Game Propaganda

I don’t keep secrets.

When I write fiction, I confess openly it’s propaganda, wherein I promote a particular world view and set of values. If I could devise or design games, I would be even more blunt about it. With just a little digging you can find all sorts of documentation I’ve written explaining and defending that viewpoint. If I can’t persuade, I’ll settle for entertaining you, but I doubt any of my regular readers are confused about my beliefs.

Not everyone is that honest.

In particular, you’ll find those promoting socialism and that peculiar brand of fascism by which the US is governed. Does anyone argue the vast bulk of academia is vehemently progressive and liberal, which is to say various flavors of socialist and communist? It dominates every college, even here in the Bible Belt state of Oklahoma. Our red state politics is just a paint job, because all of our republicans are socialist, with but a few exceptions. Socially conservative, yes, but almost none of them are economic conservatives. They all support big government. So it should not surprise you the very Christian school known as Oklahoma Baptist University was no less a liberal socialist institution than any other.

Every time I tried to tell a Baptist church what they were paying for, I caught hell from the school administrators. That’s because the school caught hell from those who paid the bills. But of course, nothing changed. My soul, even the Religion Department was that way, with the only biblical conservative a woman who had never seen a single promotion from associate professor her entire career there. The head of that department could not tell you about his “personal salvation experience,” an absolute necessity among anything labeled “Baptist.” He was, if anything, an anti-religion professor.

The whole Social Sciences division was that way, of course. So my first encounter with economics was stained with socialism. I won’t name the guy, but my professor was a slimy weasel who taught precious little actual economic theory, and lots of socialist crap. He wasted three whole weeks of our precious class time on some stinking role playing game which was all the rage in those days. I had seen it in high school in Anchorage, AK — that entire state education system is run by a blatantly communist union. But my college professor was too cheap to buy the fairly expensive game, and had made himself a pirated facsimile with a hand-painted game board and knock-off tokens and cards.

The game is slanted in that, the only way you can get anywhere is to embrace progressive social policies. There is no place for personal morality; your morals are handed to you in the game. There are no options for doing something intelligent. You are born in “da hood” and you are forced to play by the morals of your average drug dealer. All females are required to roll the dice to get pregnant and have babies. You are permitted to invest your hours in various pursuits. Differing characters would have differing numbers of hours to invest. Otherwise, everyone is assumed to be the same low-life swine.

There was no escape whatsoever. You could go into crime or you could invest your hours in communist community improvement activities. Only if you raised taxes, got tons of police on the streets, and generally turned it into a socialist paradise, could you then hope to turn your ghetto into some kind of Utopia. There were no valid business opportunities, education was a joke, and simply saving up and leaving was not an option. You couldn’t even join the military.

I hated it both times I went through it. I still hate both of the teachers, because I’m pretty sure they knew exactly what they were promoting. Let’s just say I grew up part time in each of cities, small towns and rural countryside. We move often, no less than twice each year. Until past age 10, we existed in grinding poverty. Nothing in my experience mirrored what I saw in that game. Our road out was a combination of personal morals from religion and a couple of miracles which opened the door of business opportunities.

If you are going to spew propaganda, the least you could do is be honest about it.

Humor: Starting My Own Cult

You can’t take me seriously on this one.

When I am out riding through the countryside, sometimes I get bored and steer my bicycle into the cityscape. There are lots of little side roads, back streets and alleys to explore.

Consider also that I spend a lot of time praying and contemplating, to the point I won’t bother to define the difference. It’s how I stay sane, so humor me. As I walk, ride or whatever activity which leaves my mind somewhat idle, I am talking to God and to myself, and it all blends in and out of full consciousness.

I passed by a nice old glass fronted building, which I believe was originally a car dealership a few decades ago. It’s held many different endeavors since then, none long successful. The last occupant was a collection of so-called antique dealers, folks who sold collectibles and such. This is not a good economy for that.

So I pedaled past and in the swirling fog of my numerous thoughts out popped the statement: “Lord, I need that for my new church building!” I envisioned a sign reading, “Your Local Generic Church” because any existing institutional denomination would be aghast at what I believe.

Besides, I no longer regard myself clergy, per se, but administrator and teacher. That I consider myself a prophet is another matter entirely; it’s not a church office in my mind. But I would grandly fail as a cult leader because I don’t want people dependent on me, I am not motivated by money and property, and I don’t take myself seriously. I just like to write and talk, and otherwise make noise. And I’m willing to speak to empty rooms.

So after announcing that out loud — nobody was near enough to hear me chattering to God or myself — I rode on laughing. That building will await the next entrepreneur, or be knocked down so the land can be used for some other purpose. If you are dying to see it, perhaps you can catch a glimpse of it from a few years back on Google Maps or Google Earth on the street view function. It’s around 8913 SE 29th, Midwest City, OK.

More likely I’ll end up in the FEMA camp which rumor has it will be built just a bit west of there on the land Tinker AFB bought up and fenced off as a training area. I guess they got tired of the tort claims from aircraft crashing among the houses there just off the north end of the runway. It used to be called Glenwood Community. The objective of my ride was to hug the fence line and take a fresh look at the area. Up on the north side of that fenced area, where the old railroad track beds remain nestled among new municipal buildings, looks just like a hobo hotel among the thick trees. Nobody there during this time of year, but lots of evidence from previous occupation.

Not much accounting for what drifts through my head on those long rides.