Posts Tagged ‘politics’

[This was originally posted as a private journal entry, but I decided to go ahead and share it.]

Rachel Ben-Avi: Dear Barack [via HuffPo]

The whole article hits me square in the gut, but ESPECIALLY the part I quote below. This expresses very well how I feel about politics and the possibility of change these days. I will direct my passions toward creativity, justice, and compassion and always continue to hope that lives can be positively affected. But I will never again buy into the notion that I can help elect a person to political office who is capable of bucking the system.

I’ll let Rachel’s words finish out my whine-fest, then be done with it.

My heart is broken, and this time the break is permanent. The disappointment is cosmic.

I am diminished by this disappointment, I am shrunk; my heart has folded in on itself like a psychotic origami, it is trampled beyond repair. Picture the blood wrung from it. Picture the just recently thrilled throbbing muscle, now empty, limp.

No, I am not waxing hyperbolic.

Put aside shattered love. Shattered love is an everyday occurrence; everyone has been disappointed, everyone has suffered the broken heart; but the tragedy here is: I have given up. The tragedy is deeper, more to be pitied than a broken heart. The tragedy is surrender. Shoulders shrugged, palms facing black holes. Multiply me by all the people who feel as I do, and we add up to a carpet of horizontal bodies stretching from shore to shriveling shore, too impotent even to sit up.

We shouted YES WE CAN, and actually believed it. Carried signs that said CHANGE YOU CAN BELIEVE IN.

We are stunned mute. We’ve thrown up our hands and trudged away into caves, to curl up, to “let” whatever happens out there happen. We had the illusion that we had input, but we are so far out of what makes change in this country, we might as well be ants.

I am a cynic now. You’ve had a real impact on me.

There will be no magical appearance of an even-better-than-Barack after you are done doing whatever it is that you will do. Or whatever it is that you will not do. And if, after you, there comes another image of one who seems like the real thing, I won’t fall for it. Not me, not ever again.

via Rachel Ben-Avi: Dear Barack.

I can’t find anything in this post by Debra Dean Murphy that doesn’t deeply resonate inside me.

Afghanistan and Advent « Intersections: Thoughts on Religion, Culture, and Politics.

I read somewhere recently that in order to truly hate someone, you must first have loved them. I don’t know if I think that’s actually true, but I do know that I never loved George Bush or Dick Cheney, but I have loved Barack Obama.

And these days, the inner turmoil I feel about Obama’s politically-calculated betrayal of his own stated ideals is weighing on me far worse than anything I ever felt about the Bush administration.

I ranted and railed and voted against Bush’s lies from day one. But this time, here and now, where we find ourselves … that’s a condition I helped bring about.

Leah tried to warn me. She told me over and over again, “He’s a politician, just like the rest of them. He can’t possibly do what he says he’s going to do. Political reality won’t allow it.”

I knew she was right – I didn’t actually expect Obama to succeed in all the changes he was proposing.

But I DID expect him to try. In that, I thought he’d be different.

I was wrong. And I’m sick about it.

BSG at the UN: Wow, That Actually Worked!

David Moore shared this with me, I’m passing it on. Some of the BSG cast went to the U.N. and talked about how good sci-fi can address real-world issues pretty effectively. And Edward James Olmos took the opportunity to school the U.N. assembly on the notion that using the word “race” as a term of separation is totally asinine, because there is is only one race, the HUMAN race. And then he shouted “So say we all”.

And most of the assembly shouted it back at him. Yep.

Another shareworthy laff-fest about our beloved PoTUS, discovered courtesy of a tweet from Mighty Mur Lafferty:

Obama Disappointed Cabinet Failed To Understand His Reference To ‘Savage Sword Of Conan’ #24 | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source.

Hee Hee. I needed some ticklish giggliness after my my morning dump about family drama, so this was really refreshing.

I’m as big an Obamaniac as you’re likely to find, but still, this is really funny because, well … come on people, lighten up.

Andy Borowitz: Poll: Obama Even More Awesome Than Originally Thought.

Obviously, I haven’t written in awhile. No blog posts, no VAM, and no posts on other folks’ forums – with one exception noted below.

I am in a big creative slump. Perrin stole my mojo and banked it all into his NaNoWriMo effort. And this Autumn has seen my mood drop like a spacecraft improperly aligned for re-entry.

Yeah, I know. Waaa-waaa.

And I’ve taken what energy I DID have and funneled it all into one thing – a fruitless, pointless, and ill-considered attempt to dialogue with Seth Ben-Ezra – a person I admire and respect from the RPG-design community – on his blog. It has turned into a major distraction and a major flashpoint for some soul-searching and navel-gazing on my part. And if you know me, you know that I don’t need much of an impetus to get into navel-gazing mode. But this one was massive even by my drama-boy standards. It wasn’t even about roleplaying games. It was about faith, religion, and how they intersect politically in our country in the wake of the recent election season. It was about my half-assed attempt to take Christianity back from the Fundies and prove to the world that not all Christians think like the stereotypical Christian is portrayed. I don’t bring this up much in my hobby interactions, but it is a big deal to me. And when I read Seth’s OP entitled “Thoughts for a Young Citizen”, I just HAD to get in on it. And for some reason I just HAD to keep getting in on it, long after all of the other commentors walked away.

I should have listened to Daniel when he told me to walk away.

Anyhow, it went badly. And it has dominated my thoughts and my mood for over a week. And it is amplified by other factors, and so, I’ve essentially crawled under a rock for a couple of weeks except when I chose to emerge and take pot shots at Seth.

I’m done with that now, and I’m walking past it. This was a particularly sad sojourn at a particularly unproductive waypoint. I take full responsibility because I could have stepped away at any time, could have handled it so very much better, and could have not let it get to me as much as it has. But I didn’t. I thought I had something to prove.

I suppose the way this relates to roleplaying games is this – for all our obvious ideological differences, I still really respect Seth as a game designer and rpg theorist. I like his passion for the hobby, I like his games. I like Seth. And if we get to see one another at a con, I’ll be happy to drink with him and break bread with him and call him a friend. Because there’s still a kinship there. Our hobby is a bridge over all the mess, and we can meet upon that bridge and be friends.

And I think that’s cool. I’m totally thankful for it.

Okay, I’ll try to get back to doing some actual waypoints again. Probably not every day, but as I’m able. I need to bust through this creative block, and so wish me luck and feel free to egg me on. I’ll appreciate it.

Inspired by this blog post from Ogre Whiteside

Ogre officially becomes the first person to get a second visit on my waypoint journey. I was sitting around thinking about whether to write today, as I’m grumbling about juggling too much stuff these days, and also, I’m getting way too depressed about the tone of the political situation with the whole “Real America/Anti-America” dungheap of gall, and it has already affected my blog writing. (i.e. what the hell was that wookiee rant all about, anyway?)

Anyhow, I wasn’t going to write a waypoint today, but I was reading Ogre’s blog and he has this great new post about the five biggest problems with trying to run ongoing campaigns (as opposed to one-shots and short-shots). It is all very pertinent and dead-on, in my experience. Heck, even the Canoneers are experiencing some of the same issues right now because we’re having scheduling and juggling problems.

So the thing is, I really appreciated Ogre’s post, but in my current mood, I totally took one little sentence that he wrote out of context and wrote a comment to his OP in response. And suddenly, I realized, “hey, this is a valid waypoint.” It doesn’t necessarily reflect all that well on me, but it IS how I feel, and so I’m sharing it here more as a journal entry to capture my mood at one particular point in time than anything else.

So, I urge you to read ALL of Ogre’s post, because it has a wealth of cogent points in it that go way beyond the thing I’m about to focus on. Here’s the part of Ogre’s post I responded to, followed by a copy of the comment I posted on his blog:

3. Differing play styles: Deela’s only into combat, everything else her character does is to get her closer to the next fight. Ramon wants a story about unrequited love and tragedy. Chandler wants to make orc dick jokes and to eat pizza. Randy isn’t into combat, he just wants to flirt with Collin’s character while they cuddle on the couch.

Pop quiz, which player is doing it wrong? None of them. Not a single one, and if you answered differently, you’re a dick. People want different things out of games, and not everyone wants the same thing out of the same game.

let me say that again because it’s important.

People want different things out of games, and not everyone wants the same thing out of the same game.

- Ogre Whiteside, Five Fatal Flaws, October 22, 2008

Awesome post, dude. But I’m going to have to go ahead and admit I’m a dick, because I totally think that Chandler is doing it WRONG and he’s an asshat if his so-called “play style” is to make orc dick jokes all night.

Overall I totally agree with your main point, even if sometimes I’m still tempted to grouse about some peoples’ play styles. But I admit I’m wrong and dickish when I do that.

But in my opinion, Chandler isn’t actually PLAYING, so his behavior doesn’t fall under the “all playstyles are valid” umbrella. As far as I’m concerned, Chandler should find the door right along with Farquar.

… UNLESS his character is the one making orc dick jokes. That’d be annoying to me, but I can’t say it’d be wrong. But I interpreted your OP to be suggesting that Chandler was using the table solely as his personal ‘Last Comic Standing’ audition, and that he gets his fun from making asinine commentary on the game instead of from playing the game.