He's not praising alcoholism, if you stay an alcoholic you literally get the bad ending and you get constant scorn from your partner.
I have no idea where you got the idea that detox is obligatory.
You see what he's up to, right? He's mad he can't refute what you're saying and embarrassed he can't grasp what he is calling a simple narrative, so he's trying to do points-scoring until you stop giving him mean stickers (they are very mean). And it's not to say that Disco Elysium is some labyrinthine narrative that parallels literary greats - it has a literal, a metanarrative, and an analogical layer. That's still, apparently, too much.
I would probably have liked it if you could respond to the observation that the game portrays clinging to the past as evil
In that Rene is presented as a grumpy old man - those certainly don't exist - and the Deserter is an unhinged individual whose personal misery was so solidified by his steadfast dedication to ideology that he, in an act ironically having nothing to do with said ideology, lit the fuse to a modern-era powder keg?
Gary isn't even a guy clinging to the past - he's too young to cling to the past. He's receptive to an ideological interpretation of the past that suggests that a return towards older values will offer up stability in a world that is clearly desperately in need of it. He is, again, presented as eccentric at worst and at best is helpful to the player, not as some lurking evil.
its ridiculous representation of the coalition as villains who keep the world rotting even if it comes off as cartoonish villainy.
Except that the coalition doesn't have a direct mouthpiece, and instead is characterized primarily by people in the world. Remind me, what do populist-right people think of American interventionism in the middle east? What do populist-left people think of American interventionism in the middle east? Oh yeah, they both characterize it as cartoonishly villainous.
The coalition most represents the Bretton-Woods system which has seen the virtual erasure of all conflict between European states in exchange for access to capital markets and trade routes guaranteed by an absurdly powerful, unopposable foreign power. This erasure of conflict extended eastward after 1992. Then that tenuous peace between European states was disrupted by the specter of a historical menace that was motivated not by ideology, but rather by
jealousy.
Of course, the annexation of Crimea that occurred in 2014 resultant of this flirtation and the long-standing wariness of Estonia regarding its neighbor and former master could not possibly have influenced the analogical narrative of a game that released a half-decade later and features
a character whose sole purpose is to parody the economic policies of the ECB. I guess the "keeping inflation at 2%" bit would've sailed right over someone with no knowledge of its relevance.
In a game where no ideology is presented in a positive light, and where the hopeless mire that seems destined to sluggishly drag itself into literal oblivion has been historically crafted by the influence of each and every one of those ideologies, your issue is not that the narrative is
postmodern - taking the piss of ideology and
all belief - but rather that you're assuming some sort of exclusive ire aimed at
your preferred beliefs.
All this despite the fact that fascism as presented in the game's modern-day is irrelevant. Gary, Measurehead, Rene, and the Lorry driver are all just hanging out or doing their jobs. They have not themselves contributed to the powder keg in any way. The racist coffee mug that you find in the dumpster near the body is a red herring - hmmmmmm, hmmmmmm. The primary movers of the story also happen to be its villains - social democracy as presented by Evrart, Wild Pines in the seat of exploitative and ruthless business (ultra-liberalism), and the ever-looming coalition (neo-liberalism). Communism itself is also presented as irrelevant within the narrative - no-one espousing it has any relevance to the malaise, and it's pure coincidental accident that the deserter lights the fuse.