Chatting with Bob
Jim Vassilakos (jimv@uia.net)
Being that we’re in the trailing days of a
presidential election over here, I’ve been
mulling things over more than usual. As I’m
sure everyone knows, the big issue is Bush’s
Iraq policy. Other A&E contributors,
particularly some of those who I respect
immensely, have already made their views
on this topic well known, and as I said last
month, I don’t like airing my political
thoughts because I don’t see them leading
anywhere constructive.
Nonetheless, I have this peculiar problem
in that I have to write in order to think; that
is to say, my thoughts are mushy, formless,
like warm oatmeal, utterly devoid of
cohesion and consistency, at least until I
finally muster the gumption to set them
down on paper. So here I am, writing, and
what I am going to write is going to be
embarrassing for me, and it may also be
terrifically offensive for you to read. Perhaps
it will be the most offensive crap that you
have ever read. So, before you go any
further, I would encourage you right now to
just skip ahead to my comments and to
forget about reading any more of this main
essay, because it is going to be disjointed,
ill-conceived, and, in short, an utter mistake.
Nonetheless, I really have no choice. This
is something I have to write and which I
have to put out there for you few diehards to
absorb, if it is your decision to do so. I don’t
expect or even desire constructive
commentary. I just feel that I have to work
this through in my own mind, and I have to
work it through knowing that it will stand
some small chance of being read if even
only by a single person. It’s only that
knowledge that’ll keep me on track.
From these comments, it is probably not
very difficult for you to deduce that I am in
that small percentage of Americans who
hasn’t yet decided which way to vote (Bush
or Kerry). That alone should tell you
volumes about my personal nature: cautious,
indecisive, more afraid of making a wrong
move than missing the chance to make a
right one. How I got to be this way, I have
no idea. It’s not natural.
I’ve always had a great predisposition
toward agnosticism, not merely religiously
but in everything, even running a game.
Rather than just decide something (Does the
barmaid smile invitingly or slap the PC?), I
prefer to roll a “luck die”. It holds the
illusion of non-bias; it adds to the suspense;
and, best of all, I don’t have to think.
Thinking is annoying. It makes my brain
hurt. Sometimes I think I’d rather have been
born a puppy.
Speaking of those who refuse to think for
themselves, I’m amazed that religion is
making a comeback. We now have a
president who openly admits that he uses
prayer as a guide. I’m to understand that
JFK’s Catholicism was a big issue during his
campaign for the White House. The pundits
were apparently afraid of what should
happen if Rome should start dictating policy
in Washington. Now, however, it is
seemingly a non-issue.
Well, if religion is back on the rise, then
maybe I should jump on the bandwagon (not
that I really think this way, but it makes for a
good transition). The thing is…okay, I don’t
really know how to say this…so let’s just
say that it’s a big joke, okay? I’m going to
say something that is incredibly silly, and if
you believe me, then you are way too
gullible to be reading this essay, or, for that
matter, any other essay. Go poke out your
eyes. You really shouldn’t be reading at all.
Anyway, the thing I was going to say is…I
hear voices, not the normal kind of voices of
the neighbors yelling about something, or
even voices of people on television who
apparently are paid to do nothing but talk.
(This mystifies me.) Actually, I should
rephrase. I don’t hear voices. I hear a voice.
Call it an inner voice, if you will, a vibe, a
silent scream, persistent, obnoxious,
sometimes threatening, always insistent.
Now, certainly, that sounds crazy, so go
ahead and call me crazy. I’ve never met you
(well, except for Lee and Barry), so I could
care less what you think. In any case, crazy
has certain social advantages. For instance,
bums aren’t as apt to ask you for spare
change.
In any case, this voice…he sounds
worried. He’s worried about the world,
about what’s going to happen. And I guess
crazy is actually an appropriate word to
describe it, because the world itself is crazy.
It’s perfectly, irreparably insane. It’s so
insane, I don’t even know where to begin in
describing and explaining my thoughts.
The awful truth, of course, is that the
events of this world all make perfect sense
when you examine them not from the
perspective of morality, of right and wrong,
but rather from the perspective of short-term
individual and national interests. What can I
get for me right now? That is the sickness,
but one perfectly preserved in our genetic
code, our evolutionary personality.
We are not fit to fill the role we’ve been
given, to take the opportunity we’ve been
handed. I keep coming back to that thought,
and this voice…he agrees, he agrees to the
point of rage and tears and utter, complete
resignation.
I don’t really want to use the word “God,”
because it’s much too pretentious, and, in
any case, I don’t trust anyone who says that
they speak for God. People who have
purported to speak for God have caused
much of the ill that is in the world. Such
people usually become tyrants. They use the
concept of God for their own benefit. This
has always been true. So let me say, instead,
that I sometimes hear the voice of Bob, that
Beautiful Omniferous Bastard who has
created this situation, and who wants so
desperately to say something semi-coherent
to whoever cares to listen before we all slink
back into the ooze of our shared, primeval
journey.
So you want to hear what he says, this
Bob? You want a glimpse into his mind?
Are you sure, because you can stop reading
right now. I honestly don’t care.
Okay, then. He says, “You are all going to
Hell. You who think yourself good, and you
who have embraced selfishness, evil, you are
all wrapped within the same cloak, the cloak
that is your flesh and blood; and so too you
drag me with you, for I am your creator, I
am the flesh and blood that is your shared
existence, your soul, a soul of which we have
proven ourselves wholly unworthy. We are
the sick and the dying. We are the boiled and
the flayed and the ground up and the
poisoned. It is us, ourself, upon whom we do
evil. That is the truth, for all to hear.”
Keep in mind, Bob gets a little
melodramatic from time to time. He’s got a
real flair in that direction. I really think he
could have been a politician if he weren’t so
damn honest. And like I said for those of
you who are seriously concerned for my
sanity, this is just a joke, an intellectual
exercise, vomit upon the page, a bizarre
weirdness perpetrated for no apparent
reason. Don’t be gullible.
Now, with that out of the way, let us get
back to the topic at hand. I told you that I
was torn over this upcoming presidential
election. The problem, of course, is that I
know absolutely nothing. I’m a moron when
it comes to history and politics and,
well…pretty much everything. I know so
little compared to what I feel I need to know
that I have no right to even be addressing
you. That’s okay, however, or at least it has
been in the past.
My general rule when it comes to elections
has been to ask the people I most respect
how they intend to vote. This time the stakes
seem incredible, and at the same time, the
people I know, the ones who I regard as
being much, much smarter than myself, they
disagree, and they do so vehemently.
Granted, the majority supports Kerry, but I
live in California. The majority of the state
supports Kerry. In any case, to simply follow
along with the majority seems to me to be a
cop-out. My vote will most certainly count
for nothing, but none-the-less, I feel that I
should cast it as though I were myself
deciding the outcome. It’s an incredibly
egotistical view, but given the situation, I
feel it is the only moral one.
What gets me the most, I suppose, is that
everyone seems so sure of their own
opinion, and I am so unsure of mine.
Everyone seems to have taken a very clear-
cut position on a completely unassailable set
of facts. I’ve never seen the country so
divided. John Stuart went on Crossfire1 and
made the case that political hacks are
methodically destroying the country.
Perhaps he’s right. Perhaps we’re a nation
divided because it’s division and conflict
that produce ratings.
Yet, at the same time, one can’t deny that
there are very important issues at stake in
this election. The outcome of this may well
determine the course of where things go
from here, and where they go may be
crucial. So we should take this one seriously,
and I think that we are, as a nation, taking it
very seriously.
I remember last time, in 2000, “Rage
against the Machine” protested outside the
Democratic National Convention, making
the case that there wasn’t much difference
between Bush and Gore. News articles ran
about their silver-spoon background. Even
during the debates, they agreed over a fairly
wide range of issues. But think how different
the world would be today had Gore carried
the black vote on the Supreme Court, rather
than just on the streets where, for all intents
and purposes, what the American population
spoke didn’t matter.
This was the proverbial electoral time-
bomb going off, as people had long-
predicted, but there was scarcely a sound.
The nation accepted the rule of law, even
when it was obvious that family connections
in Florida had conspired with a Supreme
Court which, supposedly united by the
supremacy of law, voted strictly according to
party lines in a case which shall forever
besmirch the high court’s reputation and
honor.
It was bizarre, yet people accepted it. After
all, this was an election between two rich
kids, neither of them particularly able or
even likable. In short, it just didn’t really
matter.
Now it’s 2004 and we’re in yet another
undeclared war. Soldiers are flying home in
body bags. The so-called fortunate ones are
getting well at hospitals in Germany and
elsewhere, learning to use their new artificial
limbs. So much for the theory that it didn’t
matter.
But, I cannot ignore the argument that
what we did may have been for the overall
good of our nation as well as humanity at
large. That is the greater circle, the larger
picture, the one which Bush and the neo-
conservatives have been trying to get us to
1
See http://www.ifilm.com/ifilmdetail/2652831
which is hella-funny.
see and accept, to incorporate into our
world-view. And this argument is not
without some validity.
If you look at the world today, what you
see is a very dangerous place. Just how
dangerous it is, I don’t think many of us can
properly conceive. This whole train of
thought reminds me of a time, back in the
recesses of my youth, where I was a little
kid, perhaps in the 2nd or 3rd grade, and I
didn’t really have any conception of the
world beyond my immediate surroundings.
Every morning we would pledge allegiance
to the flag, and sometimes at night I would
examine a globe of the world that my
parents had in the living room, and while I
saw all these countries on the map, I knew
nothing about them.
"God believes that one
day we will realize we are
part of God's family, and
there are no outsiders.
All…all belong."
- Desmond Tutu
(04-Oct-2004)
I guess I sort of assumed that the world
had been organized this way from ancient
times and that nothing had really changed
very much. I probably had the notion that
everyone lived in their own area of the
world, and that some people traveled, but for
the most part, the world was a peaceful,
stable, rational place. I don’t remember
having any concept of war beyond “Hogan’s
Heroes”. I didn’t yet know about
assassinations, or about coups, or secret
agencies infiltrating foreign governments. I
didn’t have any sense of the competition that
exists between societies as well as individual
people, this ongoing competition which is
the driving force of history. In short, I knew
nothing. Yet this idyllic, sheltered ignorance
was at least part of the basis, I think, for my
personality, and I think it plays a
subconscious factor for many of us who
have grown up in such “edenic”
circumstances where cooperation (playing
nice, standing in line, standing and reciting
the pledge of allegiance as one voice among
many) is stressed over the wholesale,
unabridged, winner-takes-all competition
which is the actual world, our history, and
our future.
And this isn’t to say that I know history as
well as I should. I know it like a leaf knows
the tree, or more precisely like a drop of
water knows the ocean. My understanding of
history is so superficial, so fragmentary, so
hopelessly naive, that everything that I write
here should be taken with several tons of
salt. Bob adds: “Yes, but at least you accept
the truth of your ignorance whereas most
cannot bear to acknowledge theirs.
Remember that noticing the darkness which
surrounds one is the first step toward
seeking the light, which is, in fact, what this
whole bizarre discomBOBulation is
ultimately about, or so it should presently
seem.”
Bob likes to speak in riddles, in case you
haven’t noticed. Don’t ask me what he
means.
Now, this isn’t to say that even if I knew
everything there is to know, I might be able
to identify some backdoor, so to speak, a
way out of history, out of the international
chess game that is present day politics. It
might be that even with perfect knowledge,
we would still trip and fall, crack our heads
on the cement of reality, and bleed to death
all over the pavement of the human
experience.
We are as we were made, creatures not
only of bad habits but also of evolutionary
design. Set within this framework exist
certain limitations, boundaries to our ways
of thinking, destructive reflexes as well as
insidious, counterproductive tendencies
endemic to our shared human personality.
We are naked apes who have seen God, but
who have failed to understand him, yet still
we strive to go beyond what we have been.
That is our one saving grace, our one
opportunity for redemption, but will it be
enough?
I am pessimistic.2 It is my nature, I think,
but in this case, I just can’t see any way out,
and that is, of course, something that is
likely to be reflected in the discourse of Bob,
so you shouldn’t hold him responsible for
everything that I put in his name. My own
personal biases are bound to creep into his
words, and to shape his thoughts, to bend
them in ways not originally intended. So I
plead guilty, if this is all one incredible
downer to read, but I am so terribly
pessimistic.
I am no longer in third grade, so let me tell
you about the world that I now see, however
obscured my vision has become by media
bias and a general lack of knowledge of
2
Of course, I would have never predicted the end
of the cold war, speaking of which, is it really
over? Gorbachev tried to reform the USSR’s
system of government. But he was promptly
replaced by Yeltsin, a courageous if incompetent
drunk who allowed corruption to come seething to
the surface like a plague of poisonous worms.
Yeltsin was then replaced by Putin, the former
head of the KGB, who is now dismantling many
of the reforms enacted by Gorbachev, including
freedom of the press, that essential ingredient of a
democratic society. Is the USSR returning to
dictatorship? If so, will the cold war begin anew?
I can’t help but think that Clinton, our cool,
smart thoroughbred, could have had some sort of
positive influence, but instead he was too
preoccupied with matters below the waist. A
president who cannot command respect cannot
lead, not in a democratic society, and certainly not
during a totally useless impeachment process.
Please note that I do not assign blame to any
particular leader. Rather, I blame them all.
which I’ve already said enough. The world
that I see now is a really bad place. It’s like
bad comedy, or a bad comic tragedy, or
perhaps just a really bad car accident caused
by four or thirteen drunk drivers all
smashing into each other simultaneously.
Here’s a curious aside. When this war
started, the current US invasion of Iraq, I am
to understand that our military planners in
the pentagon were initially calling it
“Operation: Iraqi Liberation”. Then
somebody realized what an unfortunately
funny acronym that spelled out, so they had
to change “Liberation” to “Freedom” before
everyone ended up doubled-over on the floor
holding their guts with both hands.
That’s really the thing you have to realize
about this whole “Operation: Iraqi
Freedom”. It’s not really all about the oil,
but it really is all about the oil. Ultimately,
when you look at the way that the American
government has to play chess, the oil is a
critical factor in our game, and to deny that
is ludicrous.
Yet this situation was inevitable. It not
only was foreseeable; it had been foreseen,
and this insight had been acted upon. Our
leaders, at least some of those we used to
have, were not stupid. They thought things
through carefully, and even when a president
is incapable of doing so for whatever reason
or inadequacy, there are aides, special
secretaries, researchers, and a whole plethora
of analysts and policy proponents who look
at the international situation from every
conceivable aspect. There is too much at
stake to do otherwise.
Let me talk for a bit about a case in point.
Let us go back to WWII, to a time when the
allies were well on their way to having
victory in Europe and were contemplating
what the political situation should be at the
end of the war.
Most of you probably already know about
the famed Yalta conference of February 3rd
through the 12th of 1945. That was where
Roosevelt told Stalin about “the bomb”, and
Stalin, already knowing about U.S. progress
on the nuclear super-weapon because he had
spies in Los Alamos, pretended to have
absolutely no idea what the President was
talking about. He pretended, in fact, not even
to understand what the President was talking
about.
Well, immediately following that
important conference an even more
important meeting took place. Roosevelt
flew to Egypt and from the 13th through the
15th met with several leaders of that region
including King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia.
Now, Roosevelt already realized that Saudi
Arabia, although it was a land that hadn’t
changed very much in somewhere upwards
of a thousand years, was incredibly
important for the defense and economic
interests of the United States. He realized
this because back in 1943 he dispatched
geologists all over the world with one
mission: find the oil. They came back and
told him that Saudi Arabia very likely had
the largest untapped reserves on the entire
planet. How they knew this, I have no idea.
Go ask a geologist. I’m just repeating what
I’ve heard.
So anyway, Roosevelt said to Saud, and I
quote: “Yo, dude. Let’s be friends.”
Saud replied, and again, this is an exact
quote, I shit you not: “Smootchy-woochy,
Roosy. Check it out. You support me and
my heirs into perpetuity, and you can have
all the black gook you want. I won’t even
charge you much.”
Roosevelt: “Done deal, bro.”
And so that’s how we got into Saudi
Arabia.
Roosevelt did this because he knew that
the U.S. oil reserves wouldn’t last forever.
Remember that oil was discovered in the
United States. Soon thereafter we had mass
production, which, surprisingly enough,
translates into mass depletion. Every
developing nation (in other words the entire
northern hemisphere) started doing likewise.
So it was inevitable that the northern
hemisphere would eventually run dry.
At that point, the developed nations would
turn toward the undeveloped nations and
say: “Hey, dudes, give us your oil, or we’re
gonna kick your asses.” And then a great
raping and pillaging would occur such as the
world has never before witnessed.
Roosevelt could see all this back as early
as 1943, so he decided to get a leg up on the
competition and begin forging the necessary
alliances (i.e. agreements of taking) as early
as possible. Now, some of you are maybe
shaking your heads in anger, but you can’t
blame Roosevelt. He was the leader of the
United States. He was merely doing what
was fairly obviously in the interests of the
United States. That’s international chess. It’s
a game, but a very serious game that we
cannot afford to lose.
The consequences of losing this game are
unimaginable to us. They are so horrific that
I would sound like some horror/science-
fiction writer if I were to go into the
probable repercussions. And right now, just
as it did back in 1945, oil plays a large part
in this game.
I shudder to think what will happen when
the oil runs dry. US production peaked in
1971. Right now we are dependent on
sources outside our borders for more than
half the oil we use. Every year we grow even
more dependent. Not too long from now,
those sources will reach their peak
production. At that point, demand will
outstrip supply at such a pace that it seems
inconceivable that we won’t be fighting over
the diminishing supply. What’s going to
happen then?
This is a problem for which Roosevelt had
no answer. He probably imagined that
someday we would learn to harness nuclear
energy, and we have, but the waste products
have been rather bothersome. Contained
fusion would be very nice, right about now,
but it just hasn’t happened. Sometimes I
wonder if God has placed us into one of
those cooperative puzzles, one where the
answer lay not in fighting, but in working
together.
Since you are all gamers, imagine a game
where one person plays the Democratic
Party, another person plays the Republicans.
One person controls the American media
(which, sadly, may one day actually
happen). One controls the Saudi princes.
One controls China. One controls the USSR.
And so on and so forth…one controlling the
Vatican, one controlling the ayatollahs of
Iran. Now, you have chits on the board
representing resources: population, oil,
forests, minerals. It’s a little like that game
Civilization, I suppose.
Of course, there remains one obvious
question. What’s the point of the game? Do
we just fight and scheme until we eventually
run out of some key resource and then
watch, horrified, pointing fingers of blame at
one another as civilization crumbles slowly,
inexorably, into anarchy? No, that might be
a possible outcome, but no, that’s not the
point. The point, my friends, is to find a way
out, a way for everyone to win, for everyone
to prosper, to build a world that works
together instead of constantly fighting and
constantly destroying itself.
But with limited resources, how can this
ever happen? Imagine that one day,
somebody builds a massive super-collider in
Texas. Lo and behold, the physicists learn
things about matter and energy which are
quite unknown to us right now, and they
figure out how to build a fusion reactor, one
big enough to supply the whole world with
cheap, clean energy, as much as our little
hearts desire.
But the problem is that we have to build it
really big. It has to be about as long as the
circumference of our planet at the equator,
so obviously, this is going to be a joint
project. It’ll have to cross mountains and
oceans. We’ll have to protect it from storms
and earthquakes as well as terrorists and
other assorted nogoodniks. It could solve all
our energy needs, but, alas, it would require
cooperation: massive, sustained, determined,
unrelenting cooperation. So do we build it,
or do we smash our heads on the pavement?
It would be an interesting simulation, don’t
you think?
Although I’m a pessimist, an avowed,
unrepentant pessimist, and though the costs
would be astronomical, I honestly don’t see
how we wouldn’t build it, even if it should
take a century. After all, the pyramids were
built. They are there in Egypt if you doubt
my word, and they were built by people
dragging huge, cut stones across a long, hot
desert, some of them no doubt getting
crushed underneath. But did they stop? Did
they leave any half-built? No. As arduous as
the project was, as hopeless as it must have
seemed, they never lost site of the goal. The
pyramids were their ticket to immortality, to
reaching the other side where they could be
judged and could perhaps be rewarded. So I
think we’d build it. If there were no choice,
we’d do it.
I think that a lot of things which are done
in this world are done because there is no
choice. Take the current situation, for
instance. This didn’t start on September 11,
2001. It goes back further.
Some of you may have read my zine in
A&E #314 where I talked about some of the
history prior to Al-Qaeda’s attack, however,
I didn’t go into nearly as much depth as I
should have. Part of the problem is that I just
don’t know the history. I’m sure there are
those here who can straighten me out, but
before that can happen, I need to explain my
view of the whole series of episodes leading
up to 9/11.
Like I said, we were (and still are) invested
heavily in Saudi Arabia because of their oil
reserves. Likewise, back during the 1970s,
we had close ties with Iran. Just as we were
supporting the Saud family in Saudi Arabia,
so too did we support the Shah of Iran, one
Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. His is a story
worth relating, as it explains a great deal
about why people in that part of the world
hate us as they do.
His father had been a military officer who
staged a coup and took the throne as “Shah”
in 1925. However, despite being a dynamic
if despotic ruler, he bet on the wrong horse
in WWII, making moves to side with
Germany perhaps in a bid to kick out the
British who were busy developing much of
Iran’s oil industry as well as using the
country as a military springboard.
Hence, with this father’s removal, Reza
Shah (the infamous Shah of Iran) ascended
to the throne in 1941. Now, as I’m sure you
all know, this Shah was not a particularly
nice fellow. I think that people in such
positions of high power tend not to be nice.
They tend to be ultra-pragmatic. Idealism is
great for college professors, but in the real
world, it just doesn’t pay the rent.
So in a brief nutshell, this is what
happened. The Shah decided to consolidate
his power by wiping out any opposition. He
was, after all, the pre-eminent leader of the
Middle East, the “Guardian of the Gulf”, as
it were. So he abolished any dissent to his
rule.
Unfortunately, once you abolish dissent,
dissent is precisely what you’re going to get.
In economics, this is called the law of supply
and demand. As soon as you don’t want
something, a huge supply of it comes and
slaps you in the face.
Of course, to be slightly more precise,
dissent needs an outlet. It needs a voice. If
you abolish the voice, all that is left is action.
So action is what finally happened in 1953
when Prime Minister Muhammed
Mosaddeq3 temporarily seized control of the
government.4 This is a difficult episode to
relate, as there are no small number of little
twists and turns to the story, but the upshot is
that Mosaddeq wanted higher oil prices. He
thought Iran was getting looted by the West
(which it was). So his idea, which I’m sure
wasn’t originally his idea, was to simply
nationalize the Iranian oil industry and kick
Great Britain and the United States out.
There was a slight problem with his plan,
however. Great Britain and the United States
didn’t want to be kicked out. Moreover, both
nations were afraid of losing Iran to the
Soviet bloc. So Britain blockaded Iranian
ports so that there newly nationalized oil
couldn’t go anywhere, and the United States
quickly set in motion a little thing called
Operation Ajax, which was essentially to
overthrow Mosaddeq and bring back the
Shah. And it worked. It worked brilliantly.
From then on, the Shah learned a really
important lesson: when you abolish the
opposition, you also have to create a secret
police force to brutalize them into
submission. Obviously, when he was back in
college, he must have slept through most of
Dictatorship 101. Kids!
So a couple of years later, with the
guidance of the CIA and the Israeli Mossad,
he set up a secret police force called
SAVAK.5 Now, keep in mind, SAVAK
wasn’t just about having a good time. They
had serious work to do. After all, there had
almost been a successful coup which could,
quite horrifically, have liberated Iran’s oil
reserves to be used by the Iranians. And that
3 leader.
His name is sometimes spelled as Mossadegh.
4 It was a stupendous idea, for after the
When I say temporarily, I mean for about a
week.
5
Savak, interestingly, was also the name of that
half-Vulcan hottie in The Wrath of Khan, the best
(or, perhaps, only tolerable) movie of the Star Trek
franchise and the one where Kirk tells her: “How
we deal with death is as least as important as how
we deal with life.” Appropriate words considering
what her name means to Iranians.
would have been terrible. So when I talk
about them torturing people, please
remember that it was for a very good cause.
Ah…speaking of their torture
methods…hmm…let’s see now…well, they
used electric shock just to warm things up.
Any torturer worth his salt knows how to use
electricity to elicit a confession, genuine or
otherwise. Then you’ve got your standard
7th century fare: whipping, beating, tooth
and nail extraction. It’s true, you know.
Sometimes old ways are best. Then, of
course, you’ve got your more imaginative
tortures: the tying of weights to the testicles
for extended periods of time, or the boiling
water enema, always a favorite.
But don’t think that SAVAK just did
torture. Oh, no! Heavens no! They were
responsible for the complete and total
surveillance of the society. And, of course,
we westerners were there to lend a helping
hand to our Iranian friends, for a small fee,
of course. SAVAK paid millions to
Rockwell International to implement a large
communications monitoring system called
IBEX. The Stanford Technology
Corporation got in on the action as well by
supplying the Shah with a telephone
monitoring system, and, of course, the CIA
assisted during all this.
Likewise, SAVAK had the responsibility
to follow around Iranian exchange students.
If you were an Iranian student, and you
came to the United States to study nuclear
physics or something innocuous like that,
and you happened to say something bad
about the Shah…oh…you could be a little
bit of trouble there. Once you got back
home, you might find a pair of electrodes
waiting for you.
Likewise, they were continually on the
lookout for forbidden books, basically
anything that might be construed as being
critical of the government. They, of course,
monitored journalists, literary figures, and
academics. They ran their own prisons, and,
as to be expected, they had the legal
authority to arrest, indefinitely detain, and do
pretty much anything they wanted do to just
about anyone. They were, in effect, a law
unto themselves. Nice work if you can get it.
However, as a testament to humanity, even
in the face of electrodes, testicle weights,
and boiling enemas, dissent still occurred,
and when it finally reached a boiling point,
which I think was inevitable, it absolutely
exploded. An outraged Iran overthrew the
Shah in 1979 and invited the previously
outcast Ruhollah Mousavi, popularly known
as the Ayatollah Khomeini, to be their new
initial rejoicing, the people working in
SAVAK, with only a few notable
exceptions, began working for the
Ayatollah, doing much the same sort of
activity they’d been doing before, only now
under a new name. They now have extensive
ties with Lebanon’s Hezbollah and are
engaged in a widespread campaign of
religious persecution (not surprising when
you consider that Iran is, after all, a religious
dictatorship). I could go through a list of
their more recent atrocities, but why bother?
“The point,” says Bob, “is that I am sick
and tired of waiting for you to grow up.
You’ve come a long way, but you’re just not
where you need to be in order for this to
work. You are marching straight into Hell,
and yet you refuse to see it. If you will not
trust in me and in my laws, then do not claim
me; do not pretend that we are on friendly
terms. You do not know me. You only use my
name to get and get and get without thinking
from whom you take. That is not the way that
I have shown you. You worship Mammon.
Why have you forsaken me?”
You’re going to have to forgive, Bob. He
gets irritable late at night. What can I say?
He’s a grump.
Anyway, I’m running out of time, so I’m
just going to wrap things up. The way we
have dealt with Iraq isn’t quite as wretched
as the way we’ve dealt with Iran, but it’s still
pretty wretched. We encouraged these two
countries to fight a really pointless war with
each other. We pretended as though we were
the friend of each, when, in fact, we were
friend to neither. We have lied, cheated, and
bullied our way through the second half of
the last century, the so-called “greatest
generation” celebrated by itself for itself.
“Yay us!”
Morally, what we’ve done is
reprehensible. Strategically, it was brilliant.
Historically, I think there’s going be
payback.6 I don’t how, and I don’t know
when, but a nation can’t do this and not
expect that there will be devastatingly
serious repercussions.
Now these states are at the doorstep of
nuclear prowess, and they hate us, justifiably
so. Meanwhile, we go around talking about
democracy like we’ve only had their best
interests at heart the entire time.
I don’t know who to vote for. Neither one
of these candidates gets it. They either don’t
know their history, or they aren’t willing to
admit to it. Either way, I don’t see how
either one can assume moral authority when
neither has acknowledged the awful past,
this edifice of inhumanity which we have
created.
Strategically, at least on this particularly
issue, I think that Bush is probably the best
choice.7 In terms of morality, I’m inclined to
think that Kerry has a better grasp of some
of the basic concepts. But neither of them
has earned my vote, and I can’t help but
think that this whole thing is a long way
6
Some would argue that 9/11 was payback.
Being pessimistic, as I am, I tend to think of it
as a sneak preview.
7
George Friedman, while not taking sides,
makes the argument that Bush's choice was the
only choice, and while his theory in definitely
conspiratorial, it makes for fascinating listening.
http://www.kqed.org/epArchive/R410131000
from being over.
Going into Iraq was clearly a violation of
international law8, but we should not neglect
to notice that there's also a potentially
tremendous upside, an opportunity to
establish a true, pluralistic democracy in the
heart of the Arab world. To do so will not
erase our past misdeeds, but it could signal a
new era of hope, a hope that America will
finally stop using its muscle for purely
national objectives and perhaps start using
its might and influence in a moral way.
"All that is necessary for
the triumph of evil is that
good men do nothing."
- Edmund Burke
If we had been doing that for the past fifty
years, the world we live in now would be a
totally different place. Perhaps communism,
left to its own devices, would have crumbled
and decayed under the crushing weight its
own moral as well as economic failures.
Perhaps, if freed from the fear of the "evil
empire", America could have fulfilled its
best possible destiny, becoming a beacon of
light in a world desperately in need of
illumination. But we can't turn back the
clock. We can't right the wrongs of the past.
Yet until we face up to them as a society, I
don't see how we can go forward to build a
better future with open hearts, honest
policies, and a redeemed national soul.
That’s all I have to say, at least for now.
Comments on A&E 350:
Myles Corcoran: Regarding your
comments on the igtheme, perhaps D&D is a
game about youths growing to adulthood,
power and responsibility. I suppose it all
depends how young you make the starting
age. I think the DMG has some rules
regarding this, but it would make sense,
actually, to start characters at zero-level and
assume they’re teenagers, or to at least allow
them some semblance of direction during
these formative years. I don’t just mean
direction in terms of character skills and
stats but also in terms of their character’s
response to the inevitable “life-events” of
adolescence. This, I think, would go a long
way toward defining their character’s
personality. Thoughts?
Robert Dushay: Regarding your igtheme
thoughts, in AD&D I always made new
players start their characters at 1st level even
8
Stephen Zunes of the University of San
Francisco wrote a brief analysis making this
point as well as others which, now in hindsight,
seem almost prophetic. See
http://www.fpif.org/pdf/reports/PRiraq3.pdf and
see if you can believe the date on his paper.
when they came into a well-established
group, but I didn’t adhere to the training
requirements for level advancement, so new
characters in a powerful group were able to
effectively skip levels, often rising from 1st
to 3rd or even 4th level in their very first
session. Granted, this is ridiculous. Just
because you killed a big monster with a
group of powerful friends shouldn’t make
you a powerful character, but that’s the way
we did it. On the one hand, it made new
characters earn their level like everyone else,
but on the other hand, it let them earn it
quickly. This, ultimately, was a judgement
call in favor of power-balance and
playability over logic and realism (and even
over strict rules-adherence), but I think the
nature of the genre justified the policy, and
I’d do it again.
Spike Jones: RYCT Lee Gold on the
Israelites and archeology, I’m somewhat
interested in their early history, so much that
I also subscribed to BAR for awhile. I’m
particularly intrigued by the question over
how our basic social norms came into being.
For instance, the worship of one God over
many (a critical development, though one
which we can scarcely imagine otherwise).
Was it tied to politics? To what extent were
the ancient priests servants of their kings (as
opposed to being rivals)?
Or marriage, as in one man and one
woman. Who were the first people to
practice that, and when did it begin
happening? I would imagine that for a great
many centuries, women were regarded as
little more than possessions. The notion of
being “bound” to one’s possession seems a
little strange, so obviously, there had to be a
substantial shift in thinking and in the
definition of personhood. What caused that
to happen? Was it political? Was it an issue
of fairness? Was it social-engineering at its
earliest?
Likewise, I’m curious about money. Was
it invented by people in a sort of grassroots
“this makes sense” fashion, or was it
something that the leaders forced upon the
people in order to simplify taxation? That, of
course, leads to the whole question of
money-lending, banking, in effect. How did
that get started? What rights did lenders have
against the power of the king to simply seize
their assets or demand a zero-interest loan?
There’s just so much there that I know
very little about, and I’m not even sure if
definitive answers exist to any of these
questions. I’d be curious to hear your
thoughts or any useful references you might
be able to dig up.
Paul Mason: Regarding your comments on
a martial artist’s abilities being determined
by their level of development and upsets
being relatively rare, it strikes me that, at
least in other sorts of combat, upsets do
happen, but like you suggest, they are called
“upsets” precisely because they are rare. In
general, even in sports, you can look at the
records of two different boxers or two
different football teams, and you can get a
pretty good idea of who will win. The
predictions are good enough for gamblers to
set odds.
Often, when there is an upset, it comes
down to the underdog not necessarily just
trying harder, but also getting the favorite to
“fight his fight” or “play his game”. One
boxer may have a dangerous left hook.
Another may prefer to fight on the inside.
Likewise, with sports teams, one team may
have a superior quarterback. Another may
have a superior rushing defense. In each
case, the contest is made interesting because
each opponent has semi-quantifiable
strengths and weaknesses, and these interact
in a predictable, but not entirely predictable,
manner.
Strategy plays center stage. “Hit his ribs,
Rocky!” or “Blitz the quarterback!” This, I
think, should be the holy grail of combat
mechanics. Too often we see systems where
the interface of dice and charts produces a
fairly mechanical result with little or no
input on the part of the players. “I swing. I
hit. I do his six points. Is he dead yet?”
Instead, strategy should play the central role.
I think D&D3e/d20 has made important
strides in this direction. With the inclusion of
combat-feats, strategy now plays a more
important role that it did in past versions of
the game. However, these mechanics still
don’t include a hit location system or a
system for resolving the effects of grievous
wounds. Despite combat playing a central
role, serious injury and medicine seem to be
somewhat forgotten. Perhaps this is due to
the nature of the genre, or perhaps it’s due to
the fact that such rules would likely bog
down the game in endless paperwork and
medical reports. “Yeah, he got me in the
spleen. I’m gonna be laid up here for awhile.
You guys just go on without me.” Certain it
would be more realistic, but would it be
more fun?
For more thoughts on combat as well as
experience systems (and your well-stated if
obvious power dichotomy) see my
comments to James Reichstadt. Also see my
comments to Brian Rogers. I’d be very
curious to hear your take.
Brian Misiaszek: RYCT Brian Rogers on
Classic Traveller having a lot of creative
potential outside of the actual gaming aspect,
I have to agree with this. I also tried my
hand at starship design, world design,
character generation (just for the sheer fun of
it), and so forth. Classic Traveller had a great
many systems for design, which I think was
part of the game’s allure. While D&D,
likewise, had design opportunities embedded
into the rules (monsters, spells, dungeons,
etc.), Traveller seemed to go into greater
depth, and, despite some acknowledged
physics-benders, it also seemed to have a
much greater respect for “realism”. You
couldn’t just throw something together and
call it magic. I’d be curious to learn if
you’ve kept up with the game’s various
incarnations and what you think about each.
Jonathan Nichols: Your description of the
Star Trek LARP confirms my belief that
psychological traits and disadvantages are
pretty much useless. You can put anything
you want on a player’s character sheet. Most
(if not all) players will still be constrained by
the limits of their own personalities and their
own mental agility. Now, if I were the guy
playing the Klingon, I would have ripped
your heart from your chest and shoved it up
your Romulan a…actually, that might have
resulted in a massive dose of negative
publicity to the hobby, not to mention the
loss of another A&Eer, so I’ll retract and
humbly slink off like the poor delegate in
question. Nice tongue-lashing by the way.
That part about the mother being too weak to
properly dispose of her misfit child is
classic. It’s too bad you’re human. You’d
have made an excellent Klingon. And just
think of the advantages. I hear that their
woman are extra-naughty!
Lisa Padol: It’s always interesting to read
your comments on the igtheme, and last
issue was no exception. How powerful
should a beginning PC be? “Like a woman’s
skirt, a PC’s power should be long enough to
cover the essentials but short enough to be
interesting.” I couldn’t have said it better.
You imply, correctly in my opinion, that it is
the faults and deficiencies of characters that
make them most interesting.
There have, of course, been systems that
allow PCs to select a character’s faults.
GURPS, of course, comes immediately to
mind. However, in life, we don’t often get to
select our disadvantages. We do to a degree.
We can select which skills and talents we
spend our time practicing and developing
further and which ones we allow to rot on
the vine, but in terms of some of our more
fundamental deficiencies, we have no
control. I wonder what you would think of a
character generation system where new
characters were each bestowed (or rather,
cursed) with comparable levels of
disadvantages but which they were not
allowed to actually select.
William Reger: “I say, old chap, jolly well
trained hunting bird you’ve got there!” Too
funny. I would love to see more of these
sorts of game write-ups, with English
gentlemen utterly unwilling to change their
world view to incorporate the supernatural.
Your protagonist actually does a good job
accepting the shapechanging Miss Emery. It
might have been funnier had he assumed he
was having hallucinations due to too much
of the desert air, opium pollen, or whatever.
James Reichstadt: I’d be interested in
seeing those books if you ever get around to
writing them. Regarding your comments
about the convention game you played, I
think the reason for the problem of story
taking a back-seat to math has to do with the
variety of choices available in the more
extensively designed combat systems. This,
actually, is something that most players
want, and the reason is that more options
give rise to more opportunities to exercise
strategy (see my comments to Paul Mason).
Granted, this also bogs down the game in the
trivia of numbers and often results in an
annoying diversion of attention away from
plot, character, and setting, all the things
from which good stories are woven.
I’m not entirely sure what the best solution
ought to be. Clearly, there are a great many
number crunchers and gearheads in the
hobby, and clearly there are great many
roleplayers. How to get them to meet in the
space between? There are a few different
options:
• The game designers could include
some “min-maxed” character designs
(or ability/skill packages) in the rules,
so that the roleplayers among us can
just select one of these optimized
templates rather than having to bury
our faces in the books for hours on end.
I actually think this is a pretty good
option, as it genuinely serves both
audiences.
• Combat could be made more deadly, so
that anyone, regardless of their power
level, would be wise to avoid it and,
instead, concentrate on other avenues
of play. This, however, would likely
detract from heroism and character
longevity, both of which are useful to
story.
• Combat could be made more random,
so that even with optimized characters,
there would be too many unknowns to
predict the final outcome. This,
however, goes against Paul Mason’s
desire to make combat outcomes more
predictable.
• The rules could minimize the number
of combat options, simplifying the
whole sordid affair. This, however,
would go against the wishes of the
gearhead audience as well as strategic
thinkers, all of whom apparently like to
crunch numbers.
• The rules could attempt to put combat
on a back-stage by refusing to reward it
in terms of character experience &
advancement. In such a view, combat
would be seen as simply being a type
of practice, similar to exercising any
skill, but not an avenue to greater
overall power. Of course, this would
create the question of “how do
characters move up?” (see my
comments on the igtheme in issue
#350). Paul Mason makes the
distinction (in the same issue) between
situational and rules-derived power,
which is an excellent though obvious
point, however, players, I think, want
something that can’t easily be taken
away by the referee. They want some
sort of moderately permanent
progression. There may even be some
powerful psychological reasons why
this is the case (see my comments to
Brian Rogers). However, perhaps it is
precisely this which the rules ought to
deny them.
There is the phrase in gambling: “Easy
come, easy go.” Perhaps roleplaying should
have a similar ethos rather than Gygax’s
rephrasing of the old adage “What doesn’t
kill you makes you stronger” into “Killing
makes you stronger.” The question, then,
would be how to better cater to the
powermongers which are a large part of the
RPG audience. I think we’d have to give
them more situational power in terms of
rank or contacts or something that gives
them a substantial edge over a brand new
character in order to compensate for any
ruled-based power advancement we took
away. This, I suppose, is more of less the
route that Traveller took back in the 80s,
however, I think they went too far. I think
that perhaps there’s an opportunity to mix
both methods more evenly than has been
done in the past.
Brian Rogers: Regarding the igtheme, you
pose a really great question: “If the character
is built exactly as you picture him, is there
any point in experience systems?” I agree,
and I think the fact remains that players want
something to work toward beyond the
completion of the latest plot thread. They
want something selfish for their character.
We can, of course, argue over whether this is
a ridiculous artifact of roleplaying’s roots in
wargaming, but the fact remains, to quote
you again, “I can’t ignore the Pavlovian
reflex of wanting to get more neat stuff for
the character.”
D&D provided a well-defined,
incremental, power advancement system
that, in my opinion, was addicting. I think
this is part of the reason people play D&D
today. They get a sense of fulfillment
watching their character climb to ever-
greater heights of power and authority. Is
there anything wrong with this? I’m not
sure.
To be honest, now that I think of it, I
would guess that much of this whole conflict
arises from roleplayers wanting their games
to be recognized as a form of art (I believe I
mentioned this last issue, see footnote #5
from my zine last month). In contemporary
story-telling art (movies, novels, and
television), characters do not progress quite
so much in personal power as they do in
personality. This “self-exploration” is often
meant to convey a sense of morality to the
audience and often serves to give a plot its
greater theme and characters their greater
purpose.
There is a certain religious subtext at work,
as the moment of true self-evaluation is akin
to a baptism, in effect, a rebirth of the
character, a transformation of personality
from selfish childhood into responsible
adulthood. However, while a script-writer
can cleverly arrange events such that self-
evaluation naturally occurs, this is far more
difficult in a roleplaying game where the
action is, purportedly, non-scripted, and
where character actions are the sole province
of the (often literally) unwashed masses.
This might seem a scathing evaluation, but
I really think that what’s going on here is
that game designers realize that character
growth is a tremendously import part of
story-telling. It is, arguably, the central point.
But you can’t force character growth. You
can’t force a baptism. Either the character
learns from their mistakes, or they don’t.
I’ve met many gamers over the years, and
a great many of them are very intelligent and
capable people, mature and well-reasoned,
but I have also met a sizable fraction which I
can only describe as… well…words fail me.
I don’t really know how to describe some of
the gamers I’ve met. They are probably
capable of personal growth. I think all
people are. But, for some these folks, I think
it would like pulling teeth. To them, I’m
guessing that gaming provides a sort of
sanctuary from the real world. Not merely a
source of entertainment, but rather a refuge.
And I’m sorry to sound so critical. It
bothers me that I sound so critical, because I
can remember a time when gaming was
probably a refuge for me. You know, we
pass through some of our most formative
years living in this miniature society (the
junior high and the high school) where we
have relatively little power and there are all
these expectations, social as well as mental,
and dammit…we need a refuge. There’s
nothing wrong with that.
But I think some folks get so immersed
and stake so much of their self-esteem into
this imaginary landscape that they can never
fully extract themselves. For those of us who
run the games, our sense of fulfillment may
derive, in part, from how entertaining and
“artistic” we can make our games. For the
players, the fulfillment may arise from other
factors: character power being an obvious
primary motivator.
This should not come as a surprise. It
almost seems to me self-evident. It’s that big
elephant in the room that nobody wants to
talk about. But it’s there right in front of us.
We see it. We may try to deny it. But in the
end, it’s still there.
Experience points, level progression, skill
advancement, whatever you want to call it…
this is all the “crack” of roleplaying. It’s the
addictive aspect. But does that make it bad?
I think it depends, like most things, on how
it’s used. Roleplaying can be a great
teaching tool.
Of course, unlike the script-writer, the
game designer and the gamemaster cannot
regulate true character growth, so instead we
do the next best thing. We have the character
grow in power, and once they do, we hope,
perhaps sometimes we even pray, that the
player will suddenly become cognizant of
their new place in the imaginary world and
will find a way to handle their power in a
socially constructive way, rather than using
it solely toward a selfish agenda. That is the
goal, I think. Advance the character, and
then hope the player will also advance.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t always happen.
Ultimately, it depends on the player, but
unless they make that journey, they may
never confront, in an open and social
environment, some of the more subterranean
aspects of their personality. Sorry for being
so long-winded, but that's my PoV.
Jonathan Woolley: Somebody really needs
to beet you with a stick (of celery). How
could you give stats for all these crisp,
refreshing slaadi, but forget to include my
favorite, the famous Cobb Slaad?! And,
come to think of it, where are the rules for
hurled croutons? Regarding the Devout
Coward, some sort of verbal component
ought to be included to get the speed bonus.
I’d imagine something like: “Holy sh…!”