The UAP phenomenon implies the existence of a superhuman authority that humans must submit to. By appealing to this authority, whether directly or by allowing the subject to suppose such an arrangement must exist, human power structures are able to reclaim the theological principle of a will and aims beyond human understanding. In doing so, all acts of inhumane violence, elite tomfoolery, and evidence for the invalidity of moral and ethical justifications for enshrining power in our existing institutions become handwaveable and invite the subject to these acts and arrangements to engage in the storytelling aspect of social mythmaking that is starkly lacking in the post modern global secular state order. - Any_Pilot6455 on the truanon sub.
So, in regards to the explanation for this UFO shit being "the military wants more money", I kept going "but the military can get all the money it wants, without making up nonsense about aliens".
... but I didn't consider a nascent desire for the ruling class to bring back a hightened religious fervor, as an opiate for the masses. In this God is Dead world, where even the overtly religious don't sound convinced of their beliefs, the ruling class needs human beings to stop thinking that human beings are in charge of human beings.
They need a new God to blame for everything.
Capitalists would much rather we blame aliens for our miseries instead of capitalists.
The ruling class would much rather have us believe they're just as powerless in the face of an omnipresent God-Thing / Alien-Thing, then to believe they - the wealthy and powerful humans - really are in charge, and that our miseries are the result of their choices and actions / inactions.
So much of our government and economy revolves around offloading responsibility for bad things. One party can blame the other party, one branch of govt can blame another branch, the feds can blame the states, the states can blame the feds, ceo's can blame weak regulations, regulators can blame voters, voters can blame non voters. How nice it would be for the people in charge if we all just collectively blamed aliens, while simultaneously assuming there's nothing we can do about it.
Arrival (2016) predicted this lowkey
Didn't they literally have the climax revolve around how the Chinese are inherently warlike culturally?
the climax IMO was the protagonist learning to perceive the non-linear aspect of time and of the alien language.
as for the Chinese, it's not a particularly positive depiction but I wouldn't go nearly that far. They initially demand that the aliens leave China because the aliens referred to a weapon (not unreasonable), but when the alien langauge is revealed to be the "weapon", they immediately stand down. There's nothing in there about Chinese culture being warlike.
The movie also portrays the US soldiers trying to sabotage Chinese communication efforts very negatively.