Well, the Republican National
Convention is over. Clint Eastwood probably set the high-water mark
for straight up weird with his speech there. Paul Ryan takes the
cake for straight up liar of the event. When Fox News is pointing
out that a conservative politician is just making things up, you know
he's gone really far down the rabbit hole.
Now, while it may be fun to point out
that the Republican party has let a bunch of nutters get their hands
on the microphone and they are afraid to take it away from them,
there is plenty of stupid on both side of the isle. My example of
liberal stupidity today comes completely out of left field (pun
intended) in, of all places, a Kickstarter campaign for a paper and
dice role playing game. People familiar with paper and dice role
playing game will, most likely, recognize the name Monte Cook, he has
been a prolific and successful game designer for a number of years.
For his latest project Numenera, he set up a Kickstarter campaign
with the goal of raising twenty thousand dollars, his project has
been well received and has been pledged over two hundred thousand
dollars. This success is where the political nonsense has come in.
Mr. Cook incorporated a number of, “Stretch Goals,” into his
project to keep interest after reaching his initial fund-raising
goal. When one hundred thousand dollars were pledged, he said he
would make three hundred copies of the game made available to
educators and libraries who want them. At the two hundred thousand
dollar mark, Mr. Cook said he would ship two hundred copies of the
game to military bases around the world. Some idiot took offense to
this, called him nationalistic and militaristic and asked for the
Kickstarter campaign to be shut down. Cooler heads prevailed (or was
that functional heads prevailed) and the Kickstarter is still going.
Hats off to Kickstarter for not taking baseless allegations seriously and to Monte Cook as well for sharing his creation with poorly paid teachers, libraries and military personnel. You can read Monte Cook's take on the event at his website.
I'm not sure how you make the leap from
Monte Cook making a commitment to share copies of his new game with
military personal to viewing that as Mr. Cook making some kind of
endorsement of American geopolitical policies. It's nonsense like
this that has so many people turned off to the entire American political
process. When the election of 2012 sets all kinds of records for low
voter turnout, once you get past all the voter suppression going on,
you can blame big fat liars like Paul Ryan and nameless idiots like
the ones who tried to shut down a Kickstarter campaign for a paper
and dice role playing game.
