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[MrRoboto75]

"Free Speech" only protects you from the government, for speaking out against the government.  Private corps have always been free to oblige you if they feel like it, or not.

Moreover, if anything some of them have been dodging bans simply because they're people in public office.  If I tweeted half of what trump did I'd be banned far before he ever did.

[Random_Dragon]

it’s going to morph into violence.

We're already well past that point and little in the way of consequences have surfaced, sadly. :/

[Zangi]

*deep inhale, followed by very loud scream* Why have facts and reality fallen into gray? How could we let this happen??!!

Free speech, education, and the interwebs. 

People use free speech as cover to say whatever they want, including outright lie, except for very specific things that have to do with national security and the threat of being sued for libel.  There is little to no gov't skin on this, it has largely been left to society/businesses to police people.  (But, now that we have businesses who's main revenue is from showcasing the lies and extreme opinions of average people for the last decade... )

Education in public schools have been neglected for decades.  Lowest common denominator.  Critical thinking is not a focus of education either.

The interweb allows people with fringe/extreme opinions/ideas to get together and voice such things.  The interweb lately has given them a platform to voice such things.

Special mention for Fox being classified as an 'entertainment' outlet, not a news outlet, so they essentially get a free pass to say whatever they want.

[StrawBarrel]

yeah those are 3 pretty major factors.

Special mention for Fox being classified as an 'entertainment' outlet, not a news outlet, so they essentially get a free pass to say whatever they want.

lol That's just wild. Fox News really is a scourge.

[anewaname]

Calamar is French for squid, probably a loan word from the Roman era.

So, you are Lucas and you are recreating a version of your galactic history and thinking about how horribly some races would treat weaker races. Yeah, these cat-guys are carnivores and if they had space travel and these squid-guys did not, they would treat them like we treat cows, as food and work animals. There would be squid-guys on the menu at every cat-guy restaurant. I have no doubt, Lucas named the Mon Calamari the moment he thought, "I'm at a French restaurant, shouldn't I try something different, like maybe this squid dish?".

It is a derogatory name, created by Lucas on behalf of the slaver races.

[Kagus]

Calamar is French for squid, probably a loan word from the Roman era.

So, you are Lucas and you are recreating a version of your galactic history and thinking about how horribly some races would treat weaker races. Yeah, these cat-guys are carnivores and if they had space travel and these squid-guys did not, they would treat them like we treat cows, as food and work animals. There would be squid-guys on the menu at every cat-guy restaurant. I have no doubt, Lucas named the Mon Calamari the moment he thought, "I'm at a French restaurant, shouldn't I try something different, like maybe this squid dish?".

It is a derogatory name, created by Lucas on behalf of the slaver races.

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Mon_Calamari/Legends#Behind_the_scenes

When Return of the Jedi was in pre-production, George Lucas took one look at a nameless alien design laid out by the production creature designers. He decided at that moment that it was going to be Admiral Ackbar. Creature designer Phil Tippett named the species after his lunch of calamari salad one day as a joke.

I'm getting increasingly curious as to what your sources are for these statements

[Starver]

These days, Lucas would be derided as 'woke' (by those for whom they take it upon themselves to ensure "woke" is derisive, naturally) for putting an 'ethnic minority' in such a commanding position. And look who they put in charge of a cloud city... Apparently the only (human) person of colour in the entire galaxy (we don't know anything about Finn's homeworld, etc, at this time[1]), although of course he only got there by gambling, not merit of any kind.

Just sayin'. I mean, we currently can have a female The Doctor (or Vetinari, or Hamlet), and many other things that should not actually be exciting if done well, but at the same time we have people who still wouldn't care if it were done well or not but just imagine any attempt to be too try-hard, and like the whole BLM thing pour scorn on those who try a subtle sneaky diversification (silent protests) and those that go for a wholesale overturn of expectations (riots[2], righteous or otherwise) and anything inbetween (the knee, etc). Undoubtedly there is 'tokenism', but there is a far greater intensity of accusations of tokenism than truly there is of its application (which begets truly reactionary tokenism as deliberate counter to such voices, which stokes the fires yet further).

A funny old world where historic barriers are ever more recognised in order that they be then demolished, but the backlash seem all the greater as people dare to step over the debris (or, worse, others on your side of the wall beckon people on the other to do so).

But this is more philosophical, I think, than specifically Star Wars AmeriPol in particular.



[1] Or who else is behind the post-clone trooper armour, nor that pre-clone troopers were all ethnic. In fact, the only known (but not yet!) clone is so hidden as to be basically the most white male human humanoid organic of his profession.

[2] Not a very good analogy in my eyes, before you ask. But there are some who get aneurisms at the mere thought of black shakespeare.

[StrawBarrel]

Yeah I get what you're saying. The right wing does often make a fuss about diversity in media. It's an annoying part of the right's culture war.

Thanks for linking the wikipedia article. I never heard of black Shakespeare until now. It was a short and interesting read.

[anewaname]

@Kagus

I wasn't using a source, it was conjecture, flavored with dark humor, and intentionally packaged with the "derogatory nicknames" concept that pervades American politics, because no matter what story we are told, when someone wants you to accept a derogatory name for something, that name was  chosen to diminish and lessen empathy and sympathy from you to the target of the name, as a precursor to recruiting you to attack that target.

So the story we are told is that the costume designer Alan Tippet named the Mon Calamari after a salad. The name is derogatory, it still translates to "my squid". Maybe he wanted to have moving tentacles on the costume and wasn't able to do it within the time constraints, so the tentacles were abandoned and he still named the creature after his salad that did have tentacles. He wanted people to make fun of the creature/costume, to attack it.

[Lord Shonus]

Unimportant storylet I liked:  A race of one-eyed beings in Schlock Mercenary live on a world they call Oth, but humans call them "uniocs".  One of the human characters asks their unioc friend about this, and the explanation is "It's better than being called Others."

Later there's a misunderstanding over whether a habitat is Earth-like or Oth-like.

You've got it backwards, and there's not much space between the statements.

KEVYN: Lieutenant, you told me to look for structures analogous to those common to life-forms I'm already familiar with.

When I say "alien DNA," I'm not saying I won't recognize a self-replicating molecule if it looks weird.

EBBY: Okay, but be careful.  The chemistry here seems Oth-like, but the only thing you should expect is to be surprised.

KEVYN: You mean Earth-like?

EBBY: Earth happens to be Oth-like, yes.

KEVYN: Oh.  Hmph.

KEVYN: Ebby, why do we call your people "Uniocs" instead of "Others."

EBBY: As cultural underdogs, the best we could do was convince you that "one-eye" was better than "foreigner."

[Random_Dragon]

This is reminding me of how I'd only within the past couple months found myself binging on that comic all the way to the end...

[None]

@Kagus

I wasn't using a source, it was conjecture, flavored with dark humor, and intentionally packaged with the "derogatory nicknames" concept that pervades American politics, because no matter what story we are told, when someone wants you to accept a derogatory name for something, that name was  chosen to diminish and lessen empathy and sympathy from you to the target of the name, as a precursor to recruiting you to attack that target.

So the story we are told is that the costume designer Alan Tippet named the Mon Calamari after a salad. The name is derogatory, it still translates to "my squid". Maybe he wanted to have moving tentacles on the costume and wasn't able to do it within the time constraints, so the tentacles were abandoned and he still named the creature after his salad that did have tentacles. He wanted people to make fun of the creature/costume, to attack it.

Y'know, we could probably infer some subjugation of the rest of the galaxy under human thumb based on the fact that everyone speaks human Basic, but that's wildly baseless conjecture, too, and for a story about space wizards and a nondescript evil empire that's evil solely by being evil (and not motivated by racism or hatred or other objectively reprehensible traits), this subcontext of programmed derision seems, I dunno, paranoid, or largely beside the point of the story as a whole?

If you name a minor character after a salad, it's probably because they're a minor character and need a minor name/design on the spot, not because anyone wants you to possessively deride the character. If Admiral Ackbar was more important, we'd have remembered him for more than "it's a trap!" That line is funny because it's abrupt and obvious, but otherwise has nothing to do with the fact that Ackbar is of a species named 'Mon Calamari'.

Like, look, there's plenty in the real world to actually take up issue with, feigning outrage for the sake of feigning outrage over feigned outrage (oof) really just makes it take longer to talk about real problems.

[Random_Dragon]

To bring us back on topic, evidently we're evaccing the embassy in Kabul as part of preparation to pull out of Afghanistan a bit more, or something?

[Rolan7]

You've got it backwards, and there's not much space between the statements.

Hey thanks a lot!  I sorta wanted to search up the comic, but I knew I would get distracted reading it again so I shared my vague memory and assumed nobody would know any better (Or better yet, would look it up themselves and get hooked)

[martinuzz]

To bring us back on topic, evidently we're evaccing the embassy in Kabul as part of preparation to pull out of Afghanistan a bit more, or something?

The withdrawal of US and NATO troops is turning out to be a horrible mistake. 20 years of training and arming the Afghan army, only to have the Taliban mostly waltz all over them.