REFLECTIONS, RITALIN, AND RESOLUTIONS

Traditionalist themes in video games.

by John Maelstrom

Much as I felt the call of Scrooge in the weeks leading up to Christmas, I was thwarted by great friends, a loving family, and a few events that conspired to defeat my inner curmudgeon. As enjoyable as Christmas proved to be for me, my favorite time is the week between Christmas and the New Year. This period is marked by a deep quiet that lends itself to reflection and plans for the coming year. Being American I have a terribly short attention span, so I found myself reflecting mostly on this last month of the year.

Shortly before Christmas I was treated to a concert put on by the famous YouTube duet, The Piano Guys. The audience was 99.9% homogeneous – white and Mormon to the core. I suspect I was the only non-Mormon there. Besides the racial component, the evening was significant to me because it was the first night of the Christmas season that I actually felt a twinge of that thing they call the Christmas spirit. Toward the end of the show the audience began singing Silent Night, and I couldn’t help but hear that every one of the two-thousand people there meant every word they sang. It was beautiful, truly. I won’t delve into the problems I have with Mormonism but it is impressive how this group, through their own fantasy view of Jesus and the early Americas, is doing exactly what white nationalists of all stripes can’t seem to advance beyond the planning phase with all of their studies, statistics, and supporting news articles – that is, building a Whitopia.

December was also marred by the massacre at Sandy Hook elementary school. As a parent, the sympathy I felt for the mothers and fathers of the twenty slain children ran deep, and yet I know what I imagine of their horror doesn’t come close to what those men and women feel today and for the rest of their days. To have those emotions battered around by calls for gun control, re-examination of mental health in this country, and critiques of the influence of media and video games on children must be maddening. But it is inevitable.

Like everyone, my disgust for Adam Lanza runs through to my core. If any carcass deserves to be run through a wood-chipper and dumped in the local landfill it’s his. And yet I can’t help but wonder, was Adam Lanza a closet Traditionalist? I won’t call him a young man because manhood is discouraged in our society and I expect this was especially so in his case. He was an animal that finally broke his chain. From the sound of it he did this often to his captors, his parents and mother in particular, in less dramatic ways but in ways that prompted the woman to explore institutionalizing her son. I know I risk playing armchair psychologist here but it seems to me Adam Lanza did not have a disease, he had a cage.

The modern world assigned a label to a boy; a label that didn’t exist when many of us were kids. It determined that this kid suffered a pathology, as it has done with hundreds of thousands of (mostly) boys in the West. Never did we stop to ask if these kids were just reacting normally to a pathological society. The Traditionalists have known this to be the case all along.

Mad world.

Then we learn of Lanza’s main means of escape; he was an avid video game player. Addicted, no doubt! The sheep begin to bleat, "Video games must cause anti-social behavior." There might be a case to make for that, but is it also possible that in an anti-social world where casual conversation must be internally monitored by PC-programming, where wishing someone a Merry Christmas can get you fired from your job, where expressing attraction toward the wrong person can land you in court, that maybe video game worlds are just the market’s way of providing a virtual world where a kid, or adult for that matter, can finally, freely, express himself?

It’s interesting to me, and keep in mind I am largely unfamiliar with the gaming world being from the Pong and Space Invaders generation, that the games I seem to hear about most are either first-person shoot ‘em up games, representing a chance to vent against dehumanized humans, or fantasy worlds decorated generously with Traditionalist themes – hierarchy, rites of passage, heroism, monarchy, holy or elite orders, priest and warrior castes, and the existence of extra-material worlds and beings. Some of the biggest franchises in the video gaming industry, HALO and The Elder Scrolls being two that I am aware of, are overflowing with the Traditional. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn there are many more. Unfortunately, there will be many more Adam Lanzas because these kids haven’t figured out how to vent the way we have against this sick world. The contrast between the world they feel "should be" and the one they live in is too much for some of them. I imagine being at a tender age where fitting in with your peers is important just compounds the stress. The rest of us write, we Facebook, we pray, we learn to be at peace with the Kali Yuga, we research, discuss and argue. They play their video games, but then what? And why those games? We can’t dismiss it all to marketing can we? Fortunes are spent advertising games attached to otherwise successful movies and comics that go nowhere in the gamer world. Why?

Mormons making Whitopias while playing multiculty ball with our elites . . .

Video game companies either turning these kids into Throne and Altar types, or exposing them for the Throne and Alter types they already are (without any real world thrones or altars to kneel before)...

What’s going on here?

Mormon church: Whitopia in plain sight.

Despite all of our lamentations and commentary I believe there is reason for the Alternative Right community to feel some hope. Without even trying, real entities are capitalizing on our worldview, not because they like our arguments, but because they, and we, value what Nature demands. The video gamers see in their games a world of truth. They know equality is bunk. They know real living means setting yourself apart from the crowd through discipline and perseverance, by climbing the ranks. They know a real life if not one lived for yourself but one lived in service to your God, your people, your community, and your family. The Mormons talk a good talk about multiracialism, but when it comes down to it they are strictly monocultural and that culture is one that attracts whites and repels non-whites. It’s as simple as that. They do this despite ridicule and protests. They don’t let the shower of scorn beat them down. Instead they build businesses, they live, and they have lots of children who they pass these values down to.

In 2013 I’ll continue to rend and gnash, via the pen, because that’s what I like to do. But I see now that our future is not as hopeless as I had once believed, so I’ll resolve to make note of these triumphs, as accidental as they may be. I see also that we have more support for our worldview than I had once thought, even if the supporters are unaware of us or our cause just now. New avenues of escape for these lost, suffering kids can be created with a little Mormon tenacity and a little willingness to live those Traditional truths, quirky as they may seem to Modern eyes, so I’ll resolve to not just write of a path but to actually get around to building one this year. Resolutions are born partly of determination and partly of hope. It is my hope that many of you join me or resolve to build some avenues of your own in 2013.

Happy New Year to you all!