How often, when unfortunately hearing about politics, do you find yourself saying some approximation of: “these MFers here”, or “this country is going to crap”? Perhaps you notice how seemingly stupid most American politicians are. There is a way to change that.
I mean, our politics are like cesspool of corruption. Often, this disgusting water is formed when bodies of water stagnate. We have, in this country, an average of only 60% of eligible voters engage during presidential election years and 40% during midterms (two years after/before).
If we have only 50% of the population, on average, engaging, could we consider this a sense of political stagnation? Often I hear some mention of voting or engaging doesn’t matter because the politicians will just rig things. Well, yeah, they will. So why make it easy for them? We are also told that we need to keep with the very system that we have, the (D) v (R), because any sort of advanced thought on a third party is just nonviable in this country. We don’t have time to work on that now. We only have time for the immediate, we are told.
I literally play RPG after RPG where I am some peasant protagonist who deals with soldiers or corrupt police ransacking villages, at the behest of corrupt (likely due to political stagnation) politicians, and I am left to bear witness to the destruction while working with people who have fought this battle for decades without considering that it would be better to fight easier fights. DECADES!
As a gamer, why should I even give a shiz about politics, I see you say in my mind’s eye? Great question and thank you for asking. Politics controls how even simple things like pollution and cleanup is handled. We, in America, used to have rivers that were on fire due to the amount of pollution in them. Not being engaged in politics could literally allow some garbage person to legislate your water system to industrial waste water. At best you are having gastrointestinal distress. At worst you have brain damage, like in the case of Flint, MI. and, believe it or not, 3000+ communities in this country.
Do you think if you drink water that gives you brain damage, that you would be able to play games as effectively after that? If your motor reflexes diminish to some degree of paralyses, how good at Call of Duty do you think you’ll be? How about if you play MMORPGs (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game)?
The playing is only part of the fun in those games. Often, being able to talk to you friends while gaming is what makes it so engaging. If you have brain damage and lose your ability to control your cognitive thoughts, do you think you’ll still have the same sense of enjoyment when it comes to playing video games? When you find it hard to even form sentences?
Look, I’m not saying you need to jump up, put on a cape and go save the world. I am saying, though, that if you don’t want what little you have robbed from you, then you have to engage in the bare minimum. That is to vote. I encourage you to do more than just vote and shiz post on social media. Only we will save ourselves. Sure they will try and throw out your vote but that also has diminishing returns. They can only cheat so much before they have to stop. So again, why make it easy?
I suspect, like me, many of you have found yourselves in soulless jobs where literally you can’t wait to get home and plug into some game. What if we could get you to a place where you made more money, were less stressed, and actually had a job that was meaningful to you? How much better would your mental health be?
That only happens if you make it happen. We have people in congress who literally want to steal everything you have and funnel it up to their rich benefactors. Even in a pandemic, the New York Times, reporting on now some ~30-40 million people filing for unemployment, also reported that the bill that gave a $1,200 stimulus check to workers, also gave “bonanza” financial giveaways to the richest people in the world.
We are struggling to not get fired, not get brain damage, not have our lives legislated away and from people who are the patsy of effectively Kings and royalty of old. Soon you won’t even be able to make enough to pay your bills. Do you think you’re going to be gaming then? When you don’t have a house?
Look, people who play Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts, Zelda and such titles, I trust to be far more morally centered than someone who has a law degree and cares only about what you can prove over doing what is right.
Again, I’m not telling you to give up your life and quit everything you’re doing for politics. I am telling you, though, that your life will be stolen from you, sooner or later, so it can be ground up and fed, on a platter, to some modern-day version of royalty.
How precious would it be, to instead of having your life stolen from you, we can take that wealth that has been redistributed from the poor to the richest in the world, to then, instead, be used for higher wages for labor in this country?
How much sweeter would it be to collect kill counts on the latest Call of Duty or even the latest boss in World of Warcraft, when in real life you helped stop a truly horrific evil? While you snipe people from a crow’s nest or collect the latest gear, you can relive the moment where some oligarch wanted to stick a fork in you but instead they are now begging, on the side of the road, empty bowl in hand?
Taste the sweetness. Please, for the sake of all that is important to gaming, engage. If nothing else, at least to vote to keep the fork at bay.
