Beggared, Hated, and Damned

When large portions of your nation are flooded, burning, being marched in by literal Nazis, or some combination of the above…

When your neighbors and allies are being pounded by hurricanes, and storms of historical size are headed toward your own shores…

When your cops and citizens are killing one another at a rate unmatched aside from the Roaring 20s and the 1980s Crack Wars, and are doing so on camera, no less…

When the living representative of our nation is a bumbling boorish thieving rapist clod who brags about his tax-evasion and openly threatens nuclear genocide DURING A FUCKING UNITED NATIONS SPEECH…

…and your greatest priority in office involves spending uncounted millions of dollars in order to take away medical care from millions of citizens – in many cases for the duration of their short yet miserable lives – dooming children to poverty and pain, pauperizing large swaths of the citizens you have sworn to protect, and giving ever-rising tax-breaks and ever-higher profits to the richest citizens in our nation (and in some cases, on earth)…

Then you are no conservative.

You are no Christian.

You are most certainly not a patriot.

You do not represent the American people. You represent only your own selfish gain and the howling tide of racist bile that demands overturning every law and sacrificing every life in the nation if doing so means you can erase the legacy of a man who dared to become president while Black.

In such cases, you deserve no wealth nor power nor loyalty nor love.

People with such priorities are fit only to be shunned, beggared, despised, and ultimately damned to whatever passes for a hell.

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Apparently, Breathless Vitriol is My Superpower Tonight…

Seriously?

“Greatest” and “created” are so subjective as to render that statement worthless.

Lucas created a universe that was financially successful on a previously unimaginable scale by applying familiar tropes in ways that people really needed to see and hear at the time. That said, he had the aid of equally visionary collaborators who helped turned a banal, derivative, illogical, poorly-acted and unintentionally racist mess into modern mythology.

Roddenberry had perhaps the most socially progressive and ultimately optimistic vision of the lot. That said, his writing was often hackneyed and sappy, his vision was limited by ideological blinders, and again the legacy of his work depended on the work of collaborators who were better at expanding his vision than the “creator” was at originating it.

I’m not familiar with Toryama’s work enough to comment on it, except to ask who the hell thought Dragonball belonged on a list with Middle Earth.

Professor Tolkien indisputably created a landmark work of the fantasy genre. Middle Earth was a watershed in the history of media storytelling and modern mythology. Tolkien’s world-building was second to none in terms of detail, scope, and poetic resonance. That said, it’s also a racist, sexist old-boys’ club created by a product of the Edwardian upper class, based near-entirely on reworking actual mythology from several cultures whose works don’t necessarily fit together well. (Also, Jesus Christ, if I never have to read another five pages’ worth of epic elven poetry stuck in the middle of an adventure story, it will be too soon.)

Rowling’s work is delightfully British, fun to read, and far deeper than a casual glance would reveal. More than perhaps any creator save Roddenberry, she crafted a humanistic, progressive, and ultimately hopeful vision that lacks the sappy superficiality of Gene’s own work. Like Star Wars, the Harry Potter series spoke a message that people all over the world were almost literally dying to hear, and that message – unlike those of all the other creators – had room in it for people who weren’t just straight white (or near-white) dudes. That said, the series makes no fucking sense from a logical standpoint, its storyline is retcon-city, and many of its best ideas were culled (if altered) from other, better material.

Martin is certainly the most serious and single-handedly ambitious of the lot. More than even Tolkien himself, G.R.R. has brought fantasy into the real of serious matters and adult consideration. That said… holy fuck, George, could you at least try to write a story that didn’t involve rape, torture and betrayal as major elements of the plot? Also, Tolkien with more rape and genocide is still basing your work off Tolkien.

Wow. Um, okay… apparently I had some opinions about this stuff tonight…

A World Bigger Than Ourselves

Dear Fellow Melanin-Deprived Individuals, most especially my fellow dudes:

Please just Shut Up.

There is no such thing as “the white race.” It’s a crock. The “heritage of white culture” is not a thing. Russia is not Rome is not England is not Sweden, and mashing them all together into a slot called “white culture” makes you look like an ignorant jackass.

There is no such thing as “white genocide,” either, though when y’all waste endless time and pixels ranting about it, it makes some folks – including other folks who are so-called “white” – wish we could enact one just to shut you up. (Yes, I’m kidding. Sorta.) Historically speaking, you know who’s committed “white genocide”? Other white people. That’s the facts, Jack.

Whiteness is the invention of a handful of British dudes a couple hundred years ago who wanted an excuse to justify slavery. [*1] That’s it. That’s all. You’ve been had. Deal with it.

The entire idea of “race” is literally race-ist: The linguistic root of that word comes from the Old Norse word ras, meaning “a rush of water.” The modern form of that word derives from the Old English raes, which adds connotations of attack, fury, storm and motion. The whole concept of the word is based on a notion that different sorts of people exist in ferocious competition with one another. And yet, linguistically speaking, “race” is literally fluid, always changing, pushing forward without rest… the very opposite of homogenized, discrete entities.

Human beings – like water, culture, and genetics themselves – are not set in stone. Thus, the word “race” is both poetically apt when referring to humanity as a species, and yet totally inaccurate when used to separate us into disparate classes of so-called “superiority. The term may come from an attempt to show us in competition with one another, but – like anything put into rushing water – it literally breaks down under the weight and pressure of constant, natural motion.

Anglo-Nordics are not superior. Why is this even a question? In what universe is Honey Boo Boo the product of a Master Race? The entire concept is based on junk science that makes phrenology look like quantum physics. That concept, too, is a recent invention, disproved ages ago, repeatedly, with quantifiable scientific proof. Move on, people. The future awaits.

The Roman Empire wasn’t “white.” Classical Greece wasn’t either. Ancient Egypt was less white than Harlem, and that’s not even getting into China – the place that innovated most of human technology while Western Europe still was building huts made of mud, shit and straw.

And yes, ACTUALLY there were, in fact, dark-skinned people living in medieval Europe. Lots of them. Whole nations of them. Go look up Al-Andalus, the Ottoman Empire, and the history of Spain. For fuck’s sake, educate yourselves somewhere other than Stormfront and 4Chan and old Erroll Flynn films. Recess, kids, is over.

(And by all that’s holy, go read up on the Crusades, the Inquisition, the European witch-craze and the Thirty Years’ War before going off about the evils of Islam and supposed moral greatness of Christianity.)

Jesus wasn’t white. Saint Nick wasn’t white. The entire idea rests on a bunch of self-congratulatory nonsense churned out by people who spent a few decades being paid by the word and image to produce it. It’s not true, and it never was. Get a goddamned clue.

“So who’s that hippie everyone keeps talking about?”

This is especially true of the contention that fantasy media is “rightfully” the dominion of het white dudes. If you knew nearly as much about F/SF history as you claim to know about it, you’d realize that modern fantasy media was essentially invented by two women and a Black dude back before Robert Heinlein and J.R.R. Tolkien were even born. The only reason white guys dominated the field for a few decades was because they shut the gate on everybody except “their own kind.” Even then, that gate’s been open for over half a century now. Gods almighty, get the fuck over yourselves.

I shouldn’t have to say this. No one should. This all should, as the man said, be self-evident. Anyone who’s capable of using Google or a library card for more than enforcing their own sense of self-delusion already knows this stuff. It’s entry-level. Get with the fucking program.

How pathetic and scared must a person be to so deeply fear a world that’s bigger than themselves?

And how much more pathetic must one be to keep insisting one is right when all the evidence shows otherwise?

Fellow Euro-Americans, you’re embarrassing yourselves, and you’re annoying everybody else. Including me.

Just. Fucking. Stop.

Thank you.

Lookit all the pretty colors…

NOTES
___________________________________

* 1: To add insult to idiocy, the concept derives from casta, the Spanish justification for ethnic conquest and supposed “racial” superiority. As anyone who’s so much as glanced at the history of the Iberian region and its cultures knows, Imperial Spain was not remotely “white” in the sense of an Anglo-Nordic superiority complex. 

You Do Not Get to Play Nazi without Getting Treated like a Nazi (Charlottesville Riots, Pt. II)

“Help! Help!” cried the torch-bearing Nazi, “I’m being oppressed!”

Peter Cvjetanovic, may you never be hired, laid, or welcomed into the company of your fellow human beings again.

You chose this path, fuckstick. You walk it.

Peter Cvjetanovic, loser at large.

And before someone complains I’m being too harsh on that poor boy, remember that a whole lot of Black, Latino and Native American kids his age or younger would be dead by now if they’d done what he’s done… and that plenty of his apologists would vilify those other boys for doing exactly the same thing.

Oh, and another point I’d like to underscore:

He’s not from the South. I am.

The people who resisted him came largely from the South as well. Like Richard Spencer and the car-wielding murderer I won’t even name here because I refuse to give him the infamy he craves, Cvjetanovic flew in from another part of the country and used the South as an excuse for their real agenda: a public opportunity to glory in fear and ignite a race-war everywhere.

This wretched little piss-smear isn’t a hard-working blue-collar laborer from flyover country whose dire economic plight has been neglected by the sneering smug liberal elite. Peter Cvjetanovic is a well-off college boy “studying history and political science” and yet doing that so badly that he could be radicalized – not four hours’ drive from fucking Burning Man, no less – into spending more money than I make in a month to fly across the country so he could wave a blazing torch around a statue of Robert E. Lee.

And yes, let’s call it what it is: RADICALIZED. These ambulatory cockstains are being deliberately fed – and are choosing to accept – a violent agenda of overthrow and conquest as part of their ethnic identity. They have a body count, and it is growing. It is their professed intention to destroy other people’s lives in pursuit of their perceived superiority.

If they were brown-skinned dudes wearing keffiyeh instead of Oxford shirts, we would be bombing the shit out of them right now.

Portrait of Yeehawdi as a very stupid man.

This is not the cry of oppressed wage-slaves in the heartland of America. It is the whine of entitled, pale-skinned enfant terribles whose delusions of kingship exist at the expense of their fellow human beings.

He sees himself as a hero when in fact he’s a parasitic turd.

Who joins the alt-reich? Bored white boys and girls raised on a steady diet of Fox News and InfoWars who’ve spent eight of the last nine years hearing and fearing that The Scary Black President was a Muslim and a Nazi and an anchor baby and a Maoist and whatever other racist dumbshit swill happened to make the rounds that news day. They’re kids who’ve grown up without having a viable employment situation, and bloated middle-aged chawheads who got Jesus confused with Lynrd Skynrd somewhere down the pike and didn’t bother to learn what either party actually stood for when they said the things that made them great. They’re “temporarily embarrassed millionaires” who expect Trump to whip out his magic dong and ejaculate money into a seething economic wound, and rich sociopaths whose idea of prosperity involves a condescending smirk and a half-million-dollar car and if some libotard cuck bitch-ass faggots get hurt in the process then that money is all the sweeter. These are people raised on Back to the Future films who thought Biff Tannin was the hero, who watched Wall Street and cheered for Gorden Gekko. They are the backwashed inbred spawn of a self-important, deluded, narcissistic culture in which compassion is for the weak. They equate “freedom” with “my ability to ‘roll coal’ for the sheer pleasure of pissing off them libotards.” They are the pimples on Ted Nugent’s ass, shouting “Rush (Limbaugh) is right!” because that seems somehow, in their pathetic little lives, to be something a “real Amuuurikin” does.

To hell with every one of them.

You do not get to play Nazi without getting treated like a Nazi.

You do not get to play Nazi without getting treated like a Nazi.

You do not get to play Nazi without getting treated like a Nazi.

I don’t give a fuck if the Black Man in “your” White House scared you.

I don’t care if you’re doing it For Teh Lolz, or you think their uniforms look kewl.

I don’t care if you’re suffering some existential crisis because no girl or boy will suck your cock and so you seek out solace on 4Chan, InfoWars and Return of Kings for a virtual circle jerk of like-minded loser apes who masturbate to bad Conan fan-fic disguised as “alternative philosophy.”

I don’t care.

You strap on that armband, or fly that swastika, or seig heil or Trump or Hitler or whatever, then you are the enemy.

When things get to this stage, you don’t have a fucking “side to your story.” You’ve given away that right, and history has already condemned you.

Holey Toht!

And so, I want every single one of the bastards who decided to march through a city bearing Nazi regalia and howling for white supremacy to be thoroughly, righteously shunned.

I want every turdhearted parasitical racist fuckstick in every video and every photo from that march to lose his job, his home, and his loved ones. I want cops showing up on his door with handcuffs and a warrant. I want them to live in the fear they inspire in their would-be victims, and I want every single one of them to experience the misery they openly wish for and act to bring about for others.

I want them called out in the internet and vigorously expelled from everyday society. I want their social media accounts terminated for TOS violations, and if someone decided to reveal their names and workplaces, I would not be disappointed.

I’m not worried that this will “radicalize” them because they’ve already been radicalized.

They. Chose. This. Let them deal with the results.

As Sandra Swan often says, sometimes the most loving thing you can do for a person involves allowing them to experience the consequences of their actions.

This is how I choose to love my enemies.

And let’s be clear: These people are enemies of us all.

Before some jackass “devil’s advocate” shows up to inevitably reveal their lack of understanding of what that phrase actually means, I’ll point out that the difference between this shitfest and the Occupy, Standing Rock and Black Lives Matter protests is that the latter three address real threats and grievances by the people who are protesting, while this nonsense involves directly threatening the lives and liberties of fellow citizens for the imagined crime of being The Other.

As far as “getting their side of the story,” their side of the story is simple: “I’m an asshole loser who fails at life and blames my inadequacies on the existence of other people.” That’s it. That’s it, that’s all. When you start literally carrying torches for the Nazi cause, that’s the only side you have.

This shit is not “free speech” or “the freedom to assemble.” This is calling for the violent collapse of your society and its replacement by genocidal ethnic rule. According to the Supreme Court itself, incitements to mob violence are not protected speech. (cf. Schenck v. United States and Brandenburg v. Ohio)… and even if they were, the First Amendment protects you from government persecution, not from the hatred of your fellow citizens.

These wretch-headed pissant thug-boys have violated the boundaries of a civil society. They should be treated with all appropriate contempt in return.

Where’s that Ark when you need it?

Think Harder

I have friends on the police force. I have lived in neighborhoods where we were glad to hear approaching sirens because it meant someone who robbed us, or who’d threatened to rape us, or who was turning some poor soul into hamburger in an adjoining apartment, was about to go away in cuffs. Hell, I even named a cat of mine after a cop whose beat often brought her to our building, where she typically left with some swearing asshole learning the hard way that certain women hit back hard.

I know, from my friends and personal observation and experience, that police officers have the hardest job in the world. More than anyone outside the military – and statistically the numbers may even be higher than theirs – the people who populate the Thin Blue Line are those most unlikely to return alive from an average day or night at work.

I realize that my friends in blue might never come back home one night because some dude with a high-powered rifle and a grudge had decided he had nothing else to lose.

Which is why I have to ask you, American police officers:

What the fuck are you thinking?

When you gather from several states around to go bash in Indian skulls at Standing Rock, what the fuck are you thinking?

When you close ranks to protect officers who falsify evidence on camera, what the fuck are you thinking?

When President Bully-Boy makes a ha-ha about slamming people’s heads into car doors, and you laugh – on camera – what the fuck are you thinking?

When you protect literal Nazis from the people they would gleefully destroy, what the fuck are you thinking?

When one of your own tweets “ha ha love this” after an out-of-town racist plows his car into a crowd of innocent people, killing one and sending dozens to the ER, what the ever-loving fuck are you THINKING?

Because I don’t get it.

Occupy. Berkeley. Sanford. Ferguson. Standing Rock. Trump rallies. Charlottesville. As of last night, Seattle. And that’s just a short list of obvious incidents off the top of my head.

By all that’s holy, people, THINK HARDER.

The current situation is not in your best interests. Nor in ours. Nor in the best interests of the country as a whole.

This shit puts your lives even more at risk. It draws targets on you, and on your fellow officers, and on my friends who know they’re doing the right thing by standing up for the innocent against crime.

When your union backs a racist, rapist narcissist, that marks you. When Captain Klanhood says, “Go beat in Injun skulls,” and you say yes, it marks every cop alive. When that guy next you in the squad room makes a nigger joke and you smile, when that detective plants drugs on someone who “Don’t look right,” and you let her do it, when traffic stops become death-sentences, when your partner or your friend or even that guy you don’t especially like but hey he bleeds blue just like you do… when he grabs a hippie and shoots pepper spray in her eyes from less than a foot away, it marks you as the enemy to the rest of us.

I know that many of you are standing up against these things, but much as I hate to say it, right now it’s not nearly enough of you. And that scares me.

Because I don’t want to be your enemy.

I don’t want to feel I need to hang around the scene of a car accident, with my cell phone out, if one of the folks involved isn’t white, because I’d like to at least believe they’ll make it home alive after you show up at the scene. [*1]

I don’t want to have to worry about my friends in blue.

I want to recall my relief when Officer Van Landingham pounded on the door of our abusive shitstain neighbors with her nightstick, not wonder if she was coming for us instead. [*2]

I want to hear from my friends who protest a Seattle Nazi rally that you shot tear gas and grenades at the Nazis instead of at them.

I want to believe that you’re protecting the innocents from the criminals, not the other way around.

And right now, I can’t think that.

Not because I’m a long-haired Left-Coast liobtard, but because the actions of police officers across this country, again and again and a-fucking-gain – on camera, on record, on twitter and the news – they all show me I can’t trust you.

I’m a white-ish dude [*3], middle-aged and of apparently middle-class means, and yet I’m fucking scared of you. I’m fucking furious with you. I don’t trust cops anymore, and maybe I never really should have but I know too many cops and too many criminals to think it’s all as simple as “every cop is a criminal.” And I’m not scared of you because I’m guilty, or because I “believe the media elite,” or because I think all cops are just the same. I know better than that.

I’m scared of you because when I see a blue uniform, or a cop car, or one of the ever-growing number of fucking police-force tanks showing up to protect corporate interests from citizen protests… when I know that my Black friends wonder whether they’ll die in a fucking traffic stop for the crime of being the wrong color in the wrong cop’s eyes… when I fucking watch you laugh as a man who’s in the White House instead of behind bars – where, under our supposed “rule of law,” he belongs – makes funnies about your loyalty to him, I have to wonder, with regards to those police officers, What the fuck are you thinking?

Because in a land where cops and citizens all paint targets on one another’s backs, the law is a joke, nobody’s safe, and no one – regardless of the color of skin or badge or blood – really makes it home alive.

We deserve better than this. And so do you.

For yourselves, for your families, for your brothers and sisters in blue, for all of us, for our nation, think harder. Please.

____________________________
NOTES

1: For the record, yes, I DO feel I have to keep an eye on this sort of thing these days…. and so I do.

2: My former home, dubbed Domestic Abuse Central, was filled with white folks. The only non-white people in that building were a Black medical student who kept very far away from all the madness, a Native American guy who got into lots of fights, and my Lakota-ancestry now-former wife. The racial element that’s so goddamned common in the news right now was essentially absent in that time and place because almost everyone on all sides of those situations was white. That’s not the situation in the post-9/11 Land of Trump, however. Not at all. Hell, it certainly wasn’t the situation in Richmond, VA, during the late 1980s, either, but at least our police chief at that time was Black and he kept a fairly tight rein on the bigger bigots under his command.

3: New York Sicilian, actually, and we have our own history on both sides of the law… but you can’t tell that from looking at me on the street or your computer screen.

 

Morally Wrong, Intellectually Stupid, and Historically Doomed to Failure (Charlottesville Riots Pt. I)

Because my signature achievement so far has involved Mage: The Ascension – an urban fantasy book series dealing with the subjective nature of reality and “truth” – there are people who think I should “keep an open mind” and remain apolitically neutral when it comes to topics like ethnic, gender and spiritual oppression.

My answer to that sentiment is simple:

Fuck No. Never.

To be sure, there are many gray areas when it comes to truth and reality. Our perspectives shape the world we experience, and few people see themselves as villains in the story of their lives.

That does not mean that there are no villains.

All too often, oppressors view themselves as oppressed. Occasionally, they’re even correct to a point. (Read up on the French occupation of the pre-WWII Rhineland region for a perfect example of how even the greatest evils can grow from understandable grievances.) But even in such cases, there must be lines drawn between what is and is not acceptable in a viable society. Those lines tend to be drawn, at least initially, by the people in power, but that does not make them right in the greater scheme of things. At such times, it is essential to redraw the lines – sometimes at great risk and cost – so that those who are truly oppressed, the people whose lives and health and liberties face actual threats, not simple inconveniences, may enjoy the same rights to life and prosperity that other people have.

Yes, I understand that certain people fear a future in which they do not dominate others. I realize that some people fear their own freedoms being displaced, and I know for a fact – in part because it is my job to speak that language – that mass media profits from fear and instability, and so uses techniques that exploit the human fight/ flight response in order to catch and hold an audience’s attention. All of these conclusions are verifiable from multiple perspectives, they’re supported by evidence, and so they count as “truth” by every measure that matters.

The fear is understandable.

But those people need to grow up, get the fuck over themselves, and stop acting like cartoon characters in an action movie starring their idealized selves.

The resulting oppression, and attempts to oppress, are wrong.

Morally wrong, intellectually stupid, socially counterproductive, and historically doomed to failure.

When Nazis march down streets carrying torches and demanding “their” country “back” from the rest of us, then those people have chosen to become villains. Regardless of their perceived reality, they have consciously decided to embrace actions that endanger the fabric of their society and endanger the lives of the people they fear.

I will never “keep an open mind” about such behavior.

Fuck that form of “neutrality.”

I always have, and always will, stand on the side of respecting the lives and existence of other people.

And part of that stand involves opposing those who would kick someone into the dirt and stand on their face in order to call themselves “great.”

Greatness does not need oppression. Strength does not need to prove itself by showing off at other creatures’ expense.

A great nation is not one that needs to strut down Main Street shoving “those people” back into the shadows of its greatness, but one that accepts that progress, strength and liberty come from the freedom of all its people to benefit from, and contribute to, society as a whole.

That, to me, is the only reality that matters.

Stewart Wieck: Awakening Our World

The finest thing a person can do in this life, I believe, is to leave this world a better place thanks to your presence in it. Stewart Wieck, who left this life yesterday at age 49, succeeded magnificently in that regard.

Somewhere between 1985 and ’86, a pair of geekily industrious teenager brothers founded what has since become an institution of sorts: White Wolf magazine. Named for Elric, the White Wolf of Melnibone, landmark antihero of Michel Moorcock’s psychotropic fantasy series, the magazine originated as a home-made fanzine for gaming culture. Stewart and his brother Steve, however, had a lot more on their minds. While most (though not, in fairness, all) gaming magazines of that era focused on mathematical trivia in imaginary worlds, White Wolf magazine dared to approach real-life topics like racism, gender, addiction and politics, not merely in the games but in the culture that embraced them. Ferociously intelligent and possessed of a formidable work-ethic, Stew and Steve turned their high-school fanzine into a major periodical within that industry… and then into something far more.

Combining their magazine with a gaming company called Lion Rampant, the Wieck brothers joined forces with a visionary malcontent named Mark Rein-Hagen. By that time, both sides of that partnership had gathered a driven team of hungry young creators: Richard Thomas, Nicole Lindroos, Joshua Gabriel Timbrook, and more. Founded in 1990, White Wolf Game Studio took the roleplaying game medium from a controversial niche pastime to a major (if often uncredited) influence on popular media.

More importantly, however, Stewart, Steve and Mark helped the hobby grow up.

White Wolf has been criticized as pretentious. That accusation’s not always wrong, but it misses an important point: a truly pretentious party doesn’t have the goods. White Wolf – in large part thanks to Stewart – often did. For better and worse, the company and its people addressed taboo topics with sardonic clarity and relentless intellect. History, politics, gender, bigotry, pollution, addiction, morality, metaphysics, conspiracy… the creators of this World of Darkness tossed big ideas at their audience the way they sometimes tossed rubber balls and Nerf arrows at one another in the office. In the 1990s, most staff offices in the White Wolf building had three things in common: a sound system, an impressive library, and some young workaholic or two pounding away at their computers.

Stewart’s library didn’t fit in his office; it took up several shelves in the hallway, too. I know, because I was one of those people pounding on computers back then.

Which brings me to my point:

Mage: The Ascension.

One of the many brilliant ideas Stewart, Mark, Steve and their crew had early on involved creating a shared world built around five monstrous archetypes: the vampire, the werewolf, the magus, the ghost, and the faerie. Each archetype would become a metaphor for real-life issues, and the games and rules for each archetype would emphasize thematic elements far richer than “I waste him with my crossbow.” RPGs had addressed serious topics before, notably in games like Paranoia, RuneQuest, Dark Champions, and Nephilim. But the idea of playing the monster, as opposed to killing it, and doing so in a sarcastic parody of the world (as seen by American college kids in the early 1990s, anyway) – that was new. Other RPGs had occasionally strayed into monster-character territory (notably the vampiric game Nightlife), but lacked the thematic heft and sheer attitude brought to the World of Darkness. When the partners divided up the archetypes, deciding who would helm which project, Stewart said, “I want the mages.”

Up until then, mages in RPGs (and, to be honest, in most modern fantasy media) were dotty fireball-slingers in Gandolfian drag. Stewart had bigger plans for them.

Inspired primarily by philosopher Robert M. Pirsig (who himself died earlier this year), Stew envisioned the magus as an embodiment of change. Some mages moved the world forward, others tried to lock it into place, and still others tried to drag it to oblivion. Instead of spells based on calculations of size and damage, Stew’s vision of magic… or, as he preferred, the Crowleyian magick… became an extension of an enlightened individual as that person literally reworks reality itself. At the core of that metaphor, Stewart Wieck told Mage players, “You can and will change the world.” And that, especially for kids growing up on fantasy media in the 1990s, was huge.

On some levels, the concept was too big. Mage became like Stewart’s Great White Whale, and suffered some growing pains before the game finally appeared at GenCon 1993. Even then – and even now, almost 25 years, four editions, four different incarnations, and over a hundred books later – Mage remains an infuriating puzzle for most gamers, and a life-changing discovery for the folks who understand it.

That’s where Stewart’s legacy truly shines.

Stew created many things: the magazine, the company, the World of Darkness and a rather visionary (if ultimately unprofitable) fiction division for White Wolf, and other things besides. The Cain-based mythos behind Vampire: The Masquerade was Stewart’s conception, and Stew brought a new generation of readers to the works of Michael Moorcock, Harlan Ellison, Fritz Leiber, and more. White Wolf transformed a medium, but it has been Mage, more than anything else, which has – as Stewart intended – transformed this world and many people in it.

One of those people was me.

In the spring of 1993, I was broke, suicidal, stuck in a decaying marriage, and trapped by circumstances in a job I loathed. Though I had been writing professionally since 1989, and writing for White Wolf since ’92, my writing income was nowhere close to paying our bills. Desperate, I applied early that summer for the position of Mage line developer. That job literally saved my life, changed my approach to life, and became a sort of sacred calling I still pursue almost a quarter-century on.

I had applied for that job in June, wrote a prospectus for it in July, and worked with the company at DragonCon later that same month. By August, though, I hadn’t heard a word from them. Convinced they’d hired someone else, I crashed into a deep, frightening depression. And then – while at my job in the stock room of “Virginia’s Largest Shoe Store” – I got the call: “Phil, this is Stewart Wieck calling from White Wolf, and we’d like to offer you the job of the Mage line developer if you’re still interested.”

That was one of the greatest days of my life.

Only moments earlier, I had been core-dumping in the stock room to my friend Lynne. Once I’d heard Stew offer me the job, I began bouncing up and down, struggling to keep my voice steady while I did. Lynne mouthed, Did you get it? I nodded, and she hugged me hard. By the time I got off the phone, a mob of co-workers had gathered to congratulate me. I don’t think I ever told Stew that story, but now I really wish I had.

What’s a line developer? Another of Stewart’s best ideas.

Most gaming and comic-book studios have a group of people – often freelance contractors – writing and drawing the material in question. Although there might be a head editor for a given series, game or character, creative decisions tend to be made by committee, often with a fair (or large) amount of executive “input.” I’m not sure who initiated the idea, but Stewart and Mark decided that each White Wolf game line should have a single creative director whose word was more or less law with regards to that game. The founders of the company, and their teams, would craft each original rulebook; once that book was done, however, another person would be hired to govern the subsequent series… and for the first few of us in that position, they gave us near-limitless creative freedom, so long as we didn’t crash and burn the line. As a result, the World of Darkness games had a degree of personality that few, if any, previous RPGs displayed. They weren’t just “product”; they were labors of love.

Thank you, Stewart, Mark and Steve, for that. I appreciate it more than words can say.

That decision was a brave and crazy thing to do. We line developers are a passionate, outspoken, often-tactless bunch who could be (and often were) breathtakingly territorial about our projects. We pushed the medium, our fans, our collaborators and ourselves as far as we could go back then, and then pushed further for good measure. The results ranged from classic to catastrophic, but that raw energy made White Wolf memorable even at its worst.

White Wolf in those days was not an easy place to be. We worked hard, we played hard, and occasionally we fought hard with one another, too. Tempers ran high, and unfortunate things were said and done. I said and did a few of those unfortunate things, and I have been sorry for them ever since. Even when things got bad, however, I never – NEV-ER – saw Stewart Wieck get nasty, vindictive or crude. Angry at times, more often sad; it’s hard to be a business owner under even the best conditions, and when you’re running a pack of hypercreative misfit toys in an uncertain marketplace during a boom-and-bust period, it’s even harder. Yet always, Stewart displayed graciousness, kindness, dry humor, and a godlike degree of patience. If he ever lost that patience, it was way behind closed doors, which was a damn sight better than the rest of us – myself included – did back then.

I helmed Mage in both its Ascension and Sorcerers Crusade iterations between mid-1993 and late-1999. Burning out, I left the staff at the end of ’98, and freelanced again until around 2000. For a while, I distanced myself from Mage and our World of Darkness. Mage, though, never distanced itself from me.

Stewart Wieck’s brainchild transforms lives. I know this probably better than anyone else on earth. Since 1993, everywhere I’ve gone, I’ve been meeting people from literally all over the world for whom Mage became a gospel. I’ve met fans with terminal illnesses, health conditions, debilitating diseases and soul-crushing circumstances who tell me, “I am who I am”… sometimes even, “I’m still alive”… “because of Mage.” The Afterwords of Mage: The Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition (for which I returned to Mage in 2012) feature dozens of heartfelt testimonials, including two from Stewart and from me. Many of those people inspired by that theme of empowered transformation are now parents, artists, writers, game designers. Some are cops, activists, reformers, counselors and politicians. I know of one who’s a judge, several who are teachers and medical professionals, at least one who’s an emergency first-responder, and no less than two who have founded movie studios (small ones, but hey – it’s still impressive). A few years back, some fans in Greece flew me and my wife Sandi out to Athens, and became some of our dearest friends.  One of them – who now teaches English in Greece – continues to use World of Darkness games (Mage in particular) as not only entertainment but as a tool for social healing in a country going through hell. I’ll gladly take my share of credit for all that, but without Stewart Wieck, there would have been no Mage, no White Wolf, and very probably no me.

After our return from Greece, I contacted Stewart, Steve, Mark, and most of the core Mage collaboration group. “We did good,” I told them. “Mage made a bigger difference than we ever thought was possible.”

For the foreseeable future, it still will.

That’s a pretty descent legacy for some silly RPG.

Stewart, old friend, you helped to change the world.

For Mage, for White Wolf, for your courage and vision and insight and trust, for the love you gave your projects, and the respect you gave to us, I thank you, Stewart, now and always.

You helped us to Awaken, and never will we forget you.

“First They Came For…”

“First, they came for the Latinos, and I did not speak up because I wasn’t Latino… and besides, those people were illegal immigrants, and Spanish-speaking people are scary even if they’re not here illegally, and I don’t trust ’em, and this is my country, so fuck those people anyway.

“And then they came for the Indians, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t an Indian… and besides, those crybaby redskins were trespassing, and oil is important, and every story has two sides, and the Indians aren’t perfect either, so fuck those people anyhow.

“And then they came for the Muslims, and I didn’t speak up because I’m not a Muslim… and besides, Islam is false religion built on greed and violence, and all Muslims are terrorists, or maybe some of them are, and I don’t know which ones, so fuck those people anyway.

“And then they came for the trans people, and I didn’t speak up because I’m not trans… and anyway, those queers are gross and my holy book says so, and I don’t want teenage boys scoping out my daughter or wife or girlfriend by pretending to be trans, so fuck those people anyway.

“And then they came for peaceful protesters, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t protesting… and besides, how dare they block the roads like that? And some of those people might be violent, so fuck all those people anyway.

“And then they came for the pot-smokers, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a pot-smoker… and besides, pot is bad for you, and even though it’s legal in a bunch of states, it’s still illegal on a national level, and people who smoke dope are just a bunch of stupid lazy hippies who need to get a job, so fuck those people anyway.

“And I don’t know who they’ll come for next, but it’s only been about a month, so I’m sure they’ll come for somebody else soon.

“As long as they don’t come for ME, I don’t care. Fuck those people anyway. Goddamn libotards! We’re just getting started!

“God bless America! I feel greater already.”
___________________________

Obviously, the above is intended to be taken with a great deal of bitter, angry sarcasm. The thing is, the “and besides” remarks are all statements I have actually seen and heard people say in order to justify things that should be anathema to every sane American.

Some of them have even been said or written by people I otherwise respect. Maybe by seeing their remarks in this context, those folks might realize what they’re actually saying there.

This situation is fucked, people. When you have massive paramilitary forces rounding people up, they’re not gonna stop at only rounding up “those people.”

Don’t you DARE fucking normalize this. Not for a second.

These are shows of force, meant to quell dissent before it starts.

THIS IS WHAT FASCISM LOOKS LIKE.

WAKE UP.

(With apologies to the memory of Martin Niemöller, and a deep sense of rage and shame for the people of our nation today.)

High Taxes and American Greatness

The Golden Era of American Greatness occurred in large part thanks to the highest taxes in U.S. history, as shown in the graph below [1]. Those taxes paid for an unprecedented national infrastructure, massive technological innovations, advanced education, a relatively effective government, social programs to stave off another Great Depression, and the most powerful military forces in human history.

Those sky-high taxes were mitigated by a complex system of exemptions. Taxpayers (corporate and otherwise) who invested money back into the country – and who thus sustained the economy and society with methods other than government tax-funds – could lower their taxes by directly investing in American goods and services.

When you hear stuff about America having “the highest tax-rate on earth,” 1) that’s factually incorrect, and 2) that base tax-rate DOES NOT INCLUDE EXCEPTIONS. Once you figure in exceptions – a task for which any CPA worth that name is trained and hired – that base tax-rate can drop to $0 or below.

Sadly, the federal government government kept the exemptions while – ever since Kennedy – continuing to lower the tax-rate upon which they’re based. That’s how so many corporations and wealthy individuals (like President Trump) can pay zero taxes and/ or get millions of dollars back from the government as well. [2]

Meanwhile, those same corporations and individuals continue to utilize – even destroy – the infrastructure and resources that are supposed to be tended with those taxes.

Anyone still wondering why the U.S. infrastructure is falling apart while our government maintains perpetual deficits?

Here’s one of your biggest answers.

__________________________

FOOTNOTES

1 – One of the other major reasons for that post-WWII “greatness” involved the aftermath of the War itself. Almost every other industrial power on earth had been bombed to pieces while exhausting its resources and suffering devastating losses to its work-force population.

Meanwhile, the United States, Canada, and other geographically protected combatants like Australia and New Zealand had high-functioning factories and an able-bodied work-force. While most of those other nations – being parts of the British Empire – helped to rebuild the British economy [3] the United States supported only itself.

Diplomatic arm-twisting also “encouraged” other nations to “buy American”… or else. Thus, the post-War American prosperity was unsustainable to begin with. Still, the high tax-rates and heavy investments in American goods and services propelled America’s greatest era. Without them, that era is a fading dream, nothing more.

2 – In fairness, those organizations and individuals still pay state and local taxes. That helps somewhat with regards to sustaining the local infrastructure, but does zero for the elements of social infrastructure and resources that are sustained in part or in whole by the federal government… which are actually quite extensive.

3 – An economy also sustained by Great Britain’s then-colony India, which despite geographic protection from most of the fighting lost roughly two million people to famine and disease during the War because the British Crown demanded ruinous support from the nation… a demand that led to India securing its independence shortly after WWII. 

The Immigrant’s Song

I am a guinea wop goombah greaseball grape-stomper Guido Mafioso, a garlic-breathed Fonzi with, as fellow Siciliano Quentin Tarantio pointed out in True Romance, n-word blood.

I am part Swedish meatball bork-bork chef, and part Slav – an ethnicity from which the English word slave was drawn because Slavs were so often conquered and enserfed. My grandparents and great-grandparents on all three sides of my family (Dad’s side, and the two halves of Mom’s ancestry) were part of the “great unwashed,” the Ellis Island mob of European immigrants who fled Europe around the time of World War I. My people are the people for whom the Statue of Liberty was a beacon of the future, and they were greeted with hostility, rage, and often violence.

My father and his brothers were born and raised in a ghetto of the Bronx. Their skins are several shades darker than my own, and though my father trained out his heavy accent while in the U.S. Navy, that side of my family is decidedly… shall we say, “ethnic.” This didn’t keep Dad and his brothers from serving in the military and fighting in Vietnam. Dad, in his case, became the youngest commissioned officer in the Navy at that time, commanding two ships and then helping the Pentagon update its computer systems in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s before his retirement. One of my grandfathers built ships for the U.S. during World War II, and the other was a soldier in that war.

My father, retired Commander Philip Brucato, sr.

Thanks to my Swedish grandfather, I am essentially “white.” Dad raised us in middle-class America, and that’s the pass I’ve gotten ever since.

I didn’t grow up in a ghetto. My closest personal contact with racism came by way of mild insults about my Italian/ Sicilian “Godfaddah” heritage and being beaten up throughout my time in Hawaii for being a haole (“without breath,” a slur for non-Polynesians, especially white ones) – both pretty mild experiences in the grand scheme of things. I got the white-privilege pass, and I generally still do.

But my people are that other generation of foreign trash, that wretched refuse that “good, upstanding Americans” tried to block from entrance or ship “back to where you came from” less than a century ago.

As I’ve written in previous essays, I am “those people.”  When you attack them, you’re attacking me and my people too.

Not long ago, we were the terrorists. The scum. The criminals. Hell, we Sicilians still are those things in the eyes of many Americans. Just ask Hollywood, whose nuanced palette of Italian/ Sicilian characters ranges from oversexed, badly dressed crooks to oversexed, badly dressed priests, with a few oversexed, badly dressed cops, boxers, prostitutes and morons thrown in for variety. (It’s funny, too, how many times non-Italians like Christopher Walken and Wallace Shawn get cast as cinematic Sicilians… though, in fairness, most non-Roman Italianates are played by actual paisanos.) Do I personally get called out for that stuff? Not too often anymore, though I’ve certainly heard my share of meatball and Mafia jokes along the way; hell, I’ve made a few of ‘em too. Beat the bastards to it, right? My point, though, is this:

We are America.

We immigrants, we built this country.

Even the ones who are “those people.” Hell, especially the ones who are “those people,” and whose labors have been so often obscured by prejudice, law, and the self-contradictory concept of white superiority.

My father spent half his teenage years in Harlem. Some of my grand-relations spoke little or no English, and all of them had heavy Old Country accents. They worked their asses off despite the hate, despite the ghettos and the stereotypes. They fought and occasionally died to make America great, and we’re still trying to get it to live up to its best ideals.

A handful of my relatives have thrown their lot in with Trump. To them, I say Remember who we are. The history of Muslims and Mexicans in Trump’s America is the history of our people too. To go against them is to shame our ancestors and go against ourselves.

Our song is the immigrant’s song, and America is a better place for our voices.

My people built their little corner of America, and they raised me to appreciate it and to continue their work.

I’m not rich. I probably never will be. I’ve gotten a free ride in some respects for my lighter skin and an accent that’s more Southern than Siciliano, but I am a proud embodiment of the immigrant experience in America. My work, my life, my family and our legacy – they’re not huge, but they have made this land a better place to live, and a large part of my passion… and, quite often, my anger… comes from knowing that certain people, especially now, are dedicated to fucking it up.

To every hell imaginable with such bigotry. Fuck anyone who thinks that “my America” belongs only to your kind.

I am an American. We immigrants are America too.

I am the product of my heritage. If you enjoy my work, if my words inspire you, then remember that I am one of “those people” too.

Their fight is my fight, and this fight is personal.

Whose side are you on?

I know mine.

And I ain’t goin’ nowhere, and neither are the rest of us, so just get the fuck used to it.