Immaturity and Politics

It seems like almost all the recent political discussions I've taken part in online have decayed almost immediately into juvenile behavior and incoherent ranting. Until this morning I had posted every comment made on this blog, even those that disagreed with me. However, this morning I found that some brave individual calling himself "Anonymous" had decided that the proper response to this statement from my last post:

Liberals haven't changed for decades. They often call themselves "Progressives", but they simply repackage the same tired ideas from one year to the next while resorting to name-calling when they come up against someone who opposes their philosophies (e.g., "fascists", "racists", "deniers").

was the following tidbit of wisdom:

I would stop at just "fascist". Maybe I would call you a <%$#@> as well. Have a nice life.

I didn't post the comment directly since I will not tolerate obscenity on my blog. However, thank you Mr. or Ms. Anonymous for proving my point.

Name-calling does not constitute an argument and does more harm to one's position than good. It implies that your beliefs are so indefensible that only someone with the maturity level of a 10 year old could hold them (a foul-mouthed 10 year old if you're "Anonymous"). My dear Anonymous, in what way would you say my compatriots and I are fascists? Can you defend or support that statement? Can you refute my claim that Liberals resort to name-calling when they can't provide a cogent argument? Never mind that last item; you actually supported my statement by giving a concrete example.

"That mean old Atomic Spud challenged my beliefs
and hurt my feelings. He's a poo-poo head!"

Oh, and the "have a nice life" is the icing on the cake. It's impossible not to imagine this being said by a petulant, pouting teenager trying to get in the last word before slamming her bedroom door.

A Few Thoughts On Politics

There was a time, B40K, when I actually commented frequently on politics. However, I realized that Warhammer 40,000 is simply more interesting because of the variety of characters and figures, the imagination involved in the game's sci-fi background, and the variation from one game to the next. Politics, on the other hand, are extraordinarily predictable. Liberals haven't changed for decades. They often call themselves "Progressives", but they simply repackage the same tired ideas from one year to the next while resorting to name-calling when they come up against someone who opposes their philosophies (e.g., "fascists", "racists", "deniers"). The Left clearly fits Einstein's definition of insanity by doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. How many times has the President pushed additional stimulus bills even after the first failed so spectacularly? Heck, how many Liberal ideas have been tried since Woodrow Wilson's and Franklin Roosevelt's presidencies and been shown to be utterly ineffective? Obama's Keynesian approach to the economy might as well be called New Deal 2.

Although it's often forgotten, both Wilson and Roosevelt used crises (i.e., World War I and the Great Depression, respectively) as an excuse to exercise an unprecedented amount of power over the economy (Liberal Fascism provides an excellent overview of the policies of these two presidents). Apparently some Liberals are tired of waiting for another major war or genuine depression to repeat this; there are a number of them who have decided that democracy is in the way and have publicly stated that Obama should declare marshal law or a state of emergency and pass his policies in dictatorial fashion. Representative Jesse Jackson, Jr. is the latest to do so. If a Republican or a Conservative had said that a Right-leaning president should do such a thing (especially if that Conservative were an elected representative), the mainstream media would be trumpeting it from the rooftops. However, I often get the impression that the far Left doesn't actually have a problem with dictatorship as long as that dictatorship implements their policies (look at how the Left fawns over Castro or Che). If Jackson's thinking weren't representative of the Left's actual way of thinking, I would have expected some sort of condemnation of his statement by now.

And then there's the Republican Party, which seems bound and determined to destroy itself. Obama's mishandling of... well, just about everything, should be a gift from the heavens for the GOP. But I expect the Party to completely squander the opportunity, as it often does. I'm still wary of my own party ever since it spent money like a drunken sailor (i.e., became Democrats-light) in the early 2000s. And I'm baffled by many of the candidates/potential candidates that the GOP has put forward over the past few election cycles. Haven't we figured out by now that professional politicians won't govern by the Conservative principles that we claim to cherish? The best politicians are few and far between because they are often those who accept the position reluctantly (e.g., George Washington). It's been said that a true Conservative politician would have to be drafted and dragged from his or her home to serve in Congress. Right now it seems like the person who is closest to the Conservative ideal is Herman Cain. Unfortunately it seems like many have decided that he's unelectable because... um... because it's been decided that he's unelectable, I guess. Supposedly the problem with Cain is that he's never held public office before. Honestly, that's not a bug, it's a feature. I've liked Cain since the earliest GOP debates and am encouraged by the recent polls showing him to be a frontrunner. Either way, I know who I'll be voting for come primary time.

Another Warhammer 40K Death Match

B. very selfishly ran off to Hawaii with his wife last weekend, so this past Saturday marked two weeks without playing a game of 40K. However, last night we were finally able to get together for yet another round of our favorite unhealthy obsession. Saturday night's game of 40K was notable for a few reasons. First, it was our first game played at my home rather than at B.'s. Second, it was my first game played entirely with my own figures rather than with a mix of my models supplemented by some of B.'s. Finally, I showed that an army of standard Space Marines can take on the elite Grey Knights and make it an extremely close fight.

This time around I took the "Sir Robin" approach to the battle; i.e., I bravely ran away while shooting everything I had. Since the Grey Knights are geared towards close combat rather than a shooting fight, this approach significantly leveled the playing field. I lost by a small margin, but the game could have ended very differently if a single dice roll had resulted in a three instead of a two. My Dreadnought simply needed to score one more hit against B.'s Dreadknight, after which it could have turned its heavy weapon against his remaining two Knights. Unfortunately, I had burned up a lot of my luck earlier in the game, the shot missed, and the Dreadnought was forced into close combat with the Dreadknight. The two Dreads duked it out and annihilated each other. Considering that his model was worth a lot more points than mine, I wasn't too sad about the outcome of that particular fight.

Dreadnought vs. Dreadknight: Grudge match of the week

Movie Review: The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai: Across the Eighth Dimension (1984)

Although Netflix sent me this DVD back in June, I didn't get to it until now (once again, I blame Warhammer 40,000). Buckaroo Banzai has been a sci-fi cult classic since it was released in 1984. In fact, quite a few of those who created Star Trek: The Next Generation were fans of the movie and inserted various in-jokes into computer screens, starship dedication plaques, etc. I had thus thought that I would like the movie as much as I have so many other cult sci-fi movies. As it turned out, Buckaroo Banzai left almost no impression on me.

Buckaroo Banzai is a brain surgeon, particle physicist, and rock star. He is recognized the world over and has regular phone conversations with the U.S. president. His band also doubles as his lab assistants and, when necessary, his heavily armed strike team. This makes for a wacky premise that is so underplayed that it loses much of its humor. Sure he's supposed to be a brain surgeon, but we only see him perform a single surgery at the beginning of the movie and then his medical expertise is never really used again. He's supposed to be a rock star, but he performs only once in a New Jersey club. Most of the time he plays the part of a particle physicist that helps to perfect and test a method for traveling through solid matter by entering the "eighth dimension" (he only does this once in the first 15 minutes of the movie).

The plot primarily revolves around the efforts of a renegade faction of alien beings from "Planet 10" to steal the "oscillation overthruster"; the device that allows one to enter the eighth dimension. Apparently these aliens arrived on Earth years before by way of the eighth dimension and want to use the device to return to their homeworld to finish their rebellion. In the meantime, the aliens have established a company called "Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems" that has received a number of defense contracts. When Banzai's trip through a solid mountain via the eighth dimension becomes famous, another group of aliens realizes that the renegade leader might be able to return to Planet 10. They arrive in orbit and threaten to destroy the Earth in order to kill the renegades if Banzai can't capture him first.

Overall, the movie wasn't bad, but it wasn't that remarkable, either. I was never bored (the unpardonable movie sin), but it seemed like the movie squandered most of its potential. It wasn't funny enough to be a real comedy and the wackier elements of the story weren't played up enough to be effective. At the same time there was too much comedy for it to be taken as a more serious sci-fi film. John Lithgow, who plays a human scientist who was possessed by the aliens' leader during an early attempt to travel through the eight dimension, gets the most chuckles. But this is through Lithgow's over-the-top Italian accent and Mussolini impersonation, which get old fast.

Then there are the stray plot threads that come out of nowhere and go nowhere and cause the story to lose its focus. The most egregious of these is the revelation that Buckaroo Banzai's love interest is the long lost twin of his (deceased?, estranged?) first wife. Maybe these plot threads would have made more sense if the sequel that's mentioned at the end of the film had been made. Normally I would mourn an unmade sequel (e.g., The Rocketeer deserved a sequel, but its disappointing box office receipts killed it), but the thought of the promised Buckaroo Banzai Against the World Crime League just isn't that exciting.
C+

My Poor, Neglected Blog

A few months ago my blog was averaging over 100 visits a day, thanks to Google. Well, I guess that Google's search algorithm is affected by how often you update your blog; I've since dropped to about 60 hits a day. I can only blame this on one thing: Warhammer 40,000.

Until B. introduced me to that infernal game (that wonderful, awesome game) I was on the Internet all the time. I actually knew what was happening in the world, I followed politics, I read b-movie reviews, and I updated my blog frequently. Now I don't even know what Republicans are running for president (not that it matters, I'd vote for him or her over Obama anyday), the list of B-Masters reviews that I need to catch up on has grown significantly, and my blog was updated only once last month (and then it was a 40K post). Netflix was the best entertainment-related thing ever during the B40K era ("Before Warhammer 40,000"). Now I've had a couple DVDs for nearly three months and I've still not watched them.

How can I not add this guy to my collection?

It's not like I'm playing the game all the time. In fact, we only play it once a week. However, since I'm actively building my army, I end up painting figures almost every night. This process takes a lot of time since I have an obsessive, perfectionist personality. I had told my wife that once my Space Marine army was built, I would have more time in the evenings. Unfortunately, 40K is addictive and B. and I have been talking about expanding the number of armies we have to add some variety to our games. Specifically, I've considered getting a Chaos Daemon army to complement B.'s Grey Knights (the Grey Knights are Space Marines who specialize in daemon-hunting).

So, I hope to get back into blogging by posting a few book and movie reviews, maybe a couple CD (i.e., mp3 album) reviews, and some political commentary... Oh, who am I kidding? This will probably be my only post for the month and I'll spend the rest of September building all of this stuff:

This is about $200 dollars worth of 40K stuff

Another Warhammer 40K Post Mortem

mon·o·ma·ni·a /mänəˈmānēə/ Noun: Exaggerated enthusiasm for or preoccupation with one thing.

I just got back from yet another 40K game with B. Despite the fact that I lost again (it's hard to beat someone who's been playing it since he was 12), we both agreed that it was one of our best games. For me this was due, in part, to the fact that I fully chose my army without assistance from B. As usual I played my Space Marines while B. played the Xenomorph-like Tyranids. We both started with about 1200 points and he won the game with about 300 or 400 points left. My tactical errors were few (I kept using heavy troops to fire fragmentation missiles against hordes of low-point creatures rather than firing high strength krak missiles against individual high-point monsters). In the end, the game was close enough that it was determined as much by lucky/unlucky dice rolls as by skill.

The results of the most recent game were in sharp contrast to my last two games, in which I felt like my performance was very poor. Unfortunately I've proven to be a very defensive player but I've chosen a 40K army that tends to work better when used aggressively. At B.'s suggestion I've been gearing my own army towards a slightly more defensive stance than the army that I've been borrowing from him while also playing more aggressively. Thus, I've started using a Devastator squad with long range missile launchers to harass his army while simultaneously attacking at close range with troops equipped for close assaults.

Speaking of my army, it's grown substantially in recent weeks, which meant that I only had to borrow a few models to play a 1200 point game. Most recently I completed a Space Marine captain; my most elaborate figure and the one who proved to be tonight's MVP when he stood toe-to-toe with two hive tyrants (cumulatively worth three to four times as many points as the captain) and killed one of them before being messily devoured.

Soon my army will be positively monstrous. I expect to complete a five man terminator squad before next week's game and a Dreadnought before the following game. But that's just the tip of the iceberg: over the past month I've accumulated quite a sum of money from a portion of an award I received at work, a little bit of money I earned working overtime, and my usual monthly allowance. This past week my wife placed a fairly large order for me that will more than triple the point value of my army. Although I won't admit how much I spent on 40K models this week alone, an incredulous coworker commented that I could have bought a high-end video game system for that much money (I can honestly say that I've had more fun building models and playing 40K than I've ever had playing a video game). My coworker was even more amazed when I told him that I had spent several times that amount over the five years that I was collecting Star Wars Legos. And since new 40K models are released every few years rather than every few months, as Legos are, this week's purchase will form the bulk of my army. I have plans to build a few more squads, but nothing like the bulk purchase I just made.

"The Shifting Definition of Tolerance"

The nuclear family under attack

I was recently reading an essay adapted from an address given by Bruce D. Porter at Brigham Young University. The subject was on defending the traditional family, which has often caused controversy for Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. As pointed out by Porter, the Church and its members are often accused of intolerance when they advocate the traditional definition of the family. In the excerpt below, Porter discusses how the definition of tolerance has shifted in recent decades:

Until recently in our national history, tolerance referred to racial and religious non-discrimination. It meant civility in the political arena; in other words, respecting the right of others to express their views, even if we do not agree with them. It meant treating all people with decency and respect. Such tolerance is an important and vital part of our American heritage.

Today, however, the world is in danger of abandoning all sense of absolute right or wrong, all morality and virtue, replacing them with an all-encompassing “tolerance” that no longer means what it once meant. An extreme definition of tolerance is now widespread that implicitly or explicitly endorses the right of every person to choose their own morality, even their own “truth,” as though morality and truth were mere matters of personal preference. This extreme tolerance culminates in a refusal to recognize any fixed standards or draw moral distinctions of any kind. Few dare say no to the “almighty self” or suggest that some so-called “lifestyles” may be destructive, contrary to higher law, or simply wrong.

When tolerance is so inflated out of all proportions, it means the death of virtue, for the essence of morality is to draw clear distinctions between right and wrong. All virtue requires saying no firmly and courageously to all that is morally bankrupt.

Curiously enough, this new modern tolerance is often a one-way street. Those who practice it expect everyone to tolerate them in anything they say or do, but show no tolerance themselves toward those who express differing viewpoints or defend traditional morality. Indeed, their intolerance is often most barbed toward those of religious conviction. But let there be no misunderstanding or deception: the First Amendment right of free speech applies to religious speech as well as to other kinds of speech. Believers of all faiths have every right to participate in and share their convictions in the public arena.

I agree wholeheartedly with Porter's statement.

The last paragraph of the excerpt reminds me of the experience of Californian Mormons a few years ago. In 2008 I mentioned that Mormons in California were facing a lot of resistance based on the Church's support of Proposition 8 [here and here]. Gay marriage supporters were even going as far as using California's Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) to attack the Church. Apparently they like the idea of 'free speech for me, but not for thee'. From what I've heard from my parents, who live in Southern California, although Proposition 8 may have been passed three years ago and been overturned by a Federal District Court last year (although the ruling has been stayed), Church members in California are still being harassed.