Hasbro

[Kurgan]

Only the dead have seen the end of war.

[Davane]

All right, after the third time that the claim has been made, as if it was a statement of fact, that any time there is some authoritarian shitbags they're "right wing", I'm speaking up. Authoritarianism exists across the "left" and "right" spectrum as people describe it today, only leftists continue to beat the drum that of course anyone who is a "fascist" is automatically right wing because of course THEY can't be cooperating with someone doing evil…

The problem with capitalism is that there are far too few capitalists and far too many serfs who are treated effectively like property. The problem with socialism is that you replace a small group of wealthy, powerful people acting on their own whims with an even smaller group of people who claim to be acting in everyone's best interests (and who invariably all become wealthy and powerful while everyone else gets and stays poor…) The thing that hasn't been tried really is making everyone into a capitalist, a stakeholder if only a small one, and easing regulations to allow the small shops to better compete with the large ones. Direct ownership and cooperatives. Not state ownership, but directly this is partly yours because you bought in.

If any of this was stuff you didn't know … I suggest asking yourself why you didn't know it. Anyone who would tell you what not to read, not to watch, not to pay attention to is trying to control what you think. And I've seen both left and right wing folks tell me not to read/watch/attend to stuff from the other side. My greatest political realization almost 20 years ago now was that the things the Democrats were saying about the Republicans back then was basically true, and what the Republicans said about the Democrats was also basically true. Yet … both were also basically false, because the arguments were full of misrepresentations, straw men, half-truths, and whole lies. It's the nature of politics.

So … fascism is always right-wing?

"Fascism" was literally invented BY A COMMUNIST, Benito Mussolini, who was kicked out of the Communist party not because he was violent, but because he was so enthusiastic about doing extreme violence to "eat the rich" that it was making them look bad. (Anyone who claims that communism is not about violence likely hasn't actually read Marx. And few Marxists realize that among the detractors of Marxism before he died was Marx himself!)

The leftist "hero" AND FABIAN SOCIALIST George Bernard Shaw said, "if you do not produce as much as you consume, or perhaps a little more, then your life is not of much use to us. And it cannot be of much use to you either.[/b]

He also described how Mussolini was not a bad socialist, but rather a good socialist with a bad face. Always scowling, it makes people distrust and fear him. But he's not scowling, see, he's got a happy face…

The leftist hero went one further… He described how the elderly should be able to go to some nice place with music and flowers and then there will be this "humane gas"… Yes, a left-wing socialist came up with the concept of the concentration camp gas chamber before Hitler did.

What Mussolini and Shaw didn't have for what people usually assume to be "fascism" today was any racial note to their respective authoritarianisms. Shaw pushed for government control of industry and property through collectivism. Mussolini pushed for government control of industry and property through regulation. Hitler (concerned about appearing to be part of the bourgeoisie, because that would be unseemly—he wrote that he wanted people to think he was a man of the proletariat!)

But fascism doesn't need that "right-wing" racist component. Not that you have to be right-wing to be a racist. I was raised to believe that if you declare negative attributes about a person automatically because of their skin color or country of origin or ethnic background … that makes you a racist. And yet racism is now not only acceptable to the "left", they demand more of it. The only cure to past racism is the present racism. And the only cure to this racism today will be future racism tomorrow. That's the basis of Critical Race Theory and it's in the first pages of the book everyone pushing that garbage tells you that you've GOT to read. I agree: You've got to read it. I encourage you to actually read it, though and ask yourself: If you swapped "white" and "black" (I'm an albino, you're all shades of brown), would it be racist? Because if it would be, then it's racist!

Franco took the fascism of Mussolini and substituted church for government. That didn't work well either. But since only the right wing supports (Christian) religion, that must have been a right wing fascism as well. And I'd agree that it was, but hardly for that reason.

How about Venezuela? Technically that's not "communism", but it's built around left-wing socialism taken to its logical conclusion. North Korea … I'm not sure if that one counts as communism or not. China calls itself communist, but they have an openly capitalist economy now.

All of this has damned little to do with Hasbro, save for the fact that it's all way more complex than a corporate entity can really get involved with in any sort of nuanced and limited way. You're either all in, all out, or your efforts to moderate will be seen as tokenism or weakness.

I said elsewhere my advice to Hasbro would be to get out of politics and just ignore any effort to drag them into it, be that by the woke crowd or the anti-woke crowd. Because both will effectively try to use the same techniques to force Hasbro to do as they wish the company to do. And Hasbro really should be focusing on making good toys and games, not appeasing at most half the people's politics.

ETA, folks on the left try to claim that any authoritarianism is "right wing", but people on the right do the opposite: After all, if you go investigate the neo-nazi scum on a site like Gab that won't just outright ban them … they sound an awful lot like the average leftist, except that they don't use code language about who they want to see "removed" from the planet. The style is different, not the substance.

Does that mean neo-nazis are leftists? What about antifa, are they rightists? Nope, in both cases. What they are is garbage. That's enough. Anyone who'd just decide to harm, hurt, maim, or even kill someone they don't know because of what they think they know about that "kind of person" is utterly contemptible. I think that's the only quality I need to assign to such people.

If the topic gets back to anywhere near Hasbro and what they're doing … I'll be interested in that. But this place is supposed to be about a game I play to get away from all of the above. Y'know, since both neo-nazis and antifa want me dead. Antifa are a more significant threat being from Portlandia. A dozen of them a few years back decided to chase the blind man down the street and just missed his brainstem with a crowbar. According to the cop who saw the surveillance camera footage, I was literally an inch from being an ex-albino.

You keep fighting that Cold War, boyo! You want to assert that the left and the right are both authoritarian so you can keep sitting pretty in the middle, go right ahead.

The fact is that a lot of what we see as "left" today aren't left, there's wannabe right-wing scum, just with a different version of who they want to see in power, and who they want removed from the planet. The truth is, if you want ANYONE removed from the planet, you are NOT left wing.

Forget the Cold War rhetoric about commies under the bed. Capitalists would KILL for the kind of authority that Communism had, and have done.

The problem with communism is simple - it CANNOT be enforced. If you try to enforce any form of Communism or Socialism, you have built in the means of it's own demise, and you have to spend continually more resources trying to continue to enforce it, until it collapses.

The problem is humanity itself - people are arseholes. Communism collapses if a single person is an arsehole, whilst Capitalism relies on that fact. But Capitalism is ultimately self-destructive, because it's a basic ponzi scheme that requires others to steal from. Once you run out of people to steal from, capitalism collapses, because like all gambles, sooner or later you will lose, and you will lose BIG.

Forget the rhetoric, forget antifa. If people want you dead, they are NOT left-wing. They have become the monsters they were fighting. END OF STORY.

None of this stupid political division will EVER go away whilst we continue to fight the Cold War, and there's nothing anyone can do until we are ALL ready to choose to cooperate. We aren't there yet, and there's no point trying to enforce it, because without the wisdom to go with it, it's pointless...

[iKarith]

You keep fighting that Cold War, boyo! You want to assert that the left and the right are both authoritarian so you can keep sitting pretty in the middle, go right ahead.

One True Scotsman eh? If that's where we're starting here, I don't think anywhere this thread goes from this point is gonna be useful to this community. It certainly won't have any bearing on Hasbro or people's understanding of what Hasbro has done or will do in the future.

Nothing I or anyone else is going to post here will change the opinions of a leftist, a rightist, a communist, a racist, a fascist, or anything else. I'm out, and I'd vote for a thread lock before it gets any further out of hand. Rational discussions on these topics don't work in online forums because nobody's really able to remain wholly rational, and facts will be (as they already have been) hand-waved away when they disagree with someone's personal political alignment.

No matter what viewpoint you hold, you're going to only really resonate with about half the people, unless your head is so far up your own arse you go around making statements about how "all rational people agree that…" History bears out repeatedly that either they don't in fact agree on much of anything, that they're not actually rational, or both at the same time.

[Davane]

You keep fighting that Cold War, boyo! You want to assert that the left and the right are both authoritarian so you can keep sitting pretty in the middle, go right ahead.

One True Scotsman eh? If that's where we're starting here, I don't think anywhere this thread goes from this point is gonna be useful to this community. It certainly won't have any bearing on Hasbro or people's understanding of what Hasbro has done or will do in the future.

Nothing I or anyone else is going to post here will change the opinions of a leftist, a rightist, a communist, a racist, a fascist, or anything else. I'm out, and I'd vote for a thread lock before it gets any further out of hand. Rational discussions on these topics don't work in online forums because nobody's really able to remain wholly rational, and facts will be (as they already have been) hand-waved away when they disagree with someone's personal political alignment.

No matter what viewpoint you hold, you're going to only really resonate with about half the people, unless your head is so far up your own arse you go around making statements about how "all rational people agree that…" History bears out repeatedly that either they don't in fact agree on much of anything, that they're not actually rational, or both at the same time.

Actually, it's more like I am tired of having Scotsman redefined away from MY position, and I am looking over further to one side as an anomaly going WTF are you on about?

It's a One True Scotsman as if I am the only Scotsman, but really, it's one true ME, wondering if my neurodiversity is really THAT unique.

People are complicated, but simple at the same time, and it's like I have the key or wisdom of understanding them, but in doing so, I've somehow become insane, because I think most people are... well... people. It's not that they are stupid, or that I am clever, it's just that people feel so different, and a lot of the time I feel like I'm just trapped in a human's body... either wondering WTF everyone is doing, or wondering WTF I am doing when I succumb to being human...

It's just weird... because try as you might, whatever scale you try and put me on, I've just not on it... I'm me... and It feels more like it's the one true me argument, rather than the one true scotsman...

It's hard to describe, but I see a broken world, full of broken people, as like out from a broken person in a broken body with a broken mind... a world that I can fix, but I have no right to, no power to, and often, no desire to...

I could show you how, either rationally or emotionally, cooperation trumps selfishness in the long-term - because the real opponent is always the house and life is not a zero-sum game, but it wouldn't matter, because people wouldn't believe it.

That's why it pisses me off when people bitch about the left, and I end up spending more time fighting the left, rather than the right, simply because they have become the monsters they are fighting.

I can't make anyone think like me, because it has to be a choice, and I don't have the right to dictate how others think. I don't have to like it, but to stop me from becoming a monster, I need to hold on to that idea of agency. It's not quite free will, but it's close enough that it really doesn't matter...

It's complicated, but suffice to say, I should be angry at you iKarith, but I am not. I should be angry at Shadzar, but I am not. I should be angry at Cynthialee, but I am not. I should be angry at StratosVX, but I am not. I am angry at life, and I am angry at myself, and that's about it. Everyone else is just weirdly fascinating, like watching some sort of psychosocial car crash from the outside of whatever experience is happening, because that's how I always feel... like a broken outsider of a broken reality...

Oh, and apparently, I don't NEED help, because I am too sane, and too self-aware to be insane... even though sometimes, I have to wonder...

[bastianbux]

I came to the forum to see if there was news on the new release.

Instead I found people making fun of an artist for being non-binary and wailing into the wind about how scared they are that the company making the game is "too woke."

I'm not surprised. I suspected years ago (and learned for sure a year ago) that this forum is a den of racists and homophobes and that the admin do nothing against the repeat offenders. It's why I stay away for years on end and lost all interest in collaborating with people here on quest packs and such.

I should just stop coming back, since it's always to see the same disappointment from the same "faces."

[Kurgan]

I tried to warn them. Still, better than most social media... A lesson from one of the great filmmakers of our age.

If you want news on the release, try "the big thread." If anything new gets posted on Twitter or Hasbro Pulse, you'll see it there.

[Pancho]

I came to the forum to see if there was news on the new release.

Instead I found people making fun of an artist for being non-binary and wailing into the wind about how scared they are that the company making the game is "too woke."

I'm not surprised. I suspected years ago (and learned for sure a year ago) that this forum is a den of racists and homophobes and that the admin do nothing against the repeat offenders. It's why I stay away for years on end and lost all interest in collaborating with people here on quest packs and such.

I should just stop coming back, since it's always to see the same disappointment from the same "faces."

I mean you could provide actual evidence of racism or homophobia to the admins if you wanted them to do something. Like an actual quote. Shouldn’t be too difficult if you aren’t imagining things?
Did you see the bit of the thread where a few of us were expressing our disgust that some people are cheapening concepts like racism and homophobia by using these words when you have no cause to? No? Pity.

[cornixt]

You don't have to say specifically racist/sexist/homophobic things to make it clear where you stand on those issues, the language you use and the measures you are against are more than enough.

[Pancho]

You don't have to say specifically racist/sexist/homophobic things to make it clear where you stand on those issues, the language you use and the measures you are against are more than enough.

Well we established a while back that you personally had no evidence at all, and you just reiterated that again, I was just giving Bastianbux an opportunity. I don’t expect anything but I would be the first to back him up if he did provide something real.

[cornixt]

I don't know why you think I would supply evidence for something I never accused anyone of doing, you are confusing me with someone else.

But even so, repeatedly going on about the evidence of racism rather than about racism itself is a curious choice.