hummingwolf | Peace and propaganda in our time

The Snopes Urban Legends Reference pages have confirmed that certain pictures floating around the internet are authentic photographs of Muslim protesters in London during this year's unrest over the Mohammed cartoons. Behold the face of the Religion of Peace! This is the harsh reality, people. We're so much better than they are: They have placards urging the faithful to "BUTCHER THOSE WHO MOCK ISLAM"; We have Left Behind: The Videogame.

Imagine: you are a foot soldier in a paramilitary group whose purpose is to remake America as a Christian theocracy, and establish its worldly vision of the dominion of Christ over all aspects of life. You are issued high-tech military weaponry, and instructed to engage the infidel on the streets of New York City. You are on a mission - both a religious mission and a military mission -- to convert or kill Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, gays, and anyone who advocates the separation of church and state - especially moderate, mainstream Christians. Your mission is "to conduct physical and spiritual warfare"; all who resist must be taken out with extreme prejudice. You have never felt so powerful, so driven by a purpose: you are 13 years old. You are playing a real-time strategy video game whose creators are linked to the empire of mega-church pastor Rick Warren, best selling author of The Purpose Driven Life.

I have to admit, after reading more about the game here, here, and here, it sounds very well-done, very entertaining. It may not be so good at providing spiritual clarity, however, judging from this article (Edit: if that link won't work, same column here, or use a search engine to find the Left Behind column by Joel Stein):

By the end, [Left Behind Games President Jeffery] Frichner had 24 soldiers and I had three. Defeated, I asked him if the game had accomplished its objective of making him feel invigorated about the believers' role in the end of the world. "I thought I was playing the devil," he said with a confused look. I took that as a no.

Personally, I think players of the game should be required to read all of

slacktivist's Left Behind posts (latest one here).

In other news: "Federal authorities are actively investigating dozens of American television stations for broadcasting items produced by the Bush administration and major corporations, and passing them off as normal news. Some of the fake news segments talked up success in the war in Iraq, or promoted the companies' products."

The problem here isn't that the Bush administration is Evil: the Clinton administration and all your favorite lobbying firms have produced the same kinds of "news" and sent them to all the same television stations for years. The problem is that the major TV news organizations all pass this stuff off as real news. Look, the Republicans hate the MainStream Media because they think it's biased in favor of the liberals, the Democrats hate the MSM because they think it's biased in favor of the Eeevil Bush administration, and what they all fail to recognize is that the media are, quite simply, biased in favor of whoever will do their work for them. If you're not willing to do something to change that fact, maybe you should quit complaining and go back to playing your videogames.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Just out of curiosity: Were you ever in any American bookstores or libaries at all between 1996 and 2004? Not online ones where you can influence what content you see, but physical ones? 'Cos I honestly can't believe you could have been and not seen row upon row upon shelf upon shelf of the L.B. books glaring at you in the front of the store. For that matter, did you ever ride on public transportation in the US at all and notice what people were reading? And this is in a both politically- and religiously-liberal part of the country--I can't believe that the pervasiveness was any less where you live now.

Maybe I notice this more than you do because this is my religion being polluted, but it still boggles my mind that you never noticed these books and all the people who were treating them as divinely-inspired religious tracts at all.

Were you ever in any American bookstores or libaries at all between 1996 and 2004? Not online ones where you can influence what content you see, but physical ones?

Not bookstores per se, but Wal-Mart and K-Mart. There's definitely a religious section in any of them, but I just skip over looking at it, and indeed over the best-sellers section.

Most of the Christian material appears in Christian bookstores, of which there are very many indeed. Perhaps that's the difference? Your area might be too liberal for Christian bookstores to be ultra-pervasive, forcing the Christian material into greater dominance in the mainstream stores?

For that matter, did you ever ride on public transportation in the US at all and notice what people were reading?

No. I really don't pay all that much attention to it, to be honest, and the closest thing to public transport I have been on has been aeroplanes. If we had a bus system worth a damn, I'd ride it, but we don't.

Most of the Christian material appears in Christian bookstores, of which there are very many indeed

Most, yes, but the L.B. books didn't get to the top of the (secular) national bestseller lists by hiding out in niche bookstores.

Your area might be too liberal for Christian bookstores to be ultra-pervasive

Heh. Let's not stereotype too much--this major metropolitan area is far from homogenized! There are oodles of Christian bookstores (and some Jewish bookstores, for that matter).

From your comment, the difference may be that you would have had to actively look for this stuff to notice it, while all I had to do was go about my daily business and keep my eyes open.

I don't understand someone who can pass by a bookstore and not go inside though. ::shakes head::

I go about my daily business and keep my eyes open, it's just that I find certain different things noteworthy. It's my religion too, but I just pay most books on the subject (with one obvious exception) very little attention.

Well, it's not so much that I would have found these things noteworthy on my own, as that people would come up and start talking to me about them. I rather suspect you're less likely to have strangers start religious discussions with you while you're in your car than I am when I'm on the bus or subway. (For that matter, there were the people at my unpaid internship talking about the books too, as well as friends & relatives (who were generally much saner about it all than the random strangers on buses & subways).)

I don't understand someone who can pass by a bookstore and not go inside though.

Neither do I, but I'm always busy with other things. Used to be, back in the old country, I'd bus it to the local major mall, and walk around for hours at a time, just to see what I could see. These days, I have other things on my mind. From time to time, I'll see a commercial on TV for a bookstore, and say "We need to go down there and check it out", to which the response is usually something like "People buy books? On purpose? For fun? No, dear, you've got enough books that you don't read already".

Heh. I don't go into bookstores very often anymore either, but that's because I don't go into shopping malls very often.

"People buy books? On purpose? For fun?

Ohhh, that's so sad.

She just doesn't *get* that I might buy something just for the pleasure of owning it, and having it there just in case I want or need to read it.

Case in point: there's a book right now on Amazon that would have made my job immensely easier. She wont let me buy it because I haven't finished reading the previous one we bought. They're both reference books. Well, I've got the Internet, haven't I? Well, kinda, but the Internet isn't laid out in clearly-described chapters and indices. Can't you use Google? Yes, dear.

Not being religious or politically active or any of that jazz, I can vouch for seeing a sometimes annoying level of popularity in those books. I've heard of them, never read them, heard rumors that they bought many of their own books to boost sales, that they've been on the best sellers list for a good while. There's often a rack full of them floating in the local Border's/Barnes & Noble/whatever ('cause I don't pay attention as to which store I'm in).

I thought the LB books were sold mostly at Christian bookstores, or the religious section of Barnes & Noble, et al. I had never heard about a video game till I saw it here.
However big the LB following is, I'd say the Islamic fundamentalists are still much more dangerous.

I thought the LB books were sold mostly at Christian bookstores, or the religious section of Barnes & Noble

Noooo, they were prominently displayed at the front of every chain store I passed for a long time.

Video game's not out yet, so it's not surprising you didn't know about it till now. Only people who've played it so far are game reviewers, so it's too early for people like us to get a good idea of what it's really like.

However big the LB following is, I'd say the Islamic fundamentalists are still much more dangerous

In general? Probably. But I've never met anyone who told me to my face that OBL presented the one true interpretation of Islam, while I have met people who were sure that if you didn't believe the LB books were essentially correct, you were going to Hell. Plus, people who distort Islam aren't distorting my religion and debasing the name of my God. It's like the difference between someone insulting a person you've never met versus someone insulting your best friend or your mother.

Peace and propaganda in our time

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