sukeban

@kvn While I agree with you that the Democrats aren't doing a phenomenal job, I once again caution against believing in the "false equivalency" that both parties are equally to blame for Washington dysfunction. They are not. Think back to all the other times that we have had divided government in this country (most of our history) and show me a time when one party has been so utterly unconstructive and obstructionist in their positions. I dare say that you probably couldn't find an instance comparable to the intransigence of the GOP from 2010 (really 2008, but they didn't have sufficient numbers to do much real damage) to the present. You see this type of madness in parliamentary systems--systems where representation is based off of proportion of the vote received and where snap elections are able to be called to break gridlock--and it is completely alien to the United States. There are lots of reasons (some obvious, some not) that go into this, but it is an objective fact that no party has so abused the filibuster or presided over such a titanic legislative failure (112th Congress) as has the modern GOP. Looking at political metrics such as DW-NOMINATE (partisanship measured by Roll-Call votes), the GOP has been lurching ever-further to the extreme right of the political spectrum since the 1980s: http://www.aei-ideas.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/1.3.13-DW-Nominate-112th-Congress.jpg These charts are based upon votes on economic issues (there's another set of data for "cross-cutting issues"--what we usually think of as the culture wars). You can see, since 1980 the GOP has been careening off the rails in terms of fighting for thoroughly debunked economic policies favoring the extremely wealthy. Democrats aren't exactly centrist, but there is a HUGE difference between their relative scores there, with the GOP House being 75% percent more partisan (.4 versus .7) on economic matters than Democrats in the House. Republicans in the Senate have historically been more moderate (with Democrats experiencing a lurch to the left in the 1940s), but have since matched--and exceeded--the partisanship of the Democrats, such as they are now about 25% more partisan. As our Founders expected, there is good reason to expect more partisanship out of the House (smaller districts with more extreme residents), but it looks as though--looking at the trend line--Republicans in the Senate aim to catch up to their House brethren in partisanship (meanwhile Democrats are standing pat at around -.38, as they have been for decades now). Again, this is based on actual votes in Congress--so there should be no quibbling with these numbers. Republicans ARE the more extreme party these days--and have been since the 1980s. Unlike the 1980s, however, the rest of the country (measured by presidential outcomes) does not have their back. Vis-a-vis the rest of the country, the GOP is "going rogue," attempting to placate and pander to an ever-shrinking base of voters while the majority of the rest of the country wonders what the heck they are doing. Democrats are not saints, but they are--based upon their actual voting record--sitting at an average of -.4. Republicans are sitting at an average of .65. When it comes to "returning to the center," Republicans have a far greater distance to walk. One would hope they would start walking sooner rather than later.

@Polls Just to sort of clear the air with respect to political polls, I think that both of you are right in certain instances. 1. Some polls, usually done by disreputable polling institutions (Mason Dixon, American Research Group, increasingly Rasmussen, etc.), can be and are intentionally skewed to advance a previously selected narrative. There IS a certain way that polling has transcended it's usual conception of "being a snapshot of reality" and instead sometimes creates reality. That is what these "push polls" (suggestive or non-neutrally worded polls) are attempting to do--to paint a favorable portrait for their cause in the hopes that said portrait will, in turn, influence voter behavior. You could see this in the closing weeks of the campaign with conservative polling groups and the Romney campaign releasing "idealistic" polls of states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, hoping that, if voters thought the races were truly lose and that their individual vote actually mattered, that their targeted voters would be more likely to vote. 2. Internal campaign polls can do this as well, and most campaigns selectively release "leaked" internal polls that show their candidate doing exceptionally well (controlling for context). They also--if they are actually doing their job properly--have a separate, call it "realistic" set of polling that they use to actually plan campaign strategy with. Romney's people might not have done this, however, and they might have been using their "idealistic" internal numbers for strategy purposes, which would explain why they were so visibly dumbfounded when they lost so decisively. 3. A polling institution DOESN'T have to be politically non-aligned to be credible. In years past, Rasmussen (conservative) had been pretty accurate and nowadays SurveyUSA and Mellman (liberal) polls have also proven to be reliably accurate. Neutral parties (CNN, Reuters, Quinnipiac, etc.) still tend to have good track records (minus Gallup, actually), but it is a myth that only non-partisan pollsters can be trusted. All you need to be a reliable pollster is to be honset about the data that you collect and to have a sound methodology--that can be done by any pollster with integrity regardless of their political affiliation. 4. The "art" of polling presently undergoing somewhat of a shakeup, as voters increasingly do not have access to landlines and, as such, are completely missed by many traditional, large pollsters. Other firms have experimented with internet polling--Google did especially well in 2012 with this--but this method is still in its infancy. Robodialing--the dominant polling method of the 80s/90s/2000s--seems to be on the way out (though manual-dialing is much more expensive) as response rates have dipped to around 4% of people called. Compound this with different--and changing--demographic "weights" that individual pollsters apply to their data, and you have an industry is extreme flux. However, polling is becoming more accurate rather than less, and I would very much caution against not monitoring the results of reputable polling firms. In this way, I'd say that you're both right. Polling is a tool--a powerful one, but one of many--for understanding the general trends involved in our current (and past) politics. Good polls can be very good, and bad polls are, well, bad and misleading (oftentimes intentionally so). Whenever you see a poll, seek out as much information as you can on the pollster--often times this will shed a great deal of light as to explaining their numbers. Best of all, however, most pollsters publish their entire result, from the actual data, to the questions asked, to the weight that they are using, and you can check for yourself whether or not the poll asks leading questions or otherwise is abusing the data that they collect. So polls are neither always right, nor always wrong, nor the be all and end all, nor irrelevant. Rather, they are what you, the end-user, make of them.

@Ghogiel I get what you're saying (that you can't have employees going all Game Jam-style rather than sticking to what they're supposed to do) but some things, such as this, are like basic QA. And even if we leave the realm of graphics (which, for sure, can't all be high-res due to console memory constraints) there are still things like obviously broken quests (Barenziah) and zillions of CK errors (many items not being temperable, for example) that really should just have been apparent if testers had just put more hours into the game. So who is that the fault of: the overworked/understaffed game developers, the managers setting their deadlines/headcount, or the higher-up powers that be plotting out the overall strategy of the company? Or is it by dint of receiving loads of outside funding and having those shareholders breathing down your neck for their dividend (random fact: apparently Donald Trump's brother sits on the Zenimax board!)? In any event, somebody said before that making games is a business rather than an art. Increasingly, that definitely seems to be the case... or at least in the case of the bigger houses. It's not exactly a controversial statement to say that the highest quality, most creative, and innovative games seem to come from smaller developers, those that Vagrant0 mentioned as being more likely to be working for themselves rather than for the enrichment of some anonymous, disinterested-in-games, Wall Street speculator looking to make a quick buck off a growth industry. Not saying that developers shouldn't get paid (they should, and handsomely... if the game is amazing), but perhaps that they should think twice before inviting in some well-heeled outsider to start calling the financial shots in their organization. Probably fodder for a different thread (that I'm sure has been debated before), but perhaps it is true that art and commerce cannot really coexist if art must depend upon commerce to survive. Fundamentally, their interests are not the same and only one set of interests may end up carrying the day. Ideally, consumers would want the most creative, original art available, but--witness the success of Thomas Kincaid, comic book movies, and 2Chainz--it's pretty clear that's not really the case. Obviously the judgment of art is entirely an opinion, but I would advance that the ideal of art is to showcase the creativity of the artist and to demonstrate their mastery over a chosen medium (to be fair, Thomas Kincaid was pretty good at what he did...). Transposed to the game industry, you have the big houses buying up and watering down other people's IPs or else resting on their past creative laurels and hoping that nobody notices. EDIT: Whoops, Vagrant0, just now saw your post above.

@Vagrant That makes an enormity of sense, TBH. I suppose that it answers affirmatively the OP's original question, that once a studio gets to be a certain size and their quest for Septims begins to outstrip their desire to make the best game that they can, you get the management situation that you mention. Makes one pine for the old Blizzard approach of "it's ready when it's ready" rather than aiming for artificial marketing type launch dates of 11/11/11 and such. And if your studio doesn't have the manpower to accommodate working on a game of that size while not sacking polish... why not hire more employees. I read somewhere that Skyrim grossed one billion in sales--somehow I think Beth could have afforded to hire a couple more writing/art/quest design guys and foregone ~150k in profits. Or just use interns to identify and squash the zillions of quick-fix CK bugs mwaha. @Ihoe Agree with everything that you said. I wonder if standing pat as a privately held company is the only way to go if a studio's intention is to maintain a uniform standard of quality rather than focus on profit maximization (and paying out dividends to investors), especially nowadays when going public isn't the only way to secure funding for a project when you're relatively new. @Ghogiel That makes sense to a degree (in that it makes complete sense from a cynical business standpoint while making no sense from a work-ethic standpoint), but the "buck" has to stop somewhere when it comes to such breaches of quality. If it really is the designers and the management team condoning all the corner-cutting (spurred on, no doubt, by the executive team and their desire to satisfy shareholders), common sense would seem to indicate that these individuals be replaced and the philosophy of the studio reevaluated. Or at least it would if consumers didn't reward such bad developer behavior (obviously guilty myself of this...) with unprecedented levels of sales. One potential silver lining perhaps with the mainstreaming of gaming (and the general decline in quality that this trend has ushered in) might be the mushrooming of studios, creating more genuine competition within a given gaming genre. That's why I am really excited to see, for example, what CD Projekt will do in their open-world Witcher 3--hoping that it will build upon Skyrim's flaws and force Beth to "up their game" if they desire to remain the kings (sitting all slouchy on the thrown like a Skyrim Jarl...) of open-world RPGs.

One other thing that I sometimes wonder with these large studios is about the caliber of employees that they begin to hire once they reach a certain size. I'd imagine that once (nearly) any institution (in this case, a company) gets to a certain size, personnel can begin to "relax" and coast off of institutional inertia, knowing that their action or inaction likely won't be noticed--prompting them to not really give it 100% (for example, look at the textures/meshes fixed by the Static Mesh Improvement mod--that the vanilla variants made it into a AAA game in 2011 is jaw-dropping). Some other thread that I was reading about Skyrim's "lack of polish" (e.g. vast number of simple-to-fix bugs) really made me think about this. I don't know how many employees Beth has, but I would make a huge wager that their median employee ISN'T as dedicated to the RPG genre as they used to be back when they were smaller. Now they might have guys from FPS backgrounds and other genres, guys (and girls) that never played any of the classic games and are thus largely blind to the aspects of traditional RPGs that they are now happily axing in the favor of graphics and "action" elements. I'm sure that their employees really like making games, but I would question whether the "culture" of the company is still the same (games made by RPG buffs for RPG buffs) or if now it's just like any other big corporate office where people just do what's asked of them (and not much else) and then look forward to pay day. Based on the volume of fixes in the Unofficial Patches (and many of them being quick, 2-second CK fixes), I don't know if Beth is as passionate as they used to be, nor do I know whether or not their employees are willing to put in the unpaid overtime necessary to take their games to the "next level" in terms of polish and depth. Or, to couch it in cliche sports terms, whether or not Beth is as "hungry" now that they're a big fish as they were when they were nothing but a minnow. Anyway, that same thing could probably also be said about Bioware and (especially!) Blizzard, basically that your "vision" and enthusiasm get diluted the more "other people" you bring in to help make your games. There's definitely magic in a small, cohesive team (doing anything), and that's just hard to maintain when a group starts to get too large.

I've never actually played any of the Fallout games so I can't comment on them exactly, but I definitely think that you get this with many other big-name franchises made by previously "enthusiast" studios--TES, Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Diablo (surely there are more). I wholeheartedly agree with what jim has said about the state of the industry. Sadly, these types of games (big on style, short on substance) are the types of games that you get when accountants are put in charge of game development rather than actual designers, that you get "lowest common denominator" games that are assured to move units at the expense of actual innovation and creativity. The only innovation that we really have these days seems to be in the graphics department (or gimmicky things like Kinect)--and that seems to exist in a zero-sum relationship to most everything else. So for TES, we have the loss of edgy humor, storytelling, dialogue, interesting quests, in-depth game systems, in-depth lore, in-depth character customization, and game difficulty. Skyrim, Oblivion, and the later Mass Effect games are still "good games," but that seems to be the highest that studios are willing to aim these days; as jim says, they are risk averse and unwilling to roll the dice on a potentially revolutionary game that the casual gamer might not understand. And I guess that is what happens after a studio reaches a certain size and the dollar amounts to be gained from going this route begin to seriously gnaw at the initial "idealism" of the developer. Just like LeBron leaving all his devoted fans in Cleveland and taking the "guaranteed championship" option in Miami, we can't really "blame" developers for doing this either... just sort of sigh in dissapointment as another one of the "good guys" ends up being just another dude. ................... On a TES note, I've recently watched some Let's Plays of Redguard, Daggerfall, and Battlespire and I have been simply BLOWN AWAY at some of the amazing RPG elements of those games that have... fallen out (keke) of TES since then. I get that those systems (backstory generator, forbidden weapons/armor, weaknesses, conversation options, skills, etc.) might have been less than straightforward for new players, but they are just so much cooler and more RPG than most anything currently left in the series. Kind of makes me wish that TES was based on a hard-and-fast "game system" like the Forbidden Realms games were based off of AD&D, something that, no matter what else happened in the game, would keep the game a true RPG. In TES, we don't even have stats anymore....

@kvn LaPierre, Limbaugh, and their ilk might be idiots, but if you don't think that they represent and speak for a _large_ number of people in the United States, you are woefully naive. The membership of the NRA is estimated at four million; now, not all NRA members are going to agree with LaPierre, but if they were really that opposed to the crazy things that he says, you would hope they would drop their membership in the organization. Talk radio has tens of millions of listeners dispersed throughout every state, and Limbaugh can essentially dictate the policies of GOP politicians by threatening to rile up his listeners to support a primary challenger. I don't know if Limbaugh or LaPierre actually believe the crazy words that they say--or if they just do it for the money--but their messages are heard and internalized by millions of angry, impressionable, insecure (and armed!!) Americans. ------------------ Anyway, not all violence is political or pseudo-political violence, but neither is all violence done by "nuts" or "cranks" or whatever else. Truth is, people don't just wake up in the morning wanting to shoot up a Sikh temple, even less so when said shooting is motivated by white supremacist ideology and a mission to "cleanse" the United States of lesser ethnicities. That kind of thinking doesn't just arise out of thin air; instead, it has to be planted (which in his case happened in the Army) and then nurtured by like-minded individuals and their media (in his case Neo-Nazi metal and the whole white supremacist "literature" scene). He might not have been worshiping at the altar of Limbaugh, but I'm sure he could agree with him when he calls immigration an "invasion" or that "America is no longer American" due to the influx of other cultures and peoples. The "mainstream" variant of this language is GOP politicians talking about "real Americans" versus, what, "fake" Americans? Such language is reductionist and is merely code for talking about "white conservative" ("real Americans") versus everybody else (fake Americans). It's that kind of beleaguered, Manichean, and paranoid mentality that, when paired with infinite amounts of guns (or, to quote Gearbox, "Bazillions of guns!!"), can give rise to shocking examples of violence. But beyond political violence, there is still white American rural/suburban gun culture. I personally don't understand the allure of firearms--nor anything connected with their use--but I'll agree that they're largely legit when used by responsible, law-abiding citizens. I don't think there's any issue if somebody wants to practice marksmanship, shoot skeet, hunt ducks or whatever as recreation, the only problem arises when people start viewing guns as the ultimate tool for "conflict resolution" between people or groups of people. There's also the matter of gun-accessibility, where it is far easier for a disgruntled teenager to obtain a gun from their parents if they are gun owners than it is for that same teenager to get one if he has to buy it illegally or obtain it through some other channel. With respect to these two issues, I would say that those brought up in conservative gun culture are more amenable to calls for political violence and rampant paranoia because they will feel like their "way of life" is "under attack" by all those fake Americans. Suburban kids who have parents that own guns also have a "leg up" in terms of pulling off mass shootings, as they have the "tools of the trade" already in-house and potentially at their disposal. Yes, there will always be crazy people in the world, but I would caution against merely calling all of these shooters "crazy." That, IMO, is just an easily digestible bromide that misses the true issues at play here, namely rising right-wing extremism and the easy access to guns that many (white) Americans have in their homes. You might think that is dehumanizing or whatever--to look beyond explaining away these incidents as convenient "craziness"--but the facts speak for themselves. People might be slightly unhinged or have personality disorders (paranoia, anger issues), etc. but they are given "targets" by listening to other people speak or by reading radical words in print. I repeat: people don't just wake up wanting to shoot at minorities because they are "crazy"--instead they are given direction by radical reactionary ideology that all but begs them to do so. If people were really that sad or mad in a vacuum, maybe they would have just killed themselves, but when they are all ginned up after reading or listening to the insane rhetoric of the right, how can we be at all surprised when some of these people begin to take action on the ideas that they repeatedly hear?

I'm definitely all for balancing the budget, but I think the example of Europe (specifically the UK) should be instructive in terms of deciding when the best time is to do this. The UK did the austerity thing in, what, 2009, and promptly received a double-dip recession when private industry wasn't strong enough to pick up the slack left by the disappearance of government spending. One would hope that it would be a settled matter by now that counter-cyclical spending (including deficit-spending) is what is called for during a recession and/or a depression, and that austerity is precisely what an economy does not need when it is under duress. You can also look, for a recent example, at Greece, a country that implemented strict austerity measures, yet these measures did next to nothing to stop its accumulation of sovereign debt, as the austerity measures recessed the Greek economy and, in turn, diminished tax receipts. Austerity in recessions does not work and should not be attempted. Those that advocate for it during a recession likely do not care about actual economic recovery and are instead seizing upon an opportunity to shrink government for ideological reasons. Spending reductions can be contemplated when times are good and private industry can fill the void, but when private industry is weak, all that you get will be recession and social unrest. Republicans obviously DGAF about actual economics (they still think that cutting taxes on billionaires creates more jobs!) and are clearly advocating for spending cuts due to their obsession with dismantling government in general. Democrats might not be 100% better intentioned (protecting inefficient programs isn't really a virtue), but they are at least on the right side of the argument when it comes to actually sustaining a recovery (so they are right by accident). As HeyYou says, the responsible position toward paying down the debt is additional revenues in tandem with spending cuts--attempting to do this using only one of these methods is unwise and ultimately self-defeating. The idea of a flat-tax is interesting, but only if it is heavily progressive. Doing away with our current inefficient and corrupted tax code could be the single-most beneficial action that Congress could take in terms of breathing life into the economy, though it would, I suppose, put some accountants out of business. I would like to see lower base tax rates--but with zero deductions--in addition to taxing capital gains as earned income and some sort of "per transaction" tax such as the Tobin Tax that the EU has recently proposed (you know it must be good if the big banks, multinationals, and American government hate it!). I'd also like to see lower corporate tax rates--but again, with no deductions, subsidies or loopholes. If we did that, and reigned in our military commitments and modestly reformed budget-busting programs like Medicare, the government would likely be swimming in cash--cash that we could apply to paying down the debt. Add in some legislation mandating budget surpluses and debt repayment (say, over fifty years) and I think we would be on solid financial footing. I don't believe that this is an impossible order. Certainly, there are systemic and political roadblocks in the way, but I do feel as though our gridlocked "politics as usual" is going to be ending sooner rather than later (2016-18) when the House finally tips Democratic and Republicans either a) splinter into something else or b) seriously reformulate their policies to adapt to the rising center-left preferences of the electorate. We don't want or need one party calling all of the shots, but the Republicans right now are not serious negotiating partners. Once they are out of power at all levels, they will come back to the bargaining (and electoral) table chastened and ready to compromise on actual solutions. Until then, it is just a waiting game until we can finally put the stale political paradigm of the Baby Boom to rest and get on with solving our problems.

@Nintii I definitely think that there is a demographic bias toward white men in examples of "mass shooting" types of situations. Yes, barrios and ghettos are dangerous places, but they are largely dangerous only for the people living in them. Gang members don't go on road trips to public spaces and open fire against people that they don't know--instead, it's far more tribal and personally directed violence against people--largely of their own ethnicity--who have done them perceived wrongs. You have score-settling, vendettas, and competition involved in inner-city violence, features that do not at all describe indescriminate shootings where the target is "everybody" or "the world" or "the man" or whatever. Did you (or anybody else) happen to catch Wayne LaPierre's press conference today, ostensibly responding to Obama's State of the Union address? In it, he basically hyped up "white fears" of marauding black gangs, drug lord invasions from Mexico, government stormtroopers, the imminent collapse of our economy/society/the world, and basically topped it off with his ultimate panacea: buy MOAR guns! Other ethnicities are not like this, they are not obsessed with firearms in this bizarre post-apocalyptic way. That is a feature of white people, and, more specifically, white men. It isn't some weird genetic sympton of "being white" though--instead, it is 100% rural/suburban American white culture. Lots of these people have been getting hammered by the economy and have seen their country change before their eyes. Some of them might actually be racists and/or have religious reasons to fuel their anger, but I'd imagine that most of them are simply insecure with their place in the world: in the economy, in their families, in our nation. Getting owned in the economy and feeling insecure is a perfectly reasonable response, and reasonable people can differ about how much immigration we need or don't need, but where lots of these folks go off the rails is in their listening to the "easy answers" pablum of the far-right, a group that tells them to blame and hate nearly everybody else for the way things are now and, to top it off, instructs them to arm themselves against them. From this large group of angry--and increasingly paranoid/desperate--heavily armed people, it is almost inevitable that some of them will take "the message" to heart and act on what talk radio all but begs them to do. And if it isn't politically motivated, one can easily guess where a disgruntled and mentally ill teenager may best obtain a gun (at home, from their parents). Sure, the VT shooter was Korean-American and the renegade cop in LA was African-American, but they are clear outliers amidst the general trend. White Americans are probably the most heavily armed demographic in the world (excluding criminal organizations) and they are living through trying economic, social, and political times (but who isn't these days?). Under pressure people are strange enough, but when there's a cache of firearms and hundreds/thousands of rounds stored in the basement... well, no good is ever going to come out of that. TLDR: Per capita rates of violence might be higher for other demographics, but white Americans are the most likely to be the perpetrators of massive and random violence. This is so for reasons I've mentioned before, but include economic distress, rural/suburban culture, and history. High rates of black-on-black violence in Chicago does not make me fearful that an African-American gangbanger will go on a shooting spree in public, but each time there is a mass shooting I automatically assume that it was a white male... and I am hardly ever contradicted. EDIT: Wayne LaPierre's speech: http://dailycaller.com/2013/02/13/stand-and-fight/

I think that there are two issues being addressed in this question, and I think that they are related--but discreet. First would be the very real decline of the white male, or , if you will, the white working class in general. This class of people used to be the preeminent voting and demographic bloc of the United States, yet are increasingly being replaced by other ethnicities and demographics and are increasingly adrift in an economy that no longer really wants or needs them. Fast forward through the decades and you see an ever-eroding economic situation for working class whites. I would posit that our education system has failed the white working class--that it hasn't adequately prepared them for the jobs of today (let alone tomorrow), that it has instead dumped them off to fight amongst themselves for the meager scraps that pass for an unskilled worker's wage. But to a guy who has lost his well-paying job at a machine shop or lumber yard only to wind up stocking shelves for 6.50/hr at Staples or who is unemployed... rage is a pretty understandable (if highly unconstructive) response. The white working class continues its drift from middle class to lower class and, having tasted the middle class lifestyle potentially for several generations, it is collectively unhappy about this--far more unhappy than, say, a recent immigrant who has only ever known poverty. Layer on top of this the growing diversity of this country and the baggage of religion and culture, and you can see how the white working class may believe that "their" country (and its economy) is working for seemingly "everyone else" but them. Boiled down though, it's far from a difficult concept to grasp: that economic decline facilitates anger--the stuff social upheaval has been built upon for centuries (if not for all of history!). So you have rage emanating from one (still very large) segment of the nation's people, and, through accident of history, these folks are also precisely those who are predisposed to have large quantities of weapons (settlers/frontier mentality) at their disposal. This, to me, is where these two issues intersect, as simply being a white man does not, through some secret principle of biology, make one a stone-cold killer by birthright; rather, you have to have anger and a weapon and white men DO happen to have both of these things in abundance. But not all angry white men with guns actually go out and use them on anything other than deer, so you also obviously need the element of political zealotry/desperation/mental instability/alcohol/drugs/whatever to act as the final catalyst for a violent action. To that end, white guys are perhaps an easier dope to rope, as they have have backwards ideas of "manhood" standing in their way of seeking mental health help, are emasculated due to the economy's preference for female labor, and have insane far-right zealots bombarding them with vicious propaganda via many potential media streams. All of that conspires to paint a grim picture, indeed. TLDR: the changing economy has crushed the white working class and has left millions within that class economically marginalized and angry. In addition, myriad sociological factors and a cultural bias toward gun-ownership probably do make white males the most dangerous (to society at-large) demographic in the country.

I would just like to lay one point to rest, once and for all for the duration of this thread: People arguing that "No rules, man!" anarchy is good and/or sustainable: absolutely nobody. All arguments arguing this in an attempt to refute imperistan/ghogiel = straw-man arguments because this is not at all what they arguing. ------------------- That hasn't really been the intention of anybody here, but it has been rather derailing when folks keep looping back to it--which then prompts imperistan and ghogiel to reiterate points that they have made several times before. My contention is that, to answer the OP, imperistan's anarchism is not feasible on a large scale, both for the normal reasons (human clustering around authority figures) and due to matters of scale and logistics. I think that imperistan recognizes this when he states that most people aren't cut out for anarchism and, more importantly, states that it's not the project of anarchists to attempt to force anarchism on anybody not desiring it. Rather, it demands intellectual and social training designed to remove vestigial biases toward coercion and hierarchy, structures that have held sway for most human beings during most eras of history and are now thoroughly ingrained. I also mention scale because I doubt that anarchism would be tenable given the ever-increasing complexity of today's world. That might not be a fair assumption for many reasons, but I imagine anarchism working best in simple, small societies (agrarian) where truly esoteric knowledge is not demanded and most people are engaged in mostly the same occupations (at least part-time). If you attempted to transplant anarchism into a high-tech society such as we have today... I am just not sure how well that would go, given the demands of keeping all of that technology on its feet and functional yet without recourse to any sort of coercion. I would imagine that you would either need an exceptionally high level of technological education for the median worker, such as most people were "generalists" and could complete many tasks without relying on true specialists and/or you would need a very high level of intellectual/moral dedication to it from all members of that society. Even assuming that anarchist indoctrination of younger generations could attempt to "bend" human nature to fit its project, given the variance of human temperaments and the law of large numbers--to say nothing of lizard-brain human nature that can never truly be eliminated (sans genetic tampering)--I just don't know that it would be tenable over the long-term and over large (nation-size [and real nations, not like Monaco or Bahrain]) groupings of people. However, I can't say that with certainty (of course), given that none of us have any idea what would truly happen should the paradigm of human organization within the state fall away, but I don't think that the lizard-brain would go down without a monumental fight.

I don't think he's trying to browbeat anyone. I'll admit that his vision of anarchy isn't quite what I imagined in the OP, but I'll also grant that definitions of terms have room to grow and change. That said, I do think that another term should be coined to differentiate (for the sake of helping out its proponents) what people normally (for better or worse--likely worse) think of when they hear "anarchy" and what he is talking about. He is really arguing for one thing and you another, yet both are calling it the same thing. It's probably not your intent, but I do think that arguing against what imperistan is arguing for by referencing "there are no rules, man!" old-style anarchy is somewhat of a straw man. He's just asking people to address his revised theories on their merits rather than defaulting into the same arguments that people have used to refute old-style anarchy since time immemorial.

I guess US laws are different, in Croatia no veteran is able to buy/own a weapon (not even a slingshot) without passing extensive psychological exams to confirm he's not dangerous to anyone. If there's even a slightest possibility that he might have PTSD his weapons and licenses are immediately confiscated until he passes psychological evaluation. Post-traumatic stress disorder is a nasty thing and it's better to have guys with it under control than let them have a gun. I had to take those tests when I came back from Afghanistan, even had to see a military psychologist for 3 months during which my weapons and gun licenses were confiscated and I was under surveillance to insure I don't get a firearm from somewhere. After one hell of an evaluation I got my guns back but they took away my carrying license and I've been restricted to use and store my guns only on the gun range, I must not, under any circumstances, carry them outside the range. And I've been deemed "safe" with only a light case of PTSD, anything more severe and I'd spend 6 months in a mental institution with my gun/drivers licenses revoked and my guns confiscated for good. http://forums.nexusmods.com/public/style_emoticons/dark/sad.gif But now I derailed the topic so let's go back to whatever this thread is about. What I don't understand is what does all this have to do with government, the guy snapped, killed a bus driver, kidnapped a kid and that's it. I can't find any mention of him being "fed up" with the government, only that he's anti-government (and who isn't http://forums.nexusmods.com/public/style_emoticons/dark/rolleyes.gif). In my opinion, kidnapping a kid is not the best way to show hatred for his government so I don't think that was his point. If he wanted to do damage he'd blow something up or mow down a bunch of people, something that has impact. This looks to me like he snapped before he killed the driver and when his brain kicked into gear, he kidnapped a kid thinking he could get away. A stupid move but panic makes people do stupid things so I'm not surprised, at least he had enough brains to hide somewhere where snipers can't get him. Also, why did it take so long for them to kill him? I know he was hiding in a shelter but still, it shouldn't have taken that long. http://forums.nexusmods.com/public/style_emoticons/dark/confused.gif I heard that they duped him into opening the door then they set off a flashbang and he reached for his gun. When he did that (and maybe they would have done it in any event) they shot him. The report said that the FBI had snuck a small camera into the bunker and had decided to make the move after he became increasingly unstable and started brandishing the gun at the kid. I also heard that he was due in court on some firearms charges that week, which is most likely the catalytic event that he was so immediately bent over. He probably chose the bus driver because some level of government (unless it was a private school!) operated it and likely because he was a coward and thought it was an easy target. At first I thought maybe he wanted to abduct a non-white child or something like that, and then I thought that he might have been a pedophile, but I suppose we will never know for sure why he did it. Probably they'll just find a stash of "Soldier of Fortune" magazines and an internet history full of World Net Daily and/or Stormfront visits. Anyway, I don't think that military veterans (or SWAT, FBI, etc.) are very likely to do things like this, but Croatia's approach regarding securing their weapons sounds sensible all the same. TBH, veterans, on balance, are probably far less likely to do crazy things since they likely respect both weapons and human life more than the a person who has never served. But it is good policy, since a highly trained veteran with severe trauma would be a far more dangerous adversary than some teenager who learned everything they "know" about guns from Call of Duty.

Bethesda definitely doesn't hate elves, they just aren't--for better or worse--drinking the Tolkien/Peter Jackson Kool-Aid when it comes to making them replicas of Orlando Bloom and Kate Blanchett. I admire Bethesda for wanting to make the generic concept of elves "their own thing" rather than deferring to other people's visions (much as I do enjoy LoTR). It would be pretty creatively lazy to have just made elves the boilerplate (which I'd agree with Tidus, is revisionist history regarding the historical "fairy tale" conception of elves as scary and dangerous) ethereal bombshells with pointy ears. Yeah, that is what people have come to expect due to LoTR, and especially the movies, but that is only one conception of what an elf is or isn't. You can have the same debate over Orcs, except that they were (to the best of my knowledge) created by Tolkien. Bethesda made them far more "human" than Tolkien did and, even though they aren't meant to be "pretty," they are also far less horrific than the Tolkien/Peter Jackson vision of them. Other games handle them differently (like Baldur's Gate where they're just like malformed cavemen saying essentially "Me eat you, me smash!") to Blizzard where they're similar to TES, being kind of "noble savages" of highly tribal and traditional green, tusked dudes. Nobody holds the monopoly on what it means to be an "Elf" or an "Orc," simply different visions for what these generic terms mean. IMO, having diversity in presentation is something to be desired, rather than converging upon one hegemonous definition for each type. And, as Pyrosocial mentions below, the beauty of Bethesda games is that you can replace their vision with whatever other vision you desire, so you can have Legolas cake and eat it, too.

Democrats get that wrap because they don't spend money on the "right" people. Defense spending that benefits big military contractors and their employees = good because it's a) macho and b) keeps a certain politically powerful class of people employed. Spending on things such as welfare isn't perceived as patriotic or even desirable because it benefits people (or is perceived to...) who are easily tossed into the category of "other" (non-whites) and who have little political clout due to their economic standing. For sure there is abuse and waste going on there, but I'm pretty sure that goes (probably 10-fold) for military spending as well. What is worse from a fiscal point of view, the "welfare queen" (who is almost automatically conceptualized as black even though there are more poor whites on welfare) or the pallets full of cash that we shipped to Iraq and never heard from again (or the Joint Strike Fighter program x_x). And TBH, it is FAR better for our economy to have a more even dispersal of income (welfare) than having enormous concentrations of wealth in one place and zero income in another. Wealthy people don't spend their money like poor people do; they save it and it chills out in a bank (probably foreign) earning them interest whereas a poor person spends nearly all that they make in the local economy. Not to lionize welfare--as working should always be incentivized and superior--but I would much prefer to help out my fellow citizens than shovel more cash into some bloated executive's coffers paying for wars and equipment that we really don't need. There's also that sort of personal blindness where people somehow carve out exceptions for themselves, while punishing others more harshly for the same action. What I mean is that an Iowa farmer might condemn welfare recipient as a scurrilous freeloader yet in the same breath defend his Farm Bill subsidy that also comes from the government. Ditto for the defense industry employee or, to a certain extent, to some hypocritical seniors on things like Medicare. To a conservative retiree say, in Florida, their Medicare coverage is "justified" and sacrosanct, but unemployment insurance for a displaced worker or funding for the Head Start program for a child is dismissed as largesse. In other words, spending on you and people like you is good, spending on others and people who aren't like you is bad. Basic tribalism and/or self-interest. But rationalizing the irrational is key to maintaining a balanced psyche, meaning that it is imperative that such contradictions are left unquestioned.

I agree with all of this, and do agree that Hillary would be an almost unstoppable juggernaut if/when she decides to run. If the GOP maintains its current intransigence into 2016, we could be looking at an Obama-in-2008 map on steroids, as she can potentially put even "blood red" border states in play: West Virginia, Arkansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Indiana. Texas and Arizona probably won't be winnable in 2016, but by 2020 they will be. Democrats won't crack the Old Dominion anytime soon, but I believe that Georgia is the best target for making potential inroads. I can't imagine any GOP nominee that could stand against this, maybe a Chris Christie type candidate whose views are relatively moderate, who speaks what's on his mind, and who is easily identified with by loads of working Americans... but, he'd never stand a chance in a GOP primary (kinda like Huntsman in 2011). Marco Rubio? Heck no. He might be Latino, but he's a conservative Cuban-American and is not at all representative of the dominant Hispanic minority in the USA, Mexican-Americans. Cuban-American interests =/= Mexican-American interests, especially regarding immigration and paths to citizenship. Most Mexican-American folks that I know view him as a regular GOP politician or worse--just a "token Latino" that is about as tone-deaf as saying that the GOP represents African-Americans because of Clarence Thomas. The messenger only matters if you have a compelling message to sell in the first place. The GOP emphatically doesn't. And all the news that I've seen has them falling back on the same old "principles" that got them to this point to begin with. Bobby Jindal did just this the other day, saying that GOP should stop being "the stupid party" only to essentially reaffirm all the reasons that they are perceived that way ("never backing down from our timeless principles..."). It's called adaptation and the GOP is refusing to do it. The Democrats did it in the 1990s with Clinton, as they grew tired of running on their old 1960s-era platform and losing. But dogma has a far more rigid hold over the GOP now than it did over the Democrats in the 1990s, for numerous reasons--one important consideration being that of primaries as colourwheel said. The 1990s had the Democrats shift to the right--and they didn't have to worry about Ralph Nader and his Super-PAC running ads against them saying that they weren't liberal enough. Republicans do have to worry about this, and their collective instinct for self-preservation is stronger than their urge to do right by their country. Should this process of self-reflection and adaptation continue to be avoided, the GOP will for sure transform into a regional party, holding sway only in the Deepest South and pockets of the rural West, Mid- and Mountain West. That isn't enough to govern nationally, not even to control the House. 2016 or 2018 will have the House shift back to Democrats, and 2020's redistricting should solidify this control for the decade after that. Best thing for the GOP could be to dissolve and start over. There is far more electoral hay to be made reaching into the center of the country rather than relying on the angry right as a catalyst to marginal power. Sooner or later a (probably younger) conservative will figure this out, but I don't see it coming from any of the established heavy-hitters of the party. People don't fundamentally change their political beliefs once formed, so it isn't going to be Rubio or Rand Paul or any of the other young(ish) members of the Tea Party either. More likely, it will be their children (not literally). The generational nature of electoral coalitions is very instructive. The Depression-era experience won over our great-grandparents and many of their children. Nixon, the counter-culture, and Reagan won over many of our grandparents and a good portion of the Baby Boom and Generation X. The experience of Bush Jr. and recent Republican madness has turned the overwhelming majority of those younger than Generation X against the GOP, probably for life. Conservatism will have to reap the seeds that its sown when it traded the votes of the old for those of the young. It made political sense when our grandparents still numbered a healthy percentage of the electorate, but for each of their lights that dims that trade becomes ever worse. Every year that goes by during this current phase of GOP insanity is another year in the political wilderness for the Right, both in the present as well as years in the future when those teenagers watching and reading their remarks in disgust become old enough to vote. They'll then be carried in the electorate until they day that they die, always remembering the madness of their formative years and not desiring to return to it.

This is true, but the same can be said for anything else (corporation, religious faith, individual). I don't know about the rest of ya'll, but I don't exactly feel dominated by the government these days (unless, of course, PATRIOT Act provisions have them snooping my Nexus Inbox, but then again--ignorance is bliss!). I would think that people would experience the heavy hand of government coercion more directly back when there were drafts on--WW1, WW2, Vietnam, (don't know about Korea)--as that was the government literally forcing you to risk your life on its behalf. There were also things like forced rationing of metals, rubber, and such during WW2 and gas rationing during the Oil Crisis. Taxes are also lower now than in those days (especially during WW2!). Far as I can see, for the individual, nowadays is relatively government-free compared with past epochs of our history. Sure, my health care premiums have gone up with an assist to federal healthcare reforms, but that isn't so much government domination as it is the healthcare industry exploiting its consumers because it can get away with it, and they were already going up before any reform had ever been passed. And yes, there are many regulations on businesses and some of them are asinine, but I still don't think that qualifies as a heavy-handed state. People un- or under-employed shouldn't directly blame the government either; rather they can feel like the man in Metropolis holding back the hands on the clock, knowing that they're pitted against both machines, software, and other men in ways that never existed or were comprehended before. But that isn't the fault of government--they're not the ones hiring people in Bangalore or Guangzhou instead of Cincinnati or replacing them with software because software doesn't demand wages. Anyway, certainly government is involved in some of these things (mandating health coverage) and could be doing other things better (education, regulations), but many of the most gripping problems facing us today (IMO) have arisen because government has abdicated many roles that it used to assume (enforcing trade laws, regulating the financial sector, investing in human capital and infrastructure). So I dunno, looking around today I don't really fear the government so much as nondescript guys is 20k suits scheming to loot this country and its people for every cent that they've got. And unlike the government, they don't answer to us. Kinda makes one pine for good old "Trust Bustin'" Teddy Roosevelt, armed with the power of the state, breaking up "Too Big to Fail."

That is bizarre story if ever I heard one. A bus driver hardly seems like the most high-profile symbol of government authority, but perhaps it was just the lowest hanging fruit available at the time? In any case, the individual in question sounds pretty well bent and probably had some form of latent mental illness. Not that that is any excuse. I'd tend to agree with Ghogiel, that is speaks louder about the individual circumstances of the man than it does about any sort of extrapolated anti-government narrative. As HeyYou mentioned, the guy was probably trashed coming home from Vietnam and then fed that (justified) anger by delving ever-deeper down the rabbit hole of crazed libertarianism, confusing his personal memories of coming home with government as a whole. If not anti-government, he probably would have found some other fringe crusade to join and, living such an isolated and bitter life, might have "acted on" them at some point or another. But the dude just sounded like a mean and nasty hombre; he'd been trashed at one point in his life so he seemed to dedicate the rest of it toward the trashing of others. The only real narrative I can make of this is just that the fringe right-wing has convenient answers (the government) for everything that is wrong in your life. Listen to that for long enough + are mentally unwell with bad life circumstances = this. As Ghogiel said, going postal but in a slightly different packaging.

@Vagrant I'll definitely grant that to a certain extent playing games/taking in other entertainment as a means of recreation is important, but I wouldn't go so far as to say that it's on par with medicines and such--though I know you weren't intending to strictly equate the two. I still would say that it is economically unwise to spend an inordinate amount of one's income of such things when they could be using it for other, more productive things like savings or education. But then again, if people in general behaved like that, the American economy would be pretty nonexistent mwaha. Anyway, just going to say that I--in principle--don't have a problem paying more than 60 dollars for a QUALITY videogame. I am talking about Morrowind, New Vegas, Baldurs Gate II, Dragon Age: Origins, Skyrim and such here, and not "disposable" games like Call of Duty, sports, or racing games. Thinking about Skyrim and the hours that I've wrung out of it playing and modding, it's probably one of the best entertainment "investments" I can think of (then again, I probably could have taught myself a new language given the same amount of time...). So I don't think that 60$ need be any sort of arbitrary price-point for a AAA game. However, I suppose the problem is that every game company thinks that they're making a AAA game and that they'll all just glom on to the newest price-point once it is introduced. But perhaps the market wouldn't bear a 100$ FIFA 2014 yet it would bear a 100$ TES VI. If that extra 40$ translated into decreased development time, greater depth, and more features (wishful thinking), I would pay that 100$ and more. I would be perfectly fine with "liberating" games from the 60$ price-point if it meant studios were truly able to take franchises "to the next level" with creativity, art direction, writing, programming, and QA. Likely, that'd take some sort of a re-dedication of game companies to their art--a commitment to actually invest those increased prices into actual product development rather than merely pocketing them as profits "because they can." But that takes determination from buyers to actually punish offending firms, something that is unlikely given the diminution of the median game buyer's expectations due to the rise of casual gamers. TLDR: I'm fine with paying a large premium for truly creative and inspired content, whether in the form of DLC and/or on launch-day prices. Perhaps higher prices for better quality content could serve as the impetus for lifting gaming from its current creative plateau?

It's not my intention to bait anyone espousing the "No work, no eat" ethos, as I do agree that our modern societies have drifted too far to its opposite, but I would have to ask the question, "What would be done about the invalids/elderly/disabled" in these supposed anarchist societies? It might fall to someone's family to care for a sick member or someone who is disabled, but what if they have no relations? Their friends? What if nobody likes them. If they are mentally unwell and not the... "easiest" person to be around, what then? Cast them off into the wilds? I am not really a bleeding heart, so I would be pretty okay with withholding food from the incorrigible and the lazy, but these other types of folks... I couldn't sanction casting them away. So some sort of allowance would have to be made. And if it didn't come voluntarily (human greed or malice), how would it be procured? Government in the welfare state is supposed to be the neutral dispenser of these types of services, taking up the slack where religious/civil society/whatever other groups are either unable or unwilling (sorry, we only serve members of our own denomination...). Who but a government can look out for these people? Also regarding anarchy, occupations are not equal--either in our modern societies or in an anarchist collective. Were I starting a collective at the present date, I would select programmers, doctors, organic farmers, and teachers of various stripes rather than lawyers, poets, retail workers, or football players. What holds these individuals back from "ransoming" their services from the collective if their various "demands" (compensation, status, power, influence, etc.) are not met? This is all the more acute if, say, the collective's only doctor can also hunt his own food on the side, making him less reliant on the collective. Not to say that they "owe" it to the rest of the collective to provide them with services, I mention it merely to highlight the power that certain individuals will have power simply owing to what they do... even in a collective. The hierarchy would be infinitely more practical and likely "just" in a collective (lawyers and Wall Streeters would be digging ditches >:} ), but a hierarchy would still remain. And what of people merely being people, able to be blinded and seduced by honeyed words and physical beauty? Or by their emotions: jealously, irrational hatred, love. Who is to say that an affable gent who invests his time leveling up "Speechcraft" (charisma/charm/persuasion) wouldn't be able to get his way regardless of his actual "value" to the whole? Not saying that our present societies are immune to that either (the trope of the "hot intern" or preferential legal treatment for celebrities/athletes), but at least we have formal laws and government to at least de jure prevent that from happening. Law is intended to be impartial and blind to individual characteristics, but what of a society with no codified laws and entirely subject to the caprice of human beings?

Ha, touche and devastatingly accurate! Sort of a different topic, but I do think that games provide a nice example of how default economic assumptions sort of fall down in today's world and its intense media saturation. If people truly were interested in gaining the maximum utility for their dollars they a) likely wouldn't be buying games to begin with (more rational to invest in savings or education) and b) would be seeking the best-made games at the best price rather than those with the biggest hype machine and advertising budgets backing them. Or, more bluntly, they wouldn't buy 60$ of cheap "Free to Play" mobile games that give them a collective 60 hours of entertainment when they could instead buy Skyrim (NOT the best example, I know, but with mods the game [er, engine] has infinite potential) for that same 60$ and instead get hundreds of hours of entertainment. People don't have perfect knowledge of the products they are considering, nor do they make their purchases using a logical rubric; IMO, that's why the gaming industry has been stagnating "appealing to the casual gamer" because, as you say--the market isn't disciplining games makers for churning out low-quality games.

Admittedly, I've never actually played a F2P, but probably the best sense of playing a "Pay to Win" game came with playing Diablo III for a couple of months last year. I've always thought that the business model was inherently sleazy, with the idea that you release a ill-crafted and limited game that you then expect people to pay to restore to playability. It also doesn't help that one of my friends works for a large foreign mobile game company and relates only the most sordid and face-palming antics of his eminently sleazy superiors, as they intentionally craft unplayable-as-freeware games in the hopes that poor saps will (and do!) shell out .99c + .99c + .99c etc. to get them functional. I would like to think that the "market would teach them" but they specifically target un-savvy young "gamers" and non-traditional "gamers" who don't really know better. Plus, these groups usually have discretionary income and .99c seems like not that much to ask for a couple hours of "entertainment." Thus, the equation: "gamers" with low expectations + very low price-points = massive sales for these companies. In some ways I am glad that "gaming" has become more acceptable and mainstream, however, in other ways (games companies changing their business model to tap into this group) I am not. The general quality of games seems to be declining yet the profits for the industry are ever-growing; it does not really take a genius to tell which way the industry will continue to head....

Definitely the term "anarchy" is a loaded monicker, as Vagrant noted. To me, it conjures images of really lame teenagers with those Circle-A patches on brand-new pleather jackets, but that's just cause people like that have really rubbed me the wrong way. It would be nice if perhaps anarchists (intellectuals, not teenagers) picked perhaps a new name for themselves so that they could have discussions with a broader audience without automatically incurring the cognitive killswitch that the term "anarchy" usually throws. Also, even though I get what you mean, using terms like "statist" comes across as inherently standoffish rather than descriptive; it also strikes me of a throwback (not really in a positive way) to sometime like 1968 or even 1848. Point simply being that word choice is a mine-field, especially when people have conditioned reactions to them. One might be using terms like that to intentionally irk those in opposition to their point, but if that's not the intention then probably a different term would receive a more positive reaction. ~~ @Topic Anyway, anarchy, I confess, is never something that I paid much attention to, as I always viewed it as sort of an irrelevant "ship has sailed" type of boutique political philosophy not really applicable to our time. Maybe back in the 1800s it might have had a chance in Europe, but in the present day--barring some sort of holocaust that turns the clock back to zero--I don't think it has much hope. I think you'd either need a) essentially "innocent" people (tribes with no technology and no real concern apart from wilderness survival) or b) an assemblage of dedicated true-believers. I don't think (entirely opinion) that run-of-the-mill folks would adapt well to that now, especially coming from a worldview that has always known and accepted the presence of a state. Beyond that, I don't really know how you--apart from religion--restrict the ability of the law enforcers/soldiers from simply establishing themselves at the top, as they are--assuming that everyone is doing what they're "best" at as a specialization--the most physically powerful and militarily skilled of the group. Maybe you have one "good egg" (or several) who stay within the confines of their role, but all it would take would be one "bad/ambitious egg" and the entire thing could dissolve into despotism. Perhaps if everyone was an Amazon or something and equally skilled at warfare (kinda like what HeyYou said), they could collectively prevent this from happening, but if one group had the sticks and the other group had the baskets, the guys with the sticks would win every time. So I dunno. Anarchy would probably also require a FAR higher sense of "community" than is found in modern society, especially the United States. You would have to know your neighbor and trust him, rather than never interact with him and then impute the worst motivations to him like we do now. That would lead to demonization and to despotism guaranteed without the intervention that we in the West call laws and the state. So--how do you square that circle: create a vibrant sense of community in a massive grouping of people that increasingly interacts only through media mediation? Again, that ship has probably already sailed, which is why I am not bullish on the concept.

Mainly because of the interesting vote counts, re-counts, and re-re-counts during both of bushs elections...... Not much of which made the papers for more than one article or two. We aren't fighting in Iraq any more. Sure, we still have troops there, but, they are in non-combat roles. Mainly, guarding our ambassadors and such. Not to mention that the war in Iraq was based on lies and manipulation. Anyone that said anything different than what King George wanted to hear, suddenly found himself unemployed. Patriot Act anyone? Occupy wall street camped in public parks. I will agree with you on Obamacare. I was floored that the Supreme court actually upheld that portion of it....... How in hell is that NOT a violation of my rights? I think that HeyYou answered that pretty well right there. And I would agree with the both of you regarding healthcare, that even though it is legal (...), that it was a poor substitute for advancing a genuine public option and represented just an enormous windfall for the already ludicrously wealthy insurance industry. But it does show you the WTF nature of today's Republicans when Obama can take essentially THEIR own idea from 10 years ago and then get blasted as a socialist/grandma killer/whatever for advancing it. So much chutzpah involved in that. I think though that too many people fall into the illusion of the equivalence (likely cause news outlets report it that way to avoid being tarred with the "liberal media bias" brush) in the sayings and doings of the "loud right" and the "loud left." What you see on Fox News and hear from MANY Republican politicians (and not just the fringe guys either--I'm talking the leaders of the party here) is so often not grounded in any sense of reality, nor bounded by any pretense of even caring about objective facts. Romney's campaign said it best with "We won't let our campaign be dictated to by fact-checkers" aka "We'll say whatever we please and we DGAF if it's true or not." Most folks don't bother to read the small-print corrections anyway, so his only real mistake was articulating this view to the media.... You simply don't have this "We'll create our own reality" attitude on the left. Sure, the hosts of MSNBC and Piers Morgan certainly have opinions (after all, cable news isn't the local prime time broadcast), but they at least traffic in--and care about--actual, verifiable facts. Can they be mean, sure. Can they be unfair, sure. But, to a certain degree, what else can you say about some of things that right-wing politicians and media figures say these days? You can't treat the "birther" talk of Trump et al with respect, nor can you treat "dog-whistle racism" of Gingrich, Palin et al with respect, nor can you treat talk the about the "Nullification"/quasi-revolutionary craziness of Rand Paul with any sort of respect. These are not legitimate points of view and should not be treated as such, yet the right lauds them as celebrities and heroes for each, ever-crazier remark that they make--rewarding them with airtime and acclaim like a mother reinforcing bad behavior in a child. On the left, you might have some girl handing out "Meat is Murder!" pamphlets in front of a college bookstore or some nasty, bedraggled "anarchist" punks (really just dudes that like to get drunk in public spaces and put bandanas on their dogs) "Fighting The Man" by urinating on a park bench, but crazy Republicans have control over an entire political party. One of these things is not like the other. Radical, self-identified (I don't think that mainstream liberals would claim them as their own) howl in the wilderness (literally) and are not taken seriously. Radical, self-identified Tea Partiers have co-opted 1/2 of our political system and are using that "achievement" to hold up action in 100% of it, all whilst braying about revolution and bringing up topics (Nullification) that haven't been talked about in fifty years (Desegregation) or back before the Civil War. Anyway, one could go on, but I think the point is made: these days, the far-left and the far-right are not equivalent in the least.

@colourwheel, HeyYou I think that for a certain segment of the right-wing there is a sense of "illegitimacy" on the part of any Democratic president, not just Obama--though obviously he has received the craziest attacks of any president in memory. To those folks, when a Republican is in the White House, all rules and regulations are off the table: government is free to wildly spend and decline to pay for it, presidential authority may trump the other branches of government, and executive privilege means that the president can do whatever he wants in terms of impinging upon the civil rights of American citizens. However, when a Democrat "somehow finds himself" in the White House, he is suddenly a tyrannical usurper for using signing statements and line-item vetoes and drones and black helicopters are coming to arrest American citizens. Not to mention starting ill-advised wars in foreign nations based on obviously trumped up and cooked intelligence reports. Heck, I still remember 2009 when Fox News kept running that "His hand wasn't REALLY on the Bible (it was hovering over it, you see)--he isn't really the president!" story-line for like a month after the Inauguration.