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Point! What’s Your Point?
#16 The X-Box Age
Jeff A. Van Booven

Well, I couldn't help but take some offense to the opening catch paragraph of Kenneth R. Gregg's latest column, even though it had very little to do with the column at all.

“This is the "X-Box Age" when kids grow up to think reality is a video game, with point scores and multiple characters that can be "All You Can Be." Death is pixilated on a computer monitor far away from the injuries and pain of the battlefield; where strategy and tactics aren't the unpredictable, messy things that actually happen in war; where the goals are nice little short-range "Game Over" entries on a screen; and where there are no long-term effects from the weapons – no children killed, no financial loss, no dreams ended. That's not war. Never was. Never will be. ”
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig2/gregg2.html

Now, I'd like to start out by pointing out that there is no proof what-so-ever in existence to validate his claim that kids think that reality is a video game. It's unfounded, it's a lie, and to any kid, teen, or child it's a stereotype that shouldn't be pressed upon them.

He may be right about how video games aren't really a very good representative of war, and I tend to agree with him on that point. In fact, it's been one of the biggest complaints I've had about war games is that they don't seem realistic. World War II was never fought with lone soldiers, yet nearly all the games out treat it that way. Call of Duty II was a joke in regards to squad dynamics. They were nothing more than cannon fodder. Aside from that, any game that aptly even showed the damage of war, put in innocent civilians would instantly be put on the AO list and banned from Wal-Mart and any major retailer, even though it's showing what really happens and would supposedly teach kids what war is really like, which seems to me like it would fill Jack Thompson with a smug grin. What is lost is a grand educational opportunity as well. Think about those lovely load screens. Imagine what a nice page of what actually went on could do for a person's knowledge of the war. War games as there are, are undramatic pieces of s**t simply because we have too much vested in “protecting” the youth of today from reality. You want to know why kids don't understand reality, we're too damn busy shielding them from it in any way possibly.

We might as well hang “Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch'entrate” on the delivery room doors for today's children, because they pretty much have no hope from the get go if we keep up our deliberate attack on childhood. Think about it, we can't even let our kids play outside anymore because they might be kidnapped. They can't play rough because they might get hurt. And competitiveness is right out because it might hurt their self-esteem. On top of that they're all supposed to play nice with one another because they're peers just because they're the same age. You know, our modern model of education would damn near make Marx proud.

Kids used to go out and rough-house in the woods, build forts, and shoot guns. We all know that in today's society guns only kill people. A kid could hurt himself hammering. And oh dear you'd be lucky to even find woods. The only thing left is sports, which some kids might just not enjoy, because they are in fact competitive, and not very creative at all. We don't encourage creativity, expression, thought in our children. We do expect teamwork, unity, conformity.

I'm not even surprised that kids wind up in the house playing video games all day. I truly am not at all. As interesting as it is, asphalt doesn't lead to much. Video games however, allow you to become something. To do something greater. Save planets. Discover treasure. Explore. Create. Become. What do we offer our kids of today? School work. Pressure to become a uniformed servant of the state. A wage slave. Expression and free thought aren't something we encourage, and yet it's any wonder why we have mind-drones for teenagers?

Parents also wonder why they can't connect with their kids... Perhaps they might actually try finding interest in things their kids like? Shooting used to be a great example of this. A father teaching his son to shoot. How to handle a gun properly. The works. Father and son, together. Now days what do you get? Take an interest in your kids and you might just find that they'll respond to you.

I've been through the educational system as well. My impression, might as well get working on calling ourselves the Peoples' Republic of the United States, because if I've learned anything there, we love to bring ourselves down to the lowest common denominator. We refuse to accept that some people are naturally going to be better than others. We refuse to accept intelligence, and worst of all, we refuse creativity and free thought. Nothing is a better example than our English departments and Literary Analysis. We can spent entire high school careers trying to teach the symbolism inherit in outdated novels to kids who don't care and get nothing but people who now hate to read. Why does this happen, because for one, the kids don't connect to feminism and the civil rights movement... On top of that, most of the classes are centered on this should be your opinion rather than lets discuss what you got out of this book. What's even sillier is that we don't even bother to truly encourage free expression.

You want kids to recognize reality, then give them reality. Don't give them a war as a chapter of names and dates. Give them reality. Give them what really happened. Don't give them Jeopardy. This problem isn't one caused by video games, it's one caused by adults, politicians, and educators. It's cause by parents who refuse to let kids be kids. To let boys be boys. To let creativity reign.

And on top of that, look at how society has taken away from children. For example, there used to be a field and a nice wooded area with a stream and paths where I lived. A few years back corporate religion came in and took over the wooded area, built themselves a fancy church, thinned out the woods, and put up no trespassing signs all over. Now it's a baseball diamond that gets little use, a volleyball court I've never seen used, and a Frisbee golf course. Interesting how what was once a land of nature and creativity has been turned into a land of competitive sports for a select few, by an institution no less than a church, whom practices greed proselytizing for it's youth group. They actually have a competition where the youth group is split up to teams, and the team that gets the most people to come to the youth group meetings wins a trip. A trip these kids are so desperate to win, that they'll invite known, vocal, atheists, who would do nothing more than argue completely against the religious institutions should they come. Is this what religion is these days? Corporate Greed? Churches used to be built by the sweat and labour of the congregation, now they're hired out to subcontractors to build elaborate houses of God; an ironic joke if I ever saw one.

Now the field, it's been turned into a subdivision of similar looking houses. Plain, ugly, houses, standing in a row. You want kids to think, the environment we're creating sure isn't going to get that done.

On top of all this, I'd hate to say it, but a lot of kids are in fact very concerned about what is going on in this country. They may not be fourteen, and rightly why should a fourteen year old have politics as a major concern, but the many eighteen and nineteen years old that I know have a large majority of very vocal people when it comes to politics, many of whom are fervently anti-war. These aren't kids who were indoctrinated into these beliefs by their parents. We're talking overly religious, bible-belt teens who still think that this is an immoral and unjust war we've got going now. “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” is not our battle cry. Teenagers these days are not just the mindless drones that the powers that be have tried to make us. We give a damn, we are capable of thinking for ourselves. And should anybody think otherwise, they've got something coming, because not all teens are mindless indoctrinated idiots. Even in America, the land of the ignorant, bigoted, and dumb there are still many shining beacons of hope whom America desperately needs to rise and set a new course for the century, one that doesn't send this country into Byzantium.

The X-Box is only a console, it is not a generation that hasn't even come of age.

Point! What’s Your Point?
#18 Proud to be UnAmerican
Jeff A. Van Booven

Having recently switch locations to a rather, Bushwhacked, for lack of a better term, town from my more well, still pretty much overly Republican previous location I've been somewhat taken back by how many people don't really seem to get it. After watching V for Vendetta, I got into a conversation with a staunch Christian Republican about the meaning of the movie. He seemed to have completely missed the entire basis for the movie was Bush's wars leading to a fascist Orwellian state in Britain, and that the movie relies pretty much on Bush as the main tyrant power. Of course, to properly subscribe the movie to Bush you'd have to accept the conspiracy theory that he along with the New American Century people orchestrated the 9/11 attacks, which is pretty far fetched. Needless to say, this poor kid went from thinking it was an awesome movie purporting liberty and freedom against oppression, to denouncing it as utter garbage.

Though the student body is overwhelmingly republican, serving generally the more southern parts of the state, there is a growing contingent of liberals and libertarians attending. And, as with most universities, the faculty does lean left. The town itself is about twenty five percent church, and the Wal-Mart parking lot about fifty-five percent “W” stickers. Shithole aptly describes this town. Bush's policies have done nothing to help these people, the only reason this town exists is because of the University, whose goals are decidedly against those of the Christian Right.

Well, being bored and having time to think I started work on a poem that is somewhat a parody of Lee Greenwood's, “Proud to be an American” song, which is way too overplayed here.

Proud to be UnAmerican.

I'm proud to be UnAmerican,
to hang my flag up wrong.
Proud to stand up,
against George Bush,
to stop his evil throng.

I'm proud to be UnAmerican,
to protest loud and clear.
Proud to not send soldiers,
off to die in lands unknown.

I'm proud to be UnAmerican,
to know I'm really free.
Proud to stand up,
for my rights you see.

I'll not stand idly by,
while the government
takes from me,
my last shreds of liberty;
for this I take my stand.

There's no doubt that I love this land,
and for what it really stands.
But I will not say a pledge,
to a flag that doesn't represent,
the ideals of a free land.

So call me UnAmerican,
a terrorist, or a queer.
You will not take from me,
the ideals for which this nation
stands!

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.
For there is one certain thing,
it was written by Jefferson.
And on July 4th,
his words declared us free,
and that's something you can't take from me.

Point! What’s Your Point?
#20 Open Letter to USA Today
Jeff A. Van Booven
Note: You'd have to have read the article in the October 26th issue to fully understand this letter. However, a brief summary is that the author intended that young people needed to be forced, much like they do in Israel, into a year or two of compulsory servitude to the state.

Explain to me this, how is requiring 18 year olds to spend up to two years of their life in mandatory slavery to the state “an opportunity for shared sacrifice?” After all, anybody over the age of 18 naturally would have never shared in this, and there are quite a few people over 18 who haven't. How does hindering the freedom of 18 year old high school graduates induce them to be more patriotic? It sure wouldn't make me happier to live here, if anything I'd be less patriotic due in part to even more federal intrusion into my life. How exactly are we expecting our children to turn into well-adjusted adults when we're constantly passing restriction after restriction against them? If we're going back to the draft why not just go a few steps further? Why not just repeal the 26th amendment so that our youth have even less say in the matter of how their lives are dictated? As for the bottom line, how about you let the youth of this country help shore up freedom by actually practicing it?

I find it funny how, once again, the next generation is generalized as ignorant and uncaring. After all, perhaps we're not so keen on public service because it's shoved down our throats every day. Nearly every week my high school had some sort of can drive, money collection for some benefit, or service project going on. Some districts are even considering, if they haven't already added, mandatory public service in order to graduate. To say that we don't know about public service is lunacy, we know too much about it; that it doesn't count for jack if you're doing it because you're forced to. It's not altruistic, it's not even something you care about when you're forced to do it. It's not even patriotic, it's a chore, yet another thing forced upon us by the generations before us who see themselves fit to run our lives and decide what they think is good for us. Before the 26th amendment they thought it was perfectly fine to send us to war, but not to allow us to vote. Now we're apparently not able to functionally drive cars at 16, or even buy cold medication. The message sent to us is that we're not to be trusted, and that we're all bad kids who are incapable of making our own reasoned decisions; the message is that we need to be controlled by the adults through constant new laws and restrictions.

Now the fact that the header for the last bit is called “the first class” has me a bit concerned as well. Is this just a program aimed against the children of the wealthy? After all, of course they've already got money and two years out of their lives might not mean all that much. To the middle class however, two years of their lives can mean a great deal. I also enjoyed the “unfinished business line.” Why exactly is it that the youth of this nation have to learn about the “unfinished business” of this nation? I don't recall our generation creating this business or even leaving it unfinished. How about, instead of forcing the youth into labor camps, the old generation finish their business. After all, the bottom line is, enforcing mandatory service is an intrusion on my life, on my liberty, and on my happiness.

Point! What’s Your Point?
#23 Things That Really Shouldn't Matter
Jeff A. Van Booven

In the course of human events there comes a time when some s**t just shouldn't be turned into a major national news story because it will only result in becoming a giant ******** joke. Lite-Brites are not a weapon of mass destruction. Apparently when one identifies a Lite-Brite these days their first reaction is not, “hey, I remember those” but rather, “oh s**t I'm going to die.”

One does not truly understand just how much the news blows a story out of proportion until one is actually involved in the news story. That being said, the university I attend recently fell victim to the malicious attack of a depressed grad student whose grades were less than stellar. Oh, and as the news put it, he was from the “Asian country of India.” He had a knife, a bag of white powder, and he claimed he was going to blow up the building he was in. The result of all this was most of the student body sleeping in and not really giving a damn. One group was playing washers in their back yard with a blow up doll, another was drinking beer and blasting danger zone. The news on the other hand made it seem like people were actually afraid, or even remotely gave a s**t.

Personally, I found out my nine o'clock was canceled and went back to sleep till noon. I ate lunch, and now I'm doing laundry. The news would have you believe that I'm cowering in some bunker afraid for my life. This is not the case, at no time was I ever afraid, or even gave a damn. So remember, when the news comes on and makes you think that people are fearing for their lives, in reality, most of those people are probably going about their lives and not giving a s**t.