To be honest, I’ve read a lot of fictional representations of ‘anarchist’ or ‘libertarian’ societies and they all fall apart if you look at them too closely.
“The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress” is a science fiction classic and a fun read, but the ‘free’ society it envisions depends on everything being controlled by a single giant computer. It’s set on Luna 200 years after the Moon became the prison of choice for all Earth nations. No prison gangs for ‘reasons.’
I worked alongside doctors for years, and I have plenty of stories about how Western medicine failed.
I also have plenty more stories about people who didn’t listen to their doctors and ended up regretting it.
Do you know the TOS salt shaker story?
In ‘The Man Trap’ there’s a scene where two members chat. There’s a salt shaker prominent in the scene. The props department sent someone out to buy a bunch of exotic salt shakers. When they looked at the ‘modern’ shakers they realized that no one at home would know what they were supposed to be.
In the end they shot the scene with a salt shaker from the commissary and used the exotic ones to fill Dr. McCoy’s medical bag.
In the immortal words of Betty White.
“I don’t know why ‘pussy’ is used to mean someone who is weak. I’ve got one, and that thing can take a pounding!”
Hunter Thompson served in the Air Force in the 1950s.
He said that the draft had good points, because it actually forced all sorts of people to work together.
At that time, you still had rich people who would send their kids to the Army.
No one here is qualified to diagnose your friend.
I edited my original comment.
I read the books before I saw the movie. In the books, the character is straight.
However, on the show ‘Mad Men’ and in the novel 'The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" there are characters so deeply closeted that they’d rather die than admit who they are.
That’s the kind of ‘gay’ I was thinking.
A gay cop in the 1950’s?
Read some history.
I the original novels there’s a closeted gay cop who kills himself after his secret comes out.
If you rewatch ‘LA Confidential’ and realize the Spacey was gay, it makes his crusade to find out who killed the hustler make a lot more sense.
There’s no one “American” educational system.
Under the Federal system, each State regulates itself, and each town can do what it wants. Two towns in the same state can have wildly different standards and outcomes, depending on the local Board of Education.
Remember her from years ago. She tried to break up the monotony.
I don’t want to be a billionaire.
I just want all the money companies spend repainting/redecorating when they change names.
I had the honor of meeting some old school Communists, folks who had gone to Spain to fight Franco and been blacklisted. They told us that they’d tried to warn people to vote against Nixon in 1968, but the younger folks thought that Nixon and Humphrey were equally bad.
It seems like an unending cycle.
Nixon lit the fire.
Before Nixon was elected, middle class in the US was one Union job paying for a house full of kids and a stay at home wife. By 1976, a family needing two incomes was becoming common.
Nixon had a lot more on his plate. Vietnam, inflation, and the energy crisis. Also, Nixon was President while there was a powerful free press. He lit the fire, but wasn’t able to really get to work. Heck, Nixon had to start the EPA because a river caught fire.
Reagan had incredible luck. He had three Soviet leaders die within months of each other while the USSR was caught in the Afghanistan fiasco. Not to mention Chernobyl, Solidarity trade union in Poland, and other headaches. He also came in at the dawn of Fox News and the cable revolution that helped him gut the Fairness doctrine and deregulate the media.
The funny thing is, a lot of people didn’t vote for Carter because he wasn’t perfect.
They wanted him to do more about South Africa, but his hands were tied because the US military needed South African chromium.
Instead of backing the better candidate, some people thought that letting a GOP blowhard like Reagan come in would somehow push people to the Left.
Sound familiar?
I got your airship battle right here!
https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-guns-above-robyn-bennis/90734a18a40dfd82
The Guns Above. Napoleonic airships. Pretty much the only fantasy element in the book is an unlimited supply of helium. The author did a great job ‘engineering’ the ships.
I couldn’t sit through the 2011 movie, although the recent French language version with Eva Green as Milady was not bad.
There was a trend a few years back to mix heroin and cocaine. We’d get overdose victims and apply narcan. Instead of coming around peacefully they’d go from a nod to cocaine psychosis.
My friends who worked for EMS had a lot of stories about that.
First, Trump made one of the worst deals ever with ‘Art Of The Deal’ The ghostwriter got cover credit and half the royalties, something unheard of in publishing.
Second, after having had access to Trump, the writer left and stayed away from him. He’s spent decades tellign the world what a POS Trump is.
There’s a documentary about that.
https://youtu.be/rNuk_boPD8Q?t=57