If You Think Climate Change Is Real, Act Like It

You don’t get to go from warning about or denying climate change to saying it’s too late to do anything about it without having done everything in your power to make things better. I won’t let you get away with it. If you expect to make that transition peacefully, prepare to be disappointed. Great battles are not abandoned because they seem hopeless, that is the time to dig in and show what you are made of. Anything less than that is cowardice.

God, my mother lived through WWII and experienced all the sacrifices necessary on the home front in order that the battle might be won. They did without silk stockings so that parachutes might be made. They rationed gasoline, chocolate, had paper drives and tin drives, evened rationed staple foods. And the sacrifices made by those in the United States were NOTHING compared to those made in the Soviet Union and other countries.

And my father sacrificed four years of his life in order to do what needed to be done by joining the Army, never knowing if he would see his hometown or family again.

The only thing different between now and then is they had a government to lead them, someone to tell them what to do and give them a flag to rally around. Well, your government is not going to lead you this time, your media is not going to instruct you on how we will achieve victory. They’re not on our side for this fight. It’s time for all of us—each of us—to find a way to fight the battle of our generation, a battle that is even more important than the fight against fascism. Indeed, it IS a fight against fascism, but the fight in front of us has far more long-term consequences than what my parents faced.

What can you sacrifice in the name of what is most important to you? I suspect that given proper understanding of the consequences, my mother and others like her at home found such sacrifices a light burden. I suspect even my father understood that the cause was just and heroism was a necessary and noble aspiration. You will find ways to make a difference, I have faith in you.

My parents were never threatened by the dangers we are faced with today. The worst atrocities of the Nazis were not comparable to the possibility of an environment spiraling out of control.

Chocolate and silk stockings are all very fine, but without the meagerest of nature’s blessings, they seem like tawdry toys and temptations. We only undervalue nature’s miracles because we have been conditioned to believe that they will always be there for us. It is only when we realize we may lose them that we appreciate how integral nature’s simplest blessings have been to our fondest recollections: the sounds of waves lapping on the shore or the singing of birds. The feel of a gentle spring breeze upon our skin or the suns warming touch. Nature underlies all that we are, but we have been too distracted by the artificial world we have created. But that world has been built upon the foundation that is nature, and that foundation has been crumbling under the burden it has been forced to uphold.

What can you do to lighten the burden that modern civilization has placed upon the natural world? What sacrifices are you able to make, what acts of heroism can you take in order to inspire others? These are the questions we need to ask. Such questions might initially seem frightening, unpleasant, terrible, but they are not. Because I promise you that once you let go of things you now believe are necessary, you will begin to reconnect with nature in ways that are wondrous. You will ask yourself how you ever got so wound up in artificial distractions that led you away from all that is important and holy. You will experience real joy, perhaps for the first time in a long time, perhaps for the first time in your life. And you will find something worth fighting for and living for. You will experience a sweetness to living that you had long written off as impossible. It will begin the moment you commit yourself to trying.

This must be done.

Do Video Games Cause Violence?

As much as I dislike guns personally, I have to admit there are valid reasons people give for wanting to have one: I hunt, I want to protect my family, I want it as a way of preventing a totalitarian government, I want to protect my livestock from wild animals.

There is no valid reason for owning a First Person Shooter video game.

I suspect with that last sentence I’ve triggered a few people (no pun intended). “How dare you suggest I have no reason to play a game in which I violently play-murder people in high definition as I watch the blood squirt out of my pretend victims?” “How dare you suggest that it is not good, clean fun to play-murder people either randomly or else under the orders of a fictional superior?” “What is wrong with you?”

At least, that has been the response I’ve observed every time I’ve seen someone on social media suggest that violent video games might have some part to play in the upswing in murderous rampages in the last few decades.

It does seem that the rise in mass shootings corresponds rather closely with the rise of sophisticated violence in video games. Not to say that there is a causal relation, but we shouldn’t immediately dismiss it as complete coincidence, either. In my lifetime, I have seen video games go from Space Invaders to incredibly realistic virtual reality. Never while playing Missile Command did I ever feel like I was shooting down missiles, but watching my son snipe people from a distance, I do question whether it is healthy that he do so.

I know the standard response: science has determined that playing violent and bloody video games does not make those who play them more violent. I would say to those who make this claim that they are cherry-picking their evidence. “Studies have shown that playing violent video games can increase aggressive thoughts, behaviors, and feelings in both the short-term and long-term.” And while it has yet to be proven that violent video games are a cause for increased violence, insufficient data is currently available to support either side definitively.

But in the absence of solid scientific evidence, common sense can be applied. Is it not reasonable to assume that if a child is given a football to play with, that child might be more inclined to play football? If a child is given a racetrack, is he not more likely to become interested in NASCAR than a child who does not have one? In fact, in the history of humanity, children have been given toys that replicate the tasks they are to perform as adults, from toy lawn mowers, to toy workbenches, to toy ovens, to dolls, etc. If toys prepare children for what they are to do in their adult life, what are they learning from games in which they walk around shooting everybody they encounter?

Granted, video games are likely not the primary reason for the rise in mass shootings in the United States. After all, other nations have the same games as we do and have far less such events. But they could be one contributing factor. In fact, if one were to be honest, they are likely at least a small part of the problem and certainly not helping matters any. Any excuse for how playing video games where you go around killing people you do not know, either on a lark or because some disembodied voice is telling you to, is good for you is just that: an excuse. No, violent video games are not a safety valve to release our violent impulses. If you already have impulses to go around shooting people, video games aren’t going to help you. They won’t improve your social skills. They won’t enable you to cope with real life in a more meaningful way. And if they improve your hand/eye coordination, well, that’s probably only going to come in handy if you decide to gear up and head down to some place where large groups of people are gathered like ducks on a pond.

I know, it hurts, doesn’t it, to have your hobby criticized when you yourself are never going to snap and kill a bunch of people? You know very well that pretending to go on an extended killing spree is all the experience you will ever need. But maybe there are some people who can’t make the distinction between pretend violence and the real thing. Maybe, for some, that line is blurred, and long hours of pretend violence in graphic detail just makes it blurrier. Maybe, just maybe, your insistence on your freedoms might in part be responsible for someone being killed in the future. In real life, not in a game. 

You’re really not that much different than a lot of gun-owners in that regard. As a matter of fact, if one of you pointed in a mirror, there wouldn’t be much difference than the two of you pointing at each other. Except for the real sickos, of course, who like to play violent video games AND like real guns.

The point I’m driving at, is that the reasons for mass shootings are varied and complex. It is up to everyone to ask what they can do to make it better. Finger-pointing is really not all that different from pointing a fake gun. 

I get that you like to spend hours and weekends pretending to kill a bunch of people. And I’m sure you are fine and your hobby will never make you a menace to society. I’ve gambled in casinos and have never had a problem with it. On the other hand, I’ve known people’s whose lives were ruined by their gambling addictions. I’d rather shut down the gambling industry and miss out on my small pleasures than permit families to be ruined. It’s a small sacrifice.

So ask yourself what violent video games are contributing to society, then ask yourself if the reward you receive is worth the price society pays. And if you simply cannot imagine making a sacrifice for the greater good, cut some slack to those who do not wish to be parted with their guns. 

Remember, this is coming from someone who’s never fired a gun, except virtual ones. If you want gun owners to compromise on not merely their hobby but their deeply held beliefs, maybe you can show them that you are willing to sacrifice a little, too.

Why I'm So Hard On Democrats

Why do I constantly harp on the Democratic party for their failures and demand more of them when Trump is the greater threat? For the same reason a soldier makes damn sure his weapon is in working order before going into battle. It is folly, madness, to go into combat with a weapon that is always misfiring. As it stands, we’re almost as likely to be hurt by the Democrats as we are by Trump. Politicians are not friends nor allies, they are tools to be used. If we cannot rely upon them we owe them no loyalty. If they cannot help us, we must set them aside and choose other means of winning the battle.

Suppose you were set to march out to battle to oppose an enemy intent on destroying the world. Wouldn’t you want to know the weapon you are carrying is in proper working order? And if someone told you your weapon was unsafe and would explode in your face whenever you aimed it at your enemy, would you demonize that person if he was able to provide a convincing argument for why he knew it to be true? Would you accuse him of being a willing or unwilling tool of the enemy?

This is the situation as I now see it with liberals. I have seen time and again how they have gone into combat against Republicans, armed with a Democratic party that has never proven itself capable of beating back the opponent. So when I see you rushing out to get slaughtered, please do not think that I am less eager to engage in combat, only that I have learned the dangers of rushing into battle with blunderbusses against a division of tanks.

The Democratic Party is a weapon forged by bankers and pharmaceutical companies with no thought to craftsmanship but only to profit. It is worthless in our battle against the corporations, in fact it is a tool created by them. Forget about whether or not it will explode in your own hands, it will not even permit you to aim it properly at the enemy. The scope is off so that you will never hit your intended target. In fact, if you look through the scope of the Democratic Party, you will never even see the target you wish to hit. You will see only what they wish you to see.

Go ahead, take your rusty old Biden into battle and see what happens. They say its an upgrade from their previous model, but both were made from the same blueprint. Both are weapons forged by the very enemies we need to be fighting: corporations that have usurped our democratic processes. Trump is the more obvious tool of the enemy, the more powerful weapon, but we are unlikely to win a battle and will damned sure lose the war if we rush into battle with whatever weapons are handed to us by those who grow rich by funding both sides.

What Baby Boomers Have Left For Millennials

Baby boomers are handing over $21 trillion in national debt to millennials, a debt that was virtually at zero when they started to come to power. They have also saddled them with student loan debts most boomers never had to worry about. They shipped industrial jobs overseas and ended the idea of job security forever in order to boost their 401Ks so that they might retire in luxury. They trashed the environment and had more kids than they should have when overpopulation was already a known problem. They are overwhelmingly responsible for the plastic pollution that exists, since their parents got their milk and soda from returnable glass bottles and took their groceries home in paper bags. 

They over-consumed absolutely everything, demanding larger and larger and more and more vehicles, TVs, wardrobes. Most of them divorced rather than committing to the family they created, so that two parents ended up having two houses instead of one. To compensate for abandoning their roles as parents, they sought to become “friends” with their children. Because acting like a friend meant they never had to grow up and act like adults.

Because they pursued their selfish interests rather than being full-time parents, they tried to make it up by buying their kids “all the things they never had”, mainly stuff they never needed and wasn’t good for them. Mountains of cheap plastic toys sold in fancy packaging and marketed by television campaigns that sought to indoctrinate kids into a consumer culture. Yeah, baby boomers brought marketing to a whole new and disgusting level.

Baby boomers accepted consumerism as a way of life because it was an acceptable alternative to doing the hard work required to actually leave the world a better place than the one they had been given. Unfortunately, the world they gave to their kids did not have enough left over to provide them with the easy and frivolous lifestyle boomers experienced. The party was over by the time millennials graduated from high school with little prospect for a secure position. They couldn’t afford a house but they had to pay for a storage shed for all the guilt gifts their parents had given them over the years.

But baby boomers have so much more yet to give to the generation they are passing the baton to. 

They are busily giving them their judgment and contempt, boomersplaining to them how soft they’ve had it and what losers they are for not starting their own businesses or for complaining about the economy. How someone can ever sit in judgment of a generation that they helped create is beyond me, but self-reflection does not appear high on the boomer strength list. They appear to believe that their failures were due to their not being tough enough on their children rather than not being tough enough on themselves. They never figured out that you can’t tell children not to be selfish and materialistic when you are exhibiting such traits yourself. Nobody sees hypocrisy more clearly than children.

I’m a Gen Xer, though in my younger days I tried to fudge the numbers and pretend I was a Baby Boomer. When I was young I was convinced that the postwar generation was going to change the world, bring about the revolution that needed to take place. And while Baby Boomers had good ideas (and hella good music), their ideas and ideals never came to fruition. They were a generation such as was described in The Gospel: “Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they had not much soil, and immediately they sprang up, since they had no depth of soil, but when the sun rose they were scorched; and since they had no root they withered away.” Sadly, the Baby Boomer generation was not rooted in tradition but grew within the culture television provided for them. They were taught that material possessions would make you happy and that problems would resolve themselves within thirty minutes for less serious ones, and within an hour should they be dramatic problems.

My parents were part of the generation that witnessed The Great Depression. They always said that it was the greatest time to grow up, because though they had little, they didn’t know they were lacking because nobody else had any more than they did. They had what was important, and too often when you have more than what is important, you start mistaking the non-essential as being essential as well. You lose track of what is truly important, and you lose the miraculous present among the packaging. Those who were coming of age in the ‘60’s were aware of that, but they lost sight of it somewhere along the way. I guess television’s voice was louder than their parents' voices. Or perhaps, the television was telling them what they wanted to hear.

Baby Boomers were the first generation raised with a television in the house. They were the first to have an authority besides their elders, the church, or the state. It worked its magic too on my generation, and on those who came after. But the lie that worked on boomers is no longer as convincing to younger generations. One difference is that people have learned from what came before. Another difference is that young people grew up with the internet, which has dispersed authority, giving individual voices a chance to grow their own audience. But perhaps the greatest reason the most recent crop of adults is rejecting the narrative of the mainstream media is that the media has been forced to deviate too far from the truth. As the power of the media grew, so too did its arrogance and its corruption. And as the media is merely one facet of the power that is behind corporations and the government, corruption and arrogance was allowed to grow there as well. As corruption grew, the lies were forced to become greater in order to cover for it.

It is too late for the Baby Boomers, for them the lie has been too comfortable. It is too late for my generation, too, because the lie has been infused with hatred for others so that we blame others without power who should be our allies. It is not too late for millennials, for whom the lie has not been comfortable and to whom much of the hatred has been directed. The lie cannot explain their reality, so there is hope yet that they will see the media for what it is: a means of control of the masses used by those with a compulsion for dominance and an insatiable hunger for more.