Incivility, Death and George H.W. Bush

by Wholesome Rage | 5 December 2018

I saw this most clearly for the first time with the death of John McCain. When he died, it was begged that any criticism of him was ‘too soon’, to have respect for the family, at least wait until he’s buried. That it is distasteful to criticize someone when they die.

A week later, there were few headlines on an honest assessment of his history. Few talks about how what he said never quite matched up to his voting record. How the ‘Maverick’ was just branding, and he had too often thrown his lot in with the worst excesses of the Republican party. That had been forgotten.

What had not been forgotten was the white-washing, rehabilitation of his image. Of the talks about his military career, his bravery, the good things.

Alright, I’m going to use this word again. Propaganda. Propaganda isn’t just a thing that happens in dictatorships and failed states. It’s not a consignment of history. It’s one of those things where it’s obvious that it happened in the past, but we feel we are immune to it. We like to believe we’re smarter than that, more informed.

We are not.

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The False Equivalence of Violence on Both Sides

by Wholesome Rage | 21 November 2018

I speak a lot about US politics because when you get to it, discussing US politics is discussing world politics. There’s also a pragmatic side to this, mind you—according to my site statistics, even when I was still talking about general subjects, the majority of my audience is from the United States.

So, first of all, thanks for that. It does mean a lot to me to have you here. However, speaking a lot about American politics might make me sound like I hate America, or at least that I purposely take a stance against it—–but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Your culture is loud and projected and colourful in a way you have to admire. When I talk about these issues, I’m really angry about the political and economic power structures I hate, that the United States has taken to with its usual excess.

One thing that’s been talked a lot, especially by the President himself, is that there’s ‘violence on both sides’. Violence on both sides implying some sort of equivalent, or parity. Below is an internet-famous man using it to justify his sincere belief that Anita Sarkeesian led to the Charlottesville attacks.

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Magic Guest Article: Ariamaki on Card Mechanics

by Ariamaki | 15 November 2018

Hello! I’m your guest author for the week, Ariamaki. I’ve got a very wide field of interests and expertise, arguably too wide on the first half and not deep enough on the second, but I still pride myself in versatility and balance. Lately that has ranged from adding content to games like Monster Prom (you’ll know my credit when you see it) and Wizard of Legend (the Scales may not be the best credit to my sense of balance) all the way to working on board games with my good friend, collaborator, and general oddity Andy Hopp. In the future I might dig into more arcane and esoteric topics, but today’s going to be a simple straightforward piece on game design.

We’re going to look at games from genres that have a lot in common, games that are often considered competitors, focusing on big broad-strokes differences in their core systems. This is all about just observing what makes them tick, why those differences are there in the first place, and drawing some basic conclusions from there. In the future I’ll probably take a step sideways-and-back to talk about game design from a more basic level or discuss the specific mechanics and how-to’s of these games, but right now?

Let’s make some hash.

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