351vas - Chatting With Bob

Chatting with Bob Jim Vassilakos ([email protected]) Being that we’re in the trailing days of a presidential election over here, I’ve been mulling things over more than usual. As I’m sure everyone knows, the big issue is Bush’s Iraq policy. Other A&E contributors, particularly some of those who I respect immensely, have already made their views on this topic well known, and as I said last month, I don’t like airing my political thoughts because I don’t see them leading anywhere constructive. Nonetheless, I have this peculiar problem in that I have to write in order to think; that is to say, my thoughts are mushy, formless, like warm oatmeal, utterly devoid of cohesion and consistency, at least until I finally muster the gumption to set them down on paper. So here I am, writing, and what I am going to write is going to be embarrassing for me, and it may also be terrifically offensive for you to read. Perhaps it will be the most offensive crap that you have ever read. So, before you go any further, I would encourage you right now to just skip ahead to my comments and to forget about reading any more of this main essay, because it is going to be disjointed, ill-conceived, and, in short, an utter mistake. Nonetheless, I really have no choice. This is something I have to write and which I have to put out there for you few diehards to absorb, if it is your decision to do so. I don’t expect or even desire constructive commentary. I just feel that I have to work this through in my own mind, and I have to work it through knowing that it will stand some small chance of being read if even only by a single person. It’s only that knowledge that’ll keep me on track. From these comments, it is probably not very difficult for you to deduce that I am in that small percentage of Americans who hasn’t yet decided which way to vote (Bush or Kerry). That alone should tell you volumes about my personal nature: cautious, indecisive, more afraid of making a wrong move than missing the chance to make a right one. How I got to be this way, I have no idea. It’s not natural. I’ve always had a great predisposition toward agnosticism, not merely religiously but in everything, even running a game. Rather than just decide something (Does the barmaid smile invitingly or slap the PC?), I prefer to roll a “luck die”. It holds the illusion of non-bias; it adds to the suspense; and, best of all, I don’t have to think. Thinking is annoying. It makes my brain hurt. Sometimes I think I’d rather have been born a puppy. Speaking of those who refuse to think for themselves, I’m amazed that religion is making a comeback. We now have a

president who openly admits that he uses prayer as a guide. I’m to understand that JFK’s Catholicism was a big issue during his campaign for the White House. The pundits were apparently afraid of what should happen if Rome should start dictating policy in Washington. Now, however, it is seemingly a non-issue. Well, if religion is back on the rise, then maybe I should jump on the bandwagon (not that I really think this way, but it makes for a good transition). The thing is…okay, I don’t really know how to say this…so let’s just say that it’s a big joke, okay? I’m going to say something that is incredibly silly, and if you believe me, then you are way too gullible to be reading this essay, or, for that matter, any other essay. Go poke out your eyes. You really shouldn’t be reading at all. Anyway, the thing I was going to say is…I hear voices, not the normal kind of voices of the neighbors yelling about something, or even voices of people on television who apparently are paid to do nothing but talk. (This mystifies me.) Actually, I should rephrase. I don’t hear voices. I hear a voice. Call it an inner voice, if you will, a vibe, a silent scream, persistent, obnoxious, sometimes threatening, always insistent. Now, certainly, that sounds crazy, so go ahead and call me crazy. I’ve never met you (well, except for Lee and Barry), so I could care less what you think. In any case, crazy has certain social advantages. For instance, bums aren’t as apt to ask you for spare change. In any case, this voice…he sounds worried. He’s worried about the world, about what’s going to happen. And I guess crazy is actually an appropriate word to describe it, because the world itself is crazy. It’s perfectly, irreparably insane. It’s so insane, I don’t even know where to begin in describing and explaining my thoughts. The awful truth, of course, is that the events of this world all make perfect sense when you examine them not from the perspective of morality, of right and wrong, but rather from the perspective of short-term individual and national interests. What can I get for me right now? That is the sickness, but one perfectly preserved in our genetic code, our evolutionary personality. We are not fit to fill the role we’ve been given, to take the opportunity we’ve been handed. I keep coming back to that thought, and this voice…he agrees, he agrees to the point of rage and tears and utter, complete resignation. I don’t really want to use the word “God,” because it’s much too pretentious, and, in any case, I don’t trust anyone who says that they speak for God. People who have

purported to speak for God have caused much of the ill that is in the world. Such people usually become tyrants. They use the concept of God for their own benefit. This has always been true. So let me say, instead, that I sometimes hear the voice of Bob, that Beautiful Omniferous Bastard who has created this situation, and who wants so desperately to say something semi-coherent to whoever cares to listen before we all slink back into the ooze of our shared, primeval journey. So you want to hear what he says, this Bob? You want a glimpse into his mind? Are you sure, because you can stop reading right now. I honestly don’t care. Okay, then. He says, “You are all going to Hell. You who think yourself good, and you who have embraced selfishness, evil, you are all wrapped within the same cloak, the cloak that is your flesh and blood; and so too you drag me with you, for I am your creator, I am the flesh and blood that is your shared existence, your soul, a soul of which we have proven ourselves wholly unworthy. We are the sick and the dying. We are the boiled and the flayed and the ground up and the poisoned. It is us, ourself, upon whom we do evil. That is the truth, for all to hear.” Keep in mind, Bob gets a little melodramatic from time to time. He’s got a real flair in that direction. I really think he could have been a politician if he weren’t so damn honest. And like I said for those of you who are seriously concerned for my sanity, this is just a joke, an intellectual exercise, vomit upon the page, a bizarre weirdness perpetrated for no apparent reason. Don’t be gullible. Now, with that out of the way, let us get back to the topic at hand. I told you that I was torn over this upcoming presidential election. The problem, of course, is that I know absolutely nothing. I’m a moron when it comes to history and politics and, well…pretty much everything. I know so little compared to what I feel I need to know that I have no right to even be addressing you. That’s okay, however, or at least it has been in the past. My general rule when it comes to elections has been to ask the people I most respect how they intend to vote. This time the stakes seem incredible, and at the same time, the people I know, the ones who I regard as being much, much smarter than myself, they disagree, and they do so vehemently. Granted, the majority supports Kerry, but I live in California. The majority of the state supports Kerry. In any case, to simply follow along with the majority seems to me to be a cop-out. My vote will most certainly count for nothing, but none-the-less, I feel that I

should cast it as though I were myself deciding the outcome. It’s an incredibly egotistical view, but given the situation, I feel it is the only moral one. What gets me the most, I suppose, is that everyone seems so sure of their own opinion, and I am so unsure of mine. Everyone seems to have taken a very clearcut position on a completely unassailable set of facts. I’ve never seen the country so divided. John Stuart went on Crossfire1 and made the case that political hacks are methodically destroying the country. Perhaps he’s right. Perhaps we’re a nation divided because it’s division and conflict that produce ratings. Yet, at the same time, one can’t deny that there are very important issues at stake in this election. The outcome of this may well determine the course of where things go from here, and where they go may be crucial. So we should take this one seriously, and I think that we are, as a nation, taking it very seriously. I remember last time, in 2000, “Rage against the Machine” protested outside the Democratic National Convention, making the case that there wasn’t much difference between Bush and Gore. News articles ran about their silver-spoon background. Even during the debates, they agreed over a fairly wide range of issues. But think how different the world would be today had Gore carried the black vote on the Supreme Court, rather than just on the streets where, for all intents and purposes, what the American population spoke didn’t matter. This was the proverbial electoral timebomb going off, as people had longpredicted, but there was scarcely a sound. The nation accepted the rule of law, even when it was obvious that family connections in Florida had conspired with a Supreme Court which, supposedly united by the supremacy of law, voted strictly according to party lines in a case which shall forever besmirch the high court’s reputation and honor. It was bizarre, yet people accepted it. After all, this was an election between two rich kids, neither of them particularly able or even likable. In short, it just didn’t really matter. Now it’s 2004 and we’re in yet another undeclared war. Soldiers are flying home in body bags. The so-called fortunate ones are getting well at hospitals in Germany and elsewhere, learning to use their new artificial limbs. So much for the theory that it didn’t matter. But, I cannot ignore the argument that what we did may have been for the overall good of our nation as well as humanity at large. That is the greater circle, the larger picture, the one which Bush and the neoconservatives have been trying to get us to 1

See http://www.ifilm.com/ifilmdetail/2652831 which is hella-funny.

see and accept, to incorporate into our world-view. And this argument is not without some validity. If you look at the world today, what you see is a very dangerous place. Just how dangerous it is, I don’t think many of us can properly conceive. This whole train of thought reminds me of a time, back in the recesses of my youth, where I was a little kid, perhaps in the 2nd or 3rd grade, and I didn’t really have any conception of the world beyond my immediate surroundings. Every morning we would pledge allegiance to the flag, and sometimes at night I would examine a globe of the world that my parents had in the living room, and while I saw all these countries on the map, I knew nothing about them.

"God believes that one day we will realize we are part of God's family, and there are no outsiders. All…all belong." - Desmond Tutu (04-Oct-2004) I guess I sort of assumed that the world had been organized this way from ancient times and that nothing had really changed very much. I probably had the notion that everyone lived in their own area of the world, and that some people traveled, but for the most part, the world was a peaceful, stable, rational place. I don’t remember having any concept of war beyond “Hogan’s Heroes”. I didn’t yet know about assassinations, or about coups, or secret agencies infiltrating foreign governments. I didn’t have any sense of the competition that exists between societies as well as individual people, this ongoing competition which is the driving force of history. In short, I knew nothing. Yet this idyllic, sheltered ignorance was at least part of the basis, I think, for my personality, and I think it plays a subconscious factor for many of us who have grown up in such “edenic” circumstances where cooperation (playing nice, standing in line, standing and reciting the pledge of allegiance as one voice among many) is stressed over the wholesale, unabridged, winner-takes-all competition which is the actual world, our history, and our future. And this isn’t to say that I know history as well as I should. I know it like a leaf knows the tree, or more precisely like a drop of water knows the ocean. My understanding of history is so superficial, so fragmentary, so hopelessly naive, that everything that I write here should be taken with several tons of salt. Bob adds: “Yes, but at least you accept the truth of your ignorance whereas most cannot bear to acknowledge theirs.

Remember that noticing the darkness which surrounds one is the first step toward seeking the light, which is, in fact, what this whole bizarre discomBOBulation is ultimately about, or so it should presently seem.” Bob likes to speak in riddles, in case you haven’t noticed. Don’t ask me what he means. Now, this isn’t to say that even if I knew everything there is to know, I might be able to identify some backdoor, so to speak, a way out of history, out of the international chess game that is present day politics. It might be that even with perfect knowledge, we would still trip and fall, crack our heads on the cement of reality, and bleed to death all over the pavement of the human experience. We are as we were made, creatures not only of bad habits but also of evolutionary design. Set within this framework exist certain limitations, boundaries to our ways of thinking, destructive reflexes as well as insidious, counterproductive tendencies endemic to our shared human personality. We are naked apes who have seen God, but who have failed to understand him, yet still we strive to go beyond what we have been. That is our one saving grace, our one opportunity for redemption, but will it be enough? I am pessimistic.2 It is my nature, I think, but in this case, I just can’t see any way out, and that is, of course, something that is likely to be reflected in the discourse of Bob, so you shouldn’t hold him responsible for everything that I put in his name. My own personal biases are bound to creep into his words, and to shape his thoughts, to bend them in ways not originally intended. So I plead guilty, if this is all one incredible downer to read, but I am so terribly pessimistic. I am no longer in third grade, so let me tell you about the world that I now see, however obscured my vision has become by media bias and a general lack of knowledge of 2

Of course, I would have never predicted the end of the cold war, speaking of which, is it really over? Gorbachev tried to reform the USSR’s system of government. But he was promptly replaced by Yeltsin, a courageous if incompetent drunk who allowed corruption to come seething to the surface like a plague of poisonous worms. Yeltsin was then replaced by Putin, the former head of the KGB, who is now dismantling many of the reforms enacted by Gorbachev, including freedom of the press, that essential ingredient of a democratic society. Is the USSR returning to dictatorship? If so, will the cold war begin anew? I can’t help but think that Clinton, our cool, smart thoroughbred, could have had some sort of positive influence, but instead he was too preoccupied with matters below the waist. A president who cannot command respect cannot lead, not in a democratic society, and certainly not during a totally useless impeachment process. Please note that I do not assign blame to any particular leader. Rather, I blame them all.

which I’ve already said enough. The world that I see now is a really bad place. It’s like bad comedy, or a bad comic tragedy, or perhaps just a really bad car accident caused by four or thirteen drunk drivers all smashing into each other simultaneously. Here’s a curious aside. When this war started, the current US invasion of Iraq, I am to understand that our military planners in the pentagon were initially calling it “Operation: Iraqi Liberation”. Then somebody realized what an unfortunately funny acronym that spelled out, so they had to change “Liberation” to “Freedom” before everyone ended up doubled-over on the floor holding their guts with both hands. That’s really the thing you have to realize about this whole “Operation: Iraqi Freedom”. It’s not really all about the oil, but it really is all about the oil. Ultimately, when you look at the way that the American government has to play chess, the oil is a critical factor in our game, and to deny that is ludicrous. Yet this situation was inevitable. It not only was foreseeable; it had been foreseen, and this insight had been acted upon. Our leaders, at least some of those we used to have, were not stupid. They thought things through carefully, and even when a president is incapable of doing so for whatever reason or inadequacy, there are aides, special secretaries, researchers, and a whole plethora of analysts and policy proponents who look at the international situation from every conceivable aspect. There is too much at stake to do otherwise. Let me talk for a bit about a case in point. Let us go back to WWII, to a time when the allies were well on their way to having victory in Europe and were contemplating what the political situation should be at the end of the war. Most of you probably already know about the famed Yalta conference of February 3rd through the 12th of 1945. That was where Roosevelt told Stalin about “the bomb”, and Stalin, already knowing about U.S. progress on the nuclear super-weapon because he had spies in Los Alamos, pretended to have absolutely no idea what the President was talking about. He pretended, in fact, not even to understand what the President was talking about. Well, immediately following that important conference an even more important meeting took place. Roosevelt flew to Egypt and from the 13th through the 15th met with several leaders of that region including King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia. Now, Roosevelt already realized that Saudi Arabia, although it was a land that hadn’t changed very much in somewhere upwards of a thousand years, was incredibly important for the defense and economic interests of the United States. He realized this because back in 1943 he dispatched geologists all over the world with one mission: find the oil. They came back and

told him that Saudi Arabia very likely had the largest untapped reserves on the entire planet. How they knew this, I have no idea. Go ask a geologist. I’m just repeating what I’ve heard. So anyway, Roosevelt said to Saud, and I quote: “Yo, dude. Let’s be friends.” Saud replied, and again, this is an exact quote, I shit you not: “Smootchy-woochy, Roosy. Check it out. You support me and my heirs into perpetuity, and you can have all the black gook you want. I won’t even charge you much.” Roosevelt: “Done deal, bro.”

And so that’s how we got into Saudi Arabia. Roosevelt did this because he knew that the U.S. oil reserves wouldn’t last forever. Remember that oil was discovered in the United States. Soon thereafter we had mass production, which, surprisingly enough, translates into mass depletion. Every developing nation (in other words the entire northern hemisphere) started doing likewise. So it was inevitable that the northern hemisphere would eventually run dry. At that point, the developed nations would turn toward the undeveloped nations and say: “Hey, dudes, give us your oil, or we’re gonna kick your asses.” And then a great raping and pillaging would occur such as the world has never before witnessed. Roosevelt could see all this back as early as 1943, so he decided to get a leg up on the competition and begin forging the necessary alliances (i.e. agreements of taking) as early as possible. Now, some of you are maybe shaking your heads in anger, but you can’t blame Roosevelt. He was the leader of the United States. He was merely doing what was fairly obviously in the interests of the United States. That’s international chess. It’s a game, but a very serious game that we

cannot afford to lose. The consequences of losing this game are unimaginable to us. They are so horrific that I would sound like some horror/sciencefiction writer if I were to go into the probable repercussions. And right now, just as it did back in 1945, oil plays a large part in this game. I shudder to think what will happen when the oil runs dry. US production peaked in 1971. Right now we are dependent on sources outside our borders for more than half the oil we use. Every year we grow even more dependent. Not too long from now, those sources will reach their peak production. At that point, demand will outstrip supply at such a pace that it seems inconceivable that we won’t be fighting over the diminishing supply. What’s going to happen then? This is a problem for which Roosevelt had no answer. He probably imagined that someday we would learn to harness nuclear energy, and we have, but the waste products have been rather bothersome. Contained fusion would be very nice, right about now, but it just hasn’t happened. Sometimes I wonder if God has placed us into one of those cooperative puzzles, one where the answer lay not in fighting, but in working together. Since you are all gamers, imagine a game where one person plays the Democratic Party, another person plays the Republicans. One person controls the American media (which, sadly, may one day actually happen). One controls the Saudi princes. One controls China. One controls the USSR. And so on and so forth…one controlling the Vatican, one controlling the ayatollahs of Iran. Now, you have chits on the board representing resources: population, oil, forests, minerals. It’s a little like that game Civilization, I suppose. Of course, there remains one obvious question. What’s the point of the game? Do we just fight and scheme until we eventually run out of some key resource and then watch, horrified, pointing fingers of blame at one another as civilization crumbles slowly, inexorably, into anarchy? No, that might be a possible outcome, but no, that’s not the point. The point, my friends, is to find a way out, a way for everyone to win, for everyone to prosper, to build a world that works together instead of constantly fighting and constantly destroying itself. But with limited resources, how can this ever happen? Imagine that one day, somebody builds a massive super-collider in Texas. Lo and behold, the physicists learn things about matter and energy which are quite unknown to us right now, and they figure out how to build a fusion reactor, one big enough to supply the whole world with cheap, clean energy, as much as our little hearts desire. But the problem is that we have to build it really big. It has to be about as long as the

circumference of our planet at the equator, so obviously, this is going to be a joint project. It’ll have to cross mountains and oceans. We’ll have to protect it from storms and earthquakes as well as terrorists and other assorted nogoodniks. It could solve all our energy needs, but, alas, it would require cooperation: massive, sustained, determined, unrelenting cooperation. So do we build it, or do we smash our heads on the pavement? It would be an interesting simulation, don’t you think? Although I’m a pessimist, an avowed, unrepentant pessimist, and though the costs would be astronomical, I honestly don’t see how we wouldn’t build it, even if it should take a century. After all, the pyramids were built. They are there in Egypt if you doubt my word, and they were built by people dragging huge, cut stones across a long, hot desert, some of them no doubt getting crushed underneath. But did they stop? Did they leave any half-built? No. As arduous as the project was, as hopeless as it must have seemed, they never lost site of the goal. The pyramids were their ticket to immortality, to reaching the other side where they could be judged and could perhaps be rewarded. So I think we’d build it. If there were no choice, we’d do it. I think that a lot of things which are done in this world are done because there is no choice. Take the current situation, for instance. This didn’t start on September 11, 2001. It goes back further. Some of you may have read my zine in A&E #314 where I talked about some of the history prior to Al-Qaeda’s attack, however, I didn’t go into nearly as much depth as I should have. Part of the problem is that I just don’t know the history. I’m sure there are those here who can straighten me out, but before that can happen, I need to explain my view of the whole series of episodes leading up to 9/11. Like I said, we were (and still are) invested heavily in Saudi Arabia because of their oil reserves. Likewise, back during the 1970s, we had close ties with Iran. Just as we were supporting the Saud family in Saudi Arabia, so too did we support the Shah of Iran, one Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. His is a story worth relating, as it explains a great deal about why people in that part of the world hate us as they do. His father had been a military officer who staged a coup and took the throne as “Shah” in 1925. However, despite being a dynamic if despotic ruler, he bet on the wrong horse in WWII, making moves to side with Germany perhaps in a bid to kick out the British who were busy developing much of Iran’s oil industry as well as using the country as a military springboard. Hence, with this father’s removal, Reza Shah (the infamous Shah of Iran) ascended to the throne in 1941. Now, as I’m sure you all know, this Shah was not a particularly nice fellow. I think that people in such

positions of high power tend not to be nice. They tend to be ultra-pragmatic. Idealism is great for college professors, but in the real world, it just doesn’t pay the rent. So in a brief nutshell, this is what happened. The Shah decided to consolidate his power by wiping out any opposition. He was, after all, the pre-eminent leader of the Middle East, the “Guardian of the Gulf”, as it were. So he abolished any dissent to his rule. Unfortunately, once you abolish dissent, dissent is precisely what you’re going to get. In economics, this is called the law of supply and demand. As soon as you don’t want something, a huge supply of it comes and slaps you in the face. Of course, to be slightly more precise, dissent needs an outlet. It needs a voice. If you abolish the voice, all that is left is action. So action is what finally happened in 1953 when Prime Minister Muhammed Mosaddeq3 temporarily seized control of the government.4 This is a difficult episode to relate, as there are no small number of little twists and turns to the story, but the upshot is that Mosaddeq wanted higher oil prices. He thought Iran was getting looted by the West (which it was). So his idea, which I’m sure wasn’t originally his idea, was to simply nationalize the Iranian oil industry and kick Great Britain and the United States out. There was a slight problem with his plan, however. Great Britain and the United States didn’t want to be kicked out. Moreover, both nations were afraid of losing Iran to the Soviet bloc. So Britain blockaded Iranian ports so that there newly nationalized oil couldn’t go anywhere, and the United States quickly set in motion a little thing called Operation Ajax, which was essentially to overthrow Mosaddeq and bring back the Shah. And it worked. It worked brilliantly. From then on, the Shah learned a really important lesson: when you abolish the opposition, you also have to create a secret police force to brutalize them into submission. Obviously, when he was back in college, he must have slept through most of Dictatorship 101. Kids! So a couple of years later, with the guidance of the CIA and the Israeli Mossad, he set up a secret police force called SAVAK.5 Now, keep in mind, SAVAK wasn’t just about having a good time. They had serious work to do. After all, there had almost been a successful coup which could, quite horrifically, have liberated Iran’s oil reserves to be used by the Iranians. And that 3

His name is sometimes spelled as Mossadegh. When I say temporarily, I mean for about a week. 5 Savak, interestingly, was also the name of that half-Vulcan hottie in The Wrath of Khan, the best (or, perhaps, only tolerable) movie of the Star Trek franchise and the one where Kirk tells her: “How we deal with death is as least as important as how we deal with life.” Appropriate words considering what her name means to Iranians. 4

would have been terrible. So when I talk about them torturing people, please remember that it was for a very good cause. Ah…speaking of their torture methods…hmm…let’s see now…well, they used electric shock just to warm things up. Any torturer worth his salt knows how to use electricity to elicit a confession, genuine or otherwise. Then you’ve got your standard 7th century fare: whipping, beating, tooth and nail extraction. It’s true, you know. Sometimes old ways are best. Then, of course, you’ve got your more imaginative tortures: the tying of weights to the testicles for extended periods of time, or the boiling water enema, always a favorite. But don’t think that SAVAK just did torture. Oh, no! Heavens no! They were responsible for the complete and total surveillance of the society. And, of course, we westerners were there to lend a helping hand to our Iranian friends, for a small fee, of course. SAVAK paid millions to Rockwell International to implement a large communications monitoring system called IBEX. The Stanford Technology Corporation got in on the action as well by supplying the Shah with a telephone monitoring system, and, of course, the CIA assisted during all this. Likewise, SAVAK had the responsibility to follow around Iranian exchange students. If you were an Iranian student, and you came to the United States to study nuclear physics or something innocuous like that, and you happened to say something bad about the Shah…oh…you could be a little bit of trouble there. Once you got back home, you might find a pair of electrodes waiting for you. Likewise, they were continually on the lookout for forbidden books, basically anything that might be construed as being critical of the government. They, of course, monitored journalists, literary figures, and academics. They ran their own prisons, and, as to be expected, they had the legal authority to arrest, indefinitely detain, and do pretty much anything they wanted do to just about anyone. They were, in effect, a law unto themselves. Nice work if you can get it. However, as a testament to humanity, even in the face of electrodes, testicle weights, and boiling enemas, dissent still occurred, and when it finally reached a boiling point, which I think was inevitable, it absolutely exploded. An outraged Iran overthrew the Shah in 1979 and invited the previously outcast Ruhollah Mousavi, popularly known as the Ayatollah Khomeini, to be their new leader. It was a stupendous idea, for after the initial rejoicing, the people working in SAVAK, with only a few notable exceptions, began working for the Ayatollah, doing much the same sort of activity they’d been doing before, only now under a new name. They now have extensive ties with Lebanon’s Hezbollah and are

engaged in a widespread campaign of religious persecution (not surprising when you consider that Iran is, after all, a religious dictatorship). I could go through a list of their more recent atrocities, but why bother? “The point,” says Bob, “is that I am sick and tired of waiting for you to grow up. You’ve come a long way, but you’re just not where you need to be in order for this to work. You are marching straight into Hell, and yet you refuse to see it. If you will not trust in me and in my laws, then do not claim me; do not pretend that we are on friendly terms. You do not know me. You only use my name to get and get and get without thinking from whom you take. That is not the way that I have shown you. You worship Mammon. Why have you forsaken me?” You’re going to have to forgive, Bob. He gets irritable late at night. What can I say? He’s a grump. Anyway, I’m running out of time, so I’m just going to wrap things up. The way we have dealt with Iraq isn’t quite as wretched as the way we’ve dealt with Iran, but it’s still pretty wretched. We encouraged these two countries to fight a really pointless war with each other. We pretended as though we were the friend of each, when, in fact, we were friend to neither. We have lied, cheated, and bullied our way through the second half of the last century, the so-called “greatest generation” celebrated by itself for itself. “Yay us!” Morally, what we’ve done is reprehensible. Strategically, it was brilliant. Historically, I think there’s going be payback.6 I don’t how, and I don’t know when, but a nation can’t do this and not expect that there will be devastatingly serious repercussions. Now these states are at the doorstep of nuclear prowess, and they hate us, justifiably so. Meanwhile, we go around talking about democracy like we’ve only had their best interests at heart the entire time. I don’t know who to vote for. Neither one of these candidates gets it. They either don’t know their history, or they aren’t willing to admit to it. Either way, I don’t see how either one can assume moral authority when neither has acknowledged the awful past, this edifice of inhumanity which we have created. Strategically, at least on this particularly issue, I think that Bush is probably the best choice.7 In terms of morality, I’m inclined to think that Kerry has a better grasp of some of the basic concepts. But neither of them has earned my vote, and I can’t help but think that this whole thing is a long way

from being over. Going into Iraq was clearly a violation of international law8, but we should not neglect to notice that there's also a potentially tremendous upside, an opportunity to establish a true, pluralistic democracy in the heart of the Arab world. To do so will not erase our past misdeeds, but it could signal a new era of hope, a hope that America will finally stop using its muscle for purely national objectives and perhaps start using its might and influence in a moral way.

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." - Edmund Burke If we had been doing that for the past fifty years, the world we live in now would be a totally different place. Perhaps communism, left to its own devices, would have crumbled and decayed under the crushing weight its own moral as well as economic failures. Perhaps, if freed from the fear of the "evil empire", America could have fulfilled its best possible destiny, becoming a beacon of light in a world desperately in need of illumination. But we can't turn back the clock. We can't right the wrongs of the past. Yet until we face up to them as a society, I don't see how we can go forward to build a better future with open hearts, honest policies, and a redeemed national soul. That’s all I have to say, at least for now.

Comments on A&E 350: Myles Corcoran: Regarding your comments on the igtheme, perhaps D&D is a game about youths growing to adulthood, power and responsibility. I suppose it all depends how young you make the starting age. I think the DMG has some rules regarding this, but it would make sense, actually, to start characters at zero-level and assume they’re teenagers, or to at least allow them some semblance of direction during these formative years. I don’t just mean direction in terms of character skills and stats but also in terms of their character’s response to the inevitable “life-events” of adolescence. This, I think, would go a long way toward defining their character’s personality. Thoughts? Robert Dushay: Regarding your igtheme thoughts, in AD&D I always made new players start their characters at 1st level even

6

Some would argue that 9/11 was payback. Being pessimistic, as I am, I tend to think of it as a sneak preview. 7 George Friedman, while not taking sides, makes the argument that Bush's choice was the only choice, and while his theory in definitely conspiratorial, it makes for fascinating listening. http://www.kqed.org/epArchive/R410131000

8

Stephen Zunes of the University of San Francisco wrote a brief analysis making this point as well as others which, now in hindsight, seem almost prophetic. See http://www.fpif.org/pdf/reports/PRiraq3.pdf and see if you can believe the date on his paper.

when they came into a well-established group, but I didn’t adhere to the training requirements for level advancement, so new characters in a powerful group were able to effectively skip levels, often rising from 1st to 3rd or even 4th level in their very first session. Granted, this is ridiculous. Just because you killed a big monster with a group of powerful friends shouldn’t make you a powerful character, but that’s the way we did it. On the one hand, it made new characters earn their level like everyone else, but on the other hand, it let them earn it quickly. This, ultimately, was a judgement call in favor of power-balance and playability over logic and realism (and even over strict rules-adherence), but I think the nature of the genre justified the policy, and I’d do it again. Spike Jones: RYCT Lee Gold on the Israelites and archeology, I’m somewhat interested in their early history, so much that I also subscribed to BAR for awhile. I’m particularly intrigued by the question over how our basic social norms came into being. For instance, the worship of one God over many (a critical development, though one which we can scarcely imagine otherwise). Was it tied to politics? To what extent were the ancient priests servants of their kings (as opposed to being rivals)? Or marriage, as in one man and one woman. Who were the first people to practice that, and when did it begin happening? I would imagine that for a great many centuries, women were regarded as little more than possessions. The notion of being “bound” to one’s possession seems a little strange, so obviously, there had to be a substantial shift in thinking and in the definition of personhood. What caused that to happen? Was it political? Was it an issue of fairness? Was it social-engineering at its earliest? Likewise, I’m curious about money. Was it invented by people in a sort of grassroots “this makes sense” fashion, or was it something that the leaders forced upon the people in order to simplify taxation? That, of course, leads to the whole question of money-lending, banking, in effect. How did that get started? What rights did lenders have against the power of the king to simply seize their assets or demand a zero-interest loan? There’s just so much there that I know very little about, and I’m not even sure if definitive answers exist to any of these questions. I’d be curious to hear your thoughts or any useful references you might be able to dig up. Paul Mason: Regarding your comments on a martial artist’s abilities being determined by their level of development and upsets being relatively rare, it strikes me that, at least in other sorts of combat, upsets do happen, but like you suggest, they are called “upsets” precisely because they are rare. In

general, even in sports, you can look at the records of two different boxers or two different football teams, and you can get a pretty good idea of who will win. The predictions are good enough for gamblers to set odds. Often, when there is an upset, it comes down to the underdog not necessarily just trying harder, but also getting the favorite to “fight his fight” or “play his game”. One boxer may have a dangerous left hook. Another may prefer to fight on the inside. Likewise, with sports teams, one team may have a superior quarterback. Another may have a superior rushing defense. In each case, the contest is made interesting because each opponent has semi-quantifiable strengths and weaknesses, and these interact in a predictable, but not entirely predictable, manner. Strategy plays center stage. “Hit his ribs, Rocky!” or “Blitz the quarterback!” This, I think, should be the holy grail of combat mechanics. Too often we see systems where the interface of dice and charts produces a fairly mechanical result with little or no input on the part of the players. “I swing. I hit. I do his six points. Is he dead yet?” Instead, strategy should play the central role. I think D&D3e/d20 has made important strides in this direction. With the inclusion of combat-feats, strategy now plays a more important role that it did in past versions of the game. However, these mechanics still don’t include a hit location system or a system for resolving the effects of grievous wounds. Despite combat playing a central role, serious injury and medicine seem to be somewhat forgotten. Perhaps this is due to the nature of the genre, or perhaps it’s due to the fact that such rules would likely bog down the game in endless paperwork and medical reports. “Yeah, he got me in the spleen. I’m gonna be laid up here for awhile. You guys just go on without me.” Certain it would be more realistic, but would it be more fun? For more thoughts on combat as well as experience systems (and your well-stated if obvious power dichotomy) see my comments to James Reichstadt. Also see my comments to Brian Rogers. I’d be very curious to hear your take. Brian Misiaszek: RYCT Brian Rogers on Classic Traveller having a lot of creative potential outside of the actual gaming aspect, I have to agree with this. I also tried my hand at starship design, world design, character generation (just for the sheer fun of it), and so forth. Classic Traveller had a great many systems for design, which I think was part of the game’s allure. While D&D, likewise, had design opportunities embedded into the rules (monsters, spells, dungeons, etc.), Traveller seemed to go into greater depth, and, despite some acknowledged physics-benders, it also seemed to have a much greater respect for “realism”. You

couldn’t just throw something together and call it magic. I’d be curious to learn if you’ve kept up with the game’s various incarnations and what you think about each. Jonathan Nichols: Your description of the Star Trek LARP confirms my belief that psychological traits and disadvantages are pretty much useless. You can put anything you want on a player’s character sheet. Most (if not all) players will still be constrained by the limits of their own personalities and their own mental agility. Now, if I were the guy playing the Klingon, I would have ripped your heart from your chest and shoved it up your Romulan a…actually, that might have resulted in a massive dose of negative publicity to the hobby, not to mention the loss of another A&Eer, so I’ll retract and humbly slink off like the poor delegate in question. Nice tongue-lashing by the way. That part about the mother being too weak to properly dispose of her misfit child is classic. It’s too bad you’re human. You’d have made an excellent Klingon. And just think of the advantages. I hear that their woman are extra-naughty!

Lisa Padol: It’s always interesting to read your comments on the igtheme, and last issue was no exception. How powerful should a beginning PC be? “Like a woman’s skirt, a PC’s power should be long enough to cover the essentials but short enough to be interesting.” I couldn’t have said it better. You imply, correctly in my opinion, that it is the faults and deficiencies of characters that make them most interesting. There have, of course, been systems that allow PCs to select a character’s faults. GURPS, of course, comes immediately to mind. However, in life, we don’t often get to select our disadvantages. We do to a degree. We can select which skills and talents we

spend our time practicing and developing further and which ones we allow to rot on the vine, but in terms of some of our more fundamental deficiencies, we have no control. I wonder what you would think of a character generation system where new characters were each bestowed (or rather, cursed) with comparable levels of disadvantages but which they were not allowed to actually select. William Reger: “I say, old chap, jolly well trained hunting bird you’ve got there!” Too funny. I would love to see more of these sorts of game write-ups, with English gentlemen utterly unwilling to change their world view to incorporate the supernatural. Your protagonist actually does a good job accepting the shapechanging Miss Emery. It might have been funnier had he assumed he was having hallucinations due to too much of the desert air, opium pollen, or whatever. James Reichstadt: I’d be interested in seeing those books if you ever get around to writing them. Regarding your comments about the convention game you played, I think the reason for the problem of story taking a back-seat to math has to do with the variety of choices available in the more extensively designed combat systems. This, actually, is something that most players want, and the reason is that more options give rise to more opportunities to exercise strategy (see my comments to Paul Mason). Granted, this also bogs down the game in the trivia of numbers and often results in an annoying diversion of attention away from plot, character, and setting, all the things from which good stories are woven. I’m not entirely sure what the best solution ought to be. Clearly, there are a great many number crunchers and gearheads in the hobby, and clearly there are great many roleplayers. How to get them to meet in the space between? There are a few different options: •

The game designers could include some “min-maxed” character designs (or ability/skill packages) in the rules, so that the roleplayers among us can just select one of these optimized templates rather than having to bury our faces in the books for hours on end. I actually think this is a pretty good option, as it genuinely serves both audiences.

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Combat could be made more deadly, so that anyone, regardless of their power level, would be wise to avoid it and, instead, concentrate on other avenues of play. This, however, would likely detract from heroism and character longevity, both of which are useful to story.

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Combat could be made more random, so that even with optimized characters, there would be too many unknowns to predict the final outcome. This, however, goes against Paul Mason’s desire to make combat outcomes more predictable.

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The rules could minimize the number of combat options, simplifying the whole sordid affair. This, however, would go against the wishes of the gearhead audience as well as strategic thinkers, all of whom apparently like to crunch numbers.

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The rules could attempt to put combat on a back-stage by refusing to reward it in terms of character experience & advancement. In such a view, combat would be seen as simply being a type of practice, similar to exercising any skill, but not an avenue to greater overall power. Of course, this would create the question of “how do characters move up?” (see my comments on the igtheme in issue #350). Paul Mason makes the distinction (in the same issue) between situational and rules-derived power, which is an excellent though obvious point, however, players, I think, want something that can’t easily be taken away by the referee. They want some sort of moderately permanent progression. There may even be some powerful psychological reasons why this is the case (see my comments to Brian Rogers). However, perhaps it is precisely this which the rules ought to deny them.

There is the phrase in gambling: “Easy come, easy go.” Perhaps roleplaying should have a similar ethos rather than Gygax’s rephrasing of the old adage “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” into “Killing makes you stronger.” The question, then, would be how to better cater to the powermongers which are a large part of the RPG audience. I think we’d have to give them more situational power in terms of rank or contacts or something that gives them a substantial edge over a brand new character in order to compensate for any ruled-based power advancement we took away. This, I suppose, is more of less the route that Traveller took back in the 80s, however, I think they went too far. I think that perhaps there’s an opportunity to mix both methods more evenly than has been done in the past. Brian Rogers: Regarding the igtheme, you pose a really great question: “If the character is built exactly as you picture him, is there any point in experience systems?” I agree, and I think the fact remains that players want something to work toward beyond the

completion of the latest plot thread. They want something selfish for their character. We can, of course, argue over whether this is a ridiculous artifact of roleplaying’s roots in wargaming, but the fact remains, to quote you again, “I can’t ignore the Pavlovian reflex of wanting to get more neat stuff for the character.” D&D provided a well-defined, incremental, power advancement system that, in my opinion, was addicting. I think this is part of the reason people play D&D today. They get a sense of fulfillment watching their character climb to evergreater heights of power and authority. Is there anything wrong with this? I’m not sure. To be honest, now that I think of it, I would guess that much of this whole conflict arises from roleplayers wanting their games to be recognized as a form of art (I believe I mentioned this last issue, see footnote #5 from my zine last month). In contemporary story-telling art (movies, novels, and television), characters do not progress quite so much in personal power as they do in personality. This “self-exploration” is often meant to convey a sense of morality to the audience and often serves to give a plot its greater theme and characters their greater purpose. There is a certain religious subtext at work, as the moment of true self-evaluation is akin to a baptism, in effect, a rebirth of the character, a transformation of personality from selfish childhood into responsible adulthood. However, while a script-writer can cleverly arrange events such that selfevaluation naturally occurs, this is far more difficult in a roleplaying game where the action is, purportedly, non-scripted, and where character actions are the sole province of the (often literally) unwashed masses. This might seem a scathing evaluation, but I really think that what’s going on here is that game designers realize that character growth is a tremendously import part of story-telling. It is, arguably, the central point. But you can’t force character growth. You can’t force a baptism. Either the character learns from their mistakes, or they don’t. I’ve met many gamers over the years, and a great many of them are very intelligent and capable people, mature and well-reasoned, but I have also met a sizable fraction which I can only describe as… well…words fail me. I don’t really know how to describe some of the gamers I’ve met. They are probably capable of personal growth. I think all people are. But, for some these folks, I think it would like pulling teeth. To them, I’m guessing that gaming provides a sort of sanctuary from the real world. Not merely a source of entertainment, but rather a refuge. And I’m sorry to sound so critical. It bothers me that I sound so critical, because I can remember a time when gaming was probably a refuge for me. You know, we pass through some of our most formative

years living in this miniature society (the junior high and the high school) where we have relatively little power and there are all these expectations, social as well as mental, and dammit…we need a refuge. There’s nothing wrong with that. But I think some folks get so immersed and stake so much of their self-esteem into this imaginary landscape that they can never fully extract themselves. For those of us who run the games, our sense of fulfillment may derive, in part, from how entertaining and “artistic” we can make our games. For the players, the fulfillment may arise from other factors: character power being an obvious primary motivator. This should not come as a surprise. It almost seems to me self-evident. It’s that big elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about. But it’s there right in front of us. We see it. We may try to deny it. But in the end, it’s still there. Experience points, level progression, skill advancement, whatever you want to call it… this is all the “crack” of roleplaying. It’s the addictive aspect. But does that make it bad? I think it depends, like most things, on how it’s used. Roleplaying can be a great teaching tool. Of course, unlike the script-writer, the game designer and the gamemaster cannot regulate true character growth, so instead we do the next best thing. We have the character grow in power, and once they do, we hope, perhaps sometimes we even pray, that the player will suddenly become cognizant of their new place in the imaginary world and will find a way to handle their power in a socially constructive way, rather than using it solely toward a selfish agenda. That is the goal, I think. Advance the character, and then hope the player will also advance. Unfortunately, this doesn’t always happen. Ultimately, it depends on the player, but unless they make that journey, they may never confront, in an open and social environment, some of the more subterranean aspects of their personality. Sorry for being so long-winded, but that's my PoV. Jonathan Woolley: Somebody really needs to beet you with a stick (of celery). How could you give stats for all these crisp, refreshing slaadi, but forget to include my favorite, the famous Cobb Slaad?! And, come to think of it, where are the rules for hurled croutons? Regarding the Devout Coward, some sort of verbal component ought to be included to get the speed bonus. I’d imagine something like: “Holy sh…!”