Republicans Luring Youths With Video Games
- Thread starter Tom Goldman
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but its news about video games with a little....sprinkle of politics added. Like a lovely ice cream sandwich but covered in shit.Low Key said:
If the Republicans really want my vote they'll introduce an Atheist candidate hell-bent on separating Church and State to the point that he already has a plan set to tax every major religious institution. I'm dead serious too: If the Republicans weren't a bunch of fundamentalist Christians I would vote for them.
Quite frankly, I think I'm fine with the mis-characterizations. Thank you, I have a new tool in my bag-o-tricks when dealing with Republicans.copperflyingace said:
OT: XPAC? Seriously? Who's naming this stuff these days? If the Republican party could ever re-focus themselves and get a real PR department, they might escape being a parody of themselves. Till then...
We have a similar thing going on in England. Our Conservative party; who have bashed every form of media you can imagine, with its right wing sensibilities, including censorship and "It's corrupting our youth"; have started trying to appeal to videogame lovers. Only they are doing it in a far more sensible way. They are offering Tax incentives to British developers. This is how geek lobbying should be done. Its all lies I bet though. If they ever get into power they are more likely to turn us into German and Australia than offer the Games industry tax breaks.
And I thought my opinion of Republicans couldn't be lower. Huh. Well, I guess this is a day for learning.
This is probably going to bite them in the ass anyway, with people coming and going just for the games, without paying any attention whatsoever to the political aspect, however small that may be.
This is probably going to bite them in the ass anyway, with people coming and going just for the games, without paying any attention whatsoever to the political aspect, however small that may be.
...So, any attempt to increase general voter turnout is liberal by definition? Or is it increasing voter turn-out by the young? Or fronted by figures in the entertainment industry? Wikipedia describes Rock the Vote as non-partisan, and it's worth noting that in 2006 MTV's parent company made nearly twice the amount in monetary contributions to Republican candidates that it has to Democrats.
Certainly Lieberaman and Clinton have done and said some unfortunate things regarding content in video games. But with the GOP continuing to court the "religous right", most gamers are quite reasonably more concerned about them. Mostly because video games are no one's key issue; they're a sop issue, a throwaway that allows a politician to drum up support in a given demographic without feeling they face a dangerous backlash from another. Both parties like to play to the so-called "family friendly" crowd, but when it comes to culling a base from the "we need to burn these books, think of the children" demographic, there really is no comparison.
If "Rock the Vote" is liberal just by association to popular entertainment, the GOP is definitely anti-violent media by association with groups like the Christian Coalition.
Certainly Lieberaman and Clinton have done and said some unfortunate things regarding content in video games. But with the GOP continuing to court the "religous right", most gamers are quite reasonably more concerned about them. Mostly because video games are no one's key issue; they're a sop issue, a throwaway that allows a politician to drum up support in a given demographic without feeling they face a dangerous backlash from another. Both parties like to play to the so-called "family friendly" crowd, but when it comes to culling a base from the "we need to burn these books, think of the children" demographic, there really is no comparison.
If "Rock the Vote" is liberal just by association to popular entertainment, the GOP is definitely anti-violent media by association with groups like the Christian Coalition.
I have to disagree with your definition of conservative. I think it's simpler to say they oppose change. Reactionaries, like Ron Paul, want to actively regress, but conservatives merely oppose that which is new. Their motto could be "if it's not broke don't fix it". Since the people the current system favors fail to see anything wrong with the system, of course they don't see a need to fix it. I'll use three examples of states that devalued individual rights-Nazis, Communists, and the batshit insanity that was the Khmer Rouge, and we'll see if they fall under conservative. Nazis were revolutionary-they wanted change right away, and they tried a couple of times before it worked. They drastically overhauled a country that was in a lot of ways still in a monarchist mindset. They were preaching a very new yet paradoxically ancient mindset, and their results looked like something out of the dark ages. The Communists are the stereotypical radicals, yet they openly said that the state was superior to the self, right from the beginning. The Khmer Rouge are about as radical as you can get-they wanted to erase all traces of history from before they came to power. They are as far from conservative as possible, yet they too denied individuality. There's just too much overlap of one of the spectrum to another if we use this definition of conservative. Although I agree with the example of Iran, but I think any successful theocracy has to be conservative.Starke said:
Social Darwinism basically is the law of the jungle applied to human affairs, especially economics. If someone is unsuccessful, they didn't deserve to succeed, so they shouldn't be helped. It argues against any kind of welfare and for unrestricted free markets, so it's a conservative idea. (at least as far as conservative in the US is concerned) The philosophy is that if something's failing, there's a good reason, and it should either fail or fix itself. Outside help only prolongs the process, dragging more things down with it when it eventually crashes. The idea that "a subsidized system is unsustainable" comes from social darwinism. Their response to Marx's proletarian revolution would be "Bring it on. If they win, they were more fit than we were, and they deserve to win." It shares alot in common with objectivism, but it's unrealistic for a democracy. How would it ever achieve a majority vote? It's basically politics if politics were run by machines.
tl;dr Social Darwinism is "change through competition". If the current system resists change well enough, then it was a valid system.
The Lovecraft horror is spot on. If they did this, I would be out campaigning door-to-door for the GOP. The sad thing is that their pandering to religion really started with Reagan(and his astrologist-influenced wife. WTF?) Eisenhower was probably the best president of the last century, although you can't deny the Democrats did give us Clinton.Shoggoth2588 said:
Yeah, I'm a little hamstrung here in that I'm trying to cram what can be several weeks of college level lecture on political science into a couple hundred words. What I'm discribing is an inclusive flashcard system for how most political scientists classifiy political ideologies. There's some genuinely bizarre wierdnesse, like most of the details you pointed out that do lead some people to view it as a closed continum. As a general ruel, it's the importance of the individual and their ideas that's the primary distinguisher, and the openness to change that's secondary. Historically it's been the speed of change that was measured to establish where a political ideology lands.blindthrall said:
That said, the Nazis overhauled Germany in the 1930s. If you look at what their stated goals(some of them anyway), the implication is that, there wouldn't have been much change once the conquered the world (or something). In the short term you have a totalitarian regime in the long term a fascist one. And honestly, I'm not sure where I'd put a totalitarian regime ideologically. A totalitarian regime is one that enforces fundemental cultural shifts upon it's population, but it doesn't care about the interests of that population. Iran, the Khimer Rouge and Nazi Germany were all totalitarian governments. The fundimental discription of Fascism is that the people are not fit to rule themselves so we must do it for them. Hence, conservitive, even though the examples we have were involved in massive change.
I am going to pop one thing you said out just for reinforcement:
American conservitism is liberal ideology. So are American Liberals. They're in different places on the spectrum, but they're both liberal ideologically, also, they're both advocating change, just faster or slower, more or less extreme. I can't remember ever seeing a conservitive canidate go on TV and say, "what this country needs is to stay exactly like it is today." That would be ideologically conservitive. What they will say is "we need to fix the systems we have", or "we need to be more cautious in our spending" ect. Change, but slow measured and considered change[footnote]I don't mean Democrats are out there being wacky, this is just an example.[/footnote]. You can also refer to Conservitive ideology as Classical Conservitism, or Realism.[footnote]...and this shit drives political scientists up the wall. Classical Conservitism is Burkian at best, while Realism brings in a lot of leftover crap from Mercantilism. I can explain these terms if you want to hear it, but it's part of a huge terminology mess that you just kinda have to learn your way around in the field of politics. And again, I'm really not trying to talk down to you, if it comes across that way, I appologize.[/footnote]
Honestly given your discription I'd stick social Darwinism someplace around the left edge of Moderate or the right of Liberal, so, yeah, in an American conservitive, and you're right. Thank you.
BTW: Ron Paul is an outlier. He's a genuine wackjob, and does end up way the hell out in the reactionary camp with a handful. And there are some genuine ideologically conservitive individuals on the fringes of politics (the Montana Freemen come to mind), the same way there are actual radicals (almost any American Communist party). But, for good or ill, in our system they tend to be marginalized.
