White Wolf Games has a new game out – “Ghetto!”
The idea is, you role-play a Nazi in the Warsaw ghetto of 1942. Your goal is to slap down the Jews, or “Kikes,” and pick out the agitators and leaders to be shipped to the Treblinka mass-murder camp. What fun! You also earn points by picking out the pretty Jewesses to force them to be your whores to survive, and then beating the hell out of them if they don’t cooperate. It’s really cool!
Oh, and remember: if you like being politically correct & never laughing, don’t buy this game. Remember, just saying “this isn’t for you if you’re PC” automatically makes all criticisms of racism and woman-hating moot. We don’t have to think about the moral implications of our actions and publications at all; we just have to say that anyone who criticizes us lacks humor.
(Thanks to “Alas” reader Karpad for the pointer.)
UPDATE: I’d better make it clear – this post is a parody. To see what it’s a parody of, you have to follow the link.
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Absolutely disgusting.
The company seems pretty clueless, too.
Please, please, please tell me that White Wolf is not a legit company, that its some bizarre neo-Nazi front company.
Horrifying. Absolutely horrifying. This world just seems bent sometimes on sinking as low as it can possibly get.
I don’t think there is such a game as Ghetto; at least I hope not. Ampersand was, I believe, making a analogy between a game that he described and the actual game that was developed called Pimp., And the inclusion of a link to a site that helps prostitues doesn’t make it better.
I do think there is a difference though Amp. Nazi’s were trying to eliminate Jews; the sex industry uses and abuses women and girls (some of the girls are quite young) and sometimes young men. It isn’t like being sent to the gas chamber; a real pimp may not care two hoots about the prostitue but generally he isn’t trying to get rid of as many as he can.
It is a sick, sick game in any case though.
But (criticism here) I think your case would have been as well served with either a different analogy or
Kevin, not only is White Wolf a real company, it’s one of the biggest and most popular role-playing companies, if not the biggest.
Rachel Ann, I agree that the situations of prostitutes and Jews in the warsaw ghetto are not exactly analogous – but I think the differences are obvious enough so that I didn’t need to point them out for my readers to be aware of them.
The analogy is that, in either case, just saying “don’t play it if you’re PC” doesn’t mitigate the bigotry of the game’s concept. Somehow that’s obvious when we’re talking about Jews, not so obvious when we’re talking about poor black women.
Good lord.
I’m am – *was* – a big fan of Mage: the Ascension and Werewolf: the Apocalyps, but I’m sure as hell not buying any more White Wolf products untill this “Pimp: the Backhanding” shit is pulled from their product list.
I have a friend who worked at the company until recently; I hope he wasn’t a part of making this … This is just really sick and *odd* because all of the people from WW I’ve met (which is to say, 3) have seemed like nice, reasonable people. I can’t see any of them producing this. Does anyone know when this was put out?
– alkahest
“I don’t think there is such a game as Ghetto; at least I hope not. Ampersand was, I believe, making a analogy between a game that he described and the actual game that was developed called Pimp., And the inclusion of a link to a site that helps prostitues doesn’t make it better.”
Ahhh. I didn’t click through. Amp’s right, though, the analogy holds in the limited space he was discussing it — i.e. non-death camp related activities; or, if you prefer, the common activities of abuse and oppression.
“Kevin, not only is White Wolf a real company, it’s one of the biggest and most popular role-playing companies, if not the biggest.”
That’s really depressing.
The analogy was fine. But there is a game called Junta that I have enjoyed in the past that has a similar (though not identical) theme of oppression and violence involved.
I dunno. They have every right to put out offensive crap & to tell you not to read on if it offends. After all, we do have a friend who has created the very offensive to some Kill Puppies for Satan. Go look at Lumpley’s page for it.
And we, rather than saying, “Oh, how awful!” have the option of letting as many people as we can know what the company puts out as funny. If you get enough people to let them know that we will not buy anything of theirs until they stop publishing that which offends, they’ll stop publishing it. I’ll be sending them a note.
From the “Extras” page:
“Please note: Arthaus Games does not condone or support the illegal sex trade industry. Pimp is a fictional game about the humorous stereotypes created by television and film and is in no way representational of the true horrors of the sex trade. If you would like more information on organizations focused on Women’s Rights and support groups, please visit : http://www.amnestyusa.org/women/ or any of the many organizations providing help for women around the world.”
They “don’t support the illegal sex trade industry.” Great. Maybe they’d like to put all of this on the *front* page, instead of hidden away under Extras? Extras! As if a game about beating prostitutes has nothing to do with the abuse of women (and some men) and this disclaimer is only an nice little afterthought.
I’m even angrier now, especially since reading the forums …
What the hell is wrong with people? This is the 2nd time in the past few months that some one has seen fit to joke about violence against women, and has hardly been called out for it (the last such time is recounted on my blog).
I understand the irony that WW is trying to display here, but somethings are simply beyond joking about. (I also fear that many consumer *don’t* understand the atempted irony and humor, and accept and find humorous the game at face value.)
It’s a stupid card game that won’t get even a fraction of the sales of GTA. It’s offensive, but it’s not something that deserves to be compared to this: http://www.resistance.com/ethniccleansing/catalog.htm
(Irony IS dead btw)
White Wolf once produced a book called Charnel House of Europe – The Shoah, which was basically an examination of the history of the various concentration camps, work camps and ghettos, with a bit of stuff for their role playing game about ghosts stuck on the end to justify them actually publishing it.
It made me really start researching the holocaust (which was sort of skipped over heavily in school) and the socio/political conditions that led up to it.
This card game (like pokemon, but somehow stupider) is a bad joke, it doesn’t need to have attention paid to it, really.
Though you can ignore me if you like, I had a better post, but the anti-spam system was too complex for me(yes, i added up wrong, pelt me with tomatoes and rotting vegetables)
Well, this game has made me decide not to renew my membership in the Camarilla (or whatever they are going to call in the new chronicle).
I sent WW an email letting them know why – that their new product line was distasteful and that because of it I would no longer be willing to purchase their products.
I got back an form email.
I don’t know whether to be delighted that they are receiving enough email on the matter that they need a form letter, or to be upset that writing them letters isn’t going to make them wake up.
Thank you for bringing this to my attention, I don’t normally look at anything but their rp books.
We don’t have to precisely rank evil in order to oppose it. If you don’t want to compare WW’s card game with that hateful video game, then don’t compare them. Condemn them both, instead.
I don’t think that this is no big deal. (And if you have me on your side for an anti-racist/anti-sexist cause, you can be sure that your side has some serious justice action going on.) I think it very likely that WW is attempting to tap into the submerged racism of the politically correct – the fact that a lot of “liberal” gamers, in their heart of hearts, really do have contempt for black people.
And I think tapping into that vein for profit is contemptible.
White wolf is the second biggest table top RPG publisher, which is like being…err, the point is that it’s not a big accolade overall.
and the consumers are sad rpg players, so it can (at worst) stunt the heterosexual player’s social skills a bit more than they already are.
I’m a bit bewildered as to why – other than pure partianship – you single out liberal gamers. Are you seriously suggesting that there are no politically conservative gamers? Or that liberals have a monopoly on racism?
Oh gosh, no, I didn’t mean it like that. But I sure see why you read it like that!
Speaking very broadly, those conservatives who are racists are generally outright racists, whereas those liberals who are racists are generally closeted racists.
To put it another way: assume a population of people about whom the only thing we know is whether they consider themselves conservative or liberal. We have two products to sell: Confederate flags, and ho-slapping pimp games. If I was the marketing guy, I would aim the Confederate flags at the conservatives, because the racists among them would fly the flag. I would aim the pimp games at the liberals, because the racists among them would play it and feel delightfully wicked. Liberal racists wouldn’t fly the flag because their friends would condemn them; conservative racists wouldn’t play the game because an abstract game whose “joke” is how much you dislike black people would seem pointless. (“Let’s just go beat up some black people, Cletus.”)
It’s the marketing I was speculating about, not the prevalence of racism in liberals, a quantity with which I am unfamiliar.
Okay, Rob; thanks for explaining that.
I don’t think I totally agree with you; I think that many racist conservatives feel the need to hide their racism (ones who mostly aren’t named stereotypical names like “Cletus”). One of the victories of the anti-racist movement in the USA is that it has become socially unacceptable for most Americans to be openly racist, although of course there are exceptions.
Speaking very broadly, those conservatives who are racists are generally outright racists, whereas those liberals who are racists are generally closeted racists.
Really? I don’t think I know any conservatives who would cop to being a racist. I know plenty of people who fly Confederate flags, and none of them think they’re racist, either. I can see how a self-serving conservative would like to think that conservative racists are overt and liberal ones closeted: since almost no one in America will admit to being racist, that allows you to believe that there are a lot more liberal racists than conservative ones. But in my experience, that argument has no basis in reality.
If I recall correctly, there was a game based on the same stereotypes, called Ghettopoly, that caused some controversy and interracial tension, since the creator was an Asian American (I think of Taiwanese descent, but I’d have to check that).
No provocation intended, but I remember reading a relevant post by Mac Diva at that time.
Robert wrote:
To put it another way: assume a population of people about whom the only thing we know is whether they consider themselves conservative or liberal. We have two products to sell: Confederate flags, and ho-slapping pimp games. If I was the marketing guy, I would aim the Confederate flags at the conservatives, because the racists among them would fly the flag. I would aim the pimp games at the liberals, because the racists among them would play it and feel delightfully wicked. Liberal racists wouldn’t fly the flag because their friends would condemn them; conservative racists wouldn’t play the game because an abstract game whose “joke”? is how much you dislike black people would seem pointless.
The only people I can picture finding this funny are conservatives. I don’t mean to say that most conservatives would find this funny – most conservatives I know are decent people who would find this as disgusting as I, a liberal, do – but the only people I know who would laugh at this are conservative racists. They are not dumb; most of these said people are fairly intelligent and aware, if greviously wrong in their beliefs. One of the most intelligent- and aware-seeming people I know is an honest-to-God, Mein Kampf-quoting neo-Nazi. I think he would get the “joke” and joke back at – “those dumb game-makers; they think hating n-ggers is a joke – they’re too brain-washed to see that it’s the foundation of White society”. I do know some liberals that could be thought of as rascist, but I think left-wing rascism is a lot more subtle that right-wing rascism, and that left-wing rascists would at least *act* appaled at this.
I wrote:
I do know some liberals that could be thought of as rascist, but I think left-wing rascism is a lot more subtle that right-wing rascism, and that left-wing rascists would at least *act* appaled at this.
Check that – it should have written that I think left-wing rascism is a lot more subtle than the overt Good-Ole-Southern-Boy type of right-wing rascism – there’s a lot of non-overt racism on the right, too.
Alkahest, do any of your liberal friends laugh at South Park?
I know I do (or did, haven’t watched it much lately), and my liberal friends back west were nuts for it.
A large part of that appeal was the subversion of and mockery towards the earnest liberal racial worldview. I think there’s a lot of hostility buried down there in a lot of people.
But I could, of course, be wrong. Anyway, I certainly didn’t intend to imply that most, or many, liberals were racists. Sorry ’bout that.
In a way that ought to be analyzed, webcartoonist Randall K. Milholland (of Something Positive fame) minimizes the offense without mentionning racism at all:
Robert wrote:
Alkahest, do any of your liberal friends laugh at South Park?
No. They don’t. Grant it, I live in the Deep South, in an 80% registered Republican county, and I am quite introverted, so I really don’t know more that a couple dozen liberals *at all* and only a few of those do I know well – but all of those that I know well enough to talk about the issue of “ironicaly” racist, sexist, etc. media (like South Park or the Man Show) are disgusted by it, regardless of it’s intended humor and irony.
I love South Park. The Man Show sucks big time, however.
I too love South Park. I also liked The Man Show when it was Adam Carolla and Jimmy Kimmel, it was an exercise in self-parody in those days. And I’m pretty damn arch-liberal here. For the record, I also loved Team America.
Anyway, Phil, I don’t have a problem with the Ethnic Cleansing game because it’s made by an overtly racist company that markets solely to overtly racist assholes. I checked the forums, and the first thing I noticed was someone choosing a Nazi flag as his identifying icon. The company markets itself as the white resistance or some ridiculous bullshit like that, and clearly is entirely contained in the lunatic fringe.
WW on the other hand is marketed for the more general population. And the whole “don’t play if your too PC” is offensively demeaning, as if any offense you find is your problem.
The worst part is that White Wolf seems to be out of ideas: this game is remarkably similar to a free game published in the UK humor/gaming magazine “Critical Miss”
http://www.criticalmiss.com/issue5/pimp2.html
Only it was actually kind of funny when they did it.
What Raznor said about the differences between an overtly ideological group and a gaming company.
Back in the years, The Intelligence Report had a brief announcing the release of Ethnic Cleansing – The Game. The National Alliance was fishing for youth, just like that other group they mention:
Sorry, the hyperlink to Phelps’s site seems to have been automatically enabled, although it wasn’t in the original article.
The Ghettopoly site still exists. I wonder how anyone could not find those graphics obviously racist (there’s a whole tradition there), even after reading David Chang’s Message To The Haters. That guy seems to believe he’s engaged in some kind of inter-minorities racial war. Sad.
And the whole “don’t play if your too PC”? is offensively demeaning, as if any offense you find is your problem.
The information about the game was posted on a LiveJournal feminism community I’m in, and each person who emailed the company to complain apparently got a letter from the same guy, “Conrad,” who basically said that if the writer was so concerned, they ought to donate money to [list anti-violence-against-women charity here, because of course he knows what causes we all champion — or don’t — in the real world], and figure out the difference between fantasy and reality. Some of his replies were ruder, and some posters wondered why the things he said weren’t grounds for dismissal. Some posters forwarded the emails to the director of marketing, who was more polite but apparently didn’t give an indication that they were withdrawing the game. They do indeed seem to think that telling people over and over again that it’s a parody negates any problems people might have with it.
Also, I mentioned at that site when the post was first made that people at the company would probably be more likely to respond to allegations of racial stereotypes than they would be to offensive portrayals of women. When feminists get pissed off, it’s funny and mockable, you know, and you can’t take it seriously. Those crazy man-hating lesbians!
From one of the emails White Wolf sent me in response to my complaint, they claimed that this game is supposed to be a critique of the current popularity of “pimps” and criminal activity in pop culture. There is, however, a little problem with that theory: everyone already knows prostitution and drug dealing are illegal, and this game is obviously aimed at simply cashing in on that popularity.
And wow, yet another suggestion that all blacks and Latinos are petty criminals who should be sent to prison. Gosh, that’s original.
Interesting Jimmy you should mention Fred Phelps, as earlier in the evening I was having a conversation with a friend exactly about the difference between Resistance (the Neo-Nazi company that released Ethnic Cleansing) and Phelps. Even in these similar situations, I find Phelps to be more worthy of attention than Resistance, because simply stated his homophobia is closer to mainstream than the fringe racism. Any sane person cringes at the words “Ethnic Cleansing” but there are quite a number of people who do buy into the whole “keep fags away from our kids” type message.
Sorry if this is slightly incoherent. Damn it, I really should be getting some sleep.
I’m slightly surprised no-one has mentioned pretentiously offensive teen rebellion yet. I’m sure this game is aimed in part at people who think that breaking taboos is worthwhile in and of itself, because it shows their resistance to conformity. There are people who could play the game and enjoy it just for its poor taste. (Think ‘poo’ jokes, only with older children and more offensive)
Comment by Phil
White wolf is the second biggest table top RPG publisher, which is like being…err, the point is that it’s not a big accolade overall.
and the consumers are sad rpg players, so it can (at worst) stunt the heterosexual player’s social skills a bit more than they already are.
Stereotyping somewhat? Unless you meant people who are sad because of what I wrote at the top of this post, and are gamers?
Actually, although gaming is a minority market, being the second biggest publisher still makes you quite large. White Wolf is an international company and quite obviously not run out of someone’s basement.
PS, Anne “Learn the difference between fantasy and reality” is the standard message of their disclaimers, although generally in a context like “You’re not a vampire, even if you play this game”.
This was the (surprisingly to me) reaction I got from my peers when I posted this on another board; I did it the same way as here, with the analogy first, interested to see if anyone picked up on it; I was shocked when no one thought the game described by the analogy was wrong. “It’s just a laugh isn’t it”.
South Park, at least officially, prides itself upon being an “equal opportunity offender” of all: Yuppies as well as rednecks, etc. Even if you don’t find it funny, that’s one immediate diffence between it and this game. :/
Vis-a-Vis Anne’s comment, one of the things that bugs me about the imagery of this game is that it reminds me of a sexist site bean once linked to in a discussion of racism on another board: It was supposedly a “Black liberation” site, but it featured caricatures of Black women very much like the caricatures in this game. The authors of the site (who were at least officially) Black men, were using these caricatures to claim that feminism was corrupting Black women and making them money-grubbing, arrogant, and –of course– promiscuous. Blecch.
Ah. Yes. People not liking the game wouldn’t have anything to do with said game being utter drek, now would it?
all in all, I’m impressed with the overall reaction on this board. However, Sheelzebub hit my reaction more on the head. My personal reaction was, “damn it. You’re making a product designed to offend people to cover up the poor quality of the actual idea behind the product.” It always is nice to hear feedback from this community. Even Robert. I may always think he’s wrong, but that doesn’t mean his input isn’t appreciated.
It’s akin to the makers of video games with lousy quality trying to make up for the lack of design and innovation by adding gratuitous nudity. (BMX XXX, Outlaw Golf)
so, we can rest assured that, even if this product actually does see print, it’ll leave print pretty quickly, because it’s going to lack in design. Not much of a consolation prize, but it will have to do.
They have every right to put out offensive crap & to tell you not to read on if it offends.
Why does this get dragged out whenever somebody points out bigotry? Has ANYONE suggested that we get the government to raid White Wolf and seize all copies of the product? Their First Amendment right to print offensive crap is not in question.
I’m pretty appalled that White Wolf put this out. In the past I would have called some of their stuff pretentious, but not appalling. Looks like they decided to go for a particular market segment.
Robert, I must respectfully say that I don’t think conservatives are so openly racist. Having been a writer for a conservative campus paper, and a member of the Federalist Society in law school, I can tell you that there is plenty of bigotry papered over with rhetoric. cf. The Bell Curve. Liberals, in my experience, simply deny that they could be bigots because liberals aren’t bigots.
i’m really frustrated by the fact that on the white wolf boards, people are proclaiming the fact that approximately 1/3 of the pimps portrayed being white makes the game non-racist. or that the fact that they have a male “ho” (though i heard from someone who has seen the game that he is in drag, i don’t know for sure) makes it non-sexist. because it doesn’t. it’s not a pass. we know better.
This is disgusting. Is this the same White Wolf that put out Vampire the Masquerade? I liked that game, although I never had a chance to play it. I own a couple of the RPG books. I tried to sign up to play it at a SF convention but it started long after I became too tired to stay up late to play it. Plus, the players were long-time regulars who were too lame, insular, and snobbish for my taste.
I’m speechless a company as recognized as White Wolf (if it indeed the same company I’m thinking of) could put out bilge like this.
trish:
yes, it is the same White Wolf. and they recently did some weirdness with their flagship “World of Darkness” line. the much talked about impending apocalypse finally arrived, they released source books for it, then had a sort of reboot: rules overhauls, storyline and setting revamping, and so on.
you’d think they’d be way too wrapped up in releasing their new edition rules for Werewolf, Mage, and Mummy to have time to put something this stupid together.
now, addressing the idea that “left wing racism is less overt” or whatever else, I think the other thread, about the comments directed at Michelle Malkin, really should disprove that. and plenty of right wing racists do a perfectly good job of making sure no one catches them on it.
so can we please, PLEASE shut up, forever, in all contexts about “liberal” and “conservative” racism? there are racists in both sets, and there are non-racists in both. the preponderance of racists in one group or the other is a different matter, but I think for talking about “open” and “private” racism, those are the precise terms we should use, not “liberal” and “conservative.”
I think the difference is that racism, as an intersecting set with classism, is core to the founding principles of conservativism, but the leadership have to deny it, because it is no longer socially acceptable, even to many amongst their own followers or potential followers.
Thus you get the “code-speak” and waffling of the Bell Curve defenders, after the open “coming race-war” rhetoric of the 70s (I was raised a conservative, of a rather obscure sub-set/sect, so I grew up reading all the anti-Social Security, anti-contraception, pro-censorship editorializing of the mid-70s and 80s and 90s, which is taking so many now by surprise on the Left) has been phased out in favor of Huntingdon’s Unassimilated Hispanic Menaces [credit to blogger John Scalzi there, parent of one such menace] and “welfare queens” with the “black” tacit but understood among the target audience – but opaque to the nice, non-racist soccer mom’n’dad crowd (like my parents) who may even have campaigned against segregation back in the day, even as they get all teary about Reagan today, and never realized the contradiction.
Since it doesn’t *look* like Richard Butler or Tom Metzger’s bile, people don’t realize the overlap, until it gets pointed out what exactly wishing Strom Thurmond had won really meant, or what else the editorial board at VDARE stands for…
The anti-browning-of-White-Western-Civ, with strong anti-Moslem overtones, however, has not changed since I first read it in the National Catholic Register circa 1977…
It’s not just some “sad” gamers. This whole fascination with the “pimp” culture extends to boardrooms and college campuses, as well as high schools.
The “wonderful” thing about being a Black woman in America, is we’re often “invisible” to white people. So I hear jokes, ppl who’ve had Pimps and Hoes parties, “so-and-so is my bitch” when it comes to work-related anecdotes, etc.
And no matter what the players and defenders say, it’s not all in fun. They ARE clueless at the least and cowardly racists at most. And just like they don’t have to defend their company/interests, I don’t have to defend my position.
For a lot of people, “I’m not a racist” means, “I’ve never been directly involved in a lynching.” Much like, “I’m not a sexist” means “I’ve never actually put a gun to a woman’s head and raped her.”
I seem to recall Malcolm X having some things to say on the subject of Northern liberals pointing out the racism in the South — and ignoring their own.
Bellatrys: “I think the difference is that racism, as an intersecting set with classism, is core to the founding principles of conservativism, but the leadership have to deny it, because it is no longer socially acceptable, even to many amongst their own followers or potential followers.”
Actually, you are EXACTLY wrong. The central principle of conservatism is equality regardless of race or class. That is why most conservatives are against affirmative action, soaking the rich, and other racially and classist motivated policies. It is liberals that divide people into little groups (racial, class, gender, etc) and your priority/blame/responsibility depends on the groups in which you are assigned. Poor white male go to this line; Poor black female go to that line; Rich Asian male go to the line over there: the antithesis of equality.
Lexi: “It’s not just some “sad”? gamers. This whole fascination with the “pimp”? culture extends to boardrooms and college campuses, as well as high schools.””
This stupid game seems to be a product of pop culture. Isn’t there several songs out that glorify the gangster lifestyle? I remember hearing one recently that went something like: “she said something else that I couldn’t believe so I reached back like a pimp and I slapped the ho” This was on a new rock station and I at first thought it was a parody, but now I am not so sure.
…sleeping under bridges, and stealing bread! And embezzlement, ridiculously complex tax policy, and insider trading!
The central principle of conservatism is equality regardless of race or class
You make the funny!
Larry, are you saying that the rediculously complicated tax policy is a negative aspect of being wealthy?
I don’t know many Wal-Mart employees who can afford $100/hr tax consultants, who can explain why driving an SUV to work, rather than taking the bus or a car, counts as a deduction for both a business expense and somehow as charity gifts.
There is no parity in tax law. The rich give a much smaller percentage of their income to the government than do the poor.
But that’s beside the point. The central principle of conservatism is, by definition, the protection of the status quo. If society recognises birth control and a woman’s life to choose, and maintains a system of social security and welfare to support those who need help, then to call anyone who attempts to dismantle such systems is a misnomer.
“The central principle of conservatism is, by definition, the protection of the status quo.”
No it isn’t.
I don’t want to hijack the thread with an off topic subject, so I will respond just this once in the thread (Unless the original poster doesn’t have a problem with it)
Karpad: “Larry, are you saying that the rediculously [SIC] complicated tax policy is a negative aspect of being wealthy?”
Absolutely. We as a country spend many billions of dollars every year complying with our ridiculously complicated tax policy. Being rich, in the eyes of the government (or liberals), doesn’t mean you have money to burn for teams of accountants and tax lawyers. Many small businesses are asset rich and cash poor: Ranches, farms, furniture stores….
My dad has a welding shop. He is the sole owner and operator of his company. On paper he has some wealth, but most of it is tied up in building, equipment, and materials. He is getting older and would like to hire someone fulltime to take some of the load off him. He can afford to pay someone’s salary, but he cannot afford the extra time/money/personnel to comply with federal and state tax laws. He cannot afford the extra costs involved with giving someone else a job. Tax policies are a huge hindrance to small business.
Karpad: “There is no parity in tax law. The rich give a much smaller percentage of their income to the government than do the poor.”
Not to be disrespectful, but you may want to do a little reading on this. The top 25% of all tax payers pay the vast majority of the total tax bill. The poor don’t pay income taxes. People that make $75,000 (not very wealthy in some areas of the country) and over pay the vast majority of taxes in this country.
http://www.taxfoundation.org/prtopincometable.html
http://www.allegromedia.com/sugi/taxes/ (Old info but well put together)
Larry,
Karpad wasn’t saying that the wealthy don’t pay the majority of all income taxes collected. He was saying that as a percentage of their income, the wealthy pay less than everybody else.
As an example, here are the numbers that I calculated for Oregon state income tax a few years ago:
Income Taxes in Oregon
While not exactly the right numbers for Federal Income Tax, it does follow the same pattern.
I have no problem with it; hijack away!
By the way, I’d add that neither one of those links you provided are relevant when discussing total tax burden, because they both ignore payroll taxes.
Jake’s objection is more important, though: Individual-level tax burden by typical members of a class is the point, not the total burden felt by a class as a whole.
UPDATE: On second look, the second link Larry provided does include payroll taxes; I got fooled because the link Larry provided defines “income taxes” to include payroll taxes, which is not the way 99% of people who write or study the US tax code use the phrase “income taxes.”
A book came out late last year proposing that the tax code was pretty much being used to slam everyone who made anything from poverty wages up to the low six figures. The guy who wrote it wasn’t exactly a wild-eyed radical, and got sympathetic coverage on both Air America and NPR, as well as our local station KBOO.
Damned if I can remember his name, or the book’s name. :o Anyone ?
Robert –
Yes, it is.
The senators who defended the republic, and resisted the rise of Caesar’s power were “conservatives.”
Similarly, a few centuries later, the militarists who resisted the rise of christianity, and were bent on protecting the divine status of the imperial line were “conservatives.”
In Late imperial China, people defending the empire were the conservatives, even though many of the reformer groups were much more militaristic and right wing.
There are conservatives in goverment, on both sides of the aisle. but the people setting and following the Bush administration agenda aren’t among them.
Karpad, OK, if you want to use the word that way, it’s valid. But it’s not very useful as a description of contemporary politics. If you say “conservative” in a US political context, you’re pretty much talking about people influenced (whether directly or indirectly) by Burke, and sometimes Hayek. A Burkean conservative is going to tend towards defense of the status quo – but its defense is not our primary priority. (“I must bear with infirmities until they fester into crimes.”) What we “conserve” is a certain core set of ideas – and that defense sometimes entails an all-out offensive against the status quo, as in the war against the welfare state, or in the Reagan effort to end, rather than mitigate or co-exist with, Soviet communism.
Bush isn’t strictly speaking a conservative, but he’s reasonably close to one. (He’s a lot closer to us than he is to anyone else.) I think that as a practical man, he’s selected his own philosophies, sometimes from different schools, rather than finding a single school that appeals and drawing mostly-exclusively from that school, which is what most of us ‘intellectual types’ tend to do, in my experience.
hence the term “misnomer.”
people, like you, and Bush, and whomever else, are abusing the term until it’s “people who think like me.”
Unless you’re arguing that liberals have no core set of ideals.
you can’t really say “no, they have different ones” since I’ve never seen anyone, “liberal” or “conservative” who will say life is bad, freedom I can take or leave, I think honesty, hard work, and responsibility are complete loads.
Americans have a pretty fixed set of social values that all decent people of any political affilation agree with. Some people claim it’s derived from Christianity, but I’d say the Enlightenment and Romantic Movements had more to do with them. But since everyone believes in “life, liberty and the persuit of happiness,” a “conservative” is someone who agrees with you, and a “liberal” is someone who doesn’t. an you can’t really get more specific, since there are tragically few “liberals” who oppose military spending or the death penalty on principle. it’s a bunch of people who believe the same ends are good, and bicker about the best way to achieve them. This leaves out the minority in either party who actively are just unpleasant. I refuse to believe that the majority of conservatives, even when advocating anti-gay, misogynist, or racist policies, actually think of themselves as “putting the queers, women, and darkies back in their place.” I believe people are basically good. …shades of Anne Frank…
and anyone who doesn’t admit that “liberal” is routinely used as an insult, and not an honest assessment of somone’s politics is fooling only themselves.
Aren’t you always complaining about people abusing appearantly positive terms until they turn into “people who agree with me” or is that someone else?
I think it’s someone else.
“People are basically good” is not one of the values on which there is consensus. I don’t think people are basically good, and neither do most conservatives.
Nor is it true that there is agreement on ends. There is some agreement, but it is neither as deep nor as broad as you are asserting. For example, “everybody” believes in the pursuit of happiness – but there is little agreement on what that means. Someone on the hard left has one view, probably involving economic security and the ability to improve one’s self at public expense. Someone on the hard right thinks it means being left alone to do what you want with your life. And so on, and so on.
Although labels are of limited use, they are of some use. Liberal and conservative do mean different things.
“People are basically good” is my own assertion, not a greater value of society. and I make that assertion because I HAVE to believe it, because otherwise, there’s no point in trying to appeal to basic human decency. if people aren’t basically good, there is no morality of any sort.
in short, Robert, my faith in the basic goodness of humanity is perhaps the only thing that prevents me from planning large, wholesale assassination plots to clean the government of anyone I feel is unjust.
so I feel that you, and Bush, et al, are basically good people, just horribly, horribly misguided and wrong. Because if I didn’t believe that, there is no moral roadblock to murder.
Hell, you see that reasoning even now coming out of certain individuals. America is free and good, and the terrorists hate us for it. they are evil people, and the evil doers must be punished. clearly, any sacrifices made to protect against and punish evil-doers are justified.
And I’ve never met anyone, ever, who thinks that “persuit of happiness” means getting to act out on that rediculous straw man of welfare queens, doing whatever they want and having babies, forcing the government to pay for it. It means being left the hell alone, so that, for example, if I feel like getting married to someone of the same gender, or working at my job without fear of harrassment for being jewish, or politcally unpopular, or any other minority, then it includes that.
it is exactly as I said. people agree on the ends. “Liberty is good.” but disagree on semantics “Which means we have to bomb the hell out of Iraq, and bring them freedom and cheeseburgers!” or “Which means you should leave me to my liberty of smoking pot, sex how I choose, and not peek your FBI noses into what books I borrow from the library.”
“if people aren’t basically good, there is no morality of any sort.”
Um, how’s that again?
If people are basically good, then we don’t need morality, or philosophy, or any of those things. We can just hang out and let our basic goodness flow like a river.
It is precisely because we are fallen creatures who tend to evil that we must cultivate moral and spiritual values. Naturally good creatures don’t need the decalogue or law codes or police.
We would need moral values even if we never ‘fell’, of course.
David Duke is a malignant narcissist.
He invents and then projects a false, fictitious, self for the world to fear, or to admire. He maintains a tenuous grasp on reality to start with and the trappings of power further exacerbate this. Real life authority and David Duke’s predilection to surround him with obsequious sycophants support David Duke’s grandiose self-delusions and fantasies of omnipotence and omniscience.
David Duke’s personality is so precariously balanced that he cannot tolerate even a hint of criticism and disagreement. Most narcissists are paranoid and suffer from ideas of reference (the delusion that they are being mocked or discussed when they are not). Thus, narcissists often regard themselves as “victims of persecution”.
Duke fosters and encourages a personality cult with all the hallmarks of an institutional religion: priesthood, rites, rituals, temples, worship, catechism, and mythology. The leader is this religion’s ascetic saint. He monastically denies himself earthly pleasures (or so he claims) in order to be able to dedicate himself fully to his calling.
Duke is a monstrously inverted Jesus, sacrificing his life and denying himself so that his people – or humanity at large – should benefit. By surpassing and suppressing his humanity, Duke became a distorted version of Nietzsche’s “superman”. But being a-human or super-human also means being a-sexual and a-moral.
In this restricted sense, narcissistic leaders are post-modernist and moral relativists. They project to the masses an androgynous figure and enhance it by engendering the adoration of nudity and all things “natural” – or by strongly repressing these feelings. But what they refer to, as “nature” is not natural at all.
Duke invariably proffers an aesthetic of decadence and evil carefully orchestrated and artificial – though it is not perceived this way by him or by his followers. Narcissistic leadership is about reproduced copies, not about originals. It is about the manipulation of symbols – not about veritable atavism or true conservatism.
In short: narcissistic leadership is about theatre, not about life. To enjoy the spectacle (and be subsumed by it), the leader demands the suspension of judgment, depersonalization, and de-realization. Catharsis is tantamount, in this narcissistic dramaturgy, to self-annulment.
Narcissism is nihilistic not only operationally, or ideologically. Its very language and narratives are nihilistic. Narcissism is conspicuous nihilism – and the cult’s leader serves as a role model, annihilating the Man, only to re-appear as a pre-ordained and irresistible force of nature.
Narcissistic leadership often poses as a rebellion against the “old ways” – against the hegemonic culture, the upper classes, the established religions, the superpowers, the corrupt order. Narcissistic movements are puerile, a reaction to narcissistic injuries inflicted upon David Duke like (and rather psychopathic) toddler nation-state, or group, or upon the leader.
Minorities or “others” – often arbitrarily selected – constitute a perfect, easily identifiable, embodiment of all that is “wrong”. They are accused of being old, they are eerily disembodied, they are cosmopolitan, they are part of the establishment, they are “decadent”, they are hated on religious and socio-economic grounds, or because of their race, sexual orientation, origin … They are different, they are narcissistic (feel and act as morally superior), they are everywhere, they are defenseless, they are credulous, they are adaptable (and thus can be co-opted to collaborate in their own destruction). They are the perfect hate figure. Narcissists thrive on hatred and pathological envy.
This is precisely the source of the fascination with Hitler, diagnosed by Erich Fromm – together with Stalin – as a malignant narcissist. He was an inverted human. His unconscious was his conscious. He acted out our most repressed drives, fantasies, and wishes. He provides us with a glimpse of the horrors that lie beneath the veneer, the barbarians at our personal gates, and what it was like before we invented civilization. Hitler forced us all through a time warp and many did not emerge. He was not the devil. He was one of us. He was what Arendt aptly called the banality of evil. Just an ordinary, mentally disturbed, failure, a member of a mentally disturbed and failing nation, who lived through disturbed and failing times. He was the perfect mirror, a channel, a voice, and the very depth of our souls.
Duke prefers the sparkle and glamour of well-orchestrated illusions to the tedium and method of real accomplishments. His reign is all smoke and mirrors, devoid of substances, consisting of mere appearances and mass delusions. In the aftermath of his regime – Duke having died, been deposed, or voted out of office – it all unravels. The tireless and constant prestidigitation ceases and the entire edifice crumbles. What looked like an economic miracle turns out to have been a fraud-laced bubble. Loosely held empires disintegrate. Laboriously assembled business conglomerates go to pieces. “Earth shattering” and “revolutionary” scientific discoveries and theories are discredited. Social experiments end in mayhem.
It is important to understand that the use of violence must be ego-syntonic. It must accord with the self-image of David Duke. It must abet and sustain his grandiose fantasies and feed his sense of entitlement. It must conform David Duke like narrative. Thus, David Duke who regards himself as the benefactor of the poor, a member of the common folk, the representative of the disenfranchised, the champion of the dispossessed against the corrupt elite – is highly unlikely to use violence at first. The pacific mask crumbles when David Duke has become convinced that the very people he purported to speak for, his constituency, his grassroots fans, and the prime sources of his narcissistic supply – have turned against him. At first, in a desperate effort to maintain the fiction underlying his chaotic personality, David Duke strives to explain away the sudden reversal of sentiment. “The people are being duped by (the media, big industry, the military, the elite, etc.)”, “they don’t really know what they are doing”, “following a rude awakening, they will revert to form”, etc. When these flimsy attempts to patch a tattered personal mythology fail, David Duke becomes injured. Narcissistic injury inevitably leads to narcissistic rage and to a terrifying display of unbridled aggression. The pent-up frustration and hurt translate into devaluation. That which was previously idealized – is now discarded with contempt and hatred. This primitive defense mechanism is called “splitting”. To David Duke, things and people are either entirely bad (evil) or entirely good. He projects onto others his own shortcomings and negative emotions, thus becoming a totally good object. Duke is likely to justify the butchering of his own people by claiming that they intended to kill him, undo the revolution, devastate the economy, or the country, etc. The “small people”, the “rank and file”, and the “loyal soldiers” of David Duke – his flock, his nation, and his employees – they pay the price. The disillusionment and disenchantment are agonizing. The process of reconstruction, of rising from the ashes, of overcoming the trauma of having been deceived, exploited and manipulated – is drawn-out. It is difficult to trust again, to have faith, to love, to be led, to collaborate. Feelings of shame and guilt engulf the erstwhile followers of David Duke. This is his sole legacy: a massive post-traumatic stress disorder.
I purchased this game this past weekend, and played it fervently at my regular weekend gaming session. There are 7 of us who game, and we had all been looking forward to the game’s release date. It should be noted that, of the 7 of us, 3 of us are women (myself included).
The fact that it was to be released on Valentine’s Day was endlessly funny to all of us.
The game clearly, and repeatedly makes fun of the genre it depicts. Its humor-ridden cards and rules pages left all of us in stitches. I’ve read multiple accounts of anger at the mere presence of the game on the market due to fears that it purports a “pimps are rich” lifestyle. In fact, the game depicts something quite the opposite.
It shows the violent effects of drug addiction (see the “Crack” card, and one or two of the “Ho” cards for examples). It also shows the value of a college education (and what the lack thereof can hinder) on one or two of the cards. While these things are pointed out with humor, they’re just as present as the aspects upon which you seem to hinge your anger.
It seems to me, rather than bending your frustration on removing the game from the marketplace, that you would welcome it as an outlet for folly and parody. If I am given the choice between my sons playing this game, seeing the irony and obvious downsides, and them being afraid to mention such obvious parodies, I’ll take the former with a light heart.
I lived in a neighborhood where I was friends with a few of our local prostitutes when I was 11-13 years old in a LARGE metropolitan city. They don’t want to be where they are. They wish they could live different lives. But all of them I spoke to knew it was THEIR choices that put them there. It wasn’t the choices their mama made, or their pimp made. They see the irony in their own lives, and most of them could (and would gladly) laugh about it on occasion. But for some reason it’s wrong that the rest of us see the same ironies and the same ironic humor?
No. Perhaps because we’ve been intimately involved with the scenario it’s easier for us to be objective about it, rather than angry about it.