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Valerie Smith's avatar

third option: of a synthesis of the positive characteristics of both Fleck and the Joker is conspicuous by its absence in the film. Thus it is implied that people in general - and especially men - need to choose between a weakened self who can fit into society or an antisocial but strong and sexy version of ourselves who can't.

It seems to me that synthesis is what’s lacking in politics and why no one is very satisfied with either solution: one can choose to be the manly-man with a submissive woman on the right or an empowered woman with an obligatorily PC man on the left. None of it is sexy imo, it’s juvenile and I’m not into that

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Judith Matlock's avatar

The only to extend options is to get money out of our elections by making them tax funded and compressing the campaign season to 90 days. Allow anyone who can get enough nominating signatures to run, giving them each a fixed amount budget and a fixed period in which to campaign. Then we'd see some genius sprouting because the garden bed would be the same soil for everyone. Incumbents might have the hardest time of all because experience might take a backseat to innovation.

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Guy James's avatar

agree, and that totally makes sense, but who would do that? whichever party currently in power had to have won under the current corrupt rules, therefore wouldn't want to alter them to that extent.

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Judith Matlock's avatar

When that courageous person shows up, sigh, the nation just might be saved from its worst impulses. Certainly a good place to start is to tax the rich who have had undue influence in politics and at the same time save the economy and capitalism. Remember that it was the weak economic scaffolding produced by income inequality in the Gilded Age that gave way to the Great Recession.

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Guy James's avatar

...and it was that depression which finally gave way to the New Deal, and it's pretty much a certainty that the global economy has to pass that way again, and worse, in order to be able to reset and get any real reforms passed.

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Guy James's avatar

exactly, neither option is satisfactory, which is why we keep pinging between them, rather than seeking the synthesis

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erg art ink's avatar

Door number 3. The zero point perspective which functionally hinges, synthesizing the perspectives of both polarities.

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Emer's avatar

“But people are lost in their doomscrolling, in their magic mirror which tells them they're the fairest of them all, or might become so with the right filters applied.” ❤️

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Erin Q.'s avatar

We need “Bob” now more than ever. Eternal Salvation or triple your money back!!! But seriously... what Judith Matlock wisely suggested above would go a long way to improving/solving the nightmare of these election cycles (and get us back on track with the Church of Slack).

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Matthew McCarthy's avatar

‘I believe the script is making the point that he is being a hero by rejecting the joker’

In my own opinion, he does not make this decision, which is partly why I think this movie is so bad. He is beaten and tortured into that position by the security guard. All of the mythical and dramatic tension in the movie is flattened out and ruined by the prison guard who tortured the joker and forced him to ‘shape up’….it is actually a frustratingly bad movie because of what happens there

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