Spoilers Civil War Movie

[Rabulias]

Yes, we have quite a few (27), but a new one hasn’t been ratified in over 3 decades. The Equal Rights Amendment hasn’t been ratified yet and it passed both houses of congress in 1972. It is pretty fantastical to imagine such an amendment passing in the modern political climate in America.

The ERA has kind of met the criteria for ratification in 2020, but it was well past the deadline of 1979, and some state legislatures have also rescinded their earlier approval in the last few decades. It's a tangled legal mess.

Just for context, here are the ratification dates of the previous amendments:
1 through 10 (The Bill of Rights): 1791
11: 1795
12: 1804
13: 1865
14: 1868
15: 1870
16: 1913
17: 1913
18: 1919
19: 1920
20: 1933
21: 1933
22: 1951
23: 1961
24: 1964
25: 1967
26: 1971
27: 1992

Our current period without an amendment is 32 years, about half the longest stretch of 61 years between 12 and 13. But one can see that for most of the 20th century, amending was a fairly regular thing.

 

[trappedslider]

The ERA has kind of met the criteria for ratification in 2020, but it was well past the deadline of 1979, and some state legislatures have also rescinded their earlier approval in the last few decades. It's a tangled legal mess.

Just for context, here are the ratification dates of the previous amendments:
1 through 10 (The Bill of Rights): 1791

27: 1992

Our current period without an amendment is 32 years, about half the longest stretch of 61 years between 12 and 13. But one can see that for most of the 20th century, amending was a fairly regular thing.

Fun fact: In 1992, 203 years after it was proposed, as Article 2 for the Bill of Rights was ratified as the 27th Amendment to the Constitution.

 

[Umbran]

Well, to be fair, he was Britsplainging to a Canuksplainer

If you insist on fairness, I guess I can manage it...

 

[Umbran]

27: 1992

Our current period without an amendment is 32 years, about half the longest stretch of 61 years between 12 and 13. But one can see that for most of the 20th century, amending was a fairly regular thing.

Note - the 27th Amendment was in process of ratification for 202 years, 7 months, and 10 days. It was originally proposed in 1789 along with what we now call the Bill of Rights. So it is a bit of an outlier for analysis of passing Amendments to the Constitution.

 

[RangerWickett]

I just got out of seeing it.

My take is that clearly the 'villain' is a government that treats journalists as the enemy and that values holding onto power over the truth.

That said, there's a vein of criticism in the film aimed against those types of journalists who are motivated by getting a scoop more than by upholding any sort of principles. When you're driven by that, you stop being an informer for the public and start feeding them a spectacle that leads to seeing conflict as a sport where you cheer, rather than a real complex challenge.

I think the most resonant line for me was Kirsten Dunst's character saying she was a war journalist overseas because she thought it would make Americans back home see the horror so they'd know better than to let it happen here. The implication being that no, it didn't actually work.

Who's to blame for that?

I don't think the point is to say that both sides are the same, but to say that you only avoid all this horror if you actually know the truth, and actually Pay Attention.

 

[Autumnal]

For British readers: imagine if a PM had been in power and simply didn’t call a general election for eight years and counting, particularly if they also suspended the Supreme Court for the duration of a crisis whose definition kept changing.

 

[Morrus]

For British readers: imagine if a PM had been in power and simply didn’t call a general election for eight years and counting, particularly if they also suspended the Supreme Court for the duration of a crisis whose definition kept changing.

Obviously we are capable of understanding governmental structures different to our own, and we don't need odd analogies in order to do so. We also understand things like dinosaurs and Jupiter and medieval jousts and Australian pop stars and haggis, none of which are part of our daily lives. Heck, I've had to explain your constitution to your own fellow citizens more than once when they try to claim I'm somehow violating their 'free speech' rights. Where you're born really doesn't grant basic reasoning faculties.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

That said, there's a vein of criticism in the film aimed against those types of journalists who are motivated by getting a scoop more than by upholding any sort of principles.

Somewhat ironic given the one journalist the film thanks is entirely unprincipled, and two of the people they took footage from are literally provocateurs who try to make themselves into the story, or create the story. I don't think it's a particularly good message, either, because journalists "getting the scoop" isn't really a problem these days. On the direct contrary, journalists studiously ignoring the scoop because it doesn't play well, and instead merely repeating the "party line" whatever that is, seems like more of a real issue (especially as that party line is moving rapidly in a specific direction thanks to the Overton Window).

I think the most resonant line for me was Kirsten Dunst's character saying she was a war journalist overseas because she thought it would make Americans back home see the horror so they'd know better than to let it happen here. The implication being that no, it didn't actually work.

Who's to blame for that?

I mean, I don't know what the film is saying here, but the degree to which war journalism is censored today (in the US and UK mainstream media - hate to use the term but it's appropriate here), is insane, compared to how it was in the 1990s and earlier. I think that contributes significantly to making it in effective for this purpose. Horrific scenes that you might routinely see in the 1990s are now frequently just not shown, or shown very briefly with heavy blurring. The footage is still being shot - it's still making it to the internet (albeit often by citizens not "official" journalists) - you can find it easily enough but is it on CNN, Fox, or for that matter the BBC, in the same way it was in say, 1992? No. It isn't.

So I am unconvinced that war journalism can have much of an impact on people's willingness to go to war, when so little of it really shows the actual results, and instead a lot of it borders on glorification.