The point of no return

I never played Spec Ops: The Line, but I did binge a few months ago on its TVtropes page, and I also read several articles and interviews about and with the developers. This is a game that took considerable inspiration from Apocalypse Now and its own predecessor, Heart of Darkness; unsurprisingly, such a pedigree resulted in a much darker and more self-aware take on the standard military shooter than is common.

What stuck with me was a comment made by one of the executives or produces from the company - one of the people whose job depends on making a popular and financially successful product - who said in an interview that the game was intentionally designed so that there would come a point where the only morally defensible option available to the player would be to turn off the game and stop playing.

I thought that a fascinating concept at the time, but having just read ALL the spoilers on TVtropes, I didn't feel the need to buy it and see for myself. But now I can attest to that phenomenon, because for the first time, I have shelved a video game because of my discomfort with what it is calling on me to do.

The Atlantic, The Intercept, and what the story is actually about

A few days ago, I read this: http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2015/02/what-isis-really-wants/384980/. I thought it was outstanding, both as a piece of writing and as an example of journalism that can actually clarify horrifically complicated questions and help people make decisions with significant real-world impact.

Today, I read https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/02/20/atlantic-defines-real-islam-says-isis/ via the twitter account of Glenn Greenwald (which, despite my enormous respect for the work he does, I find very irritating; everything he tweets or retweets seems to start from the base assumption that American foreign policy can do no right, end of story.)

I think the author of the second piece is misreading Wood's article as badly as he or she accuses Wood of misreading Islam.

The point of the Atlantic piece is not to establish which variant of Islam is correct or 'most Islamic', and neither does it claim to do so. Wood's stated goal was to determine what ISIS wants, and he persuasively argues that what they want is based on a very strict reading of the founding texts of Islam. That hundreds of millions of Muslims, including many highly knowledgeable and deeply devout Muslims, disagree with this interpretation has little bearing on whether or not ISIS will base its actions on these beliefs, which is entirely what the article was about in the first place. And while I wish he hadn't used the phrase 'cotton-candy view of their own religion', it is true that many both in and out of the Muslim community have denied that ISIS has any connection with Islam out of disgust and embarrassment rather than scholarly and doctrinal grounds.

If you read the Atlantic article as trying to determine whether ISIS represents "true Islam" (a phrase which, despite the headline of the rebuttal, never appears in the original article), of course it is hilariously unbalanced. But *it isn't trying to do that.* What he is trying - and I think he succeeds - to do is to shed a light on the way a very particular group thinks and the reasons it thinks that way. One can have “a coherent and even learned expression of Islam" and still disagree with other members of the faith, or even be a minority. And while he does not stress of the many non-ISIS Muslims that "their version of the religion is more genuine," neither does he claim that ISIS's version is more genuine. All he's doing is describing what their version is, where it comes from, and what it means in terms of predicting the future actions of the group.

And as an American voter who needs to have an opinion about ISIS and what the U.S. should do about it, I'm very grateful that he did so.

I sympathize with the author of the second piece, Murtaza Hussain, who I assume is Muslim. It must be horrifying to see and hear about such acts perpetrated in the name of your own faith when your own understanding of that faith is so radically opposed to such acts. It's ridiculous that, like far to many Muslims, I'm sure Hussain has been called on repeatedly to defend his faith or to publicly denounce the actions of ISIS and its ilk, like a sort of loyalty test for 'the good Muslims.' I'm equally certain that many of the people already inclined to blame Islam as a whole for the actions of some adherents have misread Wood's piece just as Hussain has, and that he's already had to deal with repeated doses of idiocy from such folk.

But make no mistake: although very narrow in its scope (and http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/18/in-defense-of-islam/?_r=0 and http://www.unz.com/gnxp/islam-is-not-a-religion-of-the-book/ both discuss important factors to consider that fell outside the scope of Wood's article), this is journalism that we need. The fact that Wood's article will inevitably be misinterpreted by readers with a prior agenda against Islam is no reason to misinterpret it in the same way. Because ISIS is a problem, and anyone trying to grapple with that problem, whether from a doctrinal or foreign policy perspective, must be willing to confront why ISIS does and believes what it does ... no matter how uncomfortable such a study is likely to be.

EDIT: Another good article on the distinction between labeling a group Islamic on a theological level rather than a sociological level. I think it's fairly clear that the original article dealt with Islam as a sociological phenomenon, but I can see how some readers who regard Islam as a theological system could misinterpret Wood's statement that the group is 'very Islamic' as an endorsement of their interpretation of the faith.

The definition of insanity

The definition of insanity, of course, is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. So we are told by Albert Einstein, who was a marvelously smart man, although I'm not aware of any particular credentials he held in the field of mental health. Still, let's accept that as at least a valid definition of insanity.

And has there been any better example of such repetitive insanity in the last 50 years than American policy toward Cuba?

Let me state upfront that I'm not a fan of the Castros. They appear to have been brutal thugs when they took over 50 years ago, and they continue to be brutal thugs today. Their removal from power in Cuba is a worthy goal, both on behalf of the Cuban people and in terms of American regional interests. I believe that this motivation was a significant portion of the reasoning behind the American embargo that was put in place after our catastrophe at Bay of Pigs and remains in place to this day. (If I'm feeling generous, I'll say that it was the primary motivation, although other motivations definitely played a large role, i.e. 'showing the Soviets that our penis is bigger than theirs' and 'protecting the economic interests of American companies and businessmen who have been using Cuba as their private fiefdom with our political support for a generation.')

There's only one problem. It hasn't worked.

From the trenches of #GamerGate

EDIT: I thought the argument was over, but it's flared up again, so I've added some more of the arguments below.

Republished from an argument with a friend-of-a-friend on said friend's facebook wall. The person with whom I was arguing professed not to be a member or supporter of GamerGate, but held some very GamerGate-ish views of Anita Sarkeesian, including, in the preceding posts, arguing that the reason she 'attacked' video games was to intentionally draw hate with which to increase her own popularity and victimhood.

My response after the jump:

Thoughts on the election

Well, that's over and done with. I'm mildly disgruntled about the results, on both a state and national level. It's not like the Democrats particularly deserved to win either, but the number of positions shifted to the GOP, as well as the overall strength of their victory, means the crap that won't get done over the next few years will be slightly more unpalatable than the crap that wouldn't have gotten done otherwise.

As a copy editor, I get to follow election news whether I like it or not. As such, here are a few of my takeaways from Democalypse 2014:

There's a definite downside to being a gamer these days

I realized something the other day. All my life, I have self-identified first and foremost as a reader. I took an obscure pride in being the kid from whom the teachers always had to confiscate books in class, and even after I stopped doing that, I still majored in English in large part because that's what someone who loves to read ought to do. So it was disconcerting to realize that I spend considerably more time and energy playing video games, reading about video games and thinking about video games than I do reading (even counting reading news stories online, which I do), thinking about reading or following the publishing industry.

On its own, that's a little sad. While there definitely are video games of such richness and artistry to elevate the player's perception of the world in the same way that a good book will do, they are few and far between in the game industry, and the vast majority of my gaming time is spent on games with much lower culture capital to offer: MMOs, match-based multiplayer games and single player games with stories that exist to get you to the next gameplay objective. These games have their own sort of value - in particular, the social aspect of these online games is a big part of my life these days - but it's not the same value I'd be getting from intentionally seeking out and exposing myself to the best stories told by the best thinkers.

So that's a cause for regret, but a relatively small one. A bigger issue is that if there was ever a time not to want to think of oneself as a gamer, this is it.

(Unhappy words about GamerGate after the jump.)

A deeply unappealing decision

Busy couple of weeks, including moving to a new apartment. Good to be back.

So, Wisconsin politics are less fraught than they were when I first started this blog, but only because I started the blog during a time of quite unprecedented fraughtitude; things remain less than collegial in the halls of Madison, the moreso now that the governor's race is heating up for round 3: this time not with Tom Barrett!

There are a number of things going on that could affect that race (in particular, the long-simmering John Doe investigation which has been tied up in highly technical procedural knots for weeks, resulting in some supremely uninteresting wire stories. My take: I think Walker and co. truly believe that their reciprocal backscratching with 3rd parties like club for growth met the letter of the law, and that they wouldn't recognize the spirit of the law if it attempted to gnaw off their sexual organs of preference). While there are ongoing sideshows regarding reproductive rights and gay marriage, the main thrust of this election seems to be economic. The Walker camp argues that they have balanced the budget and made life easier for local governments to do the same and that the state has added 100K+ jobs under his tenure. The camp of his opponent, Mary Burke, counters that he balanced the budget on the backs of public workers and recklessly cut tax revenues, that Wisconsin lags all the surrounding states in job creation, and that in any case, he had promised 250K+ jobs in his first term. The Walker camp counters that she was commerce secretary under previous Democratic governor Jim Doyle and therefore must be responsible for the crushing deficits and highly unpopular chicanery undertaken to resolve them seen during his tenure. The Burke camp counters that he's a doo-doo head, etc., etc.

Anyone who was around when I first started blogging knows my feelings about Walker. They've not changed. But despite my pronounced antipathy toward him and his, I'm finding it hard to get a lot of enthusiasm built up for this election, because Burke is an abysmal candidate, with no more integrity, decorum or competence than Walker.