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04/07/00: A Loss for the Anti-Gamer Agenda!!!
Today the forces of evil, led by Lt. Col. David "Captain Nazi" Grossman, were dealt a blow by the United States judicial system. Although I occasionally fear that the courts have been impacted by the same demogagery as the rest of our legal system, victories like this give me hope for the future. To recap, on December 1, 1997, Michael Carneal shot and killed unarmed members of a prayer cirle in a Paducah school in Kentuky. To most people who heard about this, it was nothing more than a shocking, senseless tragedy. To Lt. Col. Grossman, however, those shots were akin to the sound of a cash register. He and his slimy minions immediately descended on the families of the victims, attempting to profit from the suffering and death of their children. Of course, the big question in this case for such despicable people is "How can we profit?" Michael Carneal was a pathetic loser with no money, so suing him wouldn't have gotten the big bucks the Lt. Col. was after.
The Lt. Col. had the thought of claiming that video games made Carneal into a more effective and efficient killer. Now, the actual facts of what Grossman contends have been obscured by the media. The media would have you believe in cases like this that what games like Doom and Mortal Kombat do is teach kids how to target and fire guns more accurately. (I know that Mortal Kombat is not a gun game, I'm talking about the media here. They never let the facts get in the way.) I often wonder exactly how the media thinks a group of unarmed civilian children who are unprepared to deal with being shot at are expected to fend off an armed gunman. Perhaps they've watched a lot of movies where bad guys with machine guns shoot at the good guy and the good guy gets away without a scratch. Real life is that if someone actually gets a shot off at you there is a good chance you'll die. Guns are very dangerous, but it doesn't require any particular skill to use one against an unarmed, unprepared target. Do you really think that all the hold ups over the years have been by well trained marksmen? Nope, it's just that sane people know to fear people with guns.
However, this is the media's argument, and not Grossman's. Grossman's argument is a sick and evil one. He contends that modern soldiers have less compunction about taking human lives than soldiers in the past. The history of human violence refutes him, Nazi soldiers in WWII had no problem murdering innocent, unarmed people. On all sides in World War I, machine guns, poison gas, explosive shells and landmines made France in a charnal pit. People don't need video games to desensitize them to violence, obviously, or the wars of the past wouldn't have happened. Even Viet Nam (which Grossman uses to try to prove that American Soldiers are more viscious now than in the past) occurred before the advent of electronic military simulators. It is true that the US military uses many different tools, including but not limited to electronic simulations, to train soldiers. These tools are to allow the soldiers to fly planes more effectively, to run tanks more effectively. The military would never use a game like Doom to train soldiers to fire a gun more effectively, though they have used Doom to build team spirit among Marines. (Note: this is a reversal of what Grossman contend, Doom came first and was appropriated by the Marines to build team loyalty. I believe that this is no different than military sports teams, you want the members of a military unit to form strong bonds and having them participate in fun, team oriented activities is one way to do this. Back in WWI, the British used to form units of young men who had been chums at school, it was a way to inspire greater loyalty than just lumping a group of men who had no knowledge or friendship for each other together.)
Grossman, however, takes this and turns it into an evil military experiment. It is his contention than rather than building camaraderie among Marines, Doom was used to destroy their ethical compunctions about taking human life. To break down their natural, healthy aversion to committing murders, Grossman says, the military has them play Doom to turn them into zombie killing machines. Now, Grossman claims to believe this but in the case of the military he considers it OK. After all, in the military, they are trained only to kill when following orders, so he considers it ok that they are zombie killbots, as long as they are zombie killbots who follow orders. This is a sick and disgraceful attitude. It sounds like Grossman's ideal is not a US Marine corps, but a Nazi style SS. Of course, I don't think anyone actually believes this about the Marines, even Grossman, but the fact that he would suggest it as part of his anti-gamer agenda is truly disturbing.
I am ashamed to live in a country where a man would talk about the Marines this way and yet be given respect by many people who claim to respect the Marines. I've known Marines, including one who gave his sight and later (after being forced to live with his blindness) his life due to one of our futile little police actions in Somalia. Of course, if you buy Lt. Col.'s "zombie killbot" argument, your first protest should be toward the U.S. military. Video games are certainly not sinister brainwashing tools, as Grossman says, but if they were wouldn't it be sick that our military was using them in this way? Why does Grossman only go after video games when it will bring him profits? Could it be that his argument is only a cynical ploy to profit from the deaths of children at the expense of American Freedom?
Rather than answer this directly, I will merely refer you to the Paducah case. A federal judge dismissed that case, it never even went to a jury. The judge said the case had no merit. Now, if the case had no merit, what does that say about the man who brought it? This so-called expert on the psychology of violence? I think it shows the truth, that Grossman is a snake-oil salesman, who would trade American liberty for a fascist, military dictatorship with himself in charge of a brainwashed military. Judge for yourself, Federal judge dismisses lawsuit against movie,video game makers, is one link to the findings in this case. Look out Grossman, America is on to your fascist tricks!!!
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