Based solely on the first two episodes of the second season it's already a masterpiece. I don't even care about the first season, it wouldn't even need to have the rest of the second season. These two episodes are great in and of themselves. What a whirlwind of emotions brought forth, and all so subtly and realistically, with that real world muteness and hesitation, that shows still waters run deep. It's in the strangest place you can imagine, an anime about horse racing horse-girls, but an actually realistic portrayal of the human spirit.
Sometimes with all the drive and all the help you can get things just don't work out. It's important at times like that to accept reality and move on. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger! What a great lesson this anime has for everyone.
Sort of like how Ohio State ran into a buzzsaw yesterday and stood no chance against the perfect Alabama Crimson Tide. You can get depressed about losing or you can accept reality -- no one was ever going to beat Alabama -- and move on to the goals you can achieve like a nice pro football career. I predicted this 'Bama championship, but it hardly required 140 IQ to do so, anyone could have and should have known this was going to happen. A lopsided win to top off a lopsided season.
Losing gracefully is an important lesson Trump voters need to learn. We lost. We lost in a landslide. Get over it and move on with your lives to something you can win. We're not going to win elections anymore because our policies are unpopular, end of story. Not because of some nefarious cheater somewhere, but because we're outnumbered and all the smart, effective people are on the other side. What did you think would happen after you alienated all the billionaires and college graduates? Come on, man. Trump made a fool of himself because he didn't know how to lose gracefully like a sportsman. He should have watched Uma Musume. Even though he's a billionaire, has lots of kids, and even became president, his legacy will be that of a temper tantrum throwing child. Everyone will just remember him as the sore loser who couldn't accept reality and instead incited a deadly riot.
That's how important it is to accept defeat -- someone who knows when to do that is more admirable than a guy who can make a billion dollars or win the presidency.
In the larger picture it's important to accept authority across the board. When someone in an authoritative position tells you what happened, you need to accept that's what happened. They would know, you wouldn't. If the election officials say Biden won the election, then Biden won. It's that simple. If the doctors say Covid is dangerous, then it's dangerous. Case closed. If our astronauts say they landed on the moon, then they landed on the moon. If the CIA says Bin Laden took down the twin towers, then Bin Laden took down the twin towers. The world is what the people in authority say it is. There's no other or better source of information we can judge things by, so we have to accept things as they are. Not accepting reality and picking and choosing your own reality is the act of a sore loser. We all have to live in the real world, the same shared data set, the same factual universe that actually exists in front of our eyes. It's impossible to get along with others or for a community to get along and share living space when you insist on your own separate fact sheet, most of which impugns the character and rights of your fellow man.
If any of these facts were actually different -- if doctors were oppressing us for no reason and Covid was a hoax, or if the CIA was slaughtering Americans to force us into foreign wars, or whatever, then the outside world would be so evil as to justify their wholesale slaughter. Which means anyone who doesn't accept authority and the facts released by authority figures is declaring war on the entire world and his intent to kill as many 'evildoers' as possible before he dies. He's a ticking time bomb just waiting to go off -- a domestic terrorist. Logically there can be no other choice -- if there really are giant lying groups of people doing horrible things in the real world and covering it all up what else could you do but fight back against them? Just as logically, if the election were stolen, it would only make sense to storm the Capitol Building and demand Trump was certified for a 2nd term, logically, if Bin Laden were innocent and we've killed millions of Muslims for no reason, all of America would have to be purged by fire in response for our wanton and mindless slaughter.
There are logical consequences to believing in 'alternative facts.' None of them are good for the soul or society. There can be no comity or cooperation with those who step off that plank. Peddlers of conspiracy theories, any conspiracy theory, are all inciting violence by their very nature. They don't have to specifically call for violence, it's inherent in the logic of the situation that if the world is being deceived violence is our only recourse. Trump insisted there was a giant conspiracy against him, and violence naturally resulted. That is the natural result of any powerful or popular or persuasive person insisting on any conspiracy theory. The inevitable outcome.
There needs to be one accepted fact set for everyone, one world we all live in, and anyone saying otherwise should be deemed a domestic terrorist and neutralized accordingly. Free speech doesn't work, and this is just one more reason it doesn't work. It allows people to stupidly insist on dangerous fantasies whose logical implications require drastic mayhem and carnage. And then the poor saps who believe these things can be perfectly moral people, doing the perfectly moral deeds of mayhem and carnage, because they felt they had no other choice. Otherwise the evil conspirators would win. The cat's paws actually doing the violence think they're heroes. If they hadn't been deceived they would have been good people doing good deeds in the real world. The deceivers are the ones at fault. So why does it make sense to criminalize the violent actors but not the deceivers who drove them to violence in the first place? Who's really the villain here?
This Christmas I ignored the advice of doctors and didn't practice safe social distancing, instead the whole extended family got together to celebrate another year like every other year. We all got Covid, just like the doctors warned we would. Before then we'd all been safe and healthy because we followed the doctor's rules and advice. Now, as it turns out, our family is quite healthy and Covid never really stood a chance against our natural immune systems, so we're all over it now. It helps when you're mostly young and fit. And I knew that even if I got Covid I wasn't really at risk going in, based on the real facts that real doctors had released about the disease. But the point remains. All those idiots out there insisting doctors weren't trying to prevent an epidemic but were just randomly tyrannizing over us for fun because they're evil malicious people -- they were wrong. The doctors are trying their best to help and their advice really does make a difference. The people who aren't helping are the conspiracy theory-mongers who spread vicious, nasty rumors about how dark and evil and malicious doctors are for inventing vaccines and giving public health advice that could turn the tide and end this outbreak if we ever just listened.
By the way, 'racism' is a conspiracy theory. All the facts from all the official information gathering bodies -- school testing, evidence based courtroom trials, the FBI, the SAT, etc., everything consistently says the same thing -- blacks are less intelligent and more criminally inclined. The conspiracy theory says that every authority figure, every source of information, is biased against blacks and maliciously ruining their lives for no reason. Everyone, all white people, are in on it together to keep the black man down. Every bad thing that happens to a black person is due to a conspiracy against him. The alternative, that we should gracefully accept the reality that authority figures and authoritative studies have presented to us, is race realism. When the FBI reports every year that blacks are eight times as likely to be murderers as whites, we should accept that with the same grace and sufferance that we accept men are eight times as likely to be murderers than women. That's just how reality goes. Deal with it. Don't be a sore loser and accept reality and move on.
And yes, the conspiracy theory of 'racism' kills. It incites domestic terrorism and violence. What do you think the George Floyd riots all year were? People resorting to violence because there's no other recourse because the whole country was in a conspiracy against blacks, so evil that they were just choking blacks to death and gunning them down for no reason out of pure malice and hatred. What does that sound like? Why, it sounds like every other conspiracy theory on Earth. Everyone is evil, everyone is being deceived, there's no choice but to -- loot, riot, burn, kill. And every single 'peaceful protestor' out there thought themselves a hero. Just like the people storming the Capitol Building. Just like every deluded fool who believes in any conspiracy theory about anything. The fault is in the peddlers of lies. Once fooled, everything else logically follows of necessity. How can you blame people rising up against an unjust system that kills blacks for no reason? Obviously you can't. The fault was in the lie that such a thing was ever happening in the first place.
Anyway, everyone should be watching Uma Musume for life lessons on how to gracefully accept setbacks in life. Don't assume the doctors are lying and conspiring to keep you out of the triple crown race. Accept their authority and live with their decision that you can't run. Move on, assuming the best of everyone, and see what you can do within that reality. Usually there's still plenty of hope at the end of the tunnel, if you just look for it.
To make room for Uma Musume I kicked out Shamanic Princess, an old six episode ova that never really belonged among the ranks of the best. The plot to Shamanic Princess never really made any sense. It was just so pretty that it glided through on presentation alone.
I also added Teio, my favorite character from Uma Musume, to my fictional character hall of fame, kicking out Tomoyo Daidouji to make room. '100 Waifus' profits by gaining a unique name to replace a repeated name (now the sole owner of the name Tomoyo is from Clannad.) Also, I always thought Tomoyo's airheaded obsessiveness was a little over the top and unappealing. I admire her loyalty and skill as Sakura's cousin and helper, but it's hard to like someone who exists mainly for comic relief. I've been waiting for an opportunity to replace her with a more serious character who can stand on her own two feet, or hooves in this case. :).
I still need to rewatch the first season of Uma Musume for my ranking to be 'official.' Until I've both watched and rewatched a series in full it can't be full-fledged considered 'great.' But that can come in due time -- I haven't rewatched Kamisama ni Natta hi, Kamitachi ni Hirowareta Otoko, or Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear either, but they're also all ranked because I have strong confidence that I will rewatch them and enjoy them soon enough.
Uma Musume can sit around at #200 until this second season is over and I have a better grasp of its true worth. It might be joined by Idoly Pride or some other winter series. Wouldn't that be a great start to the year? For now, this puts my great episode count over the magical 9,000 threshold again. That calls for an entirely separate post and celebration.
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