Discussing Battlefield 6 and the "battlefield boomers"

 So, Battlefield 6 has its open beta this weekend and the battlefield boomers as I call them are up to their old tricks of just bashing the franchise because "it doesn't feel like battlefield" and it "feels like call of duty." These kinds of attacks are ridiculous whenever they come up, and I really felt a need to focus on my own opinions on this.

My overall impression of BF6: a return to form

Battlefield has made several missteps over the past decade. BF1 was their last truly good game, with BF5 going in this weird hardcore direction that wasn't popular, and 2042 just did...everything wrong. I discussed 2042 pretty openly on here, even defending the game to some extent, and pointing out that I didnt mind the hero shooter aspect of the game and the lack of a true class system. If anything, shoehorning classes back into the game kind of ruined it. 

Battlefield 6 is mostly a return to what IMO made battlefield great. it has that BF3 style realistic military vibe, without being too realistic as to make it unfun. They kept weapons unlocked to classes which has caused a tizzy from the battlefield boomer types. Im mixed on that. On the one hand locked weapons might be better from a game balancing perspective, but on the other, idk, I have more fun with them unlocked, as I like the weapon variety and hate being artificially limited into playing a certain way (like what the battlefield boomers seem to want). 

But yeah. If you liked BF3 and BF4, and the greatest games in the franchise, this game is solid. But...again...people are complaining. And not just about the weapons not being locked to classes (you can play it either way in the beta). 

"But but, it feels like COD!"

Okay, so COD to Battlefield comparisons have been a long running staple of the BF fanbase, and COD is often referred to in a derogatory fashion. At one point, this derision was justified. Like if you went back to BF2 vs COD2, the games felt different...but also did different things. BF2 was the OG large scale battle game set in the modern era, following 1942, which was the OG game. COD2 was the "next gen" successor to the gen 6 game "call of duty" which focused on WWII combat. With the rise of xbox live, COD2 was an ealy xbox 360 tiitle that was fun to play (I played it on PC a few years later multiplayer wise). 

Throughout the 360 era, COD was wildly successful. They released game after game and while not all of them were winners, COD4, the first modern warfare game, was historic. Everyone loved it. Everyone went wild for it. But PC gamers are a different animal and while the game was popular on PC too, a lot of those guys are like "but but we have counter strike and BF2" and tried to act superior for it. Meanwhile, CS...well...I hate CS. It's just a game with weird artificially difficult recoil mechanics that stroke peoples' egos for being able to control such horrid game mechanics. BF2 was genuinely good for the time, but it was always a flawed game. 

I think the real difference between the franchises started around 2010ish with BC2. By then, COD was still pumping out the same game every year, different settings, different weapons, same mechanics. Battlefield was innovating. Battlefield Bad Company 2 was amazing at launch and it felt like the second best looking game, losing only to crysis. It featured smaller, but still massive battlefields, and I liked the smaller setting better. It was more intimate, more infantry focused, and more fun. You werent farmed by vehicles like in BF2. The gun play felt better. 

But this is also where the "it feels like COD" comparisons started among a minority of the player base. But they were largely ignored at the time, and I'll come back to THOSE guys later.

BF3, by then, we got battlefield with crysis tier graphics. It was amazing. And while going back to 64 and more combined arms gameplay reintroduced some balancing issues, it was a solid game with solid game play. One of the most beloved of the franchise.

COD had Modern warfare 3, which...once again, felt like any other COD game since 2005. 

And that's the why most of the player base trashed COD. Battlefield by this point felt an entire generation ahead. Graphically, it was better. Mechanically, it was better. It had a larger scale. It was just...better. It was like comparing a PS4 game to a PS3 one. And thats why people dunked on COD, because by this point, while COD was still fun, they were just rereleasing the same slop year after year. 

This cycle continued through the first half of the PS4/Xbox one life cycle. BF4 felt far superior to ghosts, and BF1 vs infinite warfare was literally memed to death. 

But then the tides turned...

Battlefield's fall from grace and Call of Duty's rise to modern relevancy

I mean COD was never NOT truly relevant, but on PC, the community was tiny. it was only a console phenomenon and on PC the series was considered mediocre slop. After all, on PC, where people understand the tech side of things better, we kinda understood that COD games were low quality asset flips with poor mechanics and netcode as the series was aging by this point and not in a good way, while Battlefield kept innovating. But then battlefield began innovating too much...

Battlefield 5 was controversial from the beginning. We had these weird battlefield boomers coming out of nowhere claiming the series gave too much freedom to players and we needed to return to squad based game play. And being a solo player who runs off and does whatever i wanted, i HATED this, and so did most of the player base. BF5 had punitive mechanics like limited health and ammo to facilitate (read: force) squad play and it never worked. THese changes were quickly walked back and the game felt at odds with itself ever since since it was designed around those things. Not even getting into how it didnt even feel like a genuine WWII game. 

Battlefield 2042 went the other way. They were trying to cash in on the battle royale craze, which they failed to break into with BF5's firestorm mode, but scrapped it. We ended up getting 128 player modes, large empty soulless maps, poor performance and optimization, and replacing the old class system with a hero shooter system and cashing in on that trend too. The base was outraged. While there were a lot of legitimate criticisms, the one i always found irrational was the class system obsession. Yes, battlefield always had classes. At best, they were something that was just there, and i played around by going with the class and loadout that gave me the most versatility, typically some form of engineer with a carbine/DMR. At worst, they actively got in the way of my enjoyment of the game, like BF5 and it's "we're going to FORCE you to play as a team!" mentality. I was open minded toward BF2042's system and liked it. But the boomers said that "classes make battlefield battlefield" and insisted that we change the whole game to shoehorn classes in...which...made the game worse in some ways. And I've written about the battlefield boomer and their rose colored glasses for previous games and how they were never that great. I feel like in retrospect i misinterpreted them, but I'll come back to that a bit later.

In BF6, we are largely seeing a return to form. Basically, what most of the community wants, including myself, is a return to the BF3/BF4 glory days. The entire BC2-BF4 era was peak, and the series declined since. The best way for battlefield to make a come back is to just go back to what works and give us BF3/BF4 again. But now, people are saying that BF6 "feels like COD". Does it? Well let's really talk about this.

Call of duty has changed a lot from its early/mid 2010s period of infamy. B1ack Ops 4 tried implementing a battle royale and it was okay. It did bring a lot to the franchise. But what REALLY set the franchise up for success was Modern Warfare 2019. They themselves had a "return to form" moment and went back to basics. They modernized their mechanics, and greatly expanded the game. Instead of focusing just on 5v5 or 6v6 matches, they implemented ground war, which was a battlefield type mode, although they never truly captured the magic of battlefield because i dont think they understand how to make good maps or game balance. Their ground war was a bit too...shall we say...open. Like you just got shot from a trillion directions and never knew what. And it didnt "flow" well. They also lacked destruction and vehicle mechanics were limited. But it was something. And then they followed it up with warzone, which focused on battle royale and was wildly successful. I'll tell you why here. Before this, we had PUBG, which had modern weapons but felt very milsimmy. We had fortnite, which was cartoony and unrealistic. We had apex, which was fun mechanically, it was basically titanfall 2 as a BR, but it was still sci fi and had fast mechanics. Warzone was the more boots on the ground battle royale game. And it kinda got that subgenre right for more casual players who wanted a military feeling game. 

So...COD just happened to get everything right almost with MW2019, and while most games since have been a return to yearly asset flips and the same thing, the fact that those games feel like MW2019 for the most part makes them all feel more modern and more fun. Sure, they get repetitive, but they got their business model down.

So...does battlefield 6 feel like COD?

In a way, but this isn't a bad thing. The thing is, COD has modernized and feels MUCH better than it did. ANd because many people have nothing going for themselves but bashing COD, they're attacking BF6 because it also feels like a modern large scale military shooter. But battlefield is just being battlefield. If you liked BC2, BF3, BF4. BF1, etc, you should like battlefield 6. It's the best battlefield arguably in 10 years based on the beta. 

But...in a way, it does feel kind of like modern COD IN A WAY. But only because COD feels more like battlefield. This isn't a bad thing. BF is still being BF, it's just that COD has tried to muscle in on BF's territory and has been semi successful in doing so. I admit, the one gibraltar map does kinda feel like a large COD map, or even like rebirth island (alcatraz) in a way, and that can give COD vibes, but other than that, nah, BF is still BF. And if anything, both franchises are in a good place.

I dont think we should change battlefield to something else just for its own sake. I dont have this weird obsession with bashing COD. I like BOTH franchises, and while back in the day in this fandom war i would say BF was vastly superior to COD, in the modern era, BF has had falls from grace whereas COD has had new successes that made the two franchises more similar to each other and competitive. I still think COD does small scale warfare better and BF large scale warfare better, but honestly, both are solid and i try to buy both and play both. 

Still....this weekend has taught me some things about the "battlefield boomers"...

Something is wrong with these guys...

Okay, so the best way I can sum up my new attitudes on battlefield boomers is how I sum up my attitudes on MAGA.

For a while, while I never agreed with MAGA, I thought they (the voters, at least) meant well. THey were just frustrated with the status quo, had economic anxiety, and wanted to go back to the era of well paying factory jobs that represented economic security. MAGA was more about going back to the 1970s, and while more regressive elements existed, I largely thought that was the point of the movement, no matter how misguided they were.

But as time went on, I realized that MAGA is, or has become, much darker than that. It isnt just bringing back the jobs. It's about going back to the gilded age and getting rid of the income tax and getting revenue from tariffs. its about declaring war on and dismantling FDR's entire legacy. It's about undoing all social progress and going back to the days of jim crow and slavery for minority rights, and the days of women being property for social rights. 

Some of the more extreme elements can even be called nazis and are actively building concentration camps. Some are outright coming out as fascists, declaring war on the enlightenment itself, and wanting to go back to theocracy and autocracy like in the distant past. They are terrifying regressive people, with EVIL, EVIL, ideas, and we, on the left have to fight them every step of the way.

Battlefield boomers are kinda like that, but for battlefield. Some people have brought up the "battlefield is too much like COD now" attitudes people had with BF3 and the like, some of the best games of the franchise. And to THEM, what did "being too much like COD" mean? More emphasis on infantry combat, and modern feeling gun mechanics. 

I mean, WHAT? Those were positive additions to the games. I played BF2, at the time i thought it was fun, but even I saw the flaws. The game had no sense of balance. It had a hierarchy of infantry getting crapped on by ground vehicles, ground vehicles getting crapped on by helicopters, and helicopters being crapped on by jets. And the vehicle people just farmed everyone else and the games were actually very boring and frustrating to play. 

I recognized this early on and even said in my own BF2 review on a website which I will not name that this game is fun but flawed and pointed out these problems. For me, the newer games innovated and fixed those issues, with BC2, BF3, and BF4 being the best games of the franchise. By BF4, the game play model had been perfected, and my biggest beef was the DLC model. Otherwise the game was perfect in my book. Well optimization was crap too, but that was more a "running AMD" problem CPU wise. 

But...I talked to some of these guys who felt like the series was too close to COD and honestly? They hate those golden era games too. They think the series lost its way and the peak of battlefield was like 1942 and 2. Those games are practically unplayable today by modern standards. Not just because the servers were down but because 20+ year old game design doesnt hold up today. But that's what they want. For modern equivalents of those games, these guys like games like squad and hell let loose, which are far more tactical and milsimmy. And im gonna be honest, I hate those games. My steam review of hell let loose is basically "walk around in a field for 15 minutes wondering where the enemy is and then getting shot from some direction you dont even know" simulator. Im serious. THat's my experience. I tried hell let loose several times. I even got the game free on epic games store once. I dont play it because it's TERRIBLE. But these "make battlefield battlefield again" people LOVE that stuff, and that's where they want the franchise to go. 

Its kinda slapping me in the face like the dark enlightenment stuff is from MAGA. And while i wont say that battlefield boomers are evil because, chill out, it's just gaming opinions, my gosh their opinions are regressive, and quite frankly, if that's how they think, then they should quit the franchise and leave us alone. If they cant even respect BC2. BF3 and BF4, which were peak game design for battlefield, well, they can play their little niche milsim games. I dont want to be in the same franchise as them. It's like wanting to be with romney voters as a democrat. Just...no. You want different things, go away. We dont see eye to eye. 

Ya know?

Conclusion

So...that's my evolution on the battlefield boomers. Battlefield 6 is a return to form that Im hyped to play for the real game. I doubt i'll buy at launch because $70, but once that bad boy gets a decent sale, I'll buy it up right away and start playing. The game im most hyped about this year. As for the battlefield boomers, they can cope and seethe. I dont want to go back to the days of....battlefield 2. I'm sorry. I just dont. Game feels dated AF. It was dated AF by like 2009 when I got into the franchise. And the 2010-2016 era releases all took the series in a better direction. When i want a return to form, I'm like "yeah, you know BF5 and BF2042? mistakes were made, let's undo them", and this game is looking very much like it is going in that direction. Its a return to form. A REAL return to form. A return to the games I THOUGHT we all agreed were bangers, but no, the really really old players wanna go back to the ancient games with poor game design for some reason. I dont get it. Again, let them play squad or hell let loose. I'm gonna enjoy BF6. 

Discussing the authoritarian standoff in Texas

 So...Texas situation. Feel like this is a really important one to discuss. Basically, Texas wants to gerrymander congress by redistricting in the middle of the decade. Democrats can't do much to stop it, except refuse to show up. If enough democrats dont show up, the vote can't proceed. So democrats decided to stop showing up to the state legislature to obstruct it. Ya know, like republicans often would do. Greg Abbott decided to go full authoritarian and put arrest warrants out on all the democrats who refused to show up. I'm not kidding. They literally wanna arrest the democrats who refuse to show up. This is psycho crap. This has caused the dems to flee the state, going to states with democrats who will protect them, like Illinois and New York, this is causing Texas to petition the FBI to go into blue states and arrest them, which is gonna create one heck of a constitutional crisis. Now the republicans are talking about kicking those members out of the legislature altogether and redistricting congress to be even more right wing. Again, psycho crap. 

Honestly, I respect the democrats for having backbone here. The GOP have spent a good 15 years obstructing everything the dems do and this is fighting fire with fire. Of course, the GOP aint happy about it and they're escalating. And i think they're in the wrong. Arresting them is basically authoritarian behavior, and another example of creeping fascism in our society. 

 Again, my stance is that we must fight fascism. Even at the expense of principles I'd normally hold. I have changed on some views since trump took office.  I hate gerrymandering, but if the GOP does it, so must we. If the GOP obstructs, so must we. Cancel culture? Well, okay, if we're fighting outright fascists calling for literally messed up and evil things like throwing people into concentration camps. And yeah, we're playing for keeps, we're playing to save our democracy, and if we gotta go scorched earth, so be it. We cant constrain ourselves while they just go around doing whatever they want breaking our democracy. If we play by one set of rules and they play by another, we lose. So yeah, i know it's distasteful, but that's what we gotta do.

Honestly, it terrifies me that things have gotten this bad in the first place. But I am happy to see some people standing up to them. We gotta do what we gotta do. We cant just let the GOP do a fascist takeover of our government.  And yeah that's all I gotta say for now. 

Why moderate Christianity doesn't make sense to me

 So, without going into the context, I feel a need to write this article. It's been something that's been bugging me for a while, and honestly, I really want to make this clear

So....worldviews. You have the biblical Christian worldview conservatives have which sounds like a cult, and then the secular humanist worldview which is secular. But then you got moderate and liberal christians who kinda sorta do something...different. Having gone from one to the other, I just don't understand the point of liberal or moderate christianity. As an ex christian i feel more honest not beiing a Christian at all, than merely tweaking my philosophical bases and trying to make this work. I tried the moderate christian thing for a while, and honestly, I just felt a need to leave. If people make it work they make it work, but I honestly don't see the point in trying. 

To map out the moderate or liberal Christian worldview:

Theology- Christians normally start out their worldview based on their theology. While more secular and naturalistic worldviews tend to approach philosophy first, as a way to build up to God (I do this), Christians tend to presuppose God, often by faith here. Their worldview begins with "in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth", and they go from there. I assume liberal Christians do too, but already I see tension here. Conservative Christians normally assume God exists, and the Bible is the reliable word of god, and they tend to make those views their primary overriding beliefs that trump everything else, including reality itself. Which is how we get weird ideas like Satan made dinosaur bones or they were from the flood. Because science says differently and that comes from a philosophy first perspective like what I hold. What do moderate christians do here? Do they trust god and the bible? or do they trust naturalistic accounts of things? often they trust naturalism to some degree. And that's where the conflicts begin appearing.

Philosophy- As stated above, as a guy who has primarily secular humanist leanings, at the very least the base and core of my worldview is based on humanism, for Christians, philosophy is second to theology. And then moderate christians do this thing where they tend to accept the bible, but then they tend to have more naturalistic leanings. They seem to start with a more naturalistic understanding of the world, but then accept christianity on faith. It comes off as a form of compartmentalization, and for most people, it seems to work since many of them...dont think about it very hard and ask all the hard questions. But eventually, I couldn't do it. I tend to think in the same camp as, say, David Noebel, who i got this conception of worldviews from as a young christian teen. Either all of it is real or none of it is. But moderate and liberal christians just have a mishmash of things.

Now, given I have a spiritual worldview myself, and still call myself a secular humanist, most will wonder how that works. I got criticized for this recently. To answer, most humanists dont have a hard line on god not existing. They are soft atheists, skeptics, agnostics. They dont know. They dont claim absolute knowledge, and if the concept is demonstrated to them, they'd just do what I ended up doing in supplementing their existing worldview by acknowledging that there is a supernatural realm that exists outside of our current naturalistic understanding of things. It's a lot like how in our every day lives we have a newtonian concept of physics, but then in an atomic level, we might have a more relativistic or quantum understanding. The fact is, we dont understand everything about how this world works, and there is room in a naturalistic oriented worldview for the supernatural if such a concept is properly demonstrated. While I dont have scientific proof for such a thing, on an anecdotal level, I've seen enough.

I guess liberal christians can do the same, but given the nature of the christian worldview and its specific claims about the world and god, it seems significantly harder to square that circle in my opinion given the specificity of the claims surrounding christianity and the christian god. And that's what I see as limiting, why this specific concept? It was made by bronze age people for a bronze age concept and it seems as ahistorical to accept as say, the greek or roman gods. 

Ethics

From a christian worldview, ethics comes from God. He is the author of the universe, his word is final. From a secular worldview, ethics comes from humans. They're social conventions we make up about our lives. While, ideally, god's ethics can be tested and their goodness can be self evident, if they are valid, christians are often more...axiomatic. As in, they would accept the plank of the euthyphro dilemma closer to "stuff is good because god said so", whereas I'd go in the direction of "god said so because it is good." You see, with the first version, again, it leads to reality denial and prioritizing the religion and the book over reality. In the second, morality becomes a testable thing. We can figure out what's good or not by other means and study christian ethics and see if they're good. And outside of the golden rule and stuff like that, christian ethics just dont work. The old testament was a bunch of old and antiquated stuff that clearly only applied to that culture, and should not be seen as the gold standard of morality. Even jesus's morality in context is strange and seems unsustainable in the long term IMO. It only makes sense if one considered he was an ascetic apocalpytic preacher from the 1st century. Im not saying everything in christianity is bad, but there isnt enough here to justify calling myself christian or a follower of jesus. I guess liberal christians do do that, but idk, to me it just seems to defy the point. I think that once you start placing your own morality over god's where you start contradicting your own source material you might as well just leave and say you're out. 

Biology- So the christian worldview assumes creationism. The secular worldview assumes an old earth evolution. Moderates and liberals tend to accept the scientific explanation, but how does adam and eve fit into all of this? Were they real people? Were did sin come from? Is it a metaphor? Why do we need salvation? While liberals have explanations, they often seem unsatisfying to me. Because to me, I tend to accept noebel's line of "either all of it is real or none of it is." Again, why accept any of this stuff? Why try to reconcile these two ideas that are clearly at odds with each other? Doing so just leads to unnecessary complexity and seems to be an exercise in futility. If old earth theory and evolution is real, then "sin" as christians understand it isn't a real thing. The arguments for suffering and theodicy no longer make sense. Because we are trying to reconcile two different views that can't be. I know one of my moderate christian friends once gave me a list of like 5 explanations for how salvation fits and none of them make sense to me. Again, because it's all or nothing.

Psychology- Christian worldview, humans are evil and at odds with god and need salvation. Most mental illness comes from sin. Secular worldview, humans are animals who arent necessarily evil, but do evil things. I feel like the humanist worldview is more nuanced, charitable and realistic. I also feel like it's more aligned with reality, given it follows science, while christianity is based on this old book and an ancient society's faulty assumptions about human nature. 

I admit, I am inclined to believe souls exist, and humans have them, and our inclinations may partially come from the soul. However, I am not likely to strongly emphasize this, and tend to represent scientific consensus. Either way, again, the christian worldview tends to assume a lot, while a naturalistic worldview tends to just let the evidence speak for itself. 

Sociology- From a secular worldview, sociology is the study of society, or humans in a collective fashion. And once again, we tend to led the evidence speak for itself. Christian sociology is more authoritative and prescriptive, with god proscribing how people should live by saying they should go to church, get married, have kids, respect the state, and work. Liberal christians and people with a more "cosmic humanist" spiritual view can respect the science, but i feel like given the bold and prescriptive claims christianity makes, it's far more likely to go against scientific consensus and just push their ideas instead. Once again, moderate and liberal christians seem between two worlds here.

Law/Politics- In biblical christianity, states exist as an institution put there by god, with god putting rulers to rule over people and people needing to obey them. Christians, and christian nationalists, tend to put their religion over secular law, and use secular law as an excuse to push their religion. Secularists tend to believe in separation of church and state, recognizing that theocracy ends poorly for people and leads to persecution. Moderate christians tend to side with the more secular side here, which is why i respect them. They DONT push their religion on people all that much, although their philosophy still finds their way into their politics sometimes through their ethical assumptions (they may be pro life, for example). They might also oppose trump and the republicans on being pro social justice, or pro immigration, as they prioritize jesus' words over the more law and order sentiments of right wing christians. Still, to retread ethics, I see the two systems at odds and see liberals as trying to reconcile that which shouldn't be. 

From a secular perspective, morality, law, and politics all intertwine and I tend to approach things from a largely consequentialist perspective that focuses on improving human well being. I sometimes align with liberal christians but do recognize my own basis for supporting ideas is a bit different than theirs, since they often still inject jesus into everything (although let's face it jesus had good points sometimes, like on healing the sick, feeding the hungry, and loving your neighbor). Still, again, i tend to see conflicts due to aforementioned issues further up the worldview chain that I just mentioned.

Economics- The christian worldview often assumes work as an institution put here by god, and that humans are here for a purpose, and should work, and not doing so is sinful. Even liberal christians tend to assume as much, although are less hardline and cruel about it. I feel like, as a humanist, my lack of the protestant work ethic often puts me at odds with society. Because i DONT accept that crap, and see the whole point of the economy simply to serve our needs. I dont glorify work and productivity, if anything, i am rather anti work. This puts me at odds with most forms of christianity, even though I can sometimes align with the liberals a bit more. 

But to me the liberals....once again, even if their understanding of the issue and emphasis on social justice because of jesus makes them align with me more, I still dont really agree with them. Im not sure if on law/politics/economics that liberals are necessarily moderates, they just seem to take the "god said so" thing from a different perspective, downplaying the old testament and focusing on jesus instead. Which is an improvement as jesus was more loving and less authoritarian, but it still has that "god said so" thing. Even more so, if we go back to conservatism, it seems to be cherrypicking. I mean, I guess conservatives to it too. They will emphasize some weird passage from leviticus while ignoring the love your enighbor parts, but that is a broader worldview issue. The bible, as properly understood, represents an emerging religion and cultural tradition spanning 1000 years. It's not intended to be read coherently as a single document. Different authors in different ages and sometimes in the same age didnt always agree. And that's fine. If we dont put some weird priority on it being the end all be all of morality, and thus, law, politics, and economics. 

I ask, why accept any of it? Again, if i cant agree on the more abstract fundamental stuff, I struggle to find agreement on issues of more specificity. I just rejected the entire thing and built my perspective independent of christian influences. If i agree, i do so on my own terms. If i disagree, I'll make that clear. I dont "follow" the bible or 'follow" jesus, and I think making my whole philosophy around some other guy as really weird. Think for yourself, people.

History- While I would have put history well and above as more basic philosophical diferences, noebel put his account at the end. here, he defends the historical account of Jesus, and ends his book claiming that either all of it is true or none of it is. As I said, I agree with the premise, but after studying the history itself in various bible courses in college, I kinda learned that maybe the gospels arent all that reliable. Maybe there was no empty tomb and it was just a story spread like a game of telephone. I mean they didnt teach it that way for the record, but there is room to argue it. Most sources about jesus came decades after his death and alleged resurrection. And they come off as hearsay. Tall tales spread by locals who spread rumors like wildfire.

Christians tend to accept the historicity of Jesus. Even liberals do. But as I said above, how does this whole death and resurrection fit into a world where the concept of sin itself is...incoherent? if I dont accept the biblical account of biology and history of the universe, why should I accept this? At the end of the day it's faith. 

Conclusion

And that's where I'll end this. It's faith. Christians believe in this stuff because of faith, and then they will try to see the world in accordance with their preconceptions. Fundamentalists do this in an extreme form, where they'll literally say that reality is wrong and that their stuff is right. And they come off as dangerous cultists. Liberal and moderate christians...well...they seem to acknowledge the bible and the religion being wrong where its wrong, but they still accept it on a level where they actively identify with it and its ideas. They'll often accept it where it doesnt seem to conflict with reality, but will reject the parts that do. That is...okay I guess, but I dont see the point. Because at that point youre clearly using your own judgment to decide what's true and false, and what to follow and what not to, and the further upstream we get with this worldview toward the bigger metaphysical ideas of this worldview, the less I see the point.

Here's why people are moderate christians. many of them were raised in it, they never left, but they moderated their tendencies away from the extremists. Which is GOOD, the moderation part I mean, but it just comes off as coherent. Why accept any of it? And I guess some people like me who "come to god" (or "come back to god" in my case) later in life adopt the framework because it's the go to default option of society for that sort of thing. But that's the thing. Even i didnt feel a need to go back TO CHRISTIANITY. Because to me, it's an incoherent mess, and my own understanding of god is closer to the cosmic humanist worldview which is a lot more nondescript and spiritual. Really, I'm one of those "spiritual but not religious" people these days. If you wanna know how i square the circle, it's as i said above, I saw enough to acknowledge something is there, and even have theories on it, but quite frankly, I'm really just building upon the agnostic atheist perspective of understanding that there is room for a god to exist, and im acting as if I found something that convinced me that it's real. And that's all it is. I see no reason to accept strange dogmas of some jewish guy from 2000 years ago who died and rose from the dead. I dont see a need for the sin and salvation dynamic. I dont accept the bible AT ALL. And yeah. I just dont see a point in being a moderate or liberal christian. It seems to be an exercise in futility.  It's fine if people believe it (as long as they don't force it on me), but yeah, I just don't see the point.

Everyone is going nuts over this jobs report, I think it's insane we measure economic success by the number of jobs we create in the first place

 Seriously, does anyone else find this dystopian? like OMG, we create millions of jobs! This is great! Oh noes, we barely created any, this is horrible!

I mean, I get it, we designed our society where everyone has to work to get money, but given I'm literally the guy to question that whole relationship, I find the whole concept dystopian. Like we sit around cheering on rich people creating things for poor people to do in exchange for money. We value creating as many jobs as possible and people working as much as possible when it seems so unnecessary. Does the sky fall when we dont have jobs? Did the sky fall during COVID? Again, ignore the fact that people need to work to get money, which is something that we as a society made up and can change at any time. 

 And again, that's my point, we can change that at any time. I honestly think that the biggest marker of social progress is job destruction. I mean, read my previous article. I would argue that AI destroying jobs is a good thing. I think that society working less is a good thing. We just gotta come up with an alternate way to provide for people outside of the job market. Which isn't a bad thing. I mean, why should we wanna spend all our time working for rich people? It's stupid and dystopian. I literally feel like we're all brainwashed into this, and that if we just came up with a different way of doing things, we would be free. 

Some people think the alternative is socialism and communism, but the people who say that don't even know what socialism and communism are. They think government doing stuff is socialism and communism. It isn't. Well, complete state control of the economy is basically authoritarian communism, but I don't advocate for that. I support some privatization and dont think the government running everything is a good thing. But the government providing an income from taxing the rich who own the means of production, and providing basic services like healthcare, education, and stuff like that? Sure! That's more aligned with like, social democracy than communism. Although even they glorify working for a living. Still, the whole high tax cradle to grave welfare state thing within capitalism is based. We should do that instead of working our lives away. Sorry, not sorry.  

Kyle once again misses the point on automation

 So, kyle kulinski just put out a video on how a CEO is "excited" about firing workers because of AI, with the CEO saying they dont go on strike or ask for a pay raise. And....he's acting like this is comic book villain level stuff. I mean, it can be interpreted that way, but it doesn't have to be. This is just the reality of jobs and labor. 

I mean, this is a big premise of my ideology, so I'm going to bold it and make it clear. BUSINESSES DON'T WANT TO HIRE PEOPLE. THEY WANT THE MOST WORK DONE FOR THE LEAST AMOUNT OF MONEY. IF THEY COULD GET RID OF ALL HUMAN LABOR AND REPLACE IT WITH MACHINES, THEY WOULD. 

That's the thing I really wish people would understand. Work under capitalism is servitude. It's wage slavery. The left has this weird view that work is dignified and they want fair wages and fair working conditions. But...at the end of the day, they want to preserve the social contract as it exists, ie, the idea that workers HAVE to work, and businesses HAVE to pay them. It's not an arrangement either side actually likes IMO. But we all pretend to like it, because we see labor as necessary for survival, and we structured society and conditioned people to accept the idea that work has to be done, they should want to do it, and they should be paid for it.

But...if you ask me, almost all evils under capitalism come from this wage labor system. This is literally the point of my own ideology. Unlike marx, capitalism doesnt just alienate people from their labor, as if work is good and it's just the capitalist mode of production that's bad. No, work itself is bad. And to bold the other side of the above claim: We shouldn't want to work. We shouldnt want to spend all day on a factory line making widgets. We shouldnt want to spend all day asking customers if they want fries with that. Eliminating wage labor would FREE humanity. 

The whole thing is, we need to then come up with another system that distributes resources to people. Currently, people are expected to work, and they're expected to be paid by employers. And employers never ever did wanna pay. Hell, the entire history of capitalism outside of the new deal era was oppression and wage slavery and the new deal era only managed the symptoms of that rotten system, and didnt address the root causes. We need another system of economics to some extent if we're going to move past wage labor. 

And for the record, it doesnt have to be full on socialist. One of the only reasons we've been on this treadmill of work for so long is because business leaders have feared that if we kept automating away work we'd automate ourselves out of capitalism. Businesses wouldnt be able to make money because they'd value their freedom from work over buying more crap. So FDR set the system up around the 40 hour work week and here we are almost 100 years later still using his system, except with most of the worker protections stripped out of it, leading to a return to gilded age like conditions and attitudes. 

But yeah. That's what my ideology is about solving, and that's why I believe we need a second new deal or economic bill of rights that guarantees an income, healthcare, eduation, housing, and reduces the work week gradually over time. We should WANT to see the end of the wage labor system. We should cheer it on. As I said, businesses don't wanna pay us. And quite frankly, I dont wanna spend my life working. So why don't we just...do away with this crappy system and come up with something else?

Btw, I dont think businesses realize what they're doing. It's possible the dark enlightenment types see the next stage of human development as returning to feudalism as, after all, they see the state as their army to protect their property rights. But, as a believer in democracy, and as someone with left wing ideas, I believe that the answer is that, yes, the voters have to vote to redistribute property away from the rich toward everyone else. And again, that's what my own ideology is about. I'm not a dark enlightement MFer who wants to give corporations all the wealth while we have nothing. They'd LOVE for society to go in that direction as we transition away from the 20th century wage labor system. BUT, if we want society to work for ALL of us, yeah, we need redistribution. And that involves a lot of taxes, and that involves people getting paychecks for doing nothing, and healthcare, and housing, and education, etc. And the wealthy arent going to like it. The economy exists for us, we dont exist for it, and what's the point of all of this wealth in the first place if it doesnt go to us anyway? This is where i start sounding a bit leftist, but the system is inherently unjust, if we exist just as cheap labor for rich people who sit around hoarding wealth all day. But to be honest, that's what the wage labor system is, and always had been. So yeah, I cheer on its end, and hope society can reorganize itself around a more humanist ethos where we quite frankly DON'T have to work any more. 

Quite frankly, I think Kyle, and a lot of the left, misses the point. Like, they are just stuck in this weird 20th century idea of a fair day's work for a fair day's pay, when that was just the compromise all along. And it was a crappy one that at best was done out of the necessity of getting the work that had to be done, done. In reality, we shouldnt want to work, just as businesses don't want to pay us. But they should pay us anyway, because it leads to a better reality for us all. Just do it through taxation and expansive social services. It really is that simple. 

EDIT: Okay i watched the rest of the video, I reacted hastily in response to the first minute, but he kinda is at the point of "what do we do if we get rid of all the jobs?" Well, to answer that, I'll paraphrase scott santens. If we give a man a fish, he eats for a day. If we teach a man to fish, he eats for the rest of his life. If we create a robot to fish for us, do all men starve or do all men eat? And that's the question and it really depends on what we do to address this. If we have a society as it exists now where everyone has to work to eat and that's the ironclad law of society, yeah, you're gonna have a bad time when you transition away from that. But if we have a society where we recognize that property is just a social construct in the first place enforced by men with guns, we realize we can change it. It really just depends on what the men with guns do. Do the men with guns defend the privileges of the wealthy? Or do they tell them "no, you have to share." 

That, for me, is the core difference between the right and the left. Between the christian worldview that underlies capitalism with its protestant work ethic, and a more humanist worldview. Does society exist for the sake of the wealthy? or does it exist for all of us? because historically, property rights primarily exist for the sake of the wealthy. Heck, the whole idea that we are entitled to nothing and have to work for everything was a construct created to make us have to serve the rich. Because they create the jobs, and we're expected to work them. ANd then they get all of the rewards and we get what's left over. Again, all new deal liberalism was, was a compromise that they had to pay us decently. It was basically the idea that the rich had to share a bit. But only if we worked for it. They never addressed the work thing. I do address the work thing. Just provide us all money and basic services, and let the economy work as it always has. If people want to work for more money, fine, as i dont think we'll ever do away with ALL human labor. But they shouldnt have to. And income and wealth should be distributed in a way to lead to a utilitarian outcome for all in society, ideally according to some rawlsian "veil of ignorance" style fairness. And that's where we get UBI, and that's where we get universal healthcare, and all of the other stuff I'm for. That's the path forward. And that's what the left SHOULD be emphasizing, rather than being luddites and preserving an old compromise neither side was truly happy with. 

Who is more evil? Trump or the people behind him?

 So, there was a discussion about the most evil person alive. I said donald trump, but then some people said that people behind him like curtis yarvin, peter thiel, and JD vance are actually worse. And that's the real debate. Trump is bad. But the big threat might be the people behind him. Either way, it's the entire movement and what it represents, but in a way, trump is just a front man. yes, he's responsible for a lot himself. he has the desire to be a dictator and filled his second administration with lots of yes people who tell him what he wants to hear.

BUT...I have kind of detected that there are people behind him with some REALLY dark ideas who are even worse. And yes, they are the dark enlightenment MFers. These guys dont believe in democracy. They seek to overturn it. There are probably many among their ranks who are outright fascist. At the very least they give cover for fascism. I dont think it was trump who came up with the idea of doing concentration camps. He probably is listening to some neonazi MFers who is feeding him the hitler playbook. Again, you got that whole peter thiel wing of the party behind him that's genuinely scary. Quite frankly, billionaires have been declaring war on democratic society since the 1970s. They were forced to give up some privileges in the 1930s and ever since they wanted them back. And in the 1970s, i remember watching a noam chomsky documentary where they were saying the US had too much democracy and we had to correct for that. The result: neoliberalism and reagan. And here we are, with that era at its time of passing, and instead of the left taking power back, the right is trying to go in a full on fascist direction instead. These guys want to undo democracy. And they seem to be feeding trump his agenda. I dont think hes smart enough to figure out how this stuff works. Rather he has donors, he has people like vance behind him, he has institutions like the heritage foundation. And they're doing a coup in plain sight. They're trying to destroy democracy, and put people who they dont like into literal camps. It's scary. We are going in a dark direction.

This is why in a way i think the trump administration would be scarier without trump. I know a lot of people say trump's bad. But he's also unstable, and trust me when dealing with these guys, instability is what you need. Let them destroy themselves from within. Trump is, in a sense, the mammoth graveyard to curtis yarvin's blue eyes ultimate dragon if people understand that reference. For those who dont, its a yugioh reference, yugi merged kaiba's blue eyes ultimate dragon with a mammoth graveyard card which caused it to rot from within and become weaker and weaker. Trump actually weakens his own movement in a way. He's an idiot in and of himself, and probably useless without people around him. If anything can blow up this attempted coup, it's trump's ineptitude. 

So....is trump evil? yes. Are the people behind him even worsee? Arguably so. As I keep saying, trump meets many definitions of fascism but he lacks an ideological commitment to the idea. The idea people are behind him. That whole administration is rotten to the core and I would say that they're the biggest face of evil in the US at the very least right now. One can argue xi, kim jong un, or putin are worse. And maybe they are. But they live over there terrorizing people on the other side of the planet. Trump and his people are over here. So for me, trump and his administration are the personification of evil in the modern day. They represent an illiberal anti democratic movement that mirrors 1930s nazi germany. And we should be very scared of these people. Because by our standards, they DONT have morals. Their entire moral system is cut from a different cloth and have this entitlement complex that they deserve to rule and oppress everyone else. And anyone who doesnt fit into their social darwinistic view of society? Gone. 

Like for a while the left had this idea that we can just compromise with the right. You cant compromise with these people. because youre compromising with the devil. it just makes you half evil and complicit. The democrats should fight these guys with everything they have. Unfortunately they're run by billionaires too and they dont wanna do anything. Which is why their approval ratings are so low. 

Discussing the limits of free speech for the left

 So, my previous article on not tolerating the intolerant was primarily aimed at the right, particularly fascist types. However, one might wonder what about the left? Should tankies get the same treatment and stuff like that?

And the answer is yes. If you're on the left, and you're outright an authoritarian communist who advocates for violence and revolution, you should get the same treatment as a fascist. Once again, fined and possibly disqualified from repeated offenses if running for office. Cancelled by people for openly expressing such views in the public square.

However, I would like to point out that this should only apply to TANKIES. I want to keep the act of cancelling and deplatforming for the worst of the worst. I actually am a believer in free speech and a huge reason ive been reluctant to get on board with cancelling or deplatforming people is just how slippery that slope is. We've had red scares in America before over communism. And in those red scares, we didnt just go after die hard communists sympathetic to the Soviet Union. We went after labor activists, liberals, democratic socialists, that sort of thing. And that's not okay. Should people be fired from their job for trying to organize and form a union? Should I be fired for expressing overt anti work views? Should views that advocate for a redistribution of wealth via taxation be deemed "violence" as some far right libertarians would argue? No. And quite frankly, on the right, I dont think all right wing views should be cancelable either, even if i disagree with them or find them distasteful. 

My view is this. if your views are compatible with liberal democracy, ie, they generally respect the democratic process, constitutional rights, and dont advocate for overt or systemic violence against people, they should be allowed. We should allow views to the greatest extent reasonably possible. Again, the whole thing that got this started was on the idea of tolerating the intolerant. Tolerate doesnt mean to like, it means to put up with. You dont have to like everyone. You dont have to have positive views on everyone, but you do have to tolerate their existence, respect their rights, and not try to kill or oppress them, ya know? That's what it's really about. I just think we should be cracking down on these sick fricks who want to end democracy, impose dictatorship on people, and put people they don't like in literal gulags or concentration camps. That's all I'm saying. Anything short of fascism or tankie ideology should be okay in my book. I'm just starting to think that yeah, democracy and free society need some defense mechanisms against the whackjob extremists because they're starting to get in power and actually do the batcrap insane things they used to "joke" about. Ya know? As long as youre not talking about ending democracy and imposing dictatorship, or killing people or putting them in camps, you're good. 

Discussion on the limits of tolerating the intolerant

 So yeah, I think that medhi hasan thing awakened something in me. And not just me, Kyle Kulinski had a similar discussion on his program. The fact is, there are all of these weirdos coming out of the woodwork since trump won saying all of these awful and profane things, and it's disturbing me greatly. And it's one thing if it's a joke. Like....conservatives have this dark humor sometimes where they say F-ed up things just to trigger the libs. I get it, but here's the thing. I get the impression these guys arent joking any more.

Take, for example, Alligator Alcatraz. I know that right wingers make jokes about alligator moats on the southern border and stuff. And when I first heard of trump building a concentration camp in the florida everglades, I thought it was a joke. But here we are, with a LITERAL CONCENTRATION CAMP in the florida everglades, with actual human rights abuses, and actual people in them, many relatively innocent. This is messed up, and this crap aint a joke any more, it's not funny. Quite frankly, Trumpism has been this accelerating over the past decade. Trump provoked people in 2016 by saying he wont accept the results of the election if he lost. And the liberals lost their minds, and it was all fun and games until this guy decides to BASICALLY INCITE AN INSURRECTION as a result of losing the election. Like, that's the thing. These people say they're gonna do stuff, AND THEN THEY DO IT! At that point, we're no longer joking, these "jokes" are inciting violence and oppression in the real world. We got the "your body my choice" people. Again, provocative, but again, are they even joking at this point? I dont think they are. 

Heck, and this is actually what triggered this thought process before Kyle brought it up, I won't post it, but there's this one guy running for governor of california as republican. He's known to be very provocative. He's previously said things like "illegal immigrants can stay if they marry an incel" and stuff like that. And recently, and this is how I found out about this guy, he posted a picture of himself in front of auschwitz with a tweet saying that this is his "zero percent unemployment plan." So...now we're talking about rounding up the homeless and unemployed and throwing them in concentration camps. And keep in mind, trump just signed an executive order to make it easier to remove homeless people from the streets. Uh....are the homeless next? The unemployed next? Are they gonna throw those kinds of "undesirables" in their camps like the nazis did? Looks like it! 

And that's the thing, we don't know if these people are joking or not. If anything, the modern direction of the alt right and trumpism seems to be that they say crazy provocative things, and then they do that stuff if they get a positive reaction, although if they dont they'll just back off while saying "it was a joke."

I said in 2016, we shouldnt feed the trolls. But at this point, it's beyond mere trolling. These guys are radicalizing into fascism really quick, and then implementing these ideas FOR REAL. And again, that's very scary and very concerning. Again, it's not a joke any more when the camps are being built and the insurrections are happening. 

So...now we gotta wonder, when should free speech carry consequences? Legally, I'm still not sure about charging people unless the behavior is clear incitement of something. I like to be as lax on free speech as i can, I used to consider myself an absolutist, but now I'm like...uh...maybe there should be consequences? I think at the very least if youre RUNNING FOR OFFICE you shouldnt be inciting this stuff. Uncle jim bob on facebook, whatever, he wants to talk about whatever deranged crap he does, okay. But if you're running for public office and making literal holocaust jokes like mr california guy, uh...maybe there should be penalties tied to that. I mean, thats what made things different pre trump. The whackjobs in the party would say whatever foul provocative thing that came to mind, but politicians like george bush or john mccain or mitt romney would be like "what? no, that's insane" for the most part. There was a diifference between the crazy crap the base was for, and what the politicians were. In the trump era, the people running for public office and have public positions of power are the ones saying insane crap themselves. So if we focus on stuff legally, maybe politicians should be fined if they say things that imply or incite real world violence. I do believe they should be held to a different standard. 

For the rest of us, eh, let's revisit cancel culture a bit. I'm very mixed on cancel culture. I believe the left gets way too self righteous and trigger happy with their cancelling behavior where theyll cancel just about everyone over minor sleights against their dogma. They are lambasting AOC for voting yes on iron dome funding for israel. They attack cenk uygur for not being pro trans people in sports. They ban people from subreddits for buying the new harry potter video game because jk rowling is a transphobe. And I've been moderated before just for putting my foot down with these people before. The problem with cancel culture is its mob justice. The problem with mob justice is the mob gets out of hand. Which is btw, what's also happening on the right, with these insane suggestions being turned into actual policy. 

At the same time, take mr fascist from the medhi hassan thing. He called for a dictatorship, thought franco in spain was based, wants a catholic theocracy, and struggled on the idea of admitting that the nazis were bad, despite them killing catholics! Should that guy be cancelled? YES! Should some motherfricker calling for putting people in concentration camps be cancelled? YES! At some point, yes, when your words are so vile and vulgar, you should face social consequences for them. I admit, my own opinion on this is still being formulated and the kinds of behaviors i find cancellable is far smaller than most cancel culture happy lefties are. I mean, I'm not just talking minor offenses. I'm talking the people who are out in out fascists, calling for the end of democracy, putting people into camps, that sort of thing. THOSE PEOPLE, THOSE WITH ACTUAL NAZI AND FASCIST VIEWS, yeah, they should be cancelled. Society should thumb their nose at those people to the greatest extent possible, and they should face society wide shunning for their actions IMO. We need to make people scared to be open nazis again to some extent. There should be social consequences for that. 

Again, I'm not sure what this kind of framework this should take place in. Legally, i dont want the government to step in more than necessary because government crackdowns on speech are dangerous. Look at trump weaponizing arcane laws clearly intended for other purposes in order to push his authoritarianism. You dont wanna give him more tools. But, yeah, I do think fining and maybe even disqualifying candidates for repeat offenses involving advocating for really dangerous policies should be on the table.

For cancel culture, that's the double edged sword with it. Clearly lefties get too trigger happy over that stuff, but at the same time, there should be some line somewhere. We can't just have people openly calling for throwing the unemployed in concentration camps or having a catholic dictatorship becoming common opinions. Once these opinions were fringe weirdos but since trump won in 2024, these guys are getting too comfortable just letting it all hang out and being like "yeah im a fascist." So....I can get behind SOME level of cancel culture if it reaches that level of moral depravity. Either way, we need to stop platforming these guys or making them feel comfortable giving such opinions. The fact that these ideas have entered the commonplace so easily is greatly disturbing and yeah...maybe we really shouldn't, because these guys are inciting real world violence and oppression with their speech. One day they're talking about it, the next they're actually doing it. It's fine to have an abstract political conversation about something. But when we got people "joking" about throwing people in camps and as it turns out they're not actually joking...uh yeah, maybe those guys should be held responsible for their speech somehow.

Again, this is an opinion im developing. We'll see where it goes, but Im kinda on the same page as kyle here. 

Discussing the South Park episode on Trump

 So...South park is at it again. They started their newest season, and they came out SWINGING. 

 So...we all know about what happened to Colbert right? Well, Stephen Colbert was cancelled. Literally. Paramount cancelled him under pressure from the Trump administration. However, South park just signed a deal for 5 more years. And they're using them. 

The first episode was all about bashing trump. They brought back saddam hussein and made him trump basically. He's dating satan. He has a tiny...you know. They keep emphasizing that. The whole episode is about south park being sued by trump for bashing him. They agreed to a settlement and they ended up agreeing to do "pro trump messaging."

So they put trump butt naked in a desert (because he loves 'murica) with his tiny...you know hanging out. It was hilarious. Anyway, apparently they're gonna be doing 5 years of this crap every episode. And I'm looking forward to them all.  

 But yeah, this is how you deal with trump. You dont back down, you dial up the criticism and offense to a 10 and you LET HIM HAVE IT. All hail south park! Really, they're doing what needs to be done. Hats off to these guys.  

Should democrats gerrymander blue states?

 So...in response to a plan by Texas republicans to gerrymander texas in a desperate attempt to keep the house in 2026, democrats are thinking of gerrymandering blue states to offset that. The real question here is, is this a good idea, and should we support it?

On the one hand, as someone who has been a victim of gerrymandering for much of my adult life in PA (see the pre 2018 house maps...), I hate gerrymandering, and I generally align with the forward party's stance on having independent redistricting. HOWEVER, we need to consider the situation that we are in. We are in a situation where we have this illiberal GOP that is trying to break democracy and turn us into a dictatorship, and knowing that they can lose the house,  they're trying to stop that by gerrymandering the crap out of everything.

Come to think of it, the GOP has been like this for decades now. They stole a SCOTUS seat from us in 2016 by stalling the process of filling it until trump was elected. They held onto the house in the 2010s mostly by gerrymandering. In 2024, some suggested that voter suppression cost dems the election. The GOP plays by a different set of rules than the rest of us and THEY DON'T CARE. Like the dems keep talking about democratic norms and compromise, but the GOP doesnt give a crap, they care about power, and will do anything to keep and maintain it. This is why I've become as far left as I am in the first place. I remember when the tea party came to power in 2011, and I was like "these guys are playing for keeps, you cant mess around with this." Here's the thing. In 2008, they saw a glimpse into oblivion. The reagan coalition was starting to decline, Obama win in a virtual landslide, and they understood, this could be game over, this could be a realignment. So what did they do? They went scorched earth against Obama, and because the dems were weak, they rolled over us. And during that time frame, I left the GOP, became a democrat, and even in 2016, I was sounding the alarm bells. These guys arent fricking around, dont compromise.

So what did the dems do? Compromise, keep meeting them half way, and act like it was still 1992. It wasn't. It was 24 years later. An entire generation of young americans had been born and could now vote in that time span. And the dems seemed out of sync. And they misread their opponent.

Even I did. Like, I really did think the GOP was done at the time. I figured that the dems were gonna be the emerging majority as time went on, and the GOP would fade away. And I did fight the dems just as I fought the GOP and supported third parties. SOme will say it was a mistake, but it made sense at the time, given the gems were completely useless. But then MAGA awoke something in this country. Now in 2025, we got literal outright nazis saying nazi things, the trump movement has metastasized into an authoritarian fascist movement, and we're at risk of losing our democracy. Whatever future the dems had that seemed almost guaranteed 10 years ago seems gone now. The dems through it away, and MAGA has been successful in a political sense. And now we're losing. And we are at risk for losing democracy.

 Ya know, I took this comparative politics class in college, where I learned how to analyze countries and their political structures, and we had to do these assignments where we used various sources to write short reports about countries, including their political systems. One thing we learned early on...a lot of countries that claim to be democratic, arent. They're one party states. You can vote, but you can only vote for the one party. Other parties are run out of government and forcibly suppressed. There's the illusion of political freedom, but it doesnt exist. And this is why Im so smart in reading between the lines with stuff. I might critique capitalism and understand it's not as voluntary as it seems. or I might look at our two party duopoly and understand that our democracy is flawed and one step away from these kinds of states. Really, we have a two party system where the other parties are kind of actively suppressed via all kinds of legalistic ways. And voters are bullied and cajoled into supporting the two party system. I believe democracy belongs to the voters, and the US is a flawed democracy. We are run by the rich, for the rich.

However, in this era of trump, things are threatening to become so much worse. We might end up becoming a ONE party system. These systems arise out of failed democracies where one party seizes control and then breaks the democracy. It happened in 1933 with the nazis and hitler in Germany. It happened in 2000 when Putin consolidated control over Russia, destroying their fledgling democracy.

And now, the US in 2025 is at risk of going that way. And the republicans control the house, the senate, the courts, and the presidency. They dont own all these things through completely legitimate means. They gerrymander in congress. They try to engage in voter suppression and push "voter ID laws" and complain about fraud to push people they dont like off the ballot. They stole a SCOTUS seat by refusing to fill it while Obama was in office. And now they control everything. They have NO GUARDRAILS. Trump is enacting project 2025, and now texas is talking about gerrymandering to maintain a house majority there. So the question is, should democrats use the power they have to gerrymander blue states?

As much as I hate to admit it, YES, THEY SHOULD. Look, I hate the idea of gerrymandering. I believe the voters should choose the politicians, the politicians shouldnt choose the voters. BUT, if we're playing checkers and the GOP is playing 5D chess 1 move away from checkmate, we better get our heads out of you know where and DO SOMETHING about it, or we risk losing democracy altogether. The GOP has backed us into a corner. Our only move, to avoid being checkmated, is to use the power we have to play by their rules, and push back. I hate to say it, but that's where we're at.

I hate that it's come here. I really do. And...Im not gonna lie, between this, the Medhi Hassan debate yesterday, and everything I've watched all year with where our country is going, I feel like maybe I am changing. I'm changing my views somewhat to adapt to the times, and I am being a bit more hard line and authoritarian on this fascist movement. I am getting to the point where no, we can't tolerate the intolerant. No, we can't just let the right run all over us, because they're trying to do some really dark and evil crap. We have LITERAL CONCENTRATION CAMPS NOW. I'm not being hyperbolic even. That's the scary thing. We are in our germany 1933 movement, and if we don't wanna lose democracy altogether, we gotta do what we gotta do to take it back.

It's like fighting cancer. Chemotherapy sucks, it's technically poison itself, but when dealing with metastasized cancer, all you can really do is poison yourself and hope the poison kills the cancer before it kills you. That's where we're at when dealing with the far right. So...yeah. Let's gerrymander away. I do fear the long term consequences of such an action. Remember, I dont trust the democrats as far as I can throw them. They can easily misuse their power too. But what choice do we have when we're basically literally descending into fascism? It's our only move. So yes, democrats, do whatever you have to, within reason of course, let's not escalate the erosion of democratic norms more than absolutely necessary, to combat the fascists. Gerrymander deep blue states to counteract the effects of the GOP gerrymandering red states. Get the fascists out of government, and pass some legislation to secure our democracy the next time you have a majority. Pass crap like HR1. Expand voting rights. Maybe find a way to ban gerrymandering on a national level. Kick them out of government, and then LOCK THE DOORS BEHIND THEM so they can't get back in. That's where I'm at with this. Again, no more mr nice guy. We can't be nice guys with fascists. We gotta be mean machiavellian thinkers when dealing with them. Hate to say it, but that's where society is at.  

Discussing Medhi Hasan debating 20 far righters

 So, I just finished watching Medhi Hassan debate 20 far righters in one of those debates, and it was cringe. Not in the Jordan peterson way, he didnt fall apart, but my gosh, let's just say, if this is what the average red hat thinks in this country, we are SCREWED. 

 Like, I feel like America has stage 4 metastasized cancer. We always had these strains of beliefs in our society, but seeing so many people openly embrace fascist, theocratic, and anti democratic ideals is disturbing. These guys dont care about the constitution. They dont care about human rights. Freedom. Like, some of them are straight up nazis. others are straight up christian nationalists. They long for dictatorship, but only on their terms. They are EXTREMELY racist and anti immigrant. 

I mean, one thing I'll ironically agree with these guys on is that as a nation, we are supposed to have a coherent set of values. However, I thought we did. Dedication to freedom, democracy, tolerance toward others. I thought we were the country where it's like, we all dont see eye to eye with each other, but we can like tolerate each other and get along, right? But watching these guys? Im starting to get to the point of the "we can't tolerate the intolerant" people. Like these MFers really stretch my tolerance toward people with different views. It's basically because they're authoritarian fascists who wanna force their ideas on me and others.

 Like, my ideals are based on enlightenment values. Why enlightenment values? because from a secular humanist point of view, morality is a matter of trial and error and those ideas are THE ideas because they produce the best results. We dont wanna live under authoritarianism and theocracy and those who want to control others. Because that's bad for everyone except for the tiny minority doing the oppressing. We literally developed these ideas to get away from that and move on as a species toward something better.

 But these "dark enlightenment" types, or anti enlightenment types, they wanna go back. They wanna go back to the age where kings and religion controlled everything. They act like life is so much better under those principles. It wasn't. We fought revolutions and had centuries, LITERAL, CENTURIES of progress to get away from these and make society better, and these dumb fricks wanna throw it all away and go back to like the 1100s. Like we're talking pre magna carta here. 

And on immigration. Like, there was one moderate guy I could kinda sorta find common ground on. Yes, we shouldnt be open borders. my own ideas on immigration are complex, nuanced, and TLDR, I was fine with Obama and Biden. They deported people, they just did it HUMANELY. Well, at least relatively humanely. Point is, we were addressing the problem, and doing it far better than what trump is doing. We dont need to throw people into a concentration camp in the middle of the FRICKING FLORIDA EVERGLADES in order to make a point. These guys are just cruel, they're evil. I mean, this crap is EVIL. 

But yeah. If you want to stop people from coming in and having kids in the US who we call citizens when their parents came here illegally, fine. Even on trump's first day, I said, I'm not opposed to ending birthright citizenship for those people specifically. I wouldnt end it for everyone. I wouldnt want to go to some blood based system based on some insane racial hierarchy (because we all know thats code for white nationalism). But like...if your parents were here legally and you were born here, you should be an american citizen. Period. 

And I certainly wouldnt be telling Medhi Hassan to gtfo because he's of indian descent to his face. That's insane. Again, these people are insane. I lost even more faith in humanity watching this.

Let me put it this way. if these guys were immigrants wanting to come into the country, these are the kinds of people who would make me agree with the right and say no. Because we dont need reactionary people here who dont respect democracy, the rule of law, the constitution, and are intolerant frickwits. Like when we talk assimilation, I want people who can at the very least have some civic respect for the US here as a free country with equality and justice for all. Like really. I feel like, after watching this, WE are the "craphole country" now. I'm dead serious. We are the craphole country. We are the ones full of illiberal, intolerant people who dont understand or respect basic customs essential to our way of life. They talk such a big game about our way of life, but they dont understand crap. I mean, what exactly are they for here? Christian theocracy? White ethnonationalism? They're fascists. let's just call them fascists. Nazis or nazi adjacent.  F these people. If anyone is a fundamental threat to our democracy and way of life, it's these people. Sorry, not sorry. 

Like really, these guys are pushing me toward that paradox of intolerance mindset where we can't tolerate the intolerant. Because we are literally losing our country. Our free country, to this fascist movement. And it scares me. I fear for the future of America here. I dont even recognize us any more.

I used to be conservative, but I was never this bad. Like, I was that moderate wing of the GOP that was opposing trump that lost to the Trump movement. And while that movement deserved to die out itself, what has replaced it is far worse. 

Also, just as a disclaimer. I don't really have intolerance toward anyone. Like, say christianity. I dont like christianity as a religion, as an ex christian myself, but I believe people should be FREE to be christian. people should be FREE under our constitution to practice their religion in peace. I just dont want that stuff in government telling ME what I should be doing my life, or anyone else for that matter. And those ideas shouldn't destroy liberal democracy. Ya know what I mean? 

Would you date a robot?

 So...apparently Grok is going full anime waifu mode and the internet is losing his mind. Of course, the left is screaming that this is "demon tech" and going full Futurama mode on the matter. It's weird because we're supposed to be the open minded ones and yet we're the ones sounding like some 1950s conservatives screaming it's the downfall of civilization. But then I see the likes of Asmongold going on about how we dont need women any more. Idk, I just feel like the social dynamics are backwards. But that's what happens when you get the most luddite leftists who hate AI mixed with the most 4chan degenerate types on the right who are anti woke and actually have that sort of streak going for them. 

Honestly, I'm in the middle. My honest opinion, people can do what they want. I don't care. I wouldnt wanna date an AI myself, i think the concept is kinda weird, and even if I am basically a forever alone type in my 30s, I'm not THAT desperate. Idk. But if other people want to, well, let them. 

On the social commentary types with what this means with actual dating and the future. Well...honestly, I think that society has been going in the wrong direction with wokeism. Far leftist radfem ideas have poisoned the well with dating to some extent, ya know, women make like WAAAAAY too many demands from men at times to the point it's left a lot of us wondering wtf we're even supposed to do. It's like we're darned if we do and darned if we don't. And a lot of men, especially younger men, like younger than me, are checking out in their teens and 20s from this crap. I guess I was 15-20 years ahead of the curve there. 

To be fair, the alt right has the same effect on women. Why would you wanna date in the era of "your body my choice?" and crazy alt right crap like that. Like, for as much as i rip on radfems going too far, remember that the other side literally wants a 1950s leave it to beaver style sexual fantasy here, and that's not great either. Like, women are people, they should have rights too. Let's not forget that. 

But yeah. That's kind of the hellishness of the modern era on social issues. I keep saying it, it's both sides to some extent. Hate to sound like an enlightened centrist, but yeah. And I know I saw someone today saying that millennials are acting like the 1990s were the greatest time ever, and admittedly, they werent, even though I have fond memories of the 1990s, but on like social issues and crap I almost feel like the 1990s were better than now. Like, while racism still existed underneath it all, yeah, race relations were a lot better. We had a lot better balance on gender issues. Sure, radfems existed back then but no one took them seriously. And we still had some decent amount of social cohesion that no longer existed.

As I see it, the arc of social issues is thus. 1950s before sucked. 1960s and 1970s saw major positive shifts in terms of womens' rights and civil rights for minorities. The 1990s-mid 2010s or so was the peak of human civilization on social issues and it seemed like we were really going in the right direction. it seemed like actual conservatism was dying, liberalism was succeeding, everyone was getting equality, and then in 2016 everyone lost their fricking minds. The left, not satisfied at actually winning the culture war and feeling the need to start another one to distract people from the economic issues (the economic arc of history has regressed from that 1960s-1970s period onwards), ended up leaning into wokeism, whereas the right morphed into the alt right, which is just a disgusting regression to all of those ideas we thought were dead and dying wrapped all up in one, and here we are. Our social fabric is falling apart at its seams and we're descending into fascism because the left ended up biting off more than it can chew. 

And yeah. It's like the old liberal "center" is actually just massively overlooked, even though it's where the action is really at. Both the left and the right are regressive and reactionary against each other, and yeah. So...maybe in some ways the 1990s WERE better? Sure, they had problems, every decade did, but I feel like progress peaked with the Obama era and we've been backsliding since. 

Again, totally different view on other issues, economically we've been going downhill since the 1970s. On foreign policy I tend to think democrats get it right and republicans are horrible (clinton era = okay, bush era = bad, obama era = okay, biden era = okay, trump era = bad. 

But yeah given this is a post about social issues, yeah. 

As such, to go back to AI waifus, I feel like the fact that society is going this way represents a huge problem on our part to some extent. Mostly in terms of deteriorated social fabric and modern culture war causing men and women to hate and fear each other where dating has become dysfunctional, and now men would rather date AI than actual women. Like, I dont see the problem with the technology. A lot of leftists hate the technology. They hate AI, they hate what it represents, but honestly, AI isn't the problem. It's the social and economic conditions of the times, and people are taking out their anger on this tech simply because rich billionaire jerks like Elon Musk are creating it, when the tech itself is largely neutral, it's more a matter of how it's used. The left can be regressive and reactionary about it, but I don't think that's actually particularly helpful. I'd rather blame the social and economic conditions that lead to life being dysfunctional over the tech. Because that's where our problems REALLY are.  

Discussing the Jeffrey Epstein thing

 So...do we really need to discuss this? Anyone who really cared to know, knows that he has been implicated in some pretty serious crap in regard to that for a while now. Like, the Katie Johnson thing happened in 2016. ya know, the girl who accused Trump of raping her at one of Epstein's sex parties when she was 13? There was even tons of court testimony and everything and it was only retracted since she started getting death threats. Btw, above link might be sensitive for some audiences so, just a heads up there. 

 And now there's a letter that came out that seemed to heavily imply that they were in on some secretive...something. And given what secretive somethings Epstein peddled in, we all know what that's implying.  Honestly? I think he's guilty AF. 

I mean, honestly, the more I look at this, not only do I think that he was a client of Epstein's, but that it's highly likely that he was a major player. I mean, the dude was known for having beauty pageants. He's gone into dressing rooms of underaged girls before. He owns all of these properties that could possibly be used for wild sex parties. I mean, I've kind of inferred this just from watching some of the above Katie Johnson testimonies. Even Kyle Kulinski is getting a whiff of this and realizing, oh crap, maybe Mar A Lago was used for this stuff.  

I would even go so far that if I were investing Epstein's murder, er, I mean, "suicide", Trump would be at the top of my suspect list. I mean, we all know that footage the FBI released was doctored, right? It was literally missing a minute of footage. 

This is what happens when the justice system is full of Trump cronies. They're covering it up. And Trump is trying to get his base to move on, but they don't seem to wanna move on. They're pissed. I mean, this is like Pizzagate, but actually a real conspiracy. I mean, we should've known about this back in 2016 during the Katie Johnson thing. And he's been accused quite a bit since then as well. I think everyone knows Trump and Epstein are in with each other. It's really just a matter of how deep the rabbit hole goes. I just gave my own speculation, honestly, I'm to the point that not only is Trump likely a client, but probably was facilitating the stuff himself. Again, this is just speculation based on what I've seen, I have no proof (putting that here for legal reasons given how sue happy Trump is), but honestly, it's not much of a stretch given the evidence.

I said it before and I said it again, this guy shouldn't have been elected again. he shouldnt have even been allowed to run again. Quite frankly, he should be behind bars. He already got nailed on 34 felonies of a less serious nature, but yeah, he should be nailed for whatever role he played with this, and let's not forget, after January 6th, this guy never should've been allowed to run again. These aren't minor crimes. These are serious. And yet somehow we elected him. Well, enjoy pedo Hitler, America, you earned it.  Don't say we didn't warn you. Hate to sound like an arrogant craplib but uh, yeah, when you're dealing with, well, that, kinda hard not to be. Even I voted for Harris and I was one of the original bernie bros!

Why I single out nintendo for criticism in gaming

 So...nintendrones, ya know, hardcore nintendo fanboys, keep accusing me of having a double standard for nintendo that I dont have for other console manufacturers. And...I wanted to actually set the record straight and explain why I've focused so much on nintendo here.

1) They released a new console and discussing it is an autistic interest of mine

I mean, the switch 2 is gaming news. PS5 and Xbox Series X have been around for 5 years now. If anything we're probably closer to their successors than their launches given modern consoles are on a 7-8 year life cycle. And I admit i'm a little obsessed with it, but that's just me with my autism baby. I cant control what im obsessed with, I'm just obsessed with it. 

2) I'm a PC gamer...

Who says that I give micro$oft and $ony a pass for their behavior? The dollar signs as Ss in their name should sum up my disdain for those companies too. Either way, I hate the console market in general. I think all consoles are scams compared to PC gaming. You got these closed systems or "walled gardens" where you gotta deal with their eco system when in reality, their consoles are just....PCs with custom operating systems. Let's face it, consoles are computers. Except everything is configured for them already. It makes for an easier user experience, and given consoles are often sold at a loss they're cheaper than PCs up front, BUT....they also get a lot of extra money from more expensive games, paying for online services (the thing that made me gtfo of the console market), accessories, etc. 

3) Nintendo hasn't competed with the other consoles in almost 20 years now...

Let's face it, back in the day, console wars were actually interesting. And nintendo competed directly with the likes of the sega genesis, the playstation 1, the dreamcast, the ps2, the xbox, etc. But....sony beat them. Twice. Overwhelmingly. I dont even know why. Quite frankly i think sony's game library, while the biggest on paper, is the most boring and least appealing to me. 

I've stated before that my opinion on gaming during 6th gen was blah, but it was blah because i bought the wrong console, the PS2. Why did I buy the PS2? Peer pressure. Everyone in my school at the time went PS2 and it was the "cool kids console". But it didnt have a great library IMO, and xbox and game cube in retrospect appeal to me more. I guess people really wanted the DVD player and thought GTA was the edgy cool thing in middle school at the time, idk. Quite frankly, going back I wish I got gamecube. Their library was way better. And it was cheaper. But it sold like crap. Because of the dvd player thing? Idk. 

Either way, nintendo stopped competing and went in a huge change in direction after that. And that's when...I stopped caring about anything nintendo did. Ever. Their DS was the last console i bought at the time. It was underwhelming. Hyped up as a handheld N64 but then it was mostly shovelware and 2D games. The Wii did motion controls. Everything with nintendo became gimmicks and they stopped competing with other consoles.

Since then, they've run weak consoles a generation behind their competition, they relied on gimmicks like motion controls, but one thing I had to give them credit for? They were cheap and kinda set a low bar. Very accessible for children, casual gamers, etc. And they still had good games at the time. But yeah. PS3 and Xbox 360 just shifted toward the becoming more generic and like gaming PCs. And I just...bought a gaming PC after that. 

And quite frankly, i had no reason to ever touch $ony or micro$oft's crap. But nintendo? THey still offered something different on paper, and given they never released their stuff on PC, i was always tempted to get their consoles. And sometimes i got stuff second hand from friends getting rid of old consoles and stuff. Playstation and xbox were just competing directly with PC, I was a PC gamer, and the nintendo was off doing its own thing.

4) Nintendo price increases impact the industry as a whole

The 2020s are an era of greedflation. Prices are going up in general, and for the most part, it's not even for any legit reason. It's corporate greed. Yeah, we had some supply chain issues after COVID, but those are quickly resolved and corporations just decide to raise prices for no reason, just because they can. And they get higher profit margins as a result. 

When I see nintendo upping their prices, i see a domino effect in the rest of the industry. If nintendo charges $450, i can see sony making $700-800 their new bar for consoles. I mean, and let's not forget PC. We got our own problem with nvidia raising the prices of GPUs by insane amounts. Other PC parts are relatively affordable, but GPU prices have been INSANE. And these other console manufacturers, not nintendo, often push limits, making these consoles relatively affordable and selling them at a loss to bring in consumers and then making it up later through the predatory walled garden crap. PC is more expensive up front with hardware, but cheaper long term due to not putting up with the downsides of being locked into a console's ecosystem. 

But thats the thing. If nintendo charges $450 for last gen PS4/Xbox one era hardware, what are microsoft and sony gonna charge? Again, microsoft is already angling for $700. Oh, and they bumped game prices too to $80 right after nintendo did, what a coincidence!

The fact is, the first one to do this stuff was gonna get flak for it. Because then the others will say "we can do it too", and honestly, it is gonna impact me in the PC gaming market as well through higher game prices and and hardware costs. Since consoles are PCs, I need a PC on par with a console to play games at a similar level. It's still hard to match a PS5/Xbox series X for the money, even 5 years later, which is INSANE. Again, it's mainly GPUs. The consoles use an RX 6700 and a RX 7700 XT in their respective iterations of consoles (normal and pro versions). My 6650 XT comes close to the base model, but most cheaper GPUs only have 8 GB VRAM. The 7700 XT has 12, but that's matched by...the 5060...which has 8 GB. And the 9060 XT, which has 16 but only at $350. Again, we're being squeezed too in the PC market by ngreedia and AMD. 

Nintendo's pricing strategy is shaking up the market, and not in a good way here. If they sell $450 for some last gen console, it raises the bar and the expectations for sony and microsoft (tired of using the $ but i made my point), and they're gonna make even more expensive consoles too while passing on costs to the consumer. Everything is getting more expensive and as I've discussed previously, it's pricing more price sensitive people out of the market or at least making them buy less than they used to. 

5) I just can't get over how predatory nintendo has become

The switch 2's business model feels dystopian. $450 for a console, $80 for games, $10 just for the introduction, aggressive anti piracy measures bricking peoples' consoles just for playing used games that someone else copied, the whole key card thing, paying for online, paying for chat, it's weird. Like, they got you paying for everything and then bricking the entire consoles of people who didnt do anything wrong in the name of anti piracy. It's dystopian. Maybe its the fact that online is built into this stuff, something that was never a thing in previous eras, but i remember the old days. I remember the days before DLC, and season passes, and live service, and online accounts that you gotta pay for. And I just look at what nintendo people put up with and I'm like youre insane. I used to buy most of my games used back in the day. Now I got steam sales and im aware online has changed things, but at least on PC, its very good for the consumer as gaming is relatively cheap on PC. Whatever extra costs you pay for hardware you tend to make up on not paying for online or game sales or cheaper peripherals.

Heck, what inspired this post was me criticizing nintendo selling like $95 for a controller. The nintendrones brigading the anti nintendo sub I'm on by pointing out how some controllers for playstation and xbox are $150. but again, i dont care. Wanna know what controller I use on PC? The logitech F310, aka, the titanic submarine disaster special. I spent $13 on it. If I wanted an xbox type controller of higher quality, I could spend up to $60 for one. I didnt do that because even that's insane.

I game on like $25 keyboards and $45 mice. The mouse I spend a lot on because you need a good and reliable mouse for precision. Cheap mice have poor precision and break often. BUt yeah, I wouldnt pay $95 for a controller. Much less one that is known to get stick drift. You realize I pay $13 for my controllers because yeah, they might be cheap and break, but if they do, I can just buy a new one for $13? For $95, the thing better be nigh indestructible. But it's not. And that's the real cost you get by going console.

6) Nintendo's whole business model just seems antiquated to me

In a sense, Nintendo is the last true console manufacturer. They're the last one that does something different. If I wanna get a playstation or xbox game these days, I get it on PC. I play on my roughly console equivalent PC, and I get the same experience as a console gamer. I get crossplay in multiplayer with console gamers. I get similar graphics, similar frame rates, it's the same experience. And on PC, I get xbox exclusives AND PS exclusives recently. Honestly, theres talk microsoft might be pulling a sega and getting out of the console business and focusing on game pass. Their new "rog ally x" handheld seems to imply this too. I mean, the rog ally is a handheld PC. Their new handheld xbox is...a handheld PC? Like it's just a PC called an xbox. That's the direction microsoft is going. 

In all fairness, xbox started as a consolized PC. Like the whole thing was to bring PC gaming to consoles. In a sense, because PC gaming is better, xbox is just turning into PC. Sony, I could see going the same way over time. Because again, these consoles...are just....PCs. 

Nintendo, they're the ones who wont play ball. They refuse to put their games on PC. No, you need to buy a special box just to play their games. And then they charge more for games, and never discount stuff much any more, and yeah, they just do their own thing. And...uh...it's not 2005 any more. As a PC gamer, nintendo's biggest turnoff for me is this walled garden stuff. Exclusivity is a thing of the past for the rest of the industry. Doing something different is a thing of the past. We dont do things like this any more. 

And honestly? Just to enjoy nintendo products, you need their console, their eco system, etc., and it just feels....no to me.

Like, since getting out of consoles 15 years ago, I've been PC/android with my setup. My main device is a PC capable of gaming, and my secondary device is a tablet. Now I got a razer edge which came with a kishi controller so I can use that as a handheld. And I like things far better that way. Heck, I'd even like a steam deck or a rog ally if it were cheaper and I could get over the downsides of the darned things. Which brings me to my last point.

7) The switch 2 is trying to compete directly with handheld gaming PCs

For as much as nintendo tends to do their own thing, they still somewhat wrapped back around to this console/handheld hybrid model, with the switch 2 being more an underpowered console and an ovespecced handheld. It's too weak to compete directly with the PS5 and the Xbox series X, but it's too strong to compete with say, the android handheld space. THe first switch WAS an android handheld. It was an nvidia shield tablet with extra RAM. THis new switch 2...it's more competing with the steam deck and rog ally. And I see those products as niche. They're very expensive for a handheld, very underpowered compared to actual gaming PCs or laptops, the battery life is awful. Keep in mind nintendo's big thing is normally being cheap and not as good, but very accessible. The game gear was superior to the game boy in specs, but the high cost, large size, and how power usage made it unappealing compared to the smaller, cheaper, and more efficient game boy.

The switch is the successor of both the game boy and previous nintendo consoles. Its underspeccedness becomes an advantage in a way. Because it allows them to make their console ALSO a handheld, thus merging the two markets into one unified platform. With switch 1 they had a decent balance. They took the strongest gaming tablet the market had to offer at the time at a reasonable price point, and turned it into a console. THis time around, they went more in the direction of PC handhelds, with the steam deck being directly compared to the switch 2. And to me, it's just the worst of all worlds. It seems very....not nintendo for me. It's one of the reasons the thing costs so much, and the flaws are obvious. The thing is huge. It has poor battery life. Sure it can run cyberpunk, but it does so at 30-40 FPS on like minimum settings. It's just in that awkward "game gear" zone of handhelds that I generally would try to avoid. 

Conclusion

While I have a lot of gripes against nintendo, keep in mind my perspective isn't just mindlessly anti nintendo. I've gotten out of consoles and console fanboyism like 15 years ago, and I'm a PC gamer. Quite frankly, I dont like gaming consoles. I'd rather game on an open platform like PC or android or whatever tf the steam deck does, than be locked into some walled garden where I gotta pay for their services (where PC equivalents are free), buy their stuff on their terms, pay insane amounts for peripherals, etc.

I dont even dislike nintendo in some ways. I think they have strong IPs and lots of decent games. If anything Id like to play their games on non nintendo platforms. Imagine buying mario kart world on steam. That would be amazing (although not for $80). But thats the thing. Their costs, their business model, I dont like the way the company operates. And dont think I just give sony and microsoft a pass. The difference is I largely just laugh in their face when they try to do predatory stuff and then buy their games on PC instead, ON SALE, when I wanna play them. 

The thing is, if I wanna play sony and microsoft games, I can. Without paying for online services (since its free on PC). Or spending $95 or $150 for controllers. And also, steam sales. WHile I have to admit sales are lackluster as these guys are taking longer to put games on sale and charging more for them, that's becoming an industry wide problem.

But what singles out nintendo for me is the fact that they do the walled garden stuff, they've historically been the cheaper option but their greed is opening pandora's box in the industry as a whole, and quite frankly, because the switch 2 is new. I aint actually giving the other guys a pass. I praise good deals when I see them and I bash bad deals. And sadly, in the 2020s, gaming as a whole has been going in a direction of more bad deals than good ones. If anything, me dogpiling on nintendo is them dogpiling on the industry in bringing it down even further than it's already gone.

Keep in mind, I'm not a fan of the modern industry at all. I'm the "peak gaming" guy and how we're getting to a point where costs are going up, quality is doing down, and I'm quite frankly in favor of the gaming market just crashing 1983 style at this point, so that it can correct itself, and we get a new normal that hopefully sucks less than this one. The current business model is going in an unsustainable direction, and without course correction, the problems in the industry are just gonna get worse, and not better. 

If anything, nintendo's switch 2 is another nail in the coffin as far as im concerned, and then succeeding bodes poorly for the market as a whole, from a consumer point of view at least.