Posted on 12/18/2015 10:45:04 AM PST by ProgressingAmerica
Long before progressives used video games as a vehicle for their embedded message,
Long before progressives used TV shows as a vehicle for their embedded message,
Long before progressives used hollywood as a vehicle for their embedded message,
There was Monopoly. More specifically, the original name of Monopoly was The Landlord's Game. To be fair to the Parker Brothers, they did(probably) do some watering down of the original agenda. But much of the original framework remains.
Have you ever asked yourself why there are railroads on the board? That's a remnant of the war on trusts; the war on the railroads; the war on eeeevil capitalists; the war on the "robber barons". That's why those railroads are there on the board. To advance the Georgist agenda. Why is that big "Go To Jail" square in the far corner of the board? That's a remnant of the original "No Trespassing" bit.
The year was 1904, and Lizzie Magie came up with a great idea: She could invent a board game in order so that she could show all the little children how evil that landlords are. The original name of the game really does give up the whole intent. Here's what Magie actually wrote on the matter:
It is a practical demonstration of the present system of land-grabbing with all its usual outcomes and consequences," says Miss Magie
So you see, land grabbing land grabbers need to be exposed. There can't possibly be a legitimate case for someone to build an apartment and rent to someone else. And who do we target? Why, the children of course. That's the beginning of the article. It's only one page. Here, this is from the end of the article:
It was the original intention of the author simply to work out a demonstration of how the landlord gets his money and keeps it, but while doing this there gradually developed a game which has proven one of amusement as well as of instruction and one which has attractions for both old and young.
and
Children of nine or ten years and who possess average intelligence can easily understand the game and they get a good deal of hearty enjoyment out of it. They like to handle the make-believe money, deeds, etc., and the little landlords take a general delight in demanding the payment of their rent. They learn that the quickest way to accumulate wealth and gain power is to get all the land they can in the best localities and hold on to it. There are those who argue that it may be a dangerous thing to teach children how they may thus get the advantage of their fellows, but let me tell you there are no fairer-minded beings in the world than our own little American children. Watch them in their play and see how quick they are, should any one of their number attempt to cheat or take undue advantage of another, to cry, 'No fair!' And who has not heard almost every little girl say, 'I won't play if you don't play fair.'
How often do you hear the adult children, the progressives, come on TV and proclaim that this or that isn't fair?
Is it fair to target children for the purposes of propaganda? The progressive would never actually answer that question with a yes, but their actions speak yes the loudest. Here's the last sentence of the article:
Let the children once see clearly the gross injustice of our present land system and when they grow up, if they are allowed to develop naturally, the evil will soon be remedied.
So you see, if you want to abolish capitalism, exploit the children. You have to embed the message at the earliest ages in order for it to have the utmost success, and it has to be embedded everywhere. TV, movies, video games, board games, school, church, science, and any other place. The approved message must be synonymous in all corners, and it must be unopposed.
Have they come out with Global Monopoly yet
That’s pretty neat. The left often overplays the hand, though, and it backfires. Archie Bunker of All in the Family, was supposed to be a caricature of right wing bigotry and he was. The problem was that most of the audience agreed with Archie to the point it suppressed the message, seeing Meathead as the asshole he see was.
The same thing happened with the movie Wall Street. Mike Douglas to this day finds is surprising how many people tell him they like Gordon Gekko and his “Greed is good.” It wasn’t supposed to convey that idea. Douglas doesn’t like that the ‘bad guy’ he played should be identified with by so many.
As for video games, I’ve played a ton of them and the only leftist premise smuggling I can think of might be in the sequel to Bioshock, with its superpatriotism taken to right wing parody, but that suffers a similar fate to the other items I’ve listed. You’ve probably seen the Thomas Jefferson/George Washington-like poster of Donald Trump wrapped in patriotic symbolism and the flag that wends its way around the internet. The imagery and style is straight out of Bioshock.
Other than that, if the video games of today are platforms for radicalism it is too subtle to make out. And subtlety gets lost in video games, post haste. As a matter of fact, the monster game of the hour is Fallout 4, and if anything Fallout 4 is a history of the nation’s founding as it unfolded in Massachusetts. It’s more patriotic than not.
So, yes, we’re soaking in leftist drivel, but if that were the end of it, there’d be no Tea Party and all the relevant Republican presidential candidates wouldn’t be outsiders.
Didn’t you just post this?
One of the great leftist premises on video games is atheism or paganism.
Christianity is absent. Christian morality is absent.
Up to about 1900, Christian morality was a major theme in nearly all novels and plays.
Consider Treasure Island vs. Peter Pan or Star Wars
Video games are just that. Games. Do you watch football games for the religious experience? Apples and oranges.
As for morality, Christianity has no monopoly on morality. I would imagine being preached at while trying to solve puzzles or nuke super mutants would be a crippling experience. If there were a market for religious video games, be sure there be plenty for the buying.
I could easily image a gory Crusader war game, or chaplains in U.S. military war games.
How about Just War in combat games.
All possible. As I said, fiction was rife with Christian morality and themes before 1900.
Treasure Island is a great adventure novel, chock full of Christian morality.
As for football, look at how Tim Tebow has been persecuted for showing a tiny amount of Christianity in football.
The exclusion of Christian morality has been deliberate.
It is not because it is unpopular. It is to make it unpopular and un-cool...
“Up to about 1900, Christian morality was a major theme in nearly all novels and plays.”
Working on a “theory of everything” that this nation and the entire Western world started downhill because of 19th Century philosophers “God is dead”, etc. including Darwin and Karl Marx.
You are correct, the accepted cultural morality up until the beginning of the 1900’s was that there was a God (the Judeo-Christian kind) and law had a root in the Bible.
But the smart elites started changing all that.
bkmk
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.