Clark at Popehat has a long post up on a little thing called GamerGate; except that it’s actually about a bigger thing that is affecting our whole society- the cultural struggle between the ‘nannystaters’ and the ‘leave-me-be-ers’ for lack of a better term. (Oh, I have better terms, they’re just ruder than I feel like being this morning.) (And, it’s a much larger struggle than just that.)
As a poet once said: Cthulhu swims slowly, but he only swims left. Isn’t that interesting?
The blue team has made amazing progress over the last three hundred years. Occasionally by force of arms, but usually by a much more clever strategy: entryism.
Entryism, for those not hip to the lingo, is “a political strategy in which an organization or state encourages its members or supporters to join another, usually larger organization in an attempt to expand influence and expand their ideas and program. In situations where the organization being ‘entered’ is hostile to entryism, the entryists may engage in a degree of subterfuge to hide the fact that they are an organization in their own right.”
Since World War II the Blue team in the US has entered into the stodgy old universities (taking advantage of the GI Bill and the resulting explosion in size of secondary education institutions), and taken them over completely. It has taken over the media (now called the “mainstream media” or MSM by the red team), because of this. It has taken over many corporate boards (although not all attempts have succeeded).
One advantage the blue team has is the aura of inevitability: as with small Iraqi militias or army units facing ISIS in the Levant, when faced with an enemy that wins every battle, one’s priors must be that in the coming battle one will lose. Thus, the winning move is to immediately surrender, ask for forgiveness, and join the winning team (millions of years of evolution make us pretty decent players at this game of thrones, remember).
Yes, I know, tl:dr. But do read it. Follow the links. He’s done an excellent job of capturing the essence of the cultural divide that is starting to tear this civilization apart- and it’s all about video games. Funny, that.
If you’re wondering, I, like Clark, find myself aligned with Red, with misgivings. Read the article and you’ll see what I mean.