"Raiden calls armstrong insane, as if thats a disqualifying factor in American politics."
Truer words have never been spoken.

Not only would Sen. Armstrong get votes, he'd be VERY popular.

MGR was surprisingly right about the memes. The game outlived and surpassed it’s own story. Ahead of its time, truly. Memes aside, Armstrong is just… a very good antagonist.

The whole thing about Armstrong having nanomachines points to his biggest strength, which is his conviction and charisma. It's not cheating to be strong because I have an expensive gadget, because my strength allowed me to get that gadget. It's explicitly anything goes and I feel his ideology would specifically recognize non-physical strength just as much as physical strength

Holy shit i just realized. Armstrong tells jack to "fight for something you believe in" and he literally does. Once he has sams sword, jack starts fighting for an ideal hes always believed in but denied: revenge
God this game is so fucking GOOD

The fact the Armstrong is a "might makes right" villain that actually believes might makes right both makes him unique and terrifying because... you can't really argue with him. Try to claim good triumphed over evil? Nope. You just beat him at his own game. You followed his rules, and you were just the better player. So many "might makes right" villains crumble at the end, revealing it as just a flimsy argument for them to be in charge. The fact Armstrong at the end goes "Yup, you win. You make the rules now" and follows through on his stated philosophy makes him extremely difficult to beat in a battle of ideals.

And in the end... Yeah, he and Raider aren't so different. Armstrong is all like "I want a world where the strong take what they want and the weak are extinguished, and I'll kill anyone in my way to do it." Meanwhile Raiden is like "I want a world where the strong protect the weak, where the hungry and poor are fed and taken care of... and I'll kill anyone in my way to do it."

The whole bit where Armstrong is so happy that Raiden caves in only to be betrayed three seconds later after a almost vulnerable handshake and hug, you can’t help but briefly feel sorry for him, he is THAT charismatic. As batshit insane as he was, he was still charismatic as hell

No one ever talks about how he calls him Saucy Jack, the other nickname of Jack the Ripper that painted him as less of a scary serial killer and more like a raging drunkard. He doesn’t have a sword but his first lines out of that pod cut the deepest if you know it.

In Senator Armstrong's defense, the nanomachines aren't JUST a cheat. When you realize that Raiden is also augmented, it means nothing anymore. The bigger aspect of the nanomachines are that the senator's enhancements are completely invisible, giving the illusion that he's fighting with his own hands, instead of for something he doesn't understand. This shows very well with his 5 minutes speech: He was being cornered by Raiden and beaten up, but once he began to talk about his own speech, he slowly began to regain strength.

Armstrong is not just powered by money... he's powered by convictions. There's a reason why he doesn't use a blade or anything else but relies on brute force, mankind's oldest weapon.

"That's a nice argument, senator. But why don't you back it up with a source!?"
"My source is that I made it the fuck up!"

Armstrong's reliance on nanomachines for his physical strength is perfectly in line with his worldview.  Being able to lead people and convince them to do what you want is a strength.

17:15 you can see in Armstrong face here just how much he wanted Raiden to side with him. Straight up seems excited then disappointed when Raiden rejects him.

My favorite line from Armstrong is after he went on his rant on everything wrong with America, Raiden asks how he got elected, and his response is "Well, I don't write my own speeches." Everything he said is unhinged and highly controversial, and he knows it damn well. It's a line that implies that he know how to work the system in spite of his radical beliefs.

The fact that a guy like him is still more willing to give someone on the other side a chance than the average political person today soeaks volumes

"Raiden destroys the death murder robot, Then, armstrong marches out and beats the crap out of raiden with his bare fists" is a sentence that could ONLY come from the Metal Gear Franchise.

The funniest thing in that cutscene is that Senator Armstrong's slogan is Make America Great Again. That's absolutely incredible.

I always thought that when Armstrong says "weak" he doesn't actually mean the powerless, the disadvantaged in society, but rather the "morally weak", people without conviction, without willpower, the kind of people that drifts along the current of life, those who  let themselves be easily influenced. And by contrast, the "strong" are the people who have the balls to stand up for what they believe in, those who work hard to accomplish their dreams. Wich i think fits perfectly with the American myth, Armstrong wants America to go back to the time of the frontier, a society of self made men. And Raiden is the perfect example of Armstrong's ideal,  he was a child soldier and managed to survive, he was a tool of the Patriots and managed to break free from their control.

There's a nice detail about Armstrong and Raiden's fight in the cutscene. Raiden manages to briefly get the upper hand while tearing apart Armstrong's supposed reason for his plot. Then when Armstrong finally admits what his real goals are, he gets back to thrashing Raiden easily. In other words, Armstrong is at his most powerful when he is honest about who and what he truly believes.

I always thought Armstrong's idea of strong isn't purely physical but overall strength. Like a smart person is also considered strong for him.

"After this, Raiden destroys the giant death robot, then Armstrong marches out and beats the crap out of Raiden with his bare fist." is a sentence that could only make sense in a Metal Gear game