I’ve been watching the various things about punching Nazi’s today, in
particular something that came through in form of a soliloquy on whether it was
right to punch Nazi’s, ending in the conclusion that yes, you should punch
Nazi’s whenever you should and if you happen to hit a bystander who just
happens to have short hair or a bad moustache, it’s unfortunate, and that’s
life…
No…
I don’t play politics, never have, I’ve got a strong moral code and I
stick to it, but that governs my behaviour, not that of others. What I read today was an easy justification
for punching Nazi’s or anyone who holds similar views to them.
And that’s not how it should be…
I have no sympathies with Nazi’s, nor any extremists, but their views
are theirs and their own, it doesn’t give me the right to punch them out any
more than their views give them the right to beat down on anyone who disagrees
with them.
And you don’t get to justify it by saying that your grandparents bombed
Nazi’s in the War, because if we say that
it’s alright to hit something because your grandparents hit it, everyone’s a
target, you don’t get to say that we need to fight fire with fire, because that just leads to everything
burning, and you don’t even get to say that your perspective is right…
Because to the world, it’s not…
It’s just yours, it’s right to you and those like you…
Newsflash…
Their perspective is right to them and those like them…
Does it make them right…?
Only to themselves…
We live in a world where too many people are too eager to lash out, to
scream at the things they don’t like, that they don’t want, to scream at the
injustice of the world around them...
Because there’s so much injustice
in this world…
But that won’t make a better world, what makes a better world is every
one of us doing what we can to make it better.
You think punching a Nazi out makes it better? You think that a sound beating will cause
them to question their beliefs and consider that perhaps they got it wrong? Ask yourself the question.
Would a sound beating make you
question your beliefs?
Or will it just reinforce their opinion that they’re right, and that
they’ll use the example a hundred times over to show that everyone’s just as
violent…?
Because they will…
You don’t change a world with violence except for the worse, them
hurting us, us hurting them, whoever them
and us are. You change it with ideas,
you change it with the hope of a brighter tomorrow, you change it by working
every day to bring what you want to the world, without having to beat people to do it, because you know what
happens when you try to beat an idea out of something?
You drive it deeper…
Every hit you take, it roots the idea that bit stronger, because
whatever that idea is, that’s the thing that’ll free you from the beating,
because the person doing the beating can’t think of any other way to get the
idea out of you, so they’re resorting to something that will never work…
I got bullied when I was a kid, I was absolutely different to everyone else. I knew it, and sadly, so did
the rest of the world, so I ended up fighting people all the time just because they didn’t like who and what I
am, and sometimes I’d win…
Sometimes I wouldn’t win…
And I had my books damaged, ended up running home from school
sometimes, and never had a chance of fitting in with anything because I wasn’t
the same as everyone else. I remember
being chased home from the army cadets and beaten up, till one day my Dad came
out and caught them in the act, gave them a dose of their own medicine, and
showed me that I was never to give up, no matter how bad things got. Did it stop the bullies?
No, they just got sneaky about
it…
So, those two never got caught giving me shit any more, but their
friends took up the slack, and that’s what happens when violence is on the
table. The second you’ve escalated it
past words, the other side is justified in a similar escalation, and it takes
years, if ever, to come back down with neither side having won. I listened to my Dad’s words, I never gave
up, and thirty years later, the rest of the world has caught up with the
realisation that playing games is okay, and even stranger, it can be a
perfectly grown up thing to do…
Have I done my bit for it?
Yep, I’m a bloody evangelist when it comes to getting people into
games, into writing, into doing what they
want to do without fear, but I’ve never hit anyone to get my point across. I’ve thought about it a few times, sometimes
the ignorance you face is staggering, sometimes the dumb fecker screaming at
you makes it seem that the whole world is against everything you stand for, and
a solid beat down is well overdue for all the injustice that many in the world
suffer for. But it won’t work…
Because it never does…
Yesterday people marched the world over, and the world noticed, and
whether you’re for or against what they marched for, you noticed… And that’s
where ideas come from, when you see that people feel so strongly, when you know
that you can speak up for what you believe in, and someone out there will have your back, then it becomes
easier to speak up for what you believe in, and as it becomes easier for you,
then it becomes easier for everyone, and when you’ve managed to convince
everyone that you’re right, without pointing a gun or raising a bat…
That’s when you win…
And I know a lot of people are having a good laugh at all this, white
supremacist got beaned on national TV, but it’s not funny, and that where
everyone made the mistake before, they thought it was, they didn’t take it
seriously, and we are now where we are.
Doubts?
Four years ago, Trump was a by line for “That’s never going to happen…”
He was a bad joke (I know, I know, still is) to his own party, but no one took
him seriously, and all the times people were laughing at him, he wasn’t
laughing, he was working towards making all the people laughing at him, stop laughing…
And he made it, enough people stabbed at him, so he stabbed back, and there’s
no one laughing anymore…
Someone hits you, hit them back
and harder, not a problem, everyone has that reaction and rightly so…
But we should never be laughing at the notion that someone just got
hurt just because what they think is different to what we think, it doesn’t
matter that their perspective is different, it doesn’t matter that what they
say makes us howl with anger and want to punch them, because they say the same about us, and if it’s alright
for us to do it, then it’s alright for them to do it…
And It’s not alright, is it…?
Ranting about games resumes tomorrow, promise…
