 Ahoy Hoy! I'm Dr. Sumerian, not a real doctor, and today, uh, we're going to, I, oh god, such a squeaky chair, to do something about that. Anyway, today we are going to talk about, uh, well, there was a discussion on my own Discord channel, which by the way, there's a channel server. There's, there was a discussion on my Discord server this, uh, this week about how was it? The cactus entries in the last couple of contests were too political for somebody's tastes, and I was like, well, no, not even too political, just political, and therefore bad. And so I got into a long discussion, and something that I thought might be worthy of a video topic is that, you know, all fiction, all art is political in some way, fashion or form, but even if you disagree with that premise, and that's probably a whole other discussion to have, the SCP Foundation is inherently political. And people will be like, what do you mean? Funny peanut statue is political? Well, okay, first of all, funny peanut statue is not all the SCP Foundation is. But once you accept that there is an organization behind it, keeping it in containment, and accept that there are possibly other objects, which is what's implied by the original article. Even if you don't think the original article itself is political, once you establish the foundation as an organization, and you start talking about like how it handles, the whole thing is a political message of one kind or another. It's a commentary on authoritarianism on the dangers of trying to trade your liberty for security. It's about privacy, it's about it's about technocratic, you know, governance, and so on and so forth. It's about morality and politics. And you'd be like, I could understand people not seeing it because you don't tend to notice the politics in the works that you consume. If you agree with that, political stance, or if you consider that to be the base, the core of the thing, I think I've talked a little bit about this in past videos, but that's certainly true. But I mean, the SCP Foundation, we have to think about when it was first created, first of all, and that was back in 2007-2008-ish as an organization, not the original piece, but like when it started to come together as a thing. And 2007-2008-ish is okay, it's not quite the post 9-11 world, but it's pretty close to being right after the, you know, we're talking about things like the Iraqi war and the quote unquote war on terror, which was still supposedly in full swing. The thing is, and I think this is interesting, actually, as someone who lived through the fall of the Berlin Wall and 9-11 and understands both how, what a Titanic shift in politics and our perceptions of the world, both of those things were, it's really hard to, I think it would be really hard for people to understand the world we lived in between 2000 and, or I should say 1991-ish and 2001. There's a whole decade, roughly, where it was like there was no danger at all, you know, liberty runs a muck, I should say. And then, you know, 9-11 happened, and there's a whole, not only is there a full grown adults, you know, the SCP Wiki currently, I think, is the age limit 16. So there are people who were born anywhere between three and four years after 9-11. And for me, as someone who lived through it, and understand how radically culture and politics shifted compared to people who just always lived in that world, right? That's the standard. That's the base level that we live in. I can look at the SCP Foundation and see it as a commentary. I see, I've always seen it as a commentary on the dangers of trading security, or yeah, trading liberty for security, I should say. The SCP Foundation is all about that. Like, you have to ask yourself, is it okay to grab people off the streets and put them in prison without trial? Because that's what the SCP Foundation does to anomalous people, period. And not even if they're danger, like, oh, they're dangerous. Well, no, some of them aren't dangerous at all. They're just quote unquote threats to normalcy. In fact, some of them are so benign that they wouldn't even be threats to normalcy. They're just different. If you look on the SCP Wiki, you'll find plenty of instances where there are anomalies that have, I should say, anomalies that could stay hidden and have stayed hidden for a long periods of time. And the SCP Foundation still keeps them in containment. So, that's the first thing, and we talk about this in the post 9-11 world is like, at what level is it okay to just grab somebody off the street and throw them in jail? And I don't think the answer, I think the answer to that is never. And I think the SCP Foundation in a lot of ways does a lot to demonstrate how that can be a bad idea, but also in a lot of ways tries to in depends on the article you're reading, that's a political argument, really. Some articles are like, this is silly, this is stupid, we shouldn't do this. And then other articles are like, this is important, this is necessary for the safety of mankind. That's political, okay? We're talking about a thing that is reflective of what's going on in the governments of the world, especially at the time the SCP Foundation was originally created. And it becomes very easy to forget that, especially for people who have always lived in this world, where the world has always been like a little bit of security or a little bit of liberty is fine to sacrifice for a little bit of security. And we can talk about NSA spying, you know, that's, that's, that's, and you're like, that's not political, that's just, you know, it is a political question. There are people out there who legitimately, and many of them in power believe that the NSA spying program where they were able to basically spy on everybody all the time was okay. But this is my point, if you examine any fiction in any deep sort of way, you will find a political message one way or the other. And in some cases, opposing political messages, that's the point of it being about politics. It's not just necessarily, by the way, about two people disagreeing on a particular topic, although that can turn things political somehow. But one thing I really brought up was, if I wrote, let's pretend for a second, that you wrote an article about Donald Trump running for president in 2013, when it seemed ridiculous and silly and like, there's no way that would happen. It would seem significantly less political, of course, it's about running for president, so it's going to be a little political, but it's not going to be blatantly so. Does that article, if written in that year, suddenly become less good or different somehow in 2017 or 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021? What's changed? Yes, context and circumstances have changed. And if you want to argue that an article or an SCP or any fictional work is being too blunt about the politics it's trying to portray, it's not subtle enough. I might disagree with you, depending on the work in question, but I can at least see that as a viable critique, but it contains politics and therefore is bad, is a completely bad take because everything, and at least the fiction that we're talking about here specifically, is inherently political. All fiction is, again, all fiction is inherently political. It has a political message of some kind, but the SCP Foundation is not just inherently political, it is very political. It is the driving concepts behind it are all very political. Authoritarianism, again, safety and security, so on, so forth. You can keep going down the list, and it depends on which article you're reading, to be honest with you. Which message it's trying to give is, is it good? Is it bad? Is authoritarianism good? Is authoritarianism bad? Is a complete technocratic approach to governance a good idea or a bad idea? Is our morals something that a government can legislate or not? And is it okay if it's not being done by a government but is still sanctioned by a government for bad things to happen to their own citizens in exchange for a little bit more safety? Like the US government has pulled people off the street who quote-unquote weren't American citizens, and if you're a conspiracy theorist you probably think that it's possible that some American, and maybe it was. I don't, I don't know, you know, I'm not everywhere all at once. I am not omnipresent, but has pulled people off the streets and thrown them in jail with no trial. That has happened. Most of them, if not all of them, were non-American citizens, and that was considered to be okay, but there's a question of politics as to whether or not it is okay. And the SCV Foundation is just an extension of that. Anyway, it's a very simple message, right? Politics always exists in any fiction. The only question is how much of it is there? So if you say I don't like something because it's political. If you want to say it's too political, I still disagree with you, but if you want to say it's political, what are you talking about? All fiction is political. Anyway, that's it. Thank you very much for watching. I expect that a lot of people will dislike this video because I mentioned Donald Trump and him talking about politics, and people don't like politics in their entertainment, even though it's in all entertainment. But anyway, thank you very much for watching. If you enjoyed the video, scroll down and hit the subscribe button and then hit the notification bell next to that so you're notified when I upload new videos. If you want to get involved in a discussion like this, I do talk to people on my Discord channel from time to time. But daily, actually, I think. I don't think there's been a day I can't think of any. Well, maybe a few because you get a little distracted. But like most days, I'm in my Discord channel. You can go down into the description. You can click through and you can talk to me there. And if you really, really want to support the channel, head on over to patreon.com forward slash deesumerian and pledge at any level. There's a variety of reasons why, but advertising revenue for my channel and a lot of SCP channels are down right now. The easiest way to make sure that we can continue to make content is to pledge on Patreon. Like everybody here on the screen already has, including Dr. Jay Redacted and Sinjeriki, who have both pledged at $100. And in the end it lets me know that I'm not alone out here. I will see you all again on Tuesday.