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Cake day: December 15th, 2024

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  • I kind of agree, but also think it’s important to understand a few things about this:

    • The US needs to keep its military-industrial complex active and technologically advanced at all times if it wants to be a military powerhouse. It can’t decide to start it up whenever it wants because war machines have gotten too advanced. During WWII, it was easy to get the complex rolling because they just needed to churn out simple prop planes, tanks, rifles, and food. Now, they need stealth planes, laser-guided munitions, and high-tech chips.
    • Because of the geography of the US and the geopolitical situation, it would likely fight a two-front war. If the US goes to war with a formidable power, said power would surely ally with another. The US will not just fight China alone. Russia and North Korea would join. Therefore, the US military needs to be large enough to fight knowing that by population, the US is much smaller. China has just over 4 times the population of the US.
    • Having an overwhelmingly large and technologically advanced military serves as a deterrent. It’s best to never go to war. It saves lives, economies, social institutions, etc. By having a decisively superior military, those that would consider starting a war avoid doing so.
    • The Department of Defense and military-industrial complex is a huge jobs program anyway. Service members receive training and all sorts of benefits that support them and their dependents. Military production companies receive reliable government contracts that make their business ventures stable investments while employees receive relatively adequate pay. If the government did not fund those contracts, all those businesses would go out of business and everyone involved would have to find other means of sustenance.
    • The US provides military defense and deterrence for more than just itself. It’s practically the department of defense for most Pacific islands including Japan and the Philippines. It’s also a necessary supporter of the EU and South Korea.

    I’m not saying that I agree to the spending or that we shouldn’t spend more on social welfare, but the solution is not obviously clear as just spending less on defense in my opinion.








  • Elaine was part of the masturbation episode and lost, which further speaks to the progressiveness of the show because a woman was portrayed as having sexuality that was outside of acceptable limits at the time (for love only, preferably in marriage). They also presented being gay as acceptable, which was quite progressive at the time where people were calling each other “gay” and the f-word as a terrible insult.



  • Maybe I’m wrong, but I think the immorality of Kramer’s racist stand-up was exaggerated. It was absolutely offensive and 100% not acceptable. There was nothing funny about it, and there was no possible current setting in which that would be okay. Especially when the audience member became upset, Kramer needed to drop the show immediately and apologize. However, it is obvious he did not mean it as real. I believe he was trying to shock the crowd by being offensive and picked the wrong thing to be offensive about. From what I can tell, the n-word and racism to Kramer are so absurd, that the bit was to make fun of racists by taking on the role of someone that would believe in it to show how stupid it is. It was a caricature. Unfortunately, our society is still racist and the victims haven’t healed yet because it’s still ongoing, so it didn’t land right at all. His white privilege made him tone deaf, so it was less about him being purposely racist and more about showing how racism is still alive. It also gave racists a possible pass at being overly racist if he were allowed to get away with it. I think in the future, society will either not care about it as much or find it makes sense because they will agree with the spirit in their time.

    Again, i am not excusing his standup or saying it was okay. It was not okay. But, I also think it’s not what people make it out to be. In fact, he owned it and apologized for it a lot. He was clearly regretful and wanted to point out how much it hurt him as well. This made him a perfect target for mob justice using shame as a weapon because he believed he deserved it and would not fight back. It ended his career, and he’s been in hiding ever since. He was one of the first celebrities to be canceled by social media. The only time I remember him coming back out was on an episode of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee and he looked like a broken person. The backlash was so intense, that even South Park made a show about it called With Apologies to Jesse Jackson (S11E1).

    I understand I might be misunderstanding the situation, so I do not mean to profess my opinion as fact and am open to other interpretations.


  • Exactly. Seinfeld isn’t funny now because all the shows after it copied it. When Seinfeld came out, it was revolutionary. No one was doing that humor. They invented it. Now, everyone and their mother has copied them, so it’s played out. And since all these newer sitcoms had time and previous examples to improve on, they do it better, so Seinfeld looks lame by comparison. However, when I as a millennial was watching Seinfeld when it was being originally aired, I thought it was great.