Of All The Political Satire In Disco Elysium, I Find The Moralists To Be The Most Poignant. Because You

Of all the political satire in Disco Elysium, I find the Moralists to be the most poignant. Because you trend towards Moralism--towards Centrism--just by staying on track and focusing on the task at hand. You're trying to deal with the world as it is, and so it feels logical and right. My first playthrough, I felt guilty for all the trouble I had caused people, and so I ended up leaning hard into Moralism and becoming a Sorry Boring Cop.

Except "focusing on the task at hand" isn't logical at all, because it actually means ignoring information. Do not question why things are the way they are. Continue to obey the very people who have stolen from and victimized you and everyone you are likely to meet and care about.

While the "traditionalists" are repugnant, hateful, and deluded, they aren't the game's true threat, because they are not in power. The Moralists have already won, and they've convinced everyone that obeying them, enriching them, and living under the watchful eye of their distant warships is normal and uncontroversial.

They promise incremental change, but we know for certain that the future of Elysium is a sudden, apocalyptic flash of light. Moralism is associated with faith and religious imagery, but it is a faith that will never be rewarded. If you build the radio tower, you reach someone who cannot help. If you get to talk to someone in power at all, they will at best be a Sunday friend offering meaningless platitudes.

And the most tragic part is that Kim--the person you most trust and rely on--is the embodiment of this mindset. No matter how much it hurts him, he's still going to try to be a good cop.

tldr I was looking up the classification system for cerebral palsy (GMFCS) and part of the 2nd level is "climbing stairs with the use of a railing" which just about knocked me out. Ableds. . . are you not. . . using railings? it's right there? this is trying to tell me it's abled culture Not to use the railing?

(use your best judgement as to whether or not abledness applies to you here. mostly I mean disabilities that would have some impact on stair-climbing, natch. chronic pain/fatigue counts, but, like, d/Deafness wouldn't, you get me?)

Ok listen we NEED to talk about your girlfriend. I know you’re doomed by the narrative and all, but she keeps defying the will of fate with her vain and ever more desperate attempts to save you. It’s SERIOUSLY going to rend the fabric of space-time if she keeps this up. I’m not even joking. We’re all going to end up in a closed loop of decaying reality if—it’s not cute, stop laughing!!

more substantive thing about Glass Onion and then i think this is all my thoughts: i really liked something i feel was clearly shown in the flashbacks but not outright stated, which was that andi knew damn well miles bron was a dumb huckster.

that's what she wanted him for. she needed that ability to throw himself into his latest shill with total commitment, because of his need to believe in his own hype. the 'reality distortion' of his hard sell.

she knew that to get what she wanted out of life, she needed to harness that confidence of a mediocre white man we all talk about.

that it would open doors that would stay unmoved in the face of all her brilliance, and polish, and perfected rich bitch voice.

there's a lot of these guys out there, and she picked a dumb one because she planned for him to be the front man to her mastermind. (apologies to paul mccartney lol i don't mean to impugn your intelligence.) a smarter man would have had his own plans, would be harder to use as a mouthpiece for her better ones. she would have needed to find an actual partner and not a tool, and she didn't trust like that.

duke wasn't actually wrong to say they were all playing the same shitty game and andi lost. i mean, he was morally wrong but he wasn't incorrect.

like blanc says, she thought that because she was better than bron, because she was the genius and he was the cheap con artist, he wasn't dangerous. and in the end that was where it all fell apart.

I swear Bronya uses rose stickers in chat with Seele too

I guess I had so completely absorbed the prevailing wisdom that I expected people in bankruptcy to look scruffy or shifty or generally disreputable. But what struck me was that they looked so normal.

The people appearing before that judge came in all colors, sizes, and ages. A number of men wore ill-fitting suits, two or three of them with bolero ties, and nearly everyone dressed up for the day. They looked like they were on their way to church. An older couple held onto each other as they walked carefully down the aisle and found a seat. A young mother gently jiggled her keys for the baby in her lap. Everyone was quiet, speaking in hushed tones or not at all. Lawyers – at least I thought they were lawyers – seemed to herd people from one place to another.

I didn’t stay long. I felt as if I knew everyone in that courtroom, and I wanted out of there. It was like staring at a car crash, a car crash involving people you knew.

Later, our data would confirm what I had seen in San Antonio that day. The people seeking the judge’s decree were once solidly middle-class. They had gone to college, found good jobs, gotten married, and bought homes. Now they were flat busted, standing in front of that judge and all the world, ready to give up nearly everything they owned just to get some relief from the bill collectors.

As the data continued to come in, the story got scarier. San Antonio was no exception: all around the country, the overwhelming majority of people filing for bankruptcy were regular families who had hit hard times. Over time we learned that nearly 90 percent were declaring bankruptcy for one of three reasons: a job loss, a medical problem, or a family breakup (typically divorce, sometimes the death of a husband or wife). By the time these families arrived in the bankruptcy court, they had pretty much run out of options. Dad had lost his job or Mom had gotten cancer, and they had been battling for financial survival for a year or longer. They had no savings, no pension plan, and no homes or cars that weren’t already smothered by mortgages. Many owed at least a full year’s income in credit card debt alone. They owed so much that even if they never bought another thing – even if Dad got his job back tomorrow and Mom had a miraculous recovery – the mountain of debt would keep growing on its own, fueled by penalties and compounding interest rates that doubled their debts every few years. By the time they came before a bankruptcy judge, they were so deep in debt that being flat broke – owning nothing, but free from debt – looked like a huge step up and worth a deep personal embarrassment.

Worse yet, the number of bankrupt families was climbing. In the early 1980s, when my partners and I first started collecting data, the number of families annually filing for bankruptcy topped a quarter of a million. True, a recession had hobbled the nation’s economy and squeezed a lot of families, but as the 1980s wore on and the economy recovered, the number of bankruptcies unexpectedly doubled. Suddenly, there was a lot of talk about how Americans had lost their sense of right and wrong, how people were buying piles of stuff they didn’t actually need and then running away when the bills came due. Banks complained loudly about unpaid credit card bills. The word deadbeat got tossed around a lot. It seemed that people filing for bankruptcy weren’t just financial failures – they had also committed an unforgivable sin.

Part of me still wanted to buy the deadbeat story because it was so comforting. But somewhere along the way, while collecting all those bits of data, I came to know who these people were.

In one of our studies, we asked people to explain in their own words why they filed for bankruptcy. I figured that most of them would probably tell stories that made them look good or that relieved them of guilt.

I still remember sitting down with the first stack of questionnaires. As I started reading, I’m sure I wore my most jaded, squinty-eyed expression.

The comments hit me like a physical blow. They were filled with self-loathing. One man had written just three words to explain why he was in bankruptcy:

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

When writing about their lives, people blamed themselves for taking out a mortgage they didn’t understand. They blamed themselves for their failure to realize their jobs weren’t secure. They blamed themselves for their misplaced trust in no-good husbands and cheating wives. It was blindingly obvious to me that most people saw bankruptcy as a profound personal failure, a sign that they were losers through and through.

Some of the stories were detailed and sad, describing the death of a child or what it meant to be laid off after thirty-three years with the same company. Others stripped a world of pain down to the bare facts:

Wife died of cancer. Left $65,000 in medical bills after insurance. Lack of full-time work – worked five part-time jobs to meet rent, utilities, phone, food, and insurance.

They thought they were safe – safe in their jobs and their lives and their love – but they weren’t.

I ran my fingers over one of the papers, thinking about a woman who had tried to explain how her life had become such a disaster. A turn here, a turn there, and her life might have been very different.

Divorce, an unhappy second marriage, a serious illness, no job. A turn here, a turn there, and my life might have been very different, too.

– A Fighting Chance by Elizabeth Warren, pg. 34 - pg. 36

(Bolding mine)