DonCoquixote
DonCoquixote's Journalrape culture
This is based on this thread:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014468335
OK, I know this will sound horrible, but I am flabbergasted. While many agreed with a comment, I had people tell me I was wrong for calling this rape.
I am sorry, but has out definition of rape been so diluted that when a mother forcibly impregnates someone, we split hairs over whether that was rape, or whether she deserves more than f years in the clink?
Does David Barton, Evangelical Host, Think 'Bioshock Infinite' Has Anti-Christian, Anti-Conservative
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/26/david-barton-bioshock-infinite_n_3164724.htmlOK, gamer here. I have posted about this game before, but now that even Huffpo has gotten into the act, I will offer some information.
Are the bad guys White and Christian: many are, though not all. American, well, the badguys are former Confederate who secede from the Union, so there is always that bit of detachments. They call their "nation" Columbia, but it might as well be "new Dixie" as they will eventually attack the "union." But yes, villiany is spread about: indeed, one of the tragedies of the game is someone who should have been a left-wing hero give in to violent tendencies (no spoiler.)
It is a honest study of power; how people with great intention get so full of themselves they wind up destroying everything they care about. Yes, the images are raw and nasty, but I could go into a history book and pull out images that were just as raw, because the reality of racism in the early 1900's (where the game takes place) WAS Nasty. People may call it shock value, but when you have the Rand Pauls (who could easily be a bioshock villain) whitewash the Confederacy (no pun meant) you have to remind people that no, the masters were not kind to the slaves.
If any gripe is to be had, it is that you can tell that Ken Levine (the writer) he had to water the badguys down a lot, that is because some Christians staged a coup and threatened to leave. Overall, religion, racism, even America itself winds up being part of a greater plot whole, about how people make choices, and how much or little they matter. If you were the sort that liked reading existential literature, you will very likely not be griping at the ending, while many people might go "but but but..."
In short, it is not a "game to kill white people" as some racist sites said.
born in Jersey City
Maragaret Hague hospital, like they say every political campaign.
Sadly, Jersey City is becoming the sort of place that pushes out middle class; that is how I ended up in Florida. Long before 9-11, Yuppies who worked in Manhattan moved there, which was literally a 10 minute bus ride to the World Trade Center. Of course, prices shot up; oddly enough, the neighborhood that was really affected was downtown, which was the poor area. Manhattan people bought out tenements and made condos.
After 9-11, this flame got hit with Gasoline. Now downtown has skyscrapers. It makes me shudder to realize I lived in a humble area, and that the house I lived in, half the size of where I live now, is worth a Million dollars. Now, let me raise you one, we had a working class/borderline tenement right on my same street, where my aunt lived. A developer came in and restored it to it's 20 art deco glory, it looks like a set piece from a Batman Movie. Condos there go for 1.5 million. This was the place my mother wanted me not to hang out at, because there were violent gangs and pushers there.
Blumner: The shame of hedge fund masterminds
http://www.tampabay.com/opinion/columns/blumner-the-shame-of-hedge-fund-masterminds/2116215Excerpts from article in St. Pete Times.
"Take Steven Cohen of SAC Capital Advisors. Cohen's 2012 pay was $1.4 billion. For this, he obtained a 13 percent return for investors. Sounds good, right? Except that the Standard & Poor's 500 stock index shot up 16 percent last year when factoring in dividends. SAC investors paid a 50 percent performance fee to Cohen despite the lagging numbers.
Having no shame is one of the rules for success as a hedge fund manager.
There are other rules, too, such as: "Don't ever get into the business of making things. Your job is to take money away from people who make things." The rules are entertainingly spelled out in How to Make a Million Dollars an Hour by Les Leopold, a book that carries the ominous subtitle, "Why Hedge Funds Get Away with Siphoning Off America's Wealth." As fun as this book is to read, its message is no laughing matter."
in other words
Terrorists are often LOSERS.
Like a kid named Osama who was a drug addict, who blew his kidneys from all the Heroin he did, all because his family hated him as a concubine's son, from a father who was too busy making money to be a dad.
Like a former Confederate general named Nathan Bedford Forest that was so dejected after the North kicked Dixie's ass in the Civil war, that he and his fraternity buddies would dress in ghost sheets and beat up black people, calling themselves the "kyklos clan" later to me mispronounced as "ku Klux."
Like a rich kid named George W. Bush that wanted to prove he was not the stupid brother of Jeb, and in the process of becoming president, enabled and empowered the same bastards that wanted to hang his pa just because the elder Bush realized taxes had to be raised. Who lied his country into war so that he could avenge his Daddy, even though Daddy turns out to have advised him against it.
The list can go on, an Austrian art school reject named Adolph Hitler, a failed novelist named Josef Stalin, all people who, to quote Eric Hoffer, seek to write in blood the literature they know they do not have the talent to write in words. We can now add a boxer that beat his wife and blew his citizenship named Tamerlane, and Dzofar, his submissive little brother, whose one and only contribution will be that he illustrated that terrorists are just another criminal, to be arrest by cops, put into court, and then thrown into a regular old jail, where they can spend the rest of their days making license plates.
A tale of two governments: Boston and Texas
Ok first off, I have often been the person that yells at northern liberals when they dump on Texas. Also, one life= one life, so there cannot and should not be a judgment just because someone came from point a or b.
Now, there is something I think needs looking at.
Boston: liberal (give or take the odd mistake like Mitt Romney.) The culture is used to the idea of spending money on civil servants and infrastructure, even if there is the occasional mishap (like the "Big Dig"
Terrorist shows up: locals work together, police work together, suspect is caught.
Texas: Conservative. Has a culture hostile to civil servants and infrastructure spending. Big explosion happens, lots of people die. Turns out, instead of terrorists, it was an accident in part due to poor quality inspection. No jail time, no arrests, no hint of a crime, despite a death toll equal to Boston.
Of course, did the folks who ran the ammonia plant plan to lay the bomb in the same way as Tamarlane and Dzophar did? NO, but they damned well knew they were gambling with people's lives.
Jim Cornette's Rant
this guy is from pro wrestling, but a lot of what he says about the right wing is true, especially the part where he says that the talking heads are very much the equivalent of "heels" meant to work a crowd up
FBI releases images of Boston suspects
http://www.tampabay.com/incoming/fbi-releases-images-of-2-men-at-boston-marathon/2116015Now, for all we know, these can be two unlucky bastards whose worst offense was picking the wrong time to take a cigarette break.
However, if I may humbly observe...their faces are hard to make out, but they do not look like the "black man" that was reported. I also find it suspicious they are wearing the same outfit.
And yes, the first one does have pale skin. Of course, many people do.
However, this does not look good...Methinks we may have something domestic here.
Bioshock: a game as art?
First off, I recommened you check out this link in the Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2013/apr/16/bioshock-infinite-ten-critical-reactions
It has discussions done by many people, from all levels, about what this game has provoked.
The fact that this game has been discussed in the Guardian, the New York times, Forbes shows that some nerve has been pinched. There will still be a debate about whether video games can be art, but I humbly offer this. If the purpose of art is to inspire us to think and feel, to cause uncomfortable debates about issues that we would not engage in, then yes, this game has succeeded.
Of course, I should like the folks in the guardian did, I should offer a spoiler alert, though I will try to go easy on it.
Yes, the game's villains show a LOT of the ugly, racist images and actions. It is NOT filtered. Columbia, the city where you raid, is very much the whitewashed, white bread idealization of America, right down to the memorial of John Wilkes Booth. Of course, what many of the critics do not get is that the very alternation between pretty facades and empty or ugly holes IS the point. It is not a sustainable place, it is a show that people have put themselves in, totally unaware that their city in the clouds is held together with fraying wires and rusty equipment. The fact is, there is a lot of America that is fighting over the facades, over painted images and frozen statues. Meanwhile, the children we claim to love so much are locked up in towers and brainwashed (like Elizabeth, one of the main characters), or outright dehumanized like the workers who are turned into machines. Tennessee Williams once said "I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion." The game will use the yes, shocking imagery to illustrate things thoughts that yes, are real. The sci fi is just the sugar to help you swallow it.
I understand the point some people make that using Racists as bad guys can be cheap shock value, and that it does not guarantee that white people will actually get the point, because they will be too busy thinking they can just blast a bad guy, rather than confront the evil that runs in the veins of even the best people. However, I do think the "shock" is needed, because, right now, in this society, the very attitudes parodied in Columbia are still there? We all knew, for example, that some people were not ready for a Black President. Did we really expect the whole "birther" nonsense to be given half the seriousness it was? You do not, hell, you should not, seek the worst example in trailer parks, because there are any number of clean, crisp magazines you can buy in your local bookstore where the worst cliches about Minorites will be discussed as if they were scientific fact. I need not get into the public school textbooks where slavery was praised, or where "separation of church and state" is being called a lie. It is horrible that things that should be in the graveyard of lies come up again; it becomes fitting that the game is Bioshock infinite, where, without realizing it, you find yourself caught in a loop of repeating events, where your weakness forget things you should have remembered.
Of course, the story is about the relationship between the hero, Booker dewitt, and Elizabeth. Some get mad at that, whereas I say we needed more focus on relations, not just between those two, but other people. To those who play the game, yeah, i will be getting to Fitzroy), but the fact is, politics is personal, and while we focus on signs and flash, we forget it is about how people relate to each other and survive. If anything, the flaws in the game are that they offered less of this, and more of the shooter. Of course, Ken levine has said he wanted to appeal to the shooter, to appeal to the bang bang types. Again, another American flaw revealed, where, like Obama, he thinks his efforts to please everyone will unite people, and instead, on the forums, said meatheads are braggiong the game is not violent enough, not enough guns.
And here is where we get to discussing that ending. If you have people that played this game, you will hear them talk about iot, either very bad, or very Good. Now, double spoiler alert, I will not state what this ending is in precise terms, but I can discuss it, as it also says something about ourselves.
The ending is a tragic one, though I should say many would disagree with me.The problem comes into play because the hero, for all of his square jaw power, is weak, in that he cannot remember, or really examine, why he is in this mess. I see that as a reflection of our main weakness; we do not pauses, we do not reflect, and therefore, are prey to those who want to keep the cycle going for their own damned benefit. We are dupes, but we help the dupe, as our approach to problems tends to be to keep shooting until you run out of ammo. When and and Elizabeth are together, trying to figure out where to go at the end, they get caught in the same loop of kill the badguy. Of course, stuff happens, there are some twists that any lover of Greek tragedy can recognize; the tragic flaw, the things that makes you a hero becoming your fatal flaw. Even though in theory, they have more choices available than any human can every dream of, they are still limited by their own perspective, and as a result, the one last door is opened.
There are some numerous flaws, for example, the two of them needed a foil, someone to respond to to challenge their ideas. Bioshock 1's andrew ryan did that better, and they could have used a foil. As a minority and a leftist, I do feel that the character of Dasy Fitzroy was misused, as instead of being a plot device, she could have told both Booker, Elizabeth and the Vox Populi (her minions gone nuts) where they were wrong. I understand most of the staff in gaming are white, but there are minorities they can talk to to at least get a badly needed perspective. Now that game machines are more powerful, there is room to grow, room to put in the perspectives that allow true exploration. However, a lot of this is limited by Ken Levine's own problem, his belief that choice is a lie.
Now, we can debate free will till the sun goes nova, but the fact is, choices do matter. Perhaps the next Bioshock can parody the idea of Nihilism, the idea that choice a or B still gets you fucked, so why bother? This game had a chance to do that, and it failed. However, some artistic failures are better than most successes. While there are flaws in the game, it has provoked thought that needed to be provoked; it stands head an shoulders above many. I do not mean video games either: If our art, news media, and others were able to provoke half as many discussions about race, war, power, money, America's image of itself versus reality, Labor, then we would be in a different place. Frankly, a lot of so called journalists, authors, painters, academics and even some activists should be ashamed that company whose official purpose is to make a toy wound up doing a better job of stimulating thought than they did.
Boston: Humble suggestions on what NOT to do
Of course, two events can come to mind, 9-11 and the OKC Bombing. In light of those, I offer some humble ideas on what we should not do.
1) Jump the gun. A lot of people will look at Al Qaeda, and a lot of people will look at the Right wing Militia. Truth be told, we know both sets of groups have threatened violence, and we know they are capable of it. However, we have no idea who did this, and we also know there are no shortage of people who could have done this, from established ones (like the I.R.A) to unknown types. The last thing we want to do is slap a label.
2) Lose focus on who matters, the victims. There will be a LOT of political football played with this, regardless of who turns out to be the culprit. We need to make sure that even as the sound and fury swirls about, we do not lose focus on the people, the people who will need help, possibly for the rest of their lives. I even include grief in that mix, as there will be those who seek to turn grief into profit, who will swoop down on charities and prey on the weak.
3) Allow the news media to control the narrative; The news media is not interested in finding out the truth. They will want to exploit this, and move on, just like they do every time some school shooting happens. We need to make sure the truth is found, and yes, that if there is a change to be made, it is made, period.
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