Patriot Act Game Pokes Fun at Government

The Miami Herald is reporting that a new game based on Monopoly is taking a crack at Patriot Act and what creator Michael Kabbash describes as the curtailed freedom that has resulted. From the article: "The object of the game is not to amass the most money or real estate, but to be the last player to retain civil liberties. 'I've had people complain to me that when they play, nobody wins. They say "We're all in Guantanamo and nobody has any civil liberties left," he said. 'I'm like "Yeah, that's the point."'"

Comments

How about Yay for raising public awareness?

[TripMaster Monkey]

One of the most troubling things about the current situation is that your average Joe Sixpack has no idea how far the current administration has gone in their efforts to decieve them and strip away their inalienable rights. Once they're properly appraised of the situation, they're usually pretty damned mad about it.

Getting the word out is one of the most important ways we can fight this assault on our liberty. The people in power thrive on ignorance. Anything that deprives them of that is positive.

Not a waste

[Red Flayer]

And if more people become aware that there is a brewing problem with attrition of their rights, how is that a waste?

What's more beneficial to the bottom line of a popular movement -- one individual sending a letter, or one individual getting two people to send a letter? Or how about one individual making 1,000 people 0.2% more likely to write a letter?

Few people want to talk about civil liberties at the water cooler during their afternoon break. This game is interesting enough to be water-cooler fodder, which is a good thing -- raise awareness of the issue.

Re:Yay for wasting time...

[Red Jesus]

But if these people would have spent a little more time working with their representatives, or mobilizing petitions, or SOMETHING that actually affected the political systems, they might actually have what they want. Now, they've got a much talked about game, and rights are still just as infringed-upon.

Do you really think that if these people had petitioned their representatives, the Guantanamo/Patriot Act/everything else issues would be solved? I used to write letters to government officials when I was in high school, but that didn't accomplish much. Right now, we need to educate the voting public about the serious issues facing them. And the gamemakers did exactly that.

RJ

I'd like to add one more thing...

[AnonymousPrick]

I think it's also this perceived liberal vs. conservative, us vs. them, or the "bipartisanship" of America. As soon as a viewpoint is labeled "liberal" or "conservative", it immediately polarizes many people. But when you actually dig down into the base issue, beyond the hyperpole and mindless rhetoric, I usually see some common ground - a big swath of it.

It's the "sound bite" media that's really doing us in. And "they", the media, are doing it because that's where the money is. There's no profit in being rational, careful, insightful, and just using common sense. Sensationalism has overtaken the media. Trying to get the issues past that, well, is impossible. Let's face it, folks want the sensationlized version. They want to feel superior to the "stupid" people who have a different opinion from theirs.

Re:I'd like to add one more thing...

[harrkev]

I agree. And as far as partisanship goes, both are bad in different ways. Liberals tend to tear away at the 2nd amendment, and the current conservative administration has chipped away at the fourth and fifth. I happen to be quite fond of all ten of them. As an American, I should not have to pick-and-choose which amendments are the most important to me.

Your line of reasoning rang a bell

[MarkusQ]

Yeah, we're losing all our civil liberties but some guy is still free to openly criticize the government without fear of the FBI showing up on his doorstep.

Your line of reasoning rang a bell. Where did I hear it before? Oh yeah, I remember:

First They Came for the Jews

First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.

-- Pastor Martin Niemöller

You are confusing "going away" with "gone"; just because at sunset there is still more than enough light to read by, you can not conclude that daylight is not going away, and should not draw comfort from the fact that it isn't as dark as it is somewhere else on the planet.

--MarkusQ

Re:Your line of reasoning rang a bell

[Firehed]

It's almost ironic, I was just discussing that poem not twelve hours ago in my class about the Holocaust (about which it wasn't specifically written, though well applied). We also had some outright bizarre analogy that gets the same point across about slow removal of rights: Try to put a frog in boiling water and it will jump right back out. Put it in room temperature water and put it on the stove and it'll boil to death (perhaps Hitler made this analogy... it came up in the class as well. I'd suggest nobody try it lest have PETA come torch your house).

Translation: people respond drastically to sudden changes, but it's very easy to make those same changes over a longer period of time and have little reaction. Now I'd hope most world citizens are smarter than the abovementioned frog, but it still works in principle. Consider Sony: they moved in way too aggressively with the rootkit, and it massively backfired. If they'd attempted a much more subtle approach, they'd have probably gotten away with it.

"We've still got more rights than China" (etc) just doesn't cut it for me. I don't care whether we're the best or the worst. I couldn't care less about our relative position. Guess what, my cafeteria food is better than it was at middle school, but it still sucks. Likewise, I may be a bit free-er to blog than the Chinese, but that doesn't mean me saying the wrong thing isn't going to result on a rather unpleasant knock on the door.

Maybe non-slashdotters don't care about the Constitution being shat upon by the administrations (not just Bush is to blame here, though he's definately worse than most, though IMO the last couple elections were lesser-of-two-evils even if the stronger may have won, and further IMO the two-party political system is the worst thing in the history of democracy), but every non-techie friend I've talked to on the matter is totally clueless, whereas /. and forums seem to be much more aware of what's going on. Maybe it's the international input, rather than just the biased local media. So many fail to realize that while Fox is obviously hardcore right-wing, all American news sources - however poilitically 'fair' they are - have a pro-America bias. I don't mean to bring up a touchy subject, but stop griping over American deaths in the War on Iraq while we're going 50:1. Forgot about that part, didn't you, American media?

I've gone a bit OT I suppose. My original point remains, though - slowly removing rights doesn't get noticed by the masses, even if removing exactly the same rights overnight would cause rioting. Go back to just before the '01 elections and see if Bush would have been elected knowing he'd be wiretapping citizens and using terrorism as a reason. I don't want to throw too much bias into this post, but it seems strange to me that people who are predominantly more religious appear to be more concerned by terrorism - I'd figure they'd be a lot less freaked out by potential death (be it from terrorism or being run over by a steamroller).

Re:Yay for wasting time...

[hey!]

I rememeber hearing Mel Brooks interviewed after his film The Producers was made into a broadway play. The interviewer asked him how it was that he, a Jew, felt it was appropriate to make jokes about Nazis.

Brooks responded that you can't fight a dictator by getting up on a soap box. Dictators are, by nature, natural spell-binders, and you'll never outdebate them. But what you can do and what works is to make them look ridiculous.

So, in this case you paint the administration as a bunch of goose stepping blockheads who are besotted with fascism. It's not the way our system is supposed to work, but it's the way politics works.

Re:We're doomed!

[bahwi]

Yes! Look that way! At China! Now THEY have it bad! Don't look here! No! You can still criticize us! Look over there!

Oh! Got a law passed. Haha, no you can't criticize us! Good job paying attention to China.

An old idiom goes, you don't have to be better than someone else to make it, you have to be the best. So no, what's going on in China is important, but you have to ALWAYS look and see what is going on here.

And there are far more civil liberties than "The right to free speech"

Good.

[TheNoxx]

You know, more games should (no, not kidding) have political leaning and teach people about the political situation of today, and the history of American meddlins in the middle east. Maybe, just maybe, people will become aware of what their tax dollars have done to their fellow man in impoverished countries, and just maybe, with enough people, a few small but key changes could come about.

I always give a great deal of respect and support and love to people who try to keep an eye on the government, and even more when they have a sense of humour about it. The reality of the situation, for all citizens, is kinda like a parent trying to keep an eye on a really mischevious kid who likes to steal your stuff and money and beat up other kids, but instead of an unruly pubescent child, you have an army of secret agents and powermongers to try and keep from running amok.

Re:We're doomed!

[PhreakOfTime]

Moderate, or respond? RESPOND!

You do know that american idol was taken directly from a EUROPEAN TV SHOW called pop idol?

Trying to call the american public 'stupid', along with saying that somehow the abuse of power commited by certain individuals in the US governemnt is to be blamed on the general public shows me all I need to know about your line of reasoning. Otherwise, can you support your argument with something other than straw? Using the phrase 'some people say', or 'some believe', and then countering with your own statement, is a horribly wrongly overused style of debate. You may have heard of it, its called setting up a 'straw man'. The only purpose of which is to knock down, making you look like you are actually debating something.

You believe leaders to be god like figures who are destined to rule over the 'unwashed masses' who dont know any better.

Blowing things out of proportion? warrantless wiretaps, detainment wihtout legal representation, arrest without being informed of your crimes, media used for propaganda, and now PHYSICAL warantless searches as well. Exactly at what point do you think it would be appropriate to stand up for yourself? When the boot is already on your neck?

I hate to tell you, but you ARE necessarily defending what the government is doing. Saying you are 'not necessarily' defending it is to soften your language to fool yourself into believing your own words. Unfortunately, subjective thought matters little to objective reality. Looks like you fooled someone else beside yourself though, as you were marked as 'insightful'. I wonder if it was one of those guilty, stupid, uncaring americans who modded you as such? Maybe it was one of those 'enlightened' Europeans who are smarter because they made 'pop idol' a smash hit in europe first?

Believe it or not, you are advocating fascism. Stop trying to put makeup on a pig and telling me it is beautiful.

Re:This is America...

[Tim Browse]

They haven't come for the Communists.

Ahem.

Or did you just mean not recently?

Re:This is America...

[Cheerio Boy]

Forgive me all for responding to a Troll but:

They haven't come for the Jews.

No. But they've come for the Muslims

They haven't come for the Communists.

No. Because it's profitable to ignore them.

They haven't come for the trade unionists.

No. Because they no longer matter.

And they haven't come for you.

They won't bother because we don't matter.

I must've missed the memo...

[wedg]

When did Civil Rights become Civil Liberties?

When they become Civil Priviledges, I'm running for the hills.

I am a counter example

[MarkusQ]

But honestly, how many people griping about Bush/Ashcroft today thought that Clinton/Reno were A-OK?

I for one, dislike them both (see here and here for just a few recent posts predating this thread, to substantiate my claim...google should turn up more, back to the Clinton years, when Marc Rich and the Gubernatorial pardons of attractive women roused my ire). But whenever you attempt to level a rational criticism of a politician you discover that you will be instantly labeled a partisan, and the substance of your point dismissed.

Which leads me to a conclusion: attacks on politicians are frequently non-partisan (especially during primaries, when the parties eat their own to impress the masses) but defenses of them are almost always partisan. This includes the sort of "why don't you criticize this guy instead" defense going on here. It's my firm belief that reasonable people of both parties (for what it's worth, I happen to be a Republican) are appalled at the sort of shenanigans that get pulled by the leaders of both parties, but that the highly partisan yahoos always jump to the defense when their side's in power.

What Bush is doing is wrong, and frankly he should be in jail. The fact that Clinton may well deserve the next cell over is not an excuse, it's an example of how bad the problem realy is.

--MarkusQ

Re:Priceless

[orthogonal]

But honestly, how many people griping about Bush/Ashcroft today thought that Clinton/Reno were A-OK?

Hell, I thought Clinton bad enough that I wanted Bush to win in 2000. Horrible mistake. I ever bought his lies about the war enough tat I tepidly supported it.

But by 2004, I was volunterring for Kerry.

Why? Mostly because of Ashcroft and Gauntanamo and Abu Ghraib.

Let me state that again: in 2000 I was disgusted with Clinton and happy to see a Republican President. Never again.

In the five years Bush has been in office, I've seen our Constitution shredded, Madison's checks-and-balances blown away, a disastrous war and obscene war profiteering, growth of the Police State eclipsed only by massive deficits and new entitlement programs and corporate welfare and corruption, the destruction of an American city while Bush literally strummed a guitar, and the dismantling of government-funded science in favor of corporations and religious nuts.

Maybe you still don't get it: I shared most of your so-called conservative values: I was for small government, against nation-building, for lower taxes (during the Clinton years I had a good job, you see), against Washington corruption. I saw Dubya as a breath of fresh air.

It's not me who has changed. It's the Republican Party. They control all three branches of government, and yes taxes are lower, but the deficit is now nine billion dollars, government's gotten bigger and more corrupt, and it's listening into phone calls without getting warrants.

Now I see Dubya and most of the rest of the Republican Party as a threat to the future of this country.

Damned right I thought Clinton and Reno were wrong. But your Dubya's a total and unmitigated disaster on all fronts. Now I'd welcome Clinton back in a heartbeat, and so would half of my conservative friends.

Re:Priceless

[Kombat]

This is way too long, and you've not credibly refuted anything I've said, so I'll post without Karma bonus to try and avoid the wrath of the mods.

Because in the documentary [...], [Larry Silverstein] made the following statement: "'We've had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it.' And they made that decision to pull and we watched the building collapse."

I'm not disputing that he said that (although I suspect he said "pull out," not "pull it"). But it is YOU and the website that are making the completely unsupported assumption that "pull it" means "demolish." In fact, when you read it in context, such an assumption doesn't even make sense. Why would he justify proactively demolishing it by saying "we've had such a terrible loss of life" already? Why not just evacuate to save lives, and wait and see if the building can be salvaged when the fire burns itself out? How would evacuating and then deliberately blowing it up save any lives? Don't you see? It makes no sense.

If that in fact is true, than it's the third steel-framed building to ever collapse from fire, the first two being WTC 1 and 2. The simple fact is: steel-framed buildings don't collapse from fire. Period.

You're illustrating my point for me exactly. This is exactly why the building architects were so surprised by the fact that they did collapse from fire. Everybody thought that was impossible. The steel frames of the buildings were coated with insulating foam to prevent exactly this scenario from playing out. But what they hadn't counted on was the fact that the buildings' ages and poor maintenance would effectively erase the safety built into the design. Again, I cite the documentary Why The Towers Fell for a very thorough and insightful explanation of how things transpired on that fateful day.

And the reason that those 3 buildings were the first 3 steel-framed buildings ever to collapse from fire is because they were all designed the same flawed way (as have been many more since then that thankfully haven't had massive fires to test them).

The towers were designed to constantly withstand wind pressures equal to 30 times the energy of the airliner impacts.

Quit with the red herring. The "energy of the airliner impacts" had nothing to do with it. It was the heat from the fire that brought down the buildings. The buildings did withstand the impact of the airliners, just as they should have.

In July of 1945 a B-52 bomber, lost in heavy fog, crashed into the Empire State Building.

First of all, it was a B-25, not a B-52. The B-52 hadn't even been invented yet, and is a MUCH bigger airplane. The B-25 that crashed into the Empire State Building was 53 feet long with a wingspan of 67 feet. The airliners that crashed into the twin towers were roughly 3 times as long with double the wingspan. Plus, the airliners were fully loaded with fuel for a cross-continent journey, whereas the little B-25 bomber was on its way home, and thus had relatively little fuel on board.

Oops. Guess you forgot about that part, eh? But let's not get bogged down in facts. Please, continue on.

[Where are all the people who were supposedly on the non-existent AA flight 77?]

I just love it when people throw this up as an 'argument'. Their bodies have not been found, and they never will be.

That's your answer? They existed, but they've simply vanished? All at the same time? Without anybody noticing? They were secretly diverted somewhere else and killed off in the name of freedom? I'm going to need a little more explanation than that, please. Who ordered this? Who were the people who carried it out? Why would American Airlines pilots and US military service men and women kidnap and murder innocent American citizens? A conspiracy this big would requi