Lawnmower Boy

You remember 4, 8, and 12 years ago a candidate going so far beyond the pale that their own party disavowed their statements? You remember former Presidents from the candidate's own party refusing to endorse him?  You remember a candidate making racist, bigoted, and mysogynist comments and statements multiple times and doubling down on them when challenged?  
 
What I remember is growing up in a Jewish household and learning about the Holocaust...and repeating each time "never again."  That didn't mean or insinuate that we should look for Hitler himself to arise again and oppose him -- it meant that we should learn from the past and recognize the signs of a demagogue and a tyrant.  The signs of fascism, bigotry and hatred.  And oppose them. 

Let me explain: "America" is the most awesomest scripted drama television show ever created for the Canadian market. (The producers also export it to Europe, Africa and Asia, where it does amazingly well, considering the language barriers.)
 
To support this show, entrepeneurs have built "Americaland" theme parks with duty free shopping at all major Canadian border crossings,further monetising this entertainment experience, which soon spread to newspapers, magazines, comic books, and even the mass book market. 
 
However, the initial "slice of life" broadcasting, such as Leave it to Beaver, The Nightly News, televised high school football (What? I mean, seriously?) and Cal Worthington used car commercials began to pall in, I want to say, the 1960s, and the producers moved on to an "event" format, with "Presidential elections" the fall after the Olympics --I think? Every four years, anyway. 
 
"Presidential elections" featured life-and-death struggles between larger-than-life characters running for "President of the United States," or, possibly, "King of the World." (The writers often blurred the distinction.) As with the Olympics, their popularity soon overwhelmed the original, occasional-event format, and events were spread into the previous year. An alternative, rival concept, the "Off year election," was also successful, because while the stakes were smaller, the personalities were even more outrageous. For example, the comic geniusses who invented "Tip O'Neill" and "Newt Gingrich" got the Nobel Prize for Literature, for example. I think? I don't pay much attention to that stuff. Anyway, they should have. 
 
Eventually, however, the producers got greedy, and began to try the madcap, cast-of-thousands format of "Off year elections" with the high stakes and larger-than-life personalities of "Presidential elections." The critics are, understandably, divided about this. Some see it as the culmination of two generations of first-class entertainment, and look forward to a sequel, perhaps a remake of The Day AFter, or Terminator. Others think that increasing inputs will just lead to declining returns, and that America will soon be cancelled. 
 
We'll see! One thing is for sure, and that is that it'll make for some fun television. (Of course, for the poor, delusional crackpots who think that it is real, it's a world-historical tragedy unfolding in real time, but that's why they should be taking their meds!)

Let me explain: "America" is the most awesomest scripted drama television show ever created for the Canadian market. (The producers also export it to Europe, Africa and Asia, where it does amazingly well, considering the language barriers.)
 
To support this show, entrepeneurs have built "Americaland" theme parks with duty free shopping at all major Canadian border crossings,further monetising this entertainment experience, which soon spread to newspapers, magazines, comic books, and even the mass book market. 
 
However, the initial "slice of life" broadcasting, such as Leave it to Beaver, The Nightly News, televised high school football (What? I mean, seriously?) and Cal Worthington used car commercials began to pall in, I want to say, the 1960s, and the producers moved on to an "event" format, with "Presidential elections" the fall after the Olympics --I think? Every four years, anyway. 
 
"Presidential elections" featured life-and-death struggles between larger-than-life characters running for "President of the United States," or, possibly, "King of the World." (The writers often blurred the distinction.) As with the Olympics, their popularity soon overwhelmed the original, occasional-event format, and events were spread into the previous year. An alternative, rival concept, the "Off year election," was also successful, because while the stakes were smaller, the personalities were even more outrageous. For example, the comic geniusses who invented "Tip O'Neill" and "Newt Gingrich" got the Nobel Prize for Literature, for example. I think? I don't pay much attention to that stuff. Anyway, they should have. 
 
Eventually, however, the producers got greedy, and began to try the madcap, cast-of-thousands format of "Off year elections" with the high stakes and larger-than-life personalities of "Presidential elections." The critics are, understandably, divided about this. Some see it as the culmination of two generations of first-class entertainment, and look forward to a sequel, perhaps a remake of The Day AFter, or Terminator. Others think that increasing inputs will just lead to declining returns, and that America will soon be cancelled. 
 
We'll see! One thing is for sure, and that is that it'll make for some fun television. (Of course, for the poor, delusional crackpots who think that it is real, it's a world-historical tragedy unfolding in real time, but that's why they should be taking their meds!)

Let me explain: "America" is the most awesomest scripted drama television show ever created for the Canadian market. (The producers also export it to Europe, Africa and Asia, where it does amazingly well, considering the language barriers.)
 
To support this show, entrepeneurs have built "Americaland" theme parks with duty free shopping at all major Canadian border crossings,further monetising this entertainment experience, which soon spread to newspapers, magazines, comic books, and even the mass book market. 
 
However, the initial "slice of life" broadcasting, such as Leave it to Beaver, The Nightly News, televised high school football (What? I mean, seriously?) and Cal Worthington used car commercials began to pall in, I want to say, the 1960s, and the producers moved on to an "event" format, with "Presidential elections" the fall after the Olympics --I think? Every four years, anyway. 
 
"Presidential elections" featured life-and-death struggles between larger-than-life characters running for "President of the United States," or, possibly, "King of the World." (The writers often blurred the distinction.) As with the Olympics, their popularity soon overwhelmed the original, occasional-event format, and events were spread into the previous year. An alternative, rival concept, the "Off year election," was also successful, because while the stakes were smaller, the personalities were even more outrageous. For example, the comic geniusses who invented "Tip O'Neill" and "Newt Gingrich" got the Nobel Prize for Literature, for example. I think? I don't pay much attention to that stuff. Anyway, they should have. 
 
Eventually, however, the producers got greedy, and began to try the madcap, cast-of-thousands format of "Off year elections" with the high stakes and larger-than-life personalities of "Presidential elections." The critics are, understandably, divided about this. Some see it as the culmination of two generations of first-class entertainment, and look forward to a sequel, perhaps a remake of The Day AFter, or Terminator. Others think that increasing inputs will just lead to declining returns, and that America will soon be cancelled. 
 
We'll see! One thing is for sure, and that is that it'll make for some fun television. (Of course, for the poor, delusional crackpots who think that it is real, it's a world-historical tragedy unfolding in real time, but that's why they should be taking their meds!)

Let me explain: "America" is the most awesomest scripted drama television show ever created for the Canadian market. (The producers also export it to Europe, Africa and Asia, where it does amazingly well, considering the language barriers.)
 
To support this show, entrepeneurs have built "Americaland" theme parks with duty free shopping at all major Canadian border crossings,further monetising this entertainment experience, which soon spread to newspapers, magazines, comic books, and even the mass book market. 
 
However, the initial "slice of life" broadcasting, such as Leave it to Beaver, The Nightly News, televised high school football (What? I mean, seriously?) and Cal Worthington used car commercials began to pall in, I want to say, the 1960s, and the producers moved on to an "event" format, with "Presidential elections" the fall after the Olympics --I think? Every four years, anyway. 
 
"Presidential elections" featured life-and-death struggles between larger-than-life characters running for "President of the United States," or, possibly, "King of the World." (The writers often blurred the distinction.) As with the Olympics, their popularity soon overwhelmed the original, occasional-event format, and events were spread into the previous year. An alternative, rival concept, the "Off year election," was also successful, because while the stakes were smaller, the personalities were even more outrageous. For example, the comic geniusses who invented "Tip O'Neill" and "Newt Gingrich" got the Nobel Prize for Literature, for example. I think? I don't pay much attention to that stuff. Anyway, they should have. 
 
Eventually, however, the producers got greedy, and began to try the madcap, cast-of-thousands format of "Off year elections" with the high stakes and larger-than-life personalities of "Presidential elections." The critics are, understandably, divided about this. Some see it as the culmination of two generations of first-class entertainment, and look forward to a sequel, perhaps a remake of The Day AFter, or Terminator. Others think that increasing inputs will just lead to declining returns, and that America will soon be cancelled. 
 
We'll see! One thing is for sure, and that is that it'll make for some fun television. (Of course, for the poor, delusional crackpots who think that it is real, it's a world-historical tragedy unfolding in real time, but that's why they should be taking their meds!)

Let me explain: "America" is the most awesomest scripted drama television show ever created for the Canadian market. (The producers also export it to Europe, Africa and Asia, where it does amazingly well, considering the language barriers.)
 
To support this show, entrepeneurs have built "Americaland" theme parks with duty free shopping at all major Canadian border crossings,further monetising this entertainment experience, which soon spread to newspapers, magazines, comic books, and even the mass book market. 
 
However, the initial "slice of life" broadcasting, such as Leave it to Beaver, The Nightly News, televised high school football (What? I mean, seriously?) and Cal Worthington used car commercials began to pall in, I want to say, the 1960s, and the producers moved on to an "event" format, with "Presidential elections" the fall after the Olympics --I think? Every four years, anyway. 
 
"Presidential elections" featured life-and-death struggles between larger-than-life characters running for "President of the United States," or, possibly, "King of the World." (The writers often blurred the distinction.) As with the Olympics, their popularity soon overwhelmed the original, occasional-event format, and events were spread into the previous year. An alternative, rival concept, the "Off year election," was also successful, because while the stakes were smaller, the personalities were even more outrageous. For example, the comic geniusses who invented "Tip O'Neill" and "Newt Gingrich" got the Nobel Prize for Literature, for example. I think? I don't pay much attention to that stuff. Anyway, they should have. 
 
Eventually, however, the producers got greedy, and began to try the madcap, cast-of-thousands format of "Off year elections" with the high stakes and larger-than-life personalities of "Presidential elections." The critics are, understandably, divided about this. Some see it as the culmination of two generations of first-class entertainment, and look forward to a sequel, perhaps a remake of The Day AFter, or Terminator. Others think that increasing inputs will just lead to declining returns, and that America will soon be cancelled. 
 
We'll see! One thing is for sure, and that is that it'll make for some fun television. (Of course, for the poor, delusional crackpots who think that it is real, it's a world-historical tragedy unfolding in real time, but that's why they should be taking their meds!)

If by "misleadingly presentd," you meant to type "not misleadingly presented at all," then I agree! The rate is per million, and not absolute. Since there are fewer blacks than whites, it can be both true that more whites are shot by police, and that the rate per million of blacks being shot by police is higher than whites!
 
If by "sad part" you mean that it's sad that most people are killed by friends and relatives, that is certainly a sad thing. (So, blacks by blacks, whites by whites, Albano-Greek Americans by Albano-Greek Americans, etc.) Murder is always sad. You know what else is sad? Being shot by police is sad. The police are supposed to be there to protect us, and we should really make some kind of effort to prevent it.
 
Obviously, there are cases where police-involved shootings are all but inevitable. It's the cases where it's not --you know, twelve-year-olds with toy guns, unarmed men pinned down by several officers, law-abiding citizens pulled over in "driving while black" type encounters. That's where there's an argument for oversight.
 
Or we could just smear them all with guilt by association. That works too. For a certain value of "works." 

It's not amazing at all. We understand that police-involved shootings emerge from circumstances in which police confront civilians. Confrontations don't just happen, like weather. There are realfactors, if sometimes misunderstandings, which lead the police to make the decision to shoot. In most cases, police shoot people who were cruising for some kind of bad outcome. With the caveat that this kind of argument can lead to, "Oh, sure, we executed him for a murder he didn't commit, but you know, he drove over the limit all the time," we can have some sympathy for the police.
 
Here is the problem that some Americans keep dodging around: Police killed almost five black people per every million black residents of the U.S., compared with about 2 per million for both white and hispanic victims.
 
These circumstances are, of course, no novelty. When I say, "you Americans," I have absolutely no reason to be smug. Substitute "First Nations" for Black; iand you're good to make exactly the same kind of criticisms in Canada. (Actually, it's a lot worse, if anything.) Australia? "aboriginal." New Zealand, "Maori;" in the United Kingdom, it has been a struggle of generations to get "Irish" out of this category, and central Europe has a persistent problem of police maltreatment of Roma and Cinti. Sweden? Lapps and Finns. North Germany? Poles, until ethnic cleansing, fortunately, he said, with intentional irony, segregated the populations. (Notice that while Christian north Germans notoriously have unfortunate reactions to Jewish Germans, the nature of the abuse of that minority has been very different in character.) China? Uighurs. Indonesia? Ethnic Chinese. Japan? Ethnic Koreans. The Philippines? Muslims.
 
Here, in fact, is an acceptable generalisation: it happens everywhere.
 
In particular, in regions of the United States with small and segregated visible minority populations, the same patterns of discrimination emerge against whites with visible markings of "white trash" status, and no-one is less happy about it than the people identified by their neighbours as "white trash." 
 
So  do we explain this global phenomena, from Greenland's icy plain to the meth-addled trailer parks of Oregon, in which some police use force disproportionately more readily against members of low-status visible minorities than against members of high status majorities? The best explanation is that police forces are sometimes ineffective in preventing bullies from joining the ranks. Those bullies exploit opportunities to escalate situations, and in some small number of cases, those escalations go badly awrey, leading to a number of unnecessary killings.
 
How do you address these problems? Well, for the neighbourhood in which Bill Gates lives, the answer is obvious. A policeman who is dumb enough to harass Bill Gates daughters hears all about it when he applies for his next job, at 7-11. (Notice that the way power works in society, Bill Gates doesn't have to ask for this, or even want it. It just happens, because who wants someone on board who has pissed Bill Gates off?) Oh, and also Bill Gates' nephews and nieces and --you know what? Just to be safe, let's not pull over any teens in expensive cars in this neighbourhood.
 
Minorities, though? They don't live in Bill Gates' neighbourhood. They don't look like Bill Gates' nephew. They don't have this power. Again, because it is not possible to emphasis this enouogh, it does not matter which minority, which neighbourhood, because I could be talking about the slums of Ulaan Bator or Algiers as esily as St. Paul, Minnesota. Blacks in Minnesota, about Irish in Yorkshire, or Koreans in Osaka, it doesn't matter. The solution? Internal checks. No one likes being sat down in the office and asked "What the heck happened there?", but and take it from personal experience in one sector at least, unless you enjoy really long lineups at the checkouts, it sometimes has to be done. The problem lies in pushing the institution into making the effort, and sometimes this takes pushing.
 
But let's get back to the whole bit about being puzzled. There is, of course, an alternative explanation for the problem: these minorities, as minorities, had it coming, because they're all like that. That's why I've placed heavy emphasis on the fact that this is a global problem, that the culture and country of origins (never mind "race") of the discriminate minority is pretty clearly irrelevant. A  group can be a low-crime majority in one country, a model minority in a third, and a trouble-making underclass in a third tends to demolish the notion that we are talking about something intrinsic to culture or (God help us), "race." It's a nexus of class and visible markers! It's something we've known since kindergarten! Bullies are good at spotting people they can bully, and the people who can be bullied are the people who can't fight back!
 
There is one further and particularly uncomfortable aspect of this, which is that we tend to externalise categories like "bully." It's of a piece of that whole "banality of evil" thing, where the belief that "I am a good person" serves to allow the self-perceived "good person" to participate in horrible crimes, since they can't be horrible, on account of their being a "good person." Sure in our goodness, we wander off and make ourselves feel a bit better in a situation by bullying someone. Someone who, we tell ourselves, "had it coming." To my shame, I've been there. I'm pretty sure everyone has. 
 
This is a universal human problem that demands constant and uncomfortable self-reflection. Do we feel uncomfortable when we are press on it! Of course we do! And, hey, you know who is really good at pressing this button? Bullies! It doesn't matter! The issue isn't that the other guy is being mean to us for a little "harmless" ribbing of poor Brenda! (I mean, some hypothetical individual who isn't a professor in New York these days, God, I'm sorry. . . ) The issue is that we did it, and we should probably stop and think about it before we do it again.
 
And, you know, some twelve-year old with a toy gun gets shot down in a routine police encounter. 

"Do you want me to pull this convention over?"
 
"But Mom! They started it first!"

I think phantomgm has trouble reading normal text

It's a sadly uninformed opinion. I'm not sure he knows what Fascism means, and there is a certain irony in a guy who directed Die Hard and Predator griping about "hyper masculinity"

If by "misleadingly presentd," you meant to type "not misleadingly presented at all," then I agree! The rate is per million, and not absolute. Since there are fewer blacks than whites, it can be both true that more whites are shot by police, and that the rate per million of blacks being shot by police is higher than whites!
 
If by "sad part" you mean that it's sad that most people are killed by friends and relatives, that is certainly a sad thing. (So, blacks by blacks, whites by whites, Albano-Greek Americans by Albano-Greek Americans, etc.) Murder is always sad. You know what else is sad? Being shot by police is sad. The police are supposed to be there to protect us, and we should really make some kind of effort to prevent it.
 
Obviously, there are cases where police-involved shootings are all but inevitable. It's the cases where it's not --you know, twelve-year-olds with toy guns, unarmed men pinned down by several officers, law-abiding citizens pulled over in "driving while black" type encounters. That's where there's an argument for oversight.
 
Or we could just smear them all with guilt by association. That works too. For a certain value of "works." 

If by "misleadingly presentd," you meant to type "not misleadingly presented at all," then I agree! The rate is per million, and not absolute. Since there are fewer blacks than whites, it can be both true that more whites are shot by police, and that the rate per million of blacks being shot by police is higher than whites!
 
If by "sad part" you mean that it's sad that most people are killed by friends and relatives, that is certainly a sad thing. (So, blacks by blacks, whites by whites, Albano-Greek Americans by Albano-Greek Americans, etc.) Murder is always sad. You know what else is sad? Being shot by police is sad. The police are supposed to be there to protect us, and we should really make some kind of effort to prevent it.
 
Obviously, there are cases where police-involved shootings are all but inevitable. It's the cases where it's not --you know, twelve-year-olds with toy guns, unarmed men pinned down by several officers, law-abiding citizens pulled over in "driving while black" type encounters. That's where there's an argument for oversight.
 
Or we could just smear them all with guilt by association. That works too. For a certain value of "works." 

Or, people figure out how to do stuff, and then scientists arrive to explain how it was done. . . 

If by "misleadingly presentd," you meant to type "not misleadingly presented at all," then I agree! The rate is per million, and not absolute. Since there are fewer blacks than whites, it can be both true that more whites are shot by police, and that the rate per million of blacks being shot by police is higher than whites!
 
If by "sad part" you mean that it's sad that most people are killed by friends and relatives, that is certainly a sad thing. (So, blacks by blacks, whites by whites, Albano-Greek Americans by Albano-Greek Americans, etc.) Murder is always sad. You know what else is sad? Being shot by police is sad. The police are supposed to be there to protect us, and we should really make some kind of effort to prevent it.
 
Obviously, there are cases where police-involved shootings are all but inevitable. It's the cases where it's not --you know, twelve-year-olds with toy guns, unarmed men pinned down by several officers, law-abiding citizens pulled over in "driving while black" type encounters. That's where there's an argument for oversight.
 
Or we could just smear them all with guilt by association. That works too. For a certain value of "works." 

If by "misleadingly presentd," you meant to type "not misleadingly presented at all," then I agree! The rate is per million, and not absolute. Since there are fewer blacks than whites, it can be both true that more whites are shot by police, and that the rate per million of blacks being shot by police is higher than whites!
 
If by "sad part" you mean that it's sad that most people are killed by friends and relatives, that is certainly a sad thing. (So, blacks by blacks, whites by whites, Albano-Greek Americans by Albano-Greek Americans, etc.) Murder is always sad. You know what else is sad? Being shot by police is sad. The police are supposed to be there to protect us, and we should really make some kind of effort to prevent it.
 
Obviously, there are cases where police-involved shootings are all but inevitable. It's the cases where it's not --you know, twelve-year-olds with toy guns, unarmed men pinned down by several officers, law-abiding citizens pulled over in "driving while black" type encounters. That's where there's an argument for oversight.
 
Or we could just smear them all with guilt by association. That works too. For a certain value of "works." 

It's not amazing at all. We understand that police-involved shootings emerge from circumstances in which police confront civilians. Confrontations don't just happen, like weather. There are realfactors, if sometimes misunderstandings, which lead the police to make the decision to shoot. In most cases, police shoot people who were cruising for some kind of bad outcome. With the caveat that this kind of argument can lead to, "Oh, sure, we executed him for a murder he didn't commit, but you know, he drove over the limit all the time," we can have some sympathy for the police.
 
Here is the problem that some Americans keep dodging around: Police killed almost five black people per every million black residents of the U.S., compared with about 2 per million for both white and hispanic victims.
 
These circumstances are, of course, no novelty. When I say, "you Americans," I have absolutely no reason to be smug. Substitute "First Nations" for Black; iand you're good to make exactly the same kind of criticisms in Canada. (Actually, it's a lot worse, if anything.) Australia? "aboriginal." New Zealand, "Maori;" in the United Kingdom, it has been a struggle of generations to get "Irish" out of this category, and central Europe has a persistent problem of police maltreatment of Roma and Cinti. Sweden? Lapps and Finns. North Germany? Poles, until ethnic cleansing, fortunately, he said, with intentional irony, segregated the populations. (Notice that while Christian north Germans notoriously have unfortunate reactions to Jewish Germans, the nature of the abuse of that minority has been very different in character.) China? Uighurs. Indonesia? Ethnic Chinese. Japan? Ethnic Koreans. The Philippines? Muslims.
 
Here, in fact, is an acceptable generalisation: it happens everywhere.
 
In particular, in regions of the United States with small and segregated visible minority populations, the same patterns of discrimination emerge against whites with visible markings of "white trash" status, and no-one is less happy about it than the people identified by their neighbours as "white trash." 
 
So  do we explain this global phenomena, from Greenland's icy plain to the meth-addled trailer parks of Oregon, in which some police use force disproportionately more readily against members of low-status visible minorities than against members of high status majorities? The best explanation is that police forces are sometimes ineffective in preventing bullies from joining the ranks. Those bullies exploit opportunities to escalate situations, and in some small number of cases, those escalations go badly awrey, leading to a number of unnecessary killings.
 
How do you address these problems? Well, for the neighbourhood in which Bill Gates lives, the answer is obvious. A policeman who is dumb enough to harass Bill Gates daughters hears all about it when he applies for his next job, at 7-11. (Notice that the way power works in society, Bill Gates doesn't have to ask for this, or even want it. It just happens, because who wants someone on board who has pissed Bill Gates off?) Oh, and also Bill Gates' nephews and nieces and --you know what? Just to be safe, let's not pull over any teens in expensive cars in this neighbourhood.
 
Minorities, though? They don't live in Bill Gates' neighbourhood. They don't look like Bill Gates' nephew. They don't have this power. Again, because it is not possible to emphasis this enouogh, it does not matter which minority, which neighbourhood, because I could be talking about the slums of Ulaan Bator or Algiers as esily as St. Paul, Minnesota. Blacks in Minnesota, about Irish in Yorkshire, or Koreans in Osaka, it doesn't matter. The solution? Internal checks. No one likes being sat down in the office and asked "What the heck happened there?", but and take it from personal experience in one sector at least, unless you enjoy really long lineups at the checkouts, it sometimes has to be done. The problem lies in pushing the institution into making the effort, and sometimes this takes pushing.
 
But let's get back to the whole bit about being puzzled. There is, of course, an alternative explanation for the problem: these minorities, as minorities, had it coming, because they're all like that. That's why I've placed heavy emphasis on the fact that this is a global problem, that the culture and country of origins (never mind "race") of the discriminate minority is pretty clearly irrelevant. A  group can be a low-crime majority in one country, a model minority in a third, and a trouble-making underclass in a third tends to demolish the notion that we are talking about something intrinsic to culture or (God help us), "race." It's a nexus of class and visible markers! It's something we've known since kindergarten! Bullies are good at spotting people they can bully, and the people who can be bullied are the people who can't fight back!
 
There is one further and particularly uncomfortable aspect of this, which is that we tend to externalise categories like "bully." It's of a piece of that whole "banality of evil" thing, where the belief that "I am a good person" serves to allow the self-perceived "good person" to participate in horrible crimes, since they can't be horrible, on account of their being a "good person." Sure in our goodness, we wander off and make ourselves feel a bit better in a situation by bullying someone. Someone who, we tell ourselves, "had it coming." To my shame, I've been there. I'm pretty sure everyone has. 
 
This is a universal human problem that demands constant and uncomfortable self-reflection. Do we feel uncomfortable when we are press on it! Of course we do! And, hey, you know who is really good at pressing this button? Bullies! It doesn't matter! The issue isn't that the other guy is being mean to us for a little "harmless" ribbing of poor Brenda! (I mean, some hypothetical individual who isn't a professor in New York these days, God, I'm sorry. . . ) The issue is that we did it, and we should probably stop and think about it before we do it again.
 
And, you know, some twelve-year old with a toy gun gets shot down in a routine police encounter. 

But, eventually, you will be Soylent Green.

I'm not arguing that the weaponisation of space isn't an important and ongoing problem. I'm arguing that pre-orbited "kinetic strike weapons" are a dumb idea.
 
I mean, just beyond stupid. 
 
This artificial meteorite concept is often nicknamed ‘the rods from God’ even by its supporters, who usually claim it would be relatively cheap to set up (indeed some claim it already exists). They give the impression that at the press of a button, these rods will just fall from the sky on their victims. However it is not that easy. As each rod circles the Earth it is moving at least 7 km/s, to make the rod fall from orbit under gravity, we need to adjust its orbit to intersect the Earth’s surface. To do this each rod therefore needs to be attached to a rocket motor and its fuel tanks (or solid propellant), suddenly each cheap 100kg rod has ballooned into a multi-tonne vehicle, perhaps the size of a Soyuz spacecraft. At least it does not need a heatshield, a tungsten projectile could reasonably be expected to survive the expected heat of re-entry.
The ground-penetrating effects of such projectiles is grossly over-stated too- do falling meteorites of this sort of size always bury themselves hundreds of metres under the ground? Laboratory experiments show that objects striking the surface at speeds greater than 1 km/s are melted by their own kinetic energy before they penetrate the ground, effectively liquefying on impact. Rather than slamming into the target at 20 times the speed of sound, the rods may need to be slowed down to fast aircraft speeds to prevent them disintegrating on impact.
The problems of guiding each rod is usually dismissed with handwaving references to GPS, although some armchair space marshals also follow Pournelle’s fictional lead to suggest each rod would have its own imaging sensor to find and steer onto moving targets like tanks or warships. I have no doubt that the electronics are feasible but the rod now needs control surfaces hooked to its guidance system and sounds more like a missile than a cheap metal rod. Do these now complex projectiles require maintenance in orbit?
Finally, it is said that the rods can hit any target on Earth minutes after the KILL button is pressed. Once again, this doesn’t seem properly thought out. The rods can only hit targets on or near their orbital track, for weeks at a time some parts of the world would be invulnerable as their potential attackers would never come within hundreds of kilometers from their positions. The only way around this limitation is to have hundred of rods waiting ready in multiple orbits, requiring a ludicrous number of launches. Even if the target is directly under the rod’s orbital track, the attack may not be instantaneous, as those who order the attack wait perhaps 90 minutes for the rods to move around the Earth into position. Even the Joint Chiefs of Staff cannot overrule Sir Isaac Newton.

Speaking for left coast heathens, pancakes ain't much, but if you put  Granma's chokecherry syrup on them. . . 
 
 

Maybe they could make a comic book movie that isn't an origin story? Crazy talk, I know.

He hasn't Knocked Three Times or Tied a Yellow Ribbon Round The Ole Oak Tree in years.  The gods have a strange affinity for 1970s music.

The reason they go young for franchise parts is that it takes years between films, and years aren't kind on actresses particularly in their 30s.

This seagull was turned bright orange after falling into a vat of chicken tikka masala

This show is dead to me!
 
I'm just waiting to see if it's because there's too much Superman, or too little. 
 
Or possibly Lois Lane. It could be dead to me because they cast Lois the wrong way. Or if they don't cast her at all. Gotta admit, we sure are spoiled for choices in superhero TV these days.