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While Plato wrote over 2,000 years ago, his argument has been appropriated by those who oppose video games; however, it also has a second component. In the second article “Video Games and the Wars of the Future,” Oyang Teng, writing for LaRouche’s PAC, claims that “Today’s trigger-happy gamer has the choice of hundreds of similar titles plying virtual violence as entertainment — and as training.” Comparing these two claims from both articles, it’s clear that LaRouche’s argument against video games actually makes two separate but related points. First, they condition players to become killers, and second, that video games provide practical training in how to use weapons.
These are serious charges, even though we have heard them before. And we have to concede to LaRouche that, if he is right, then a whole generation of Americans are being programmed to become proficient and brutal suicide shooters. Video games are big business. The Associated Press reported on December 19, 2007 that NPD reported a 52 percent jump in video game sales for the year. By November, over $2 billion was spent on games and accessories even as the economy began to slow down. By the time the Christmas holiday season was over, the ESA reported that a whopping $18.85 billion dollars was spent in 2007 on computers and video games.
Almost every home in America has a PC that’s capable of playing PC games, and many homes have consoles whose sole purpose is to act as a platform for game playing. Video games have come a long way from the stereotype of nerdy guys in their mother’s basement interacting with EGA monitors because no one liked them. Now, thanks to consoles such as the Wii, the Associated Press reported on January 24 that both the elderly and women are contributing to the economic growth of video games. In fact, so much so that Nintendo had to revise its earnings projections for the Wii upwards due to exceptionally strong sales.
I could continue to bore you, my fellow gamers, with statistics and economic forecasts, but the point is easily made. Video games, like it or not, have a long reach in American culture. Thus, if there’s something potentially damaging about them, especially in the way LaRouche and his writers claim, then there might be a problem. Even if the arguments seem ludicrous, they have to be answered. After all, the type of psychological damage described, including claims that “the obvious effects of such games, proves clearly that the satanic effect is the intent. What is the end of game-playing today? To shoot yourself? To shoot your friend? Or, to shoot your classmates, and then, yourself? Is that why you play?” makes video games appear to be worse than heroin or meth addiction and puts video games on par with the kind of psychological conditioning seen in the original The Manchurian Candidate.
Alright, so what’s the evidence cited in favor of video games as the harbinger of doom in American culture? First let us take up the arguments that conclude that video games psychologically condition gamers to become cold blooded suicide killers. In terms of psychological conditioning, Walsh cites several school shootings to demonstrate the harmful cause. Specifically, his article cites an incident in Finland perpetrated by Pekka-Eric Auvinen; Seung Hui Cho of the infamous Virginia Tech massacre; Robert Steinhauser, who murdered his classmates in Erfurt, Germany; Michael Carneal of Kentucky; and Clive Thompson, who hasn’t killed anyone or committed any crimes worthy of a news article, but who has written for Wired magazine and contributed columns to the Wall Street Journal. Conspicuously absent from the article is a lengthy treatment of Columbine; however, in a footnote at the bottom of the page, Walsh claims that “This author chose not to provide a full case study for Columbine, since the fact that Doom was a key cause of that atrocity is well known, although still denied. Only an idiot, or a liar, would attribute the cause of any of these school atrocities to, ‘the kids were picked on at school.’”
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Auvine may have asserted that video games, music and movieshad no influence on him.
Are you going to believe this psychotic mass murderer?
Idiot
The anti-video game crusade, along with items against social networking sites and wikipedia and google, is a matter of controlling the cult members. Since last April (due to events on April 11), a flood of internal items have fallen onto the Internet due to internal strife as older members have fled the cult. This crusade sort of culminated with an edict which ordered the members of the “Larouche Youth Movement” off the Internet.
That is why Larouche hates your hobby.
A well written, unbiased article. Although I wonder why almost uniquely, americans seek to displace the actions of the few to some enviromental factor that could be controled and therefore elimintated, instead, as is more likely to a culmination of social and physcological causes, brought about more by a flaw in the society than a computer game or a film. Hitler didn’t play computer games he was dissolusioned with a less than perfect society, but he did paint perhaps that was the reason he was so racist.
I appologise for the bad grammer and possibly spelling.
The cult will hijack any tragedy and “Laroucheify” it by adding one of a virtual infinite universe of delusions spinning in the cult master’s brains. The cult is desperately trying to replenish Larouche’s precious body fluids by recruiting confused college students to drop out of school and work around the clock, 7 days a week for this madman. Months of goping through lack of sleep. nutrition and being in the Hostile Fantasy World of Larouche will creat a Nick Walsh.
If you waish to have some eye opening material, just google a convicted felon named Don Phau who was at the Va hearings. This multi decade Larouche bootlcker spent aq few years in the big house for his role in the theft of nearly 30 million dollars from elderly supports of Larouche when he was running for the WHite House ijn the 1980s. Don Pahua has lost his family, wife and every bit of dignity in worshipping Larouche. WHen they finally have a funeral for the very old Laoruche. I expect Don to try tom jump into the grave to still be with him.
If it is not video games it is the internet, if it is not that it was rock music. Google Don Phau and rock music to read an insane haze of delusions about the Beatles. This is a sick, sick bunch of llsers who Laoruche breathes life into by elevating them into his Bizarro world of hate and delusions.
For more info you can check out
kenkronberg.com
justiceforjeremiah.com
lyndonlarouchewatch.org
laroucheplanet.info They even have a Laoruche video game set up.
To read a long running documentary about the cult, go to factnet.org and do a search under
Laoruche or find it in “social organisations.
There are also tons of other articles one can find. These Larouche zombies are usually good for a few laughs, but the cult has caused pain, abuse, monetary losses and now has the death of a several people in its portfolio of lunacy
Really, it all boils down to chance. Someone should figure out:
-How often terror-hobbyists are actually into violent games.
-How often gamers become terrorists as opposed to relatively non-violent people.
-How often these terrorists have other factors that vastly outweigh game choice.
-How often taking away violent games from pre-terrorists curbs their appetite to ruin everyone’s life and die.
and
-How often Americans let government take away their trivial freedoms.
I dont claim to be a pych expert but I can realize that games and distractions as a whole can VENT anger and frustration. I think that keeping the YOUTH contained until their mental maturity and INTELLIGENCE, reaches their ability to control their own DESTRUCTIVE IMPULSES, does the world a great service. I am a player and wonder what ballances me more, my personal beliefs in GOD or my ability to use a computer for social development and anger managment. It is my understanding that the youth could be doing far more destructive things. I have learned to see “BOTH SIDES” of the world through the eyes of SCI-FI. I learned, nothing is as it seems. Aliens can be friend and foe. Hasty and rash decisions have dire consequences. Openess leads to discussion and knowledge. Cults tend to control knowledge and people therefore stiffling information. Anything that is not OPEN for discussion is probably very BAD for everyone. Warmongers should sit down with every WAR movie and personalize themselves in the lowest positions. Being forced to make bad things happen on behalf of someone else. EVIL is about personal greed,control, and fear. A tiny bit of it makes us productive and aware. Too much makes us EVIL. Being able to play violent games and press “RESET” after your friends have died is very comforting. To watch War movies and see how things can and do get without the “RESET” switch is a very powerfull lesson.
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