tainbocuailnge:

like the thing with senator armstrong that makes him so iconic and dare i say realistic even though he only has like one scene and spends it throwing cars at a cyborg ninja is that he correctly identified the symptoms - modern media and consumerist culture is geared towards providing an endless stream of bullshit that doesn’t matter in order to distract the masses and keep them complacent - but because he never actually struggled a day in his life he’s completely wrong about what it’s a symptom of, and therefore, what the solution is. everyone is fucking sick of late stage capitalism! it’s not meant to actually benefit anything other than the line that shows the profits going up and even this guy at the top of the food chain thinks its a load of shit. armstrong and raiden actually agree on that part. but raiden is the saddest wettest most pathetic poor little meow meow who suffered every possible crime against humanity as well as being forced to perpetuate those crimes himself so he correctly identifies that the media spectacle is meant to distract from the blood of the weak that oils the machines while armstrong thinks it’s meant to distract the strong from the fact that they could totally kill people with their bare hands and only pussies rely on the machine to squeeze the blood out of the weak. which makes him fucking insane! and at the same time an incredibly real portrayal of the way upper class white men feel alienated by the system built from the ground up to benefit them and radicalise into being batshit insane precisely because the system has always benefited them but they’re still unsatisfied so instead of continuing to adhere to the rules of this alienating society they think the world should just be a complete free for all in which they’ll surely still come out on top. and even though he absolutely and undeniably is a villain, when he’s screaming “fuck the internet fuck the 24/7 stream of internet celebrity bullshit fuck all of this” you still wanna scream it with him because we all hate it here