‘Was Nietzsche MAGA?’ Post Mortem Stream

Blonde Abby! House of the Dragon blonde Abby IRL PLZ🙏

I first got into photography as an art form… because my high school had a class. But I soon realized some things, and ended up sticking with it through college. The key realization was: the photographer is never IN the picture. I do hope that by the time I check out, I will have somehow done something that leaves the world better than it was. But if that’s just “I mopped the floor of the cafeteria, so the big brain folks could concentrate on the big brain problems. That’s hard to measure, and harder to say it was me, and not just “Any janitor could have done the same, or better.”

Luckily, I’m also a nihilist, so me not living up to my potential doesn’t bother me. Nor me not being the next Achilles who needs to be remembered.

Shooting a YT video in 35mm still image pictures. That’s basically a PowerPoint deck. Which honestly sounds kind of interesting. 100% PowerPoint, the art museum can have it running on a loop, with audio, and just a few rows of benches.

I was talking to my mom the other day. The moms came to Amsterdam, so I trained up to hang. And it occurred to me that a subtle form of so-called “hostile architecture” is to put a life-sized statue of a human sitting on a bench. People can still sit on the bench, but the unhoused cannot sleep on it. And much better PR. So my PowerPoint would be about hostile architecture, and there would be statues of city planners on the benches. Like, the guys who intentionally built the US Interstate Highway system so the freeway itself became a barrier to the black neighborhood it disrupts.

“Shutterbugs are in front of the camera.” I will answer the implied question with… an analogous story. Not a question. That “answer a question with a question” stuff is soooooo 00s Zoolander.

US law requires that bottles of wine sold in the US contain certain things. Pieces of info. Stuff the marketing nerds in sister would fail to attract attention. Surgeon general’s warning about smoking, etc. But it turns out the law does not define which side of a circlular shape is the front. So, in America at least, the label with the vineyard’s logo, probably a stock picture of a château, and nothing else… the side the grocers turn towards the shoppers… that’s the back of the bottle. The bit with all the fine print… that’s the front.

So who REALLY is in front of the camera? The passive subject, or the active photographer? (Is that philosophical enough?)

I’ve typed all of the above, based on 8m32s of video, which included the “please wait” prompt and the placement of the candle. So I think I’ll end with this. I have actually read some Nietzche. In the 90s. Long before Leftist YouTube. So there was never any… like, marketing analysis of specific luminaries. We looked at the text itself, and enough history to understand the bit about the old guy with the lantern, saying God was dead.

And even though that same class also included Primo Levi’s “Survival in Auschwitz”, we never really looked at how those people also mis-applied Nietzsche’s work. Asking if he was really MAGA is like Ben Shapiro (and other thankfully less famous alt-right bad-faith actors) trying to to argue that the 1930s Germans were really left-wing, because they used the word “Socialist”. Or when Rep Paul Ryan (then Speaker of the US House, and third in line for the presidency) started releasing pictures of him in the gym to prove how ‘hip’ and ‘with it’ he was. He then claimed that Rage Against the Machine was his favorite band. Prompting the former members of the band to coalesce long enough to so Paul Ryan is a garbage human, that their music was a renunciation of everything he is, and to please stop listening to their music.

Which is to say, MAGA and the alt-right are perfectly happy to adorn themselves in the trappings of… stuff… without really engaging with the actual topic. Nearly all of what Jesus said goes against the core “firmly held religious beliefs” of the so-called Christian right. But they’re happy to cherry-pick lines to manipulate us. Like the Germans used Nietzsche to support stuff he himself would never agree with.

Is “being MAGA” the same as “being misquoted by MAGA”?

How many deep-right politicians were tweeting MLK quotes on MLK day, using them to support positions MLK explicitly renounced in literally that same piece?

I’ve seen a photo online, where the homophobe tattoos Leviticus 18:22 on his arm, but just that book and verse reference, not the actual text of it. My response will be to tattoo the book and verse of Leviticus 19:28. Which is the prohibition against tattoos. Because I prefer my blasphemy to be both meta and self-contained.

Bro, he was Ultra-maga

I'm sitting here rivited 1:20:17 listening to Abigail riff on the idea of writing for Doctor Who. Brilliant! There are probably thousands of fans that would punch the air to hear it. I say thousands. Probably more like a million. Aaaaaaaanyways.

She. Is. So. Fit.

31:32 I remember a few years ago, my mom forced me to watch F&F6, and the flying headbutt made me think that the entire movie was all in the head of an autistic kid playing with their action figures, sort of like a St. Elsewhere situation.

That line of thinking seemed like a much more interesting movie, where the family's struggles with daily life–the difficulties of raising an autistic child; potential divorce (and the debates over personal mental health vs the mental health of the family unit; self-care vs self-sacrifice; split up and mend yourself vs stay together for the kids and put on a brave face); the slow, inexorable encroachment of capitalistic fascism on the working class–all manage to filter their way into this autistic kid's mental playtime, albeit via the distortions of the child's own partial understanding of the situation.

Because, let's face it, Vin Diesel flying through the air to headbutt a guy makes no damn sense in the real world, that would lead to a broken or fractured neck &/or skull. But you can just picture a kid slamming two action fugures into each other in that exact way, can't you? Also, the entire series coming from the mind of an autistic preadolescent is impressively imaginitive. Coming from a typical H'wood committee, it just comes off as the same old mindless, paint-by-numbers, jejune, juvenile slop that is the best argument for chatgpt-written scripts being the industry standard for decades before chatgpt's creation.

37:41 I don't know what the commenter said to you, and they may have intended malice for sure, but I've recently heard "Luciferian" referred to as a philosophical way of living..? Like, not demonic but independent. Refusing the way that the powers that be tell us to so things and do our own thing instead. There's a content creator I heard talk about it but I don't remember who. (They used Kendrick Lamar as an example.) I don't think it's religion, like worshipping Satan, more of a mindset. Anyone reading this, please do your own research because this is just how it was explained to me!

thats not a pet – thats dinner. That should be a Monti Python classic 😀

Abby; on the patrons comment – You've helped so many of us learn to be more compassionate and treat others with grace and kindness. With that in mind, how could we ever expect more from you than you're capable of giving? We know you're just another human, and we know that to be human is to be less than perfect. We adore you because you're human, not in spite of it you absolute dork <3

I watched I saw the TV Glow a couple of months ago, thought it was an allegory for realizing you're neurodivergent, then about a month ago I realised I was non-binary

Hey Abi. I did enjoy the Nietzche videos. I really like seeing you open up personally during the post mortem. As a trans woman living in the US, I understand the despair and how hard it is to fight it. PS: I hope to start donating to Patreon soon, but moneey is tight.

Did she address essentialsalts' video? (Time code pls)
If that video is correct, Nietzsche reviled antisemitism and other facets of the fascist mindset.

I think I'm more confused now.

These videos are so long now that it's basically impossible to fact check everything yourself without understanding the entire topic first. What if something important gets omitted? A source-cited usually only verifies included info and can't check for omitted context

re: the nietzsche=white supremacy thing, honestly, there was a marked difference with your usual (and current!!!) rigorous style so you can probably count on a lot of your long-time viewers seeing that with empathy, despite the fact that there was more to say, and you had more to say, than straight equivalency

nah. he didn't like nationalism.

In Ecce Homo (1888), Nietzsche criticized the "German nation" and its "will to power (to Empire, to Reich)", thus underscoring an easy misinterpretation of the Wille zur Macht, the conception of Germans as a "race", and the "anti-Semitic way of writing history", or of making "history conform to the German Empire"

Rats are more contained but equally fluffy. Same with a lot of small rodents.

noo I missed it

Raw dogging the hardwood! 😮

Everything Everywhere All At Once was (to me) an excellent artistic expression of optimistic nihilism. It was the piece of art that made me even able to grasp the concept.

It unsubscribed me!😢 sad I missed the stream…

First time here.

Great video

Girl, I appreciate the self-reflection but you glossed over the entirety of Nietzsche’s work and life. It’s not an issue with the format but the actual things you said were so wrong in so many ways I genuinely wonder whether you have engaged with his actual work

But… What about the nihilism..? Personally, I think most people misunderstand nihilism but, I'm a hedonistic nihilist at heart so, bit of bias. So many only see the negative, that nothing matters. For me, the need for meaning is very close to a need for gawd. If you need the threat of hell, and the reward of heaven, to be a good person; you are not, in fact, a good person. You are only good under duress. I say we don't need the eternal threats of a judgemental patriarchy to be good people and love each other.
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The good side is, every single cringey thing you ever did also does not matter. I mean, it does to you. Everything matters, a little bit, in the moment. Telling the cop that nothing really matters won't keep you from getting arrested, if that's what they have decided to do. Meaning is ephemeral in the long term. That's why I think everyone is a nihilist on a long enough time frame. All we have is each other in this existence. {Jefferson?!? Oh, I can't wait for that. I've read a few biographies. As a Yankee democrat he is not my favorite founder. I like Adams.} I'd love to see Rupert Grint as The Doctor, just so his first line after regeneration can be; "Finally! Ginger!!"