@timberwraith Ah, Edgar. Still better working class representation than anything Republicans have.

@timberwraith I've seen unconfirmed reports that he's just a bunch of germs wearing an RFK, Jr. suit like Edgar from "Men in Black."

@timberwraith RFK, Jr.'s most salient personality trait is making his bad decisions other people's problem.

@Ilka4You It's a real quote around 1:49.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yp8z-IaUmD0&t=42s

You know who's not in the Epstein files? Trans people.

Except as victims.

You know who the Epstein class tell you to hate? Trans people.

Like, I would like to flee, but I totally get it at this point.

Seriously, world, you should quarantine America. Don't come here. Don't let us out.

RFK, Jr: "I'm not scared of a germ. I used to snort cocaine off of toilet seats."

Our Secretary of Health and Human Services, everyone.

That said, one of the minor details in "They Live" which tends to get forgotten is that the aliens are encouraging climate change as part of terraforming the Earth to be more suitable to them.

I suppose even John Carpenter couldn't bring himself to believe -- then -- that humans would deliberately destroy their own planet.

After all, what are you going to do about it?

Despite "Illuminatus!" being an often unpleasant slog to read, I personally prefer fnords conceptually.

"They Live" has become something of a cliche, after all, and portraying the bad guys as a shadowy conspiracy of alien or foreign elites tends to invite obvious problems. John Carpenter had to repeatedly fight with Neo-Nazis over the meaning of the film.

And of course, it's not so secret anymore.

The wealthy white men and hangers-on of the Epstein class don't care if you know who they are.

Now why do you think some people are so hostile to "woke?"

Jean-Jacques Rousseau: "There is no subjugation so perfect as that which keeps the appearance of freedom, for in that way, it captures volition itself."

They live. We sleep.

Perhaps unfortunately, reality is a bit more subtle. It's more like the "fnords" from the "Illuminatus!" trilogy.

The idea there is children are taught not to see the word "fnord" so its subliminal presence causes anxiety.

The government liberally sprinkles it into the news, but the advertisements don't contain any so consumerism offers a sense of escapism.

Hence "I see the fnords" means "I see through the Man's bullshit."

Which maybe that's not subtle either.

But fascinators and fnords.

Refusing to go down without a fight, George storms a TV station, kills the Fascinator on the news, and uses its image to command everyone to "wake up," see the aliens for what they are, and kill them.

Humanity triumphs in the end but poor old George dies at exactly eight o'clock.

The John Carpenter version is snazzier. It's got a guerilla resistance and magic shades and pokes fun at the sociopathic consumerism of the Reagan Eighties.

But it's the "waking up" part that's important.

The Fascinators hypnotize people into thinking they are normal human beings and they control everything from the media to the government. Their subliminal orders are everywhere. "MARRY AND REPRODUCE," "WORK AND OBEY," and most especially, "CONSUME."

George tries to convince people of what is happening, which doesn't work, and he eventually receives a phone call from one of the Fascinators, who instructs him to die at exactly eight o'clock the next morning.

There is a short story called "Eight O'Clock in the Morning" by Ray Nelson. You have probably never heard of it, but it was turned into a John Carpenter movie called "They Live."

In the story, a man named George Nada is hypnotized by a stage magician, but when he is told to "wake up," he wakes up completely and realizes he can see aliens living among us, whom he calls Fascinators because of their hypnotic powers.

@Vanalope That figures.

The cop who shot Renee Good recorded the murder on his own cell phone and distributed the video to right-wing websites and to my knowledge, nothing has happened to him since then.

The fun history of how when body cams were introduced and cops didn't know how they worked, they ended up recording themselves planting evidence on a regular basis.

Which is why cops now routinely either don't wear them, turn them off, or control the release of footage so they can lie about what happened.

https://gizmodo.com/cops-planting-drugs-2010s-body-cameras-2000718559