>Referring to the rise of global terrorism, Mr Scorsese said that the aftermath of the 2003 Iraq invasion "had created thousands and thousands of Travis Bickles."
>"They say they have nothing to lose," he added.
>Bickles is the depressed loner at the centre of his classic 1976 thriller Taxi Driver who is drawn to violence in his disgust against the decadence and sleaze he perceives around him.
>Mr Scorcese was in Dublin to collect a gold medal from Trinity College's Philosophical Society.
I can't help but feel this is a reference to us..."young men with nothing to lose"
No mate, I think he's talking about the young men in Iraq. If you're American and you think you have "nothing to lose," you don't actually understand what that phrase means
Jackson Barnes
What
Jordan Sanchez
>le you have to be a starving african to complain about being hungry epin maymay
get fucked mate
Hudson Barnes
>"had created thousands and thousands of Travis Bickles."
So, more heroic individuals who are ready to take a stand against immoral society? I'm okay with this.
Joshua Bell
So how do we turn this into a critique toward Trump and Trump supporters so that I can start shitposting about Scorsese and his flicks?
Levi Miller
that's the point, you've never been hungry in your life
Jack Cox
I'm hungry right now though
Jaxon Hughes
I'm not talking about "hungry," I'm talking about "nothing to lose." I'm not saying Americans don't have problems, but you have a hell of a lot to lose. In this particular comparison, we could start with your fertile farmlands and not-especially-war-torn cities. Then we could move on to the countless private charities and government entitlements that prevent you from dying of hunger, even if you still get "hungry" sometimes. For fuck's sake you guys really need a dose of perspective
Carson Johnson
The shameless veneer of glamour and superficiality masks the rot in our society caused by rampant consumerism, selfishness, materialism and nihilism. Tell me, are you willing to fight for your iPhone? Are you willing to die for the latest car? Are you prepared to sacrifice everything for the stream of garbage pouring out of Hollywood and television networks? Our society has lost its soul - and to many, that is everything we had to lose.
Aiden Clark
Nah, but see, you're still operating within your fallacious refusal to see things relatively. A billionaire can have nothing to lose. "Nothing to lose" doesn't just mean you have no things, that's a hopelessly literal and juvenile interpretation of that figure of speech.
Luke Clark
Loner cast from the world because he refuses to participate in the godawful -vanity -degeneration of moral, emotional, physical, sexual, spiritual values -destruction of dignity that takes place in our society, and the growing willingness to use force.
Nothing left to lose means that the Bickle has no longer ties to the world that would prevent him from using violence.
Bentley Hughes
We have come to the apex of postmodernism,a man disgruntled by a slight change in his countries immigration policy equated his plight to someone's who has known nothing but war and terror for 15 years now. And he justified it by saying he feels bad too...
Kevin Nguyen
But
Travis Bickle lived in America
Andrew Collins
>be american >pretend you have it rough to feel fulfilled Sad.
Lincoln Smith
>a man disgruntled by a slight change in his countries immigration policy Oh, if that were only all it were...
Leo Harris
He lived in a version of America where young men (including himself) were legally compelled to fight in a poorly conceived, pointless clusterfuck of a war, where New York City, the hub of American industry, was a crime-choked hellhole.
Again, I know we've still got problems now, but you're fucked if you think it's the same thing. You really don't understand how good you've actually got it.
James Thomas
I don't dare to read the OP. Has this man I love said something SJW-y?
Hudson Martin
>Referring to the rise of global terrorism, Mr Batts said that the aftermath of the 2003 Iraq invasion "had created thousands and thousands of Spitshine Tommys."
>"They say they'll make your shoes look like fuckin' mirrors," he added.
>Tommy is the depressed shoe shiner at the centre of his classic 1990 gangster movie Goodfellas who is drawn to violence in his disgust against the shinebox and ball breaking he perceives around him.
>Mr Batts was in Dublin to get his shoes shined from Trinity College's Philosophical Society.
Mason Mitchell
You're completely missing the point, lol. In this article he's obviously talking about the Iraqis. I don't want to "minimize your experiences," you precious little snowflakes, but how exactly did the 2003 invasion of Iraq leave YOU with nothing to lose?
John Sanchez
how many days without eating?
Sebastian Roberts
>you precious little snowflakes
Liberal attempts to hijack this term is a hilarious testament to your inability to meme effectively
Brayden Reyes
luckily he doesn't have much time left
Levi Allen
Bro literally food stamps. I got them, they give you like 200 a month to buy any food at Walmart and that's if you're single and unattached (you get more depending on family size), only people who literally can't walk or are retarded have to worry about starving in the US.
Gavin Bell
all those cunts complaining about obama on Sup Forums and saying trump is gonna take down globalists arent old enough to remember that it was those republican dipshits that fucked up the middle east
Dylan Ramirez
Not that user, but that's precisely what it means to have nothing to lose. A figure of speech is not literal, but it's not for granted. A billionaire can have nothing to lose only if he doesn't value the money he has at all (ie, he wouldn't fight to keep his money, he would burn it for his values, etc). The billionaire can be radical in some respect, but still he has something to lose, in the sense that if he loses his battle, whatever it is, he has something to go back to. A person who really has nothing to lose, has no guarantee of home, no place to return to (metaphorically, but also literally sometimes).
Oliver Perez
What makes you think I'm a liberal? The "snowflake" thing applies well to anyone who's being a whiny little bitch
Austin Miller
>Battsposting never took off Real shame.
Ethan Cox
>Ameriburgers think they're the good guys
Daniel White
A billionaire has at least a billion dollars to lose. Maybe that's "literal," but when you're comparing that billionaire to a kid who lives in a desert with no money whose home and family have been destroyed, it's also accurate. Money doesn't buy you happiness but it buys you a hell of a lot of options. In whatever kind of "nothing to lose" mission you imagine that billionaire is on, the money will probably come in handy
Brandon Ross
Go fuck yourself Scorsese.
OIF veteran.
Carson Adams
Sure, and contemporary young America men live in a country where IT jobs are farmed out to India & manufacturing jobs are farmed out to Mexico and China, robbing them of the means to build their lives and start/provide for their families, and even if this hadn't been taken from them the current form of cultural warfare has done away with the role of the man in society, condemning even the existence of the father, the husband. They wander through their lives without purpose or responsibility, and if you're going to turn around now and say "yeah but they're not starving to death or being shot at so they should be grateful" then we need to cut this discussion short because you're operating on a level that completely eschews human psychology and spits on the fundamental requirements of a healthy mind and it's not worth my effort to sink down and face you there.
Austin Harris
>I was too dumb for university so went to the desert and killed brown people >this means my opinion is important Think again, welfare queen
Jaxon Jackson
"Snowflake" refers fairly specifically to the gender and sexuality rainbow. Since snowflakes are all unique and hopelessly fragile. You shouldn't use words when you don't know what they mean, user.
Caleb Davis
hes actually not though
Lucas Hernandez
>literally nicknamed land of opportunity >no, I have it worse than africans
Eli Powell
Well see what I read here is "a figure of speech is not literal" followed by a completely literal interpretation of the figure of speech. The billionaire doesn't value his money, but whatever happens he has money to go back to, so as long as he has that thing to go back to he doesn't have no things. Do you see?
Jaxon Watson
>"Snowflake" refers fairly specifically to the gender and sexuality rainbow. Not really.
Christian Sanchez
How is it that everyone in the world that's even remotely famous all have exactly the same hot opinions about fucking everything?
The lack of diversity is astonishing
David Young
...
Lincoln Rivera
Nah, it does. Using it to refer to a whiny bitch doesn't even make sense.What does a snowflake have to do with whining.
Kevin Roberts
Detroit's nicknamed Motor City but how many cars did it manufacture last year?
Michael Jenkins
Who invaded Libya, put the Muslim Brotherhood in charge of Egypt and armed ISIS in Syria?
Parker Bennett
All right, well we can at least agree that counts, right? I might've been too hasty with the other two
Aaron Jenkins
Sure.
Bentley Robinson
wait what, I thought it was because of Fight Club
Connor Bell
That is where it comes from originally. Their use of "snowflake" comes from a faggot, their use of "redpill" comes from two trannies. Interesting
Landon Diaz
enjoy your gold medal for literally nothing, faggot.
Chase Lopez
It did, but in the current social context it's come to refer to seeking that uniqueness ridiculed in the movie through being pangendered superqueer. I mean, the term "redpilled" comes from the Matrix and has its own distinct meaning there, but if you heard someone call someone redpilled you'd be pretty sure they were conservatives.
Michael Brooks
He's talking about disillusioned young Muslims, you dense cunt, and he's right too.
Blake Peterson
>You are not special. You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You're the same decaying organic matter as everything else. We're all part of the same compost heap. We're all singing, all dancing crap of the world. I don't know, it's a pretty clear indictment of the young wealthy left-leaning sensitive cohort
Brayden Jenkins
The Western world changed fundamentally after 9/11, and for the worse. If you don't think the wars overseas have had a massive impact back home, than you're mistaken
Nolan Rivera
>live in the middle east >literally no industry >literally no agribusiness >literal wasteland >literally a giant welfare-state >this is Americas fault
ok Martin, sure.
Isaiah Taylor
Scorcese is obviously referring to Iraqi's though.
Colton Sullivan
He's probably talking about the 99%.
Luis Jenkins
>Referring to the rise of global terrorism, Mr Scorsese said that the aftermath of the 2003 Iraq invasion "had created thousands and thousands of Travis Bickles." Where do you read in this that he is referring to Americans though?
Austin Lewis
He compares it to the 1920's and 30's, then makes a reference to a 70's film, Taxi Driver. There's no direct line on this, but that's how most people speak.
Cameron Thomas
You honestly have no idea what "welfare state" means, do you?
Iraq and Afghanistan don't have any kind of functional infrastructure, the majority of the employed population were subsistence farmers and traders before they were invaded. their governments handed out more executions and beheadings than cents in welfare cheques.
The US invasions completely destroyed what little infrastructure there was, meaning roads, water mains, gas mains, power lines and oil pipelines, and killed off huge proportions of the young men. Afghanistan was still reeling from the Russian invasion in the late 80s, too, which had left the country with more than half its population under the age of 14 at the time.
Yes, Iraq and Afghanistan are fucked up thanks to the successive foreign invasions of the last 30 years, and 3 of those 4 invasions were American.
Lucas Torres
>Interesting
Proof they're not bigots
Julian Bennett
kek
Robert Wright
A dispossessed, disenfranchised individual is common to ALL societies in ALL places of the earth. You don't have to be poor or starving to be pushed past the point of 'giving a fuck'; most of the super-wealthy feel just as maligned and preyed-upon as the starving of Africa - the rich can distract themselves by spending their money, while the poor (can) tend to act out more lawlessly. But the feeling is the same. And it is everywhere...look at brexit; look at trump.
Elijah Bennett
>Iraq and Afghanistan are fucked up thanks to the successive foreign invasions of the last 30 years,
Please, Iraq and Afghanistan and the whole rest of the gang are fucked up because of centuries of sectarian conflict. A couple of decades of US intervention is just a blip.
Luis Cooper
Well, Saudi Arabia is really nothing more than a welfare state. 9 out of 10 private jobs are done by expats, either professionals building their massive towers or the cheap exploited labor from South and South-East Asia
Egypt's population is still increasing rapidly and the government has a massive subsidy scheme to give everyone bread because they literally can't feed anyone and have to buy wheat tenders. Other countries are shitholes. Everyone was touting that the most secular modern example of a Muslim country was Turkey just 6 years ago, and look how that turned out.
If I was forced to live in a Muslim country, I'd certainly choose to live in something like Bosnia than any of the other ones. Fucking Indonesia has a higher population on the island of Java than fucking Germany and France combined.
Julian Roberts
There are parts in the Middle East like Dubai that are literally SWIMMING in wealth. Those places literally put goats in stealth bombers because it's fun and own shit like orangutans on dune buggies. Not all of the Middle East is a shit hole. Keep in mind the metric shit loads of money they get for oil.
Jeremiah Green
good thing i like violence and despair, i can't wait for the future sounds neat
Jonathan Peterson
>which had left the country with more than half its population under the age of 14 at the time. more like Muslims can't into stop breeding and into civilization on their own. They send their own failures out. Even Pakistan, with no civil war of any kind, has its humanoids paying smuggler to get them into Europe. You constantly read stories who people sleeping in the Calais, Serbia or Greece camps are not just Syrians, but fucking other refuse like Afghans and Pakis. Why can't those shitholes manage to survive on their own? Pakistan is partly fuelling the Taliban and giving them leverage and has no civil war or conflict of its own.
Lincoln Adams
>the gulf war was an invasion
please, don't be retarded in my presence.
Angel Cook
>You honestly have no idea what "welfare state" means, do you?
Do you?
Other guy said Middle East, not Iraq or Afghan. The Gulf Arab nations which produce the highest number of terrorists and promote the most amount of terrorism are welfare states with some (like Qatar) having citizens who are wealthier than any Western country.
>Iraq and Afghanistan don't have any kind of functional infrastructure
That applied to Afghanistan since the beginning, they are barely even a country. They also deserved to be invaded for harboring and aiding al-Qaeda/bin Laden. >killed off huge proportions of the young men.
Not true for either Afghanistan or Iraq. And in Iraq, most of the deaths came from the Sunni-Shi'a civil war that was bound to happen whether Saddam was overthrown or died naturally.
>Afghanistan was still reeling from the Russian invasion in the late 80s, too, which had left the country with more than half its population under the age of 14 at the time.
Youth outnumber adults heavily in the Middle East to begin with anyway. It's a problem everywhere there.
Jonathan Clark
>Keep in mind the metric shit loads of money they get for oil. That's true, but it's mostly because their locals just exploit the ones who come to work there. Qatar has a population of 300k and has one of the highest income/GDP per capita in the world. I assure you none of the native population do much hard work, they probably get along with passive investing. But it's not like they're going to be perpetually wealthy, their budgets still depend on the a relatively high price of oil, and now that price is hovering around $55 because of the US shale production. Saudi Arabia is going to go through some turmoil of its own in 15 years if price never go back up to $60+ by then
Ryder Thomas
>Pakistan is partly fuelling the Taliban and giving them leverage and has no civil war or conflict of its own.
Pakistan has a massive terrorism problem and issues with separatists in Pashtun areas and Baluchistan.
Pakistan is fighting the TPP (Pakistani Taliban) and supporting the Afghan Taliban. Two different groups faggot.
Tyler Reyes
This is all so fucking stupid
Jack Reyes
>which had left the country with more than half its population under the age of 14 at the time. 70% of the people in both Egypt and Saudi Arabia is under 30 and exponentially more of them are entering their domestic job market each year. Look at the massive population growth that Syria went through. Syria barely had any industry before then aside from some feeble textile and tourist stuff, and its oil reserves are barely anything to live off. No one in their right mind would think that population growth is sustainable unless nature does its bidding and force social turmoil amongst the population who lash against the authorities for apparently not providing enough jobs and bread
Hunter Moore
>Pakistan is fighting the TPP (Pakistani Taliban) and supporting the Afghan Taliban. Two different groups faggot. what difference does it make? They're both deluded terrorist groups, you make it sound that fighting one heavily outweighs the other.
And Pakistan really has a fantastic reputation throughout the world, wonderful culture too. Everyone wants to read their literature and learn about their culture of 180 million people.
Robert Gutierrez
>its a right wing intersectionalist episode
Charles Miller
my friend, I've spent 6 months at the little summer-camp the air force has set up near Doha, Qatar. I've seen this first hand.
I've seen the shops full of guys standing around doing literally nothing, i bought the knock-off shit they peddle. Everything about Doha is fake. It's like a Sim-city city surrounded by a martian landscape of rocks and dust. I assure you there is by no means enough jobs there to support normal functioning society. That's what I mean by welfare state...it's fucking fake.
Cameron Hernandez
That's where we're goin', brother user! No brakes, full throttle, no hands on the wheel! Hillary's continued ass-sucking of the rich proves she's about as braindead as they come; none of the hurting people in america are ever going to listen to her again. And none of the thinking people take the trumpster seriously - they just fear him - which of course engenders more instability - and dedicate themselves to doubling down on stupid, like election recounts and 'not muh country' bullshit. Bloody sheep. Embrace the chaos of violence and despair - new world order, baby!
[Oh captcha! Was the sign 'turn around' a message of some kind?? My paranoia is peeking right now....]
Jason Rogers
just keep on using and supporting American oil production, that Obama inadvertently and surreptitiously supported over the last decade, and with the Trump rollback of environmental regulations, this will keep the global oil price down for quite some period, forcing those Gulf countries to come to terms with their excess and massive population growth.
Hence why Saudi Arabia for example is scrambling to sell of their Saudi Aramco, just so they can keep their welfare state/government spending afloat.
Thomas Johnson
I genuinely did not know this. All of the stories I've heard from people in the military who were stationed over there tell of a land of opulent wealth.
Then again I've also heard that there's some weird conspiracy where Saudi oil can only be purchased with US currency and that's why we're in that region in the first place, to protect them and ensure that the US dollar remains strong as most advanced nations are dependent on oil and consequently the dollar.
I'd guess that's bullshit too.
Justin Harris
>what difference does it make?
Pretty big one, since you just said they have no conflicts or internal civil war. Don't try to act informed if you spout shit like that.
>wonderful culture too.
True, good music and poetry.
Brody Cook
at this point, the Saudis need the US more than vice versa. Their military spending is nonsensical for a population of 30 million that only has a war with their southern neighbor, yet they keep on increasing their military budget despite the low oil price.
Andrew Morris
oh it is opulent and very wealthy, certain parts for sure and that's it.
it's a facade. How the Bedouins do gated communities. just like Kuwait and the UAE.
>no conflicts or internal civil war no, but it's mostly sectarian. There's barely been any reform in Pakistan when it comes to Saudi-aided madrassas, which does nothing but inculcate a fundamentalist version of Islam, and hence why the idea of joining ISIS, TPP or any insurgent group to oppress the minorities seems alluring.
It's not that hard to understand. Pakistan is essentially a religious partition of the Indian subcontinent.
Ryder Diaz
Are you such a retard you didn't even see the analogy to Travis Bickle?
Jose Price
>Wealth in the Arab Emirates is a facade
Why are they like this? I mean at least in the states you can say it's the Skypes pooling wealth for their Human Instrumentality or whatever such nonsense but why are the Arabs stacking/spending money like there's no tomorrow and not investing in building up their economy or infrastructure. Couldn't they be major global players if they got their shit in line.
Adrian Cox
Fucking kek
Tyler White
Pic related.
Saudia wasn't invaded in 2003, and very little has changed there since the 1970s. Egypt is in the shit because of losing its wars with Israel and getting its government overthrown by Twitter. Turkey was absolutely fine until the USA invaded its neighbours and forced tens of millions of refugees across its border.
Are you being sarcastic? Taking a territory by force and then occupying it is an invasion, even if you hand it over to a local 5 years later.
>Other guy said Middle East, not Iraq or Afghan.
Scorsese didn't. He specifically mentioned 2003 and Iraq. The Emirates and Saudia were affected very little by those wars, and if anything that little was positive.
>They also deserved to be invaded for harboring and aiding al-Qaeda/bin Laden.
They were invaded to prevent Russian access to the Gulf and to put Afghan opium poppies back on the market (the Taliban had banned opium farming in Afghanistan 6 months before the invasion in 2001, effectively taking 90% of the world's non-medical-grade opiates out of circulation). Bin Laden was hiding in Pakistan.
>Youth outnumber adults heavily in the Middle East to begin with anyway. It's a problem everywhere there.
A problem which is hugely exacerbated by warfare and the destruction of what few schools are available.
Exactly why it was such a deathblow for Afghanistan to be left with such a young population after the Soviet invasion. I'm not disputing that it's a horrible thing, it's just also part of the fallout of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Jeremiah Wright
>Lol how can you, like even, complain about being dispossessed and made a debt slave lmao, get real problems like the starving african niggers that fuck my wife >t. Europoor faggot
Alexander Scott
I like how this entire thread is just confirming what he said.
Camden Collins
>If you're American and you think you have "nothing to lose," you don't actually understand what that phrase means
Do YOU know what that phrase means? What does being American have to do with "having nothing to lose"?
You have nothing to lose if you have no family, no friends, no SO, no meaningful job, or ties to anything around you