic looking armor covered in iconography. These
new ones were very rounded, very tactical, very modern esque,
and they lacked a lot of the charm of the
old school of startes. But this was definitely first and
foremost an economic decision to sell people space marines. Again,
as they've continued to sell Space Marines constantly ever since.
They are their best selling faction, so beyond economics an
indication that they were losing contact with their own setting, definitely,
But I think that was the primary motivation for the
Space Marines relaunch rather than the political side of it.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, one hundred percent. But point is right again.
I think one of the I know, one of the
reasons many people are leaving is that the cost of
engaging in this has gone up dramatic, Right, you can't
keep a model for nearly as long as you used to.
You know, things are being refreshed, maybe a slight diversion there.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 3: What's been really interesting, arch is the people who effectively
have decided that they are going to build their own. Right,
in the past five or six years, maybe a little longer,
we've seen the explosion of consumer grade resin printers, right,
something that I jumped on and have had a lot
of fun doing, and also a sort of secondary market
of people designing files. Right, some of them, let's be honest,
you are ripping off other properties, right, You've got to
squint your eyes and you know exactly what they're going for.
But also you know, making their own, making their own systems,
which are absent of these kind of you know, political overtons.
So I'm curious, Arch, is there anything you see on
that front that you see as sort of a sign
for hope.
Speaker 2: Potentially there are many people trying to work on own
their own alternatives. I do have a system in the
works myself, as you do eventually have to just try
to make your own if you're not happy with the
current product anymore. I don't know how successful it will be,
because at the end of the day, it's very difficult
to make something like this really start taking off, and
there's only so many people who have the resources to
do so. And there have been many alternatives that have
been around for quite some time that have never managed
to really get going either. It's one of those problems
where you don't want to give up on the thing
you like. Anyone has been a fun of a style
of Star Wars has known that feeling for quite some time,
even as you see it on its deathbed, and like
forty K two has the problems you mentioned with the
economy of it that gw has just been increasing their
prices add infinitum to the point where their specialty paint
now costs ten times that of their competition and sell
simply because of brand and market recognition. It's I suppose
one of the problems with our current day internet based
system as well, that once you have a thing become big,
it usually becomes the dominant force in its own arena,
rather than back in the day when we had far
more competitors to all of this. Wow, it's difficult to
say if we'll see anything rise up to replace it,
but eventually, because we were kind of in the early
stages of a replacement period right now, right where we're
seeing many of the primary entertainment things like Star Wars
are beginning to fall off. A lot of The Rings
was lauded for the longest time due to the excellent trilogy,
and then came to The Rings of Power, which is
severely damaged its reputation. Game of throneses was lauded until
his final season, and so on. So we're kind of
seeing the end of many of these cultural giants right now,
and we're not yet sure what will emerge now, like
what comes next.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's sort of an interesting thing writ large that
as the Boomer generation is beginning to pass, so are
many of the sort of the cultural phenomenon that they created.
And obviously, you know, Tolkien was not a baby boomer
not my point at all, but the kind of great
cultural properties of the twentieth century, Marvel, Star Wars, any
one of these sort of got taken through this, you know,
slow build up, meteoric rise, and then very quickly burnt
out at the point which there's very little left. And
I think it's interesting to see, and I know that
you've done a few videos on this, the sort of
later attempted editions. So I'm sort of fascinated by Avatar
for a number of reasons, James Cameron, not the Cartoon
Network show. And perhaps the reason I'm the most interested
in it is that it is the message of that
movie is the most insane boomer slot possible, but it
is sort of out of date, right, So the central
conceit of Avatar is very much the sort of male
baby boomer fantasy, right of finding people who were connected
to the earth, who are you know, from a different culture,
you know, being placed in charge of them, made a warlord,
and getting you know, a really hot alien babe. This
is the plot of you know, obviously Dances with Wolves,
any number of you know, similar Western movies. I mean, honestly,
the Last Samurai is very similar as well. Right, there's
this whole genre of film, but Avatar is that same story,
just remade much past its cell by day. And obviously
the politics of Avatar are completely and totally insane on
multiple different levels. But it is sort of this interesting
instance of both being the property that never was right,
the movie that sold a billion tickets but no one
actually talks about or remembers particularly. But you see that
same trend, you see that same narrative, that same thing
once the sort of roots that underpinned have begun to rot,
you know, And I think that you're entirely right to
talk about this era of replacement because so many of
these large legacy properties that have taken up so much
of everyone's time and kind of psychic energy are running
out or petering out and sort of converging into kind
of gray ubisoft slop. It's an interesting thing.
Speaker 1: That it is, because you say it too.
Speaker 2: The story of Avatar is basically the story of John Carter,
Warlord from of Mars, which was published in nineteen thirteen. Like,
this is an over one hundred years old story, and
we can go back further beyond that. You've got to
bear in mind that things like Troy were basically their
versions of Issachais going to strange and distant lands or Hercules,
right and finding strange alien babes in these areas too,
Like this is a tales all this time, and Avatar
is fascinating again because.
Speaker 3: Or you Norwegians just made a culture out of that, right,
going to strange lands and finding strange women.
Speaker 2: But sorry, it's a romantic pursuit that is vaguely recognizable,
but Avatar, Avatar doesn't manage to deliver it because the
problem is that the Navy aren't the good guys. The
Navies are obviously the slaves of this parasitic fungus entity
that is obviously evil. So I firmly believe that is
the reason why it has failed to have the cultural impact,
because when people go to watch the movie, even if
they are not entirely aware of it, not quite cognizant,
they understand that the bad guys are winning, and that
makes them disconnect from it.
Speaker 3: Well, and there's a fascinating element of racial politics to
these where of course, right, this is a movie that's
sort of hamfictedly about colonialization. Right, you have the the
evil you know, uh, technologically advanced imperial faction, uh, you know,
harassing these noble savages, right, a unified you know, a
race of people who have never died in war only
due to old age, at which point they are, you know,
their body is subsumed, right in this sort of beautiful
circle of life. But and I'll be one hundred percent honest,
I haven't seen the first one since it came out, right,
So I'm not gonna pretend to be a scholar. Actually,
now that I think about it, I've seen all of
these movies when they came out and never you know
again since. But point is, there's this really interesting dynamic
that comes up in the third one where there's sort
of this debate raging about purity, right, the genetic purity
of the nov because of course you have you know,
Jake I always want to say it, Jake Soley, because
that's how they say it in the films. But Jake Sully,
you know who has been He has a man's soul
transported into a you know, a nave body, right he is,
you know, which is again the idea of having a
soul and a body disconnected to sort of an interesting
one orright, you know, a spirit in in kind of
current politics, right if we look at gender or something else.
But nonetheless you have this debate between him and his wife,
and you know, they're constantly arguing back and forth about,
you know, the need to keep their planet pure. And
a large part of the conflict of the second movie
is that there is a you know, a kid who
through bs earth magic, it's not particularly important, has gained
the ability to breathe the toxic air. And of course
everyone's all worried because oh no, now the invaders can
live here, right if they discover his secret. And so
it's quite funny because again this is a deeply progressive
movie intentionally, but the unintentional message, of course is we
can't allow the invaders here because once they get a foothold,
they'll take over. And so that's this bizarre kind of
you know, mixed up you know, racial politics if you will,
where it could very easily be recast as you know,
something that you know, a certain mid century German would
have made. But if you see what I'm going to
get there, they almost can't keep their own you know
logic straight.
Speaker 2: Well, there's very much so a James Cameron problem, because
James Cameron, he has a feeling of what he wants
to get across, but he doesn't quite understand the implications
of what he's trying trying to create. Like even the
third movie was basically him realizing that, oh God, I
have made the humans look way too good. I'm going
to need to just up the bad on every level
to try and make you not sympathize with them. And
again he keeps overseeing these obvious things, like the entire
idea of Awa the goddess. We have now had it
basically confirmed in the third movie that yeah, no, she
is a fungus. She lives within people. She uses their
memories as a way to prey upon their psyche. Oh
you want to see your loved once again, Well you're
going to have to worship me then, because I.
Speaker 1: Can do that.
Speaker 2: And even that, it's I've seen progressives as well described
this as an after life, and no, this is an
alien entity showing you a snapshot of the person the
last time they connected to a war as a form
of emotional black mail in essence, I mean, by any
other in any other franchise, this would be a monstrous,
nightmarish entity. Yet because it's presented as as realistic in
a way you have progressives flocking to it. It's kind
of become this form of how did I put in
like a secular god to them where they worship realism
almost it's.
Speaker 1: A strange thing.
Speaker 2: I think that's the only part where I've seen it
actually have any cultural impact is amongst the progressive class,
and it is usually by using very religious language combined
with this worship of the rational.
Speaker 3: And there's a so, look, this is not a good film.
You should not watch it, listener. It's a large to
total waste of time. If you've seen the second movie,
watch it again. That's the third one. But there's sort
of this fascinating, fascinating instance at the very end where
the arch villain whose name I cannot remember, another you know,
human soul transported into a blue body, which, by the way,
arch as one of the only other people to see
this movie as far as I remember. Their explanation as
to why he is back is a single line which
basically just says he was resurrected. Am I am I
misremembering that? Or is there some greater explanation for why
this dead character is back now?
Speaker 1: Oh quotach?
Speaker 2: He was basically brought back by James Cameron straight up. Yes,
he became one of the most popular characters in the
first movie. And this also because the actor is excellent, Like,
he's a fantastic act.
Speaker 3: He's the only compelling character in the entire film.
Speaker 2: Yes, and that's why James Cameron brought him back, because
there was okay, well, I can't not. And that's also
kind of, you know, one of the things that have
damaged the overall story because Avatar really only had one
movie in it, and every movie since the first one
has basically just been a retelling of the first movie
in slightly different circumstances, to the point where now it's
almost as much of a tale between Qurridge and Jake
Sully as anything else, because again James Cameron doesn't quite
know what he's doing with this. But no, he was
just brought back and it's like, oh, yeah, we decided
to back up your mind in a navvy body because
you know, fuck it, why not?
Speaker 3: And that's basically the reasoning for most things.
Speaker 1: Oh, that is the entire reasoning.
Speaker 2: Like he even Quorish himself just kind of shrugs like, okay,
well fine, I guess.
Speaker 3: One of the other relevant parts about this and I
maybe too much personal detail, arch, but going to see
the Avatar films as part of a noble tradition known
as mall beers. There is a theater in the mall.
There's a bar in the mall, and so you know,
you combine the two and you get smashed and go
see a movie.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: It's not high art all, grant you, but it's something
to do. And you know, so I'm going to see
this with the kind of guys who are interested in that, right,
most of them aren't necessarily interested in cultural analysis per se.
They're normal guys, right. And you know, halfway through this movie,
I'm sitting next to a guy and he leans over
to me and he just whispers in my ear, James
Cameron really hates people. Which it's entirely true, right, this
this is a profoundly anti human movie. And Korich again,
who is this villain? He declares that his loyalty is
to the human race. I'm sure you're familiar with the
heat map meme arge, right, which is comparing you know,
left wing and right wing people on their assigned amount
of loyalty. Right, You're given ten points, will say to
assign to different groups. Generally speaking, conservatives assign that to
their family first, in ever decreasing amounts going outwards, whereas
people who self identify as progressives are the exact opposite.
They feel the most loyalty to the universe at large,
the least to the people around them. Right. And so,
what's again kind of interesting about the mixed up politics
of this movie is Korich is the villain, right, He
certainly played sympathetically, but he is a bad guy. Right,
We're supposed to be rooting against him. But right before
he dies for the third time in the third movie,
he basically says like, no, I did this all for humanity.
Everything I did was in service of the survival of
the species. And it's profoundly amusing to me that this
is basically a liberal movie about the the need to
prioritize your tribe quite literally over the human race. I
just think that that's a very funny message for a
progressive to put forth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, because again it's because of their own worship. Like,
the progressives are as deeply religious as any other group,
it's just that their God is named something else. That
God is the rational god and for them therefore are
awa an Avatar is rational good. The planet of Pandora
is beautiful, it's clean, and everybody is happy there. Nobby
has a nine to five job, and their god is
a real god, and therefore they're good. Now again, if
we start to actually analyze what's going on there, you
can very clearly see that the now we are not.
Speaker 1: Good, and that a war is not good either.
Speaker 2: But it's I really need to like look into this
war when it comes to like the rear reaction to
it from a progressive point of view, because I do
think there's definitely just a natural outgroup preference there which
allows them to overlook the other logical inconsistencies. Right, we
don't like humans, therefore we automatically root for the opposition.
But there is a lot of contradictions because it does
absolutely boil down to well, you know, I am on
this side of the fence now, so I will do
anything I can to protect this side of the fence
over yours at any cost. And the way they'll probably
square this is by simply just bioterror bombing Earth with
AOA spores, and then we'll all become monkeys living the
Stone Age.
Speaker 1: Instead.
Speaker 3: You're you're you're entirely right. I'm sort of fascinated arch
by these poorly produced pieces of political progressive propaganda. That
alliteration is not intentional, but we'll go with it. Another
one is the second Dune film, which got panned by
a lot of our guys, and I understand why, But
in a way, I actually thought that having you know,
Chini be this kind of you know, scowling character, you know,
doubting you know, poll's ability to sort of you know,
unite the stars in this kind of global giha or
this you know, galactic chihat, I thought that it was
actually an oddly poignant thing, right where effectively, you know,
this image of you know that this woman looking over
her shoulder scowling because he didn't pick me. He wanted
to go, you know, change the entire you know, destiny
of the human rights. I thought that was an oddly
poignant message. And the movie, of course, is trying to
tell you that you know, she's right, that he really
should stay at home, that you know, this destiny isn't real,
that he's you know, he's given into toxic masculinity. But
they're almost unable to present that message in a compelling
way and end up sort of communicating the exact opposite.
So these, you know, not particularly good progressive science fiction
movies are kind of a fascination of mine, if you
see what I'm getting at.
Speaker 2: Yes, And a lot of this has to do is
the inability to understand it as well. That there's a
fascinating picture from from one of the Dune premieers. I
think that shows the entire cast. I'll put in a
little private chat here so you can see it, And
it's the most metrosexual bunch of people you've ever seen.
And when you understand that, when you understand this is
a cast made by very metrosexual people, by very metrosexual producers, developers,
written in a very modern fashion, they obviously can't understand
the destiny of Paul the Tradees. They can't understand this
is a man who will conquer the galaxy through force,
who will eventually be haunted by the force he was
forced to unleash in largely the defense of himself and
his family as well. They can't understand that very idea
of being willing to do these things, even knowing they
are going to result in horrible consequences, in order to
defend yourself and your own as as you say it,
Shanni is very much so the counterpoint of well, shouldn't
you just roll over and die, shouldn't you just let
the evil empire win and your family be eradicated if
you're so horrified by your own actions? And no, because
there there is actually a morality in looking out for
your own people. That is not moral. In fact, it
is a very definition of morality. These are mine, I
will defend them to the best of my abilities.
Speaker 3: Well, and additionally, right, there's the level of her saying no,
stay with me, right, you know, be a prince here,
don't fulfill your destiny. And it sort of it honestly
adds a sort of beautiful, beautiful element to the story.
Right because of course, during the duel with fate Rautha,
you know, paul Is is wounded, but because he is
human and he can master his emotions, he can master
his pain, he's able to push through it, win the duel,
and you know him marry into the imperial household. But
what's interesting about that is obviously there is the death right,
the death of Paul you know, the birth of Madep
the man who is a god. But also in that right,
he is saying, you know, I am giving up the
happiness of being a normal man right be married to
the woman I love. I am taking this sort of
loveless imperial marriage. And that's another level as well. That's
sort of interesting because he is, you know, killing the
man to sort of become a legend, right to become
a demigod almost, and with that, you know, there is
glory with it. Right, he will be the most powerful
man in the history of the human species. But also
right he is, he is giving something up there. There's
a sacrifice there, and I think that that's a very
interesting element to the film that again they are unable
to recognize because in the progressive vision, power and a
press are one and the same thing. Of course stated
not revealed. They're more than happy to be in power,
they just can't recognize it. But I think that that's
another interesting element as well, where they simp they cannot
understand the fact that there is a sort of tragedy
to that right, that you must sacrifice your personal happiness
for something greater. It's kind of great destiny. And it's
again it's a concept that would be very basic to
pre moderns, right to anyone really before the nineteen forties
John Carter, you know any number of these even you know,
kind of pop cultural or you know, we could say,
you know, a pulp right would recognize this and show
similar themes. But the modern progressive is simply unable to
recognize that. And again, right, this is something that you
see in forty k as well. It's funny if if
you go on you know, Reddit or something like that,
which I don't recommend, it's it's poisonous to your brain,
but you can find very funny interactions. So owl caat
right did a CRPG in the Warhammer universe that you know,
I quite enjoyed, but the coverage of it was quite interesting,
right because you see, you know, people saying, oh, is
this a fascist game?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 3: Why is their consequences for freeing heretics? Why are there
consequences for not you know, blowing up entire planets because
of corruption? Is this game fascist? And again there's no
way to recognize that. You know, in the Warhammer universe
or and Doing or anything else, there are these hard
limitations placed, right, There are tough choices that require sacrifice
sometimes you know, not willing sacrifice even and I think
that's sort of an interesting element to watch them, you know,
grapple with something they can't understand and sort of mess
it up in the process.
Speaker 2: Yes, and this of course holds the thing comes also
back to the end goal of progressivism is to reduce
Western society, is to get rid of the fundamental pillars
that uphold it, and one of those is absolutely the
idea of self sac that there are going to be
things that are greater than yourself, and you should, to
be a moral being take actions to preserve those things,
even at a personal cost. And the progressives kind of
have never accepted the idea of the personal cost. They
are fundamentally a very selfish political movement that pretends to
not be. It's one of the interesting things that whenever
you see any progressivist group argue for something, it is
always going to be in their own favor in some way.
The Great War between the proper progressives and the radical
feminists was very interesting in this regard because the radical feminists,
of course, simply wanted things that benefited them. They wanted
greater power for themselves, greater privileges for themselves, and that
of course ran into a big conflict with the progressives,
who didn't want more powers for feminists, for women. They
wanted to define what a woman was. They wanted a
man to be able to be a woman because that
would grant them more power, and the radical feminists didn't
have any good arguments against it other than to continue
to be radical feminists. And that didn't work because the
only reason why that worked was because they were arguing
against men who have also been through Western society well
programmed into being like, no, no, no, you've got to take
care of the women. They're a little bit brain damaged,
we all know, but you gotta agree with them even
when they say crazy shit, And that, of course didn't
work on the progressives. So they have an interesting thing
where they don't seem to understand negative consequences, Like they
live in this weird kind of world of duality where
at the one time they are always the victim. It's
always terrible, they're always undergoing great hardships, but they seem
to never actually be able to expect those hardships to occur, oh.
Speaker 3: One hundred percent. It's very much this kind of performative
theater where you know, the rebels are always the good guys,
but ultimately, you know, the Nazis have to do their
part and lose. Like honestly, it's sort of why Star
Wars is sort of fascinating because it's the archetypal version
of this story. I mean, honestly, if we're talking about
the great, you know, the great kind of you know,
turnover in culture, I think a large part of it is,
honestly the mythology of World War Two, not that it
didn't occur, right, but that as the defining moment for
our culture, you know, that as the story which must
be eternally retold. Obviously Star Wars dude, it's just it's
World War two in space, right. You don't have to
be a genius to figure this out. But that kind
of core story, the idea of you know, the plucky
resistance if you will, built into that is ultimately a lie. Sorry,
but America wasn't the underdog and world or too, you know,
like you were a continent size superpower and you bolt
us to the Soviet Union and you know it, It's
not exactly like that was the you know, the plucky
underdog against you know, the empire from Star Wars. So
I think that's that's definitely part of it. Not looking
to get into a historical digression there. But I think
another part of that right is an inability to have
true evil, right to have an objective you know, good
and ill, because you know you have shades of it,
right obviously, you know the Nazis. That's a reason that
slur is used. But I think that you know, really
there is this kind of baked in idea that you know,
the outsider, the downcast, that's never evil, right, it is
simply misunderstood. It is simply something that can be normalized
and brought into the fold, and that's ultimately good. And
I think that when we're talking about that kind of
you know, particularism of sacrifice, right, it's a sacrifice for who.
You know, when when Beowulf, you know, tears Grendel's arm off, right,
he is doing that to protect definite people and he
is ultimately killed in battle with the dragon, it is
he is a king protecting his people. And I think
that that's an element as well, right, that the lines
become very blurred and there's an unwillingness to accept, you know,
a world, whether ours are a fictional one, where there
is an absolute, irredeemable evil that cannot be normalized, that
cannot be brought into the fold that is not misunderstood.
It is simply you know, wrong and evil. And so
even in like the modern Wolfenstein games, right, which are
perhaps the most egregious versions of that, you know, twentieth
century myth. You know, every one of these German soldiers is, oh, well,
you know, he's a he's a sexual degenerate, or oh
there's some other reason he's doing that, and he is,
you know, fundamentally, he cannot even simply be evil. He
must be this sort of twisted, misunderstood thing. And I
wonder if that's an element as well.
Speaker 2: Arge perhaps like we've changed our ideas of evil too,
in this kind of interesting way, where we had a
fairly simplistic evil and from the Lord of the Rings perspective,
like sour on darkness, all of this stuff. This, of course,
also was one of the earliest versions of the Second
World War as our modern day mythology. But the Nazis
have taken up the position of the irredeemable evil side,
and it lacks a certain how do I put it,
not finesse necessarily, but depth of understanding. I guess because
on the one hand, I kind of sympathize with the
idea of the misunderstood villain, because there's a lot of
interesting things you can do with that. Magneto used to
be one of my favorite villains from the old, you know,
comic book days, because he was a victim of the
Nazi purchase who then became a mutant and started basically
becoming the Nazis. And his journey of discovering this is
quite fascinating, and the way that he rationalizes his own
crimes without understanding the parallels between them and the Nazis.
But there's also this kind of intersects with the idea
that the enemy must be both infinitely powerful and malicious
and infinitely retarded at the same way. In old law
of propaganda, which is where you arrived in kind of
around that the Avatar thing, where the humans are evil,
they do random evil shit for absolutely no gardamn reason,
and at the same time they're also incompetent. You have
humans here fighting an underwater alien species with our underwater
alien mounts that refuse to use a simple sona to
wipe them out in a single goddamn ping, but simultaneously
they're going to kill their ancestors. These whale creatures practically
just for shits and giggles to take like a single
vial of magical, obscure liquid nonsense out of them and
dump their carcasses back into the water.
Speaker 1: I feel like we.
Speaker 2: Have almost managed to lose track of how to conceptualize
of an antagonist in many ways, like beyond just the
purely evil or or the progressive version of evil. That's
something I need to think about more.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's sort of an interesting it's sort of an
interesting question. Right. There's a great article and I can't
remember exactly what it's called, by Dave Green, the Distributist,
about Harry Potter. Right, it's basically asking the question of, like, well,
you know what happens to House Slytherin afterwards? Right, what
do you do when this evil faction has been bested?
And you know, he's talking about kind of a like
what does the progressive do with a vanquished evil? Right now,
we can look to you know the history of the
American South or you know, continental Europe and say, well,
they will simply socially engineer them out of existence, right,
they will attempt to sort of reform them in a
very kind of Quaker way. But that's sort of an
interesting question. Again because part of that, you know, that
kind of founding myth, right in the same way that
like Romulus and Remus or the Trojan War would have
been for previous empires, for US is is you know,
World War Two, and so you know, in the kind
of retellings of this, it's like, well, you you blow
up the Death Star and then it just goes away, right,
It's just done. It's crumbled, and you know, even in
the sequels you can see that they're not entirely sure
what that looks like. Where it's you know, fifty years
on and well, the rebellions now the resistance, and I
guess they're kind of in charge. But also you know,
the is that the first Order I can't remember what
they rebranded it. To the point is they're still stormtroopers, right,
There's no way to conceptualize what winning looks like. And
I think a big part of that is that idea
around power, which is the idea that you know, power
is fundamentally illegitimate, that if you were in charge, there's
something wrong with you and you ought to be resisted.
And so that question of what does a victory look like,
what does beating the big bad It's sort of a
gray area, right one where there's there's nothing to find.
Speaker 2: Yes, there's also just the reductivest part of it, because
one of the keys of progressivism is that it doesn't
want to be happy. It wants problems. Problem brings power
to it. It doesn't want to find a solution because
if it finds a solution, you can no longer use
graevance politics against everybody else. It's fundamentally anti Western society,
and this can manifest itself in many ways. Like a
favorite favorite quote of mine is the idea of George R. R.
Martin quote, But Tolkien doesn't ask the question what was
Adragon's tax policy? And the reason why that is so
amusing to me is because, on the one hand, I
actually like the idea of a fantasy setting where you
delve into that, Okay, what does Gondor look like after
defeating Mordor? What happens to the Orc? And the answer
is probably just simple genocide. But it's also one of
those ultimately reductivist tastes where I actually don't give a
shit about what Adragon's tax policy is. I give a
shit that he is the king that was chosen, He
is the king that was promised, He returned, and he
beat the Big bad and the story is over. That's
where Star Wars should have ended. Now the Imperium was destroyed.
There you go, You're done, You're finished. To then have
them transition into the Resists whilst being the masters of
the Galaxy to the point where you have to have
the best scrawling introtext in the history of cinema going
somehow Palpaty in returned. You don't have a plot anymore
at that point. And I don't know if it's a
lack of imagination to not understand where you could possibly
go with this, or simply an inability to understand that
sometimes you have to have a goal in mind, and
I don't think the progressives do. I don't think the
progressives have an idea of the ideal society, and I
don't think they're working towards it. They just have these
loose promises, these thoughts in their minds, which, amusingly they
were a part of tearing down I mean, you can
look at the acceptance rate of things like gay marriage
or transgender people today and they've all nose dived after
progressivism became more popular. Estually, the progressive victory would have
been to shut up in the nineties and just let
everything proceed as it was.
Speaker 3: Well, Arch, I'll have you know that for many of
our progressives, your society with roughly the demographics of Mogadishu,
I believe that is the ideal society. Obviously, I'm not
going to ask you to, you know, to weigh in
on if that is some sort of heaven on earth.
But yeah, you're entirely right. I mean, I think another
part of this, to be brutally honest, is that, you know,
for many of these cultural figures, you have this huge
talent gap where you have you know, these baby boomers
right who have held onto their positions of powers. Actor directors,
you know, James Cameron is a great example, and the
people underneath them did not come up under the same circumstances.
They were not forced to compete in any sort of
meritocracy whatsoever, and they were pushed well ahead of their
skills sets. And so if you look at you know,
Millennial and you know gen X directors, writers and all
their diversity hires, so even you know, the kind of
like core skill set of how to write something compelling, right,
even if the politics in it are horrible, and there's
a great number of examples of films that have bad politics,
but are you know, great to watch. I think that's
another element as well, that they have sort of undercut
their own talent based to the point where I don't
think they have anyone who even understands what they're doing anymore.
Maybe a discussion for another day that but arch we're
oh sorry, I'll let you respond.
Speaker 2: Oh you know, I'll just finish by saying that that's true.
There was an article a few weeks ago that basically
was from it Insider that was trying to become a writer.
He was a young person trying to become a right
in the page, and he was.
Speaker 3: The Lost Generation is by something Savage in Compact.
Speaker 2: Yeah, where he simply lined out that no, they weren't
looking for good writers. That was ir relevant. That was
a Urchieady concern.
Speaker 1: At best.
Speaker 2: They were looking for diverse writers, and when they needed
one or two good writers, they had an entire stable
of fifty sixty year old people with proven track records
that they would rely on instead. And so we lost
an entire generation, multiple generations of storytellers who never got
a chance because they were born wrong.
Speaker 3: Again, they're doing it to themselves. And honestly, Warhammer was,
and I've successfully emotionally divorced from Warhammer. I don't really
care anymore because I can't do anything about it, right,
and they have a little bit of control over you
if you do care, right, if you're still buying this stuff.
But with all of these other ones, you know, it's
just very clear there's there's not much left, you know,
they have been sort of hoard out. And again, as
you said, the best bet we've got is sort of
either going back right to a previous version or you know,
to the source material, or making your own because clearly,
you know, the people in charge of these different franchises
you know, pick your poison right, are complete and total idiots,
to be blunt about it. Absolutely well, Arch, we are
fast approaching time. This was a fun discussion. We talked
about Warhammer much less than I thought. Where can people
find you? Where can they find your work?
Speaker 2: Well, these days it's either the law channel, which is
simply called ARCH for interesting for the k law, or
if you're interested in the regular cultural commentary and the politics,
then that is the arch cast.
Speaker 3: Well again, check both of those out as far as
my stuff, The Jay Burdens Show, Apple, Spotify, YouTube, anywhere
you want to listen to podcasts. This is what I do.
It's my job, and if you want to support me
you can do so just a couple bucks a month
on Patreon, Substack or gum road. You get the episodes
early in ad free. I know the ads are your rotating,
but you know what, I got a mortgage to pay. Guys,
I'm sorry, and if you pay for it, it's like
twenty cents an episode, not a bad deal, So you
can support me. There again, Archie was a ton of fun.
Speaker 1: Man, I'm solely happy to be Yeah.
Speaker 3: Never went home. Keep your head up. Well, I can't
last forever.
Speaker 4: Good night.
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