Game and the Founding, cont.

There is more this morning on the remarkable overeraction by some Gamesters to my innocent compliment of the article, “How Game Secured American Independence.” It now appears that by calling the article “amusing,” I “humiliated” an important and respected figure in the Game world! The world of Game is starting to resemble that of Objectivism in the 1960s as famously recounted by Murray Rothbard: an ideological—and fanatically humorless—cult, where the only proper reaction to recognized leaders is instant and total deference. However, maybe I’m still misunderstanding what’s going on and the whole thing is some elaborate put-on. (And I don’t intend to humiliate anyone when I say that.)

* * *

For a further discussion of the fragile, hothouse mentality of ideological cults, see the entry, “How Randian website replied to polite explanation of traditionalism.” Commenting in that thread, Alan Roebuck sums up the phenomenon when he says this about the Randians, and perhaps, by extension, about some Game followers as well:

There is a strain in white, middle class America that cannot bear the contemplation of certain unpleasant truths, and Objectivism promises that unpleasant reality can be disproved via their brand of rationality. But their system is far too brittle: With literally everything in the Cosmos riding on the complete validity of their rational system, even one anomaly cannot be admitted.

Similarly, with everything in the world riding on the complete validity of Game, even a simple compliment of a Game article as “amusing” rather than as important cannot be tolerated.

- end of initial entry -

Todd White writes:

I doubt the Gamers would find this post at my site funny…

Which One of These Articles is NOT a Parody?

How Game Secured American Independence

How Thomas Jefferson Used Game to Write the Declaration of Independence

How Einstein Used Game to Create the Theory of Relativity

How Joan of Arc Used “Girl Game” to Defeat the British at Patay

Todd White writes:

You wrote,

“The world of Game is starting to resemble that of Objectivism in the 1960s as famously recounted by Murray Rothbard: an ideological—and fanatically humorless—cult, where the only proper reaction to recognized leaders is instant and total deference.”

That’s why, back in September, I called Game a “chauvinistic pseudo-religion.”

Needless to say, that provoked a pretty testy response.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 27, 2009 09:25 AM | Send