I’m glad you found it as illuminating and enjoyable as I did! =)

I really enjoyed the interview he gave on The Big Picture about a month ago: https://youtu.be/Nh9H3EXM3jA?t=6641

(also available in their podcast feed if you prefer audio-only)

I can’t speak to why the Irish instead of some other group. But generally, they’re an example of a historically subjugated people who experienced hardship and discrimination when arriving in the US, but were eventually (more or less) accepted and brought into the fold as “white”. Meanwhile, black people, on whose backs the US was literally built, many of whose lineage in the US stretches back hundreds of years further than many white people, still face some of the worst treatment and outcomes of any minority group in the US.

So my read is that while they had a common plight, the relative leg up the Irish had would render attempts to form community between the two groups fraught. And Remmick is clearly trying to exploit that common cause for his own purposes, and isn’t too concerned with actual liberation, as demonstrated by his first recruits being Klan members.

sigh

I was wrong. BNW blows. =/

Side note for Brave New World: I’ve seen a handful of people online say they’ve no interest in a jingoistic movie given gestures around. Which is strange to me, since if the trailer is even the slightest bit accurate, it’s more in the vein of Winter Soldier, where the US government is the problem. Maybe they mean it’s too close to reality? shrugs

It’s been mixed over the past few years. I know way more people who’ve watched the post-Endgame shows than the post-Endgame movies. They certainly haven’t been treated as the cultural event they were in the 2010s.

Although, that’s been shifting. A bunch of people I know both online and in real-life were pumped for Deadpool & Wolverine. I’ve been hearing a bunch of excitement over the upcoming Thunderbolts* and Fantastic Four movies. And I’m personally super pumped for Brave New World, although the reports of production woes seem to have tempered others’ expectations.

I occasionally read Mike McGranaghan’s The Aisle Seat and Dan Chilton’s Dan Says its Alright.

And if I may be so bold, I’d like to offer up my own, Take 'Em to the Movies, Austin!. I aim to get up at least one review a week, along with the occasional list.