Bay 12 Games Forum
Other Projects => Curses => Topic started by: Kay12 on May 26, 2011, 07:43:27 am
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A few questions about election reform...
* As far as I can see, it doesn't affect anything while it would make sense if the corporations could vote C+ with dollars when laws are conservative. Should the reform actually do something?
* Isn't there a long-lasting debate about the status of Washington DC and the inhabitants' ineligibility to vote for Congressmen? What if Liberal Election Reform would make Washington DC an actual state with two Senators and a handful of Reps? I'm not an expert of US politics, but isn't Washington DC quite Democrat LIBERAL-friendly, making it advantageous for Conservatives to try to keep them suppressed?
* There recently was a Supreme Court decision (IRL) that, if I recall correctly, was in favour of CONSERVATIVE corporations funding the campaigns. Should this be reflected in the initial setup of the laws?
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I'm not an expert of US politics, but isn't Washington DC quite Democrat LIBERAL-friendly, making it advantageous for Conservatives to try to keep them suppressed?
According to the 2010 Census, the population distribution of Washington, D.C. is 50.7% Black or African American, 38.5% White, 3.5% Asian, and 0.3% American Indian. Individuals from other races made up 4.1% of the District's population while individuals from two or more races made up 2.9%. In addition, Hispanics of any race made up 9.1% of the District's population.[73] There were also an estimated 74,000 foreign immigrants living in Washington, D.C. in 2007.[74] Major sources of immigration include individuals from El Salvador, Vietnam, and Ethiopia, with some concentration of Salvadorans in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood.[75]
DC is actually a Southern State. We don't really view it that way though, because it's the seat of US power and all the white guys hang out there. So yes, the argument has been made that DC residents are disenfranchised because they have no electoral representative in Congress, and if they did, it would probably be a Democrat.
It would probably be a liberal thing to do, to grant them a representative.
* As far as I can see, it doesn't affect anything while it would make sense if the corporations could vote C+ with dollars when laws are conservative. Should the reform actually do something?
Sure. Campaign financing is a big part of election reform. Even if it doesn't do anything, it's still flavorful and appropriate to mention it. It would logically dictate that more conservatives win house and senate seats...but that's kind of double-jeopardy for the player, isn't it?
There recently was a Supreme Court decision (IRL) that, if I recall correctly, was in favour of CONSERVATIVE corporations funding the campaigns. Should this be reflected in the initial setup of the laws?
The Supreme Court could pretty much be considered conservative right now, thanks to Bush's appointments and the still-serving conservatives. So the continuum of Election Reform would look to me like:
L++ - Corporations and no one that works for a corporation can donate to election campaigns. (That's so liberal it's broken heh.)
L+ - Corporations cannot donate to election campaigns.
M - Corporations can donate small amounts to campaigns
C+ - Corporations can donate large amounts to election campaigns.
C++ - Corporations can donate unlimited amounts to election campaigns.
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The current issue texts aren't so detailed which is partially good because they leave room for a bit broader interpretation than simply "can corps donate". It's centered on campaign funding, though. Maybe stuff at the C end should include that legal persons (corps) can vote, that a person's "voting power" is determined by net worth etc.
Somewhat offtopic: My personal election reform system (IRL) would include that everyone who wants to vote should pass some exam of basic political knowledge. We had a survey here in Finland a few months ago that showed that Finns who know which are the 4 parties in the government and the 4 ones in the opposition are actually a minority.
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Somewhat offtopic: My personal election reform system (IRL) would include that everyone who wants to vote should pass some exam of basic political knowledge. We had a survey here in Finland a few months ago that showed that Finns who know which are the 4 parties in the government and the 4 ones in the opposition are actually a minority.
This stuff was historically used in USA to exclude blacks (who were uneducated at that time) from voting. USA democrats and even moderate republicans would panick at the idea of aptitude tests.
As for corporations donating money, I believe L+ would be a system where money totally plays no role in election - everyone gets the same amount of TV time, advertising is banned, etc.
I'd make it
L+ Political advertisement is banned and politicians are given equal time in media. Districts are drawn by a mathematical algorithm.
L Parties are funded from the budget, private donations are limited, districts are drawn by non-partisan groups
M Lobbying and party funding are moderately regulated.
C Parties are funded solely by donations, which are unregulated. Gerrymandering and corruption reign.
C+ Votes are bought, sold and extorted and democracy is a facade
C+ and C would give conservatives a boost depending on the state of workers rights and corporate law issues.
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Perhaps the referendum system of direct votes on the issues could be tied to election reform. If too Conservative, the people don't get to vote on issues, only to elect leaders.
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We could also draw inspiration from the actual Russian Duma. A nice incident from a few years ago was when different parties rushed to be the first to push the voting buttons of the absent reps. Speed? Critical. Brute force, elbow maneuvers? Absolutely. Democracy? In name only.
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Making the Election Reform laws do something requires that we have Election Reform an actual issue that can be influenced (tied to certain sleepers and sites), as opposed to Election Reform being tied to how generally "liberal"/"conservative" a society is.
My idea is just have the actual "election results" (for both representatives and propositions) be slightly 'biased' by Election Reform, basically an official form of election fraud. L+/C+ laws sway the results of a prop by up to 5% in the preferred direction.
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I'd suggest that rather then just having an across the board effect from election reform, you make it affect the nominating process. At L+, proportional representation is instituted, making third parties more viable. This means that you'll see a lot more L+ and C+ candidates win election and a lot fewer L and C. At C+, a rigid party clique controls the nominating process and few L+ candidates run (getting replaced with L) and most C candidates run (getting replaced with C+). Gives the idea more flavor then an across the board shift.
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I dont feel L+ are crazy enough, because I agree with the majority of them.
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I dont feel L+ are crazy enough, because I agree with the majority of them.
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I dont feel L+ are crazy enough, because I agree with the majority of them.
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I dont feel L+ are crazy enough, because I agree with the majority of them.
Don't lose sight of the fact that this game is played from the perspective of the LCS, who would obviously see the actions of Elite Liberals as clear and good. L+ wouldn't look anywhere near as good through the eyes of the CCS.
Anyway, the following political parties are in the game as of now:
The $$ Flag Eagle $$ USA Party
The Conservative Party
The Moderate Party (I think I saw this one as an election winner once, but I'm not certain. This may not really be in the game.)
The Liberal Party
The Progressive Elite Social Liberal Party
Now, sans the possibly non-existant moderate party, all of these have clear real life counterparts in US politics. Flag Eagle USA is Constitution USA, Conservative is Republican, Moderate could be Libertarian or Modern Whig, Liberal is Democrat, and Progressive Elite Social Liberal is Green. The issue status on each alignment does fit well with this comparison to the real parties' doctrine.
It is my thought that we could assist in giving election reform an effect by allowing all five parties to submit a candidate for the presidency, but "corrupting" the public's opinion as it gets closer to Arch-Conservative through unethical campaign practices and corporate funding. At Arch-Conservative, it would be such that only $$FE$$USA and the Conservative Party have a real chance of winning, perhaps a moderate if the public is Elite Liberal in entierty. Other parties would end up with only a few percentage points of the vote. At Elite Liberal, the will of the people is directly reflected in election percentages.
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While the game is through the eyes of the LCS, it still helps to make the liberal agenda silly when possible.
Maybe L+ voting law could be: "Corporations are kept out of politics and everyone from the age of two up is given an equal vote."
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I don't recall the existence of the Moderate Party, but I do know that the Liberal Party/Conservative Party do nominate a "Moderate" if the country is so far to the right/left that it cannot realistically nominate a liberal/conservative.
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In my most recent game, the first term Arch-Conservative President didn't run for a second term. Instead, the Conservatives ran a Moderate and the Liberals ran a Liberal. In Nightmare Mode. I've never seen that happen before now.
EDIT IDEA: New Elite Liberal Amendment: Reduce the Presidency to only having one term. New Arch-Conservative Amendment: Allow a President to run over and over and over with no limit.
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I'm in favor of making ER laws actually do something and having ER as an actual issue, possibly tied to Corp HQ, CEO Castle, Court House (which should BTW hand over the gay laws to one of the upcoming religious sites). ER being something rather extreme at the C+ end would be nice, perhaps that random non-L+ representatives would occasionally convert to C+ as a result of
bribery a change of heart. Having big effect for L+ seems a bit useless from the gameplay POV because that's what the term limit ELA is for (although I recently made a commit that allows disabling the ELAs). Maybe the term limits should be a natural consequence of L+ election laws? Also, don't liberals favor ranked list elections because they claim they represent the popular opinion more accurately (which is, from the LCS perspective, wholly true)? Maybe this "inaccuracy" would be a force that gives conservatives various bonuses in addition to a huge fortification bonus for entrenchment.
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In my most recent game, the first term Arch-Conservative President didn't run for a second term. Instead, the Conservatives ran a Moderate and the Liberals ran a Liberal. In Nightmare Mode. I've never seen that happen before now.
EDIT IDEA: New Elite Liberal Amendment: Reduce the Presidency to only having one term. New Arch-Conservative Amendment: Allow a President to run over and over and over with no limit.
Moderates in the first election happens quite regularly if you influence all the issues to 100% liberal by the time November runs around.
Term limits aren't really a liberal issue in American politics or any other political system that I'm aware of.
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Weird presidential stuff that happens fairly often...
Start nightmare mode, spend the first years building an organization and raising funds instead of influencing the issues significantly -> Conservative president instead of Arch Conservative despite extremely C+ public opinion.
Start nightmare mode, influence issues fairly quickly, have a moderate president who is extremely unpopular, have him/her re-elected and then succeeded by another extremely unpopular moderate president...
By the way, since in LCS there hasn't been one yet, should there be some special message when the first racial minority president is elected? It would be mainly flavortext, but could carry some small bonus in racial issues.
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Liberals have been race blind in LCS so far, I see no reason to change that now.
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By the way, since in LCS there hasn't been one yet, should there be some special message when the first racial minority president is elected? It would be mainly flavortext, but could carry some small bonus in racial issues.
I feel that since this has already happened in the real world, the noteworthiness of it for a player has been greatly diminished. Before Obama was elected, it was very striking whenever a movie or book or game depicted a black president. Now that impact is limited female presidents. :)
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Liberals have been race blind in LCS so far, I see no reason to change that now.
In real life, a certain first African American President was hailed as a Messiah by some liberals here in Europe as well. But I think the first female President would strike as more novel, indeed. And she would always be from the Liberal party, I assume, as Conservatives tend to favor males?
Hundreds watch with astonishment and curiosity as <name here>, the first woman elected the President of the United States, proclaims the beginning of a new era of gender equality. After several hours of insightful political speech, United States welcomes the new era of Gender Equality.
It is now up to the Liberal Crime Squad to ensure that the progress may continue.
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And she would always be from the Liberal party, I assume, as Conservatives tend to favor males?
If we're basing this off current American politics, then no actually. For 2012 the Republicans currently have two bat shit crazy ladies looking at the Presidency, and no females of note on the Democrat side have been making noises.
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But based on the LCS, if I recall correctly every C+ president is a "White male patriarch" (as they're called in the source) and as the Conservatives treat women as second-class citizens, I doubt their party would even have any female politicians apart from a few token women to ensure popularity even among the "lesser sex".
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Oh, and
Liberals have been race blind in LCS so far, I see no reason to change that now.
Reverse discrimination is race blindness?
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As I recall from Jonathan's tutorial videos, all of the Arch-Conservatives have white male names. At least in the Executive Branch, I recall differently for the Supreme Court.
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But based on the LCS, if I recall correctly every C+ president is a "White male patriarch" (as they're called in the source) and as the Conservatives treat women as second-class citizens, I doubt their party would even have any female politicians apart from a few token women to ensure popularity even among the "lesser sex".
...right, and I think LiteralKa raised the counterexample of Sarah Palin in the comments. Though it may be flavorworthy, I think it'd be more hilarious for the Conservative Party and Liberal Party to be both gender-blind and race-blind when nominating candidates.
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Aside from C+ nominees, I don't think there's any limitation preventing the Conservatives from nominating a woman. There might be an alignment-based bias, so that only L+ is equally likely to be male or female, but you should occasionally see some female C politicians.
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Well, because women's rights are opposed by the conservatives (even "Moderate" women's rights, the most Liberal Conservative party position, has women "nominally equal" only), I've always imagined every single female conservative public figure to be just their attempt to cater to the female population as well, while the actual big issues are handed to them by more skilled (=male) politicians. Ironically, it has some resemblance to affirmative action.
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While Sarah Palin arguably fits that mold, it would only take one American version of Margaret Thatcher (former leader of the Conservative Party, appointed Prime Minister three times, survived an assassination attempt in 1984...) to overturn it.
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Why are male and female candidates equally likely at L+? At L+, we don't stop at equality! Women should be more likely!
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Why are male and female candidates equally likely at L+? At L+, we don't stop at equality! Women should be more likely!
Once again, what the LCS says has to be reflected by reality due to the game's satirical nature. Men being underrepresented in L+ Women's Rights would be how the CCS would see it. (Well, that would be more like M for the CCS. L would likely force them out of politics, and L+ would make them abused slaves of a Radical Feminist Regime. I digress.)
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Huh?
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I would make L+ represent anti-male discrimination in a game where you play as the CCS.
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Well, Elite Liberals requiring Presidents to be female or African American etc would make sense in a way. Liberals like reverse discrimination, and that would make up for all those years without female & black Presidents. After 2300 the balance should be fixed and white men can become Presidents again.
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It doesn't make sense for LCS, regardless of how actual liberals feel. LCS advocates total equality, and parts of the game's satire are that:
A. The LCS is always right, no matter what.
B. Law=Reality
As the Elite Liberal position on women and races is total equality, that's how the game should represent them. We are viewing all of the game through the eyes of deluded maniacs, after all.
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No, you're wrong. Liberals advocate affirmative action, and affirmative action is not total equality, is it? No. Affirmative action is quotas, limits, regulations to enforce a "fair" gender/race share. At extreme (which is what LCS is about), it could be something like Presidents being of alternating sex (male, female, male, female) and/or race.
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And the idea behind those affirmative action is that it ends with their being an equal chance of any race or sex reaching a given position despite the existance of societal or proportional bias. As the LCS is always right within the context of the game, this should end with the chance of the president being male or female at 50% when it comes to Elite Liberals.
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No, that would be pretty standard equality. Affirmative action would enforce an outcome, not simply randomize it. Affirmative action dictates that the Congress must be divided between genders 50/50, every major company's board must be divided between genders 50/50, and because the Precidency can't be divided, it has to be shared 50/50.
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Think of how affirmative action works for colleges. It doesn't determine who graduates, just who gets in. If it effected the Presidency, it would do so by making it 50/50 for the canidates, not the winners.
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The very point of affirmative action is to undermine hidden sexism/racism by balancing for it. Despite total gender equality in law, males are frequently thought as more trustworthy and this may result in an unfair advantage. It would suit the silly LCS atmosphere well if this balancing was taken to the extreme by making the Precidency alternate between the sexes.
Also, one of the issues in the left/right division is the definition of equality. Right-wingers typically define equality as the equality of chance - everyone gets a fair chance at education and work. Left-wingers (the actual ones, not the Democrats) typically define equality as the equality of outcome - everyone has the facilities needed for fairly good life provided, negating the effect of chance events but also undermining the rewards for effort. LCS is a left-wing organization, so they'd go for the equality of outcome. Mix that with affirmative action, and what you get? Strictly enforced gender and race quotas all around the society!
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The death penalty is considered barbaric and never practiced. Abortion is legal. Individual privacy is sacred. Elections are publicly funded, and voting is by ranked list. Nuclear power is illegal. There are universal workers' rights and a high minimum wage. Industry is subject to zero-tolerance pollution regulations. Flag burning is legal.
With very few exceptions, L+ law descriptions are quite sane, and grounded in real demands made by Liberals. It doesn't mean you're batty and beyond the political spectrum, it just means you would have preferred Dennis Kucinich (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Dennis_Kucinich) over Barack Obama. Your political objectives are fairly innocuous; it's the things you do to achieve them that make you crazy.
L+ women's rights is "Gender equality is universally respected." All gender biases in the game are removed. Half of all Elite Liberal politicians are women.
In my view, that's exactly what Liberals dream of in their heart of hearts, and that makes it exactly the right goal for the LCS.
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Of course the Liberals like gender equality, that's why they support affirmative action to ensure women's equality. However, since LCS views are reality, it could also be assumed that L+ society no longer needs those measures and gender equality happens as a result of natural change of HEART. I also realized that discussing this is pretty silly as the game only takes account gender for Supreme Court, Pres and the Cabinet, and has nothing but cosmetic effect.
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It is purely cosmetic, though a few other characters are more likely to be male as well, like CEOs, Football Coaches, Priests, and Corporate Managers. Others, like Secretaries and Yoga Instructors, are more likely to be female. I think those biases on both sides are reduced to nothing as women's rights becomes more liberal.
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Personally I think affirmative action would be more of an L policy than an L+ policy. At L, they're trying to reverse society's perception that one gender is better at a certain role. At L+, they don't need to. Kind of like how at L+ animal rights you get canine heroes; once you liberate people from the shackles of gender bias, society becomes magically balanced - somehow the different sex hormones stop having an effect, and a woman is as likely to enlist in the armed forces as a man, and the same for men in caring professions, etc.
In short, I tend to think of L+ laws as how they imagine the world actually works beneath the Conservative corruption, rather than some way of enforcing a liberal world.
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Well, the L+ law for race equality (or civil rights) states that racial equality is strictly enforced. Whether this means colorblindness, extreme prejudice against hate crimes or affirmative action takes to the extreme, I don't know, but maybe it's better if it's left for us to imagine.
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Kind of like how at L+ animal rights you get canine heroes.
I mentioned this in the main thread, but apparently you don't actually need L+ to recruit Canine Heroes. I was able to bring one into my ranks at C+ Animal Rights.
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You need a lot of heart. I checked it at the source. IIRC 20 is the minimum heart to recruit dogs. Otherwise your Liberal will show inadequate taste when trying to talk to them.
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While in the past I think I agreed with the idea of the L+ world looking sane through LCS' eyes, I think we have to start corrupting that world for non-L+ players, or at least make the world more extreme. You could easily view anything utopian/dystopian if you are in the right mindset (the Wiki claimed that L+ pollution regs forces factories to produce sweet-smelling musk due to "zero-tolerance regulations" prohibiting any sort of pollution whatsoever while that L+ Flag Burning laws causes the US flag to be used as fuel) but I think the satire needs to be more blatant, otherwise people will miss the subtext.
It is true that what the LCS advocates are also what real-world left-wing extremist organizations also advocate ("All law enforcements subject to recall" for instance). So the LCS shouldn't be insane. But it does need to be extreme.
EDIT: I am in the process of committing changes in the hopes of fulfilling the goal of making LCS extreme, at least for Women's Rights, Civil Rights, Abortion, Free Speech, and Flag Burning.
EDIT2: Ugh, silksubversion isn't working. Likely for the best. Here's the ideas I had, tear them apart:
Women's Rights: Gender is an obsolete social construct.
Civil Rights: Racial equality is guaranteed and vigorously enforced by Political Correctness Pogroms.
Abortion: The government pays for all abortions, without any exceptions.
Free Speech: Free speech is universally supported through government subsidies.
Flag Burning: Flag-burning is regularly used in political protests.
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While in the past I think I agreed with the idea of the L+ world looking sane through LCS' eyes, I think we have to start corrupting that world for non-L+ players, or at least make the world more extreme. You could easily view anything utopian/dystopian if you are in the right mindset (the Wiki claimed that L+ pollution regs forces factories to produce sweet-smelling musk due to "zero-tolerance regulations" prohibiting any sort of pollution whatsoever while that L+ Flag Burning laws causes the US flag to be used as fuel) but I think the satire needs to be more blatant, otherwise people will miss the subtext.
It is true that what the LCS advocates are also what real-world left-wing extremist organizations also advocate ("All law enforcements subject to recall" for instance). So the LCS shouldn't be insane. But it does need to be extreme.
EDIT: I am in the process of committing changes in the hopes of fulfilling the goal of making LCS extreme, at least for Women's Rights, Civil Rights, Abortion, Free Speech, and Flag Burning.
EDIT2: Ugh, silksubversion isn't working. Likely for the best. Here's the ideas I had, tear them apart:
Women's Rights: Gender is an obsolete social construct.
Civil Rights: Racial equality is guaranteed and vigorously enforced by Political Correctness Pogroms.
Abortion: The government pays for all abortions, without any exceptions.
Free Speech: Free speech is universally supported through government subsidies.
Flag Burning: Flag-burning is regularly used in political protests.
Psychonauts is a great game. Early in development, it was about a crazy ostrich. Tim Schafer loved it. You had one control stick to move, another to peck. Your abilities came from being mentally imbalanced and having multiple personalities. But Psychonauts isn't about a crazy ostrich because nobody wants to be an insane ostrich. You want to be heroes. Even the later GTA games portray your murdering main character as the most balanced and good character around, someone just trying to get by, someone who tried to reject violence before getting drawn into it by circumstance and loyalty to family and friends.
There is little to no satire of the Liberal Agenda because the Liberal Agenda isn't being satirized. It's not that it's too subtle and hard to notice; it simply isn't there. This game is a Liberal fever dream. It's about frustrated Liberals getting to go out there, throw away their principles, and FORCE people to see their ways. If you change the goals, if you "corrupt the world" so that the win condition isn't likable, you undermine that. It would be about... what? People pursuing made-up goals with ridiculous methods? That's not wish fulfillment for frustrated Dennis Kucinich Liberals anymore, and it's not wish fulfillment for Conservatives either.
Hypocrisy. Naivety. That's the serious criticism of the LCS. The game almost never makes this specifically known. The overt digs against the left are all light-hearted humor. The heavy stuff happens when you walk away from the game knowing this would never work, and the LCS is delusional. The game doesn't have to acquit itself by reminding the player that it knows this. In fact, the game doesn't have to know that at all. It can be 200% on the side of the LCS. The satire will still work, because nobody in their right mind, including the players of the game, want people gunned down in the street because of their political views.
Please don't make changes to the tone of Elite Liberal issues. If you're worried that some people won't get that the game isn't meant to be taken seriously, just add the Bay12Games disclaimer as a splash screen.
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No changes will be made then.
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What if LCS members could rum for president? ;)
It could open a whole new window of gameplay, from proposing bills to pardoning Liberals from Conservative Warrants.
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What if LCS members could rum for president? ;)
It could open a whole new window of gameplay, from proposing bills to pardoning Liberals from Conservative Warrants.
This, but they'd have to have alot of heart and a hell of alot of persuasion. Or just alot of liberals.
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I can't say I haven't thought about it, but something I've been pondering about is what does the Liberal party (particularly the Ultraprogressive L+ wing) think of LCS? Are they heroes? People with the right ends but horrible means? Just another angry mob?
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I don't think we can really know. The Progressive Elite Social Liberal Party are everything the LCS loves and wants for the USA, so even if they issued daily statements of condemnations against the LCS they'd still rationalize it away somehow. That said, the ideals of the PESLP are opposed to how the LCS generally acts. The LCS actually does a lot of stuff that the Arch-Conservatives want to do. There's:
Killing people for being Conservative. (Free Speech)
"Enlightenment". (Human Rights)
Being armed to the teeth. (Gun Laws)
Prostitution. (Women's Rights [Sometimes])
Stealing and publishing people's secrets. (Privacy Rights)
Working their members to the bone. (Labor Laws)
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Yeah, that's the sweet irony of it. An example that is repeated quite often on this very forum: You shoot up a radio station in the name of free speech. You also install sleepers at various locations, a particularly nasty case being the Court House where you replace Conservative Corrupt Judges with Liberal Indoctrinated ones!
Think about what the judges do when they're advocating Liberalism. Maybe they're influencing obviously wrong death sentences to raise public concern, or something like that.
Could be because of the game's perspective, but I never saw LCS actually hurting their own in any way. From an objective viewpoint, the LCS may run a sweatshop, but for some reason I just think they're making those T-shirts for fun, maybe a bit of profit too.
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These are still people going out all day every day to raise money for the LCS. That can't be easy on them, juice or no juice.
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Somewhat offtopic: My personal election reform system (IRL) would include that everyone who wants to vote should pass some exam of basic political knowledge. We had a survey here in Finland a few months ago that showed that Finns who know which are the 4 parties in the government and the 4 ones in the opposition are actually a minority.
LOL. Why not go one step further and insist that the CANDIDATES have to pass an aptitude test? (But that would end Sarah Palin's political career!)
Or go several steps further and abolish voting entirely! We'll follow ancient China and all government posts will be determined by sitting for an exam!
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^ We would need that here in Finland. One of our fresh MPs has received a lot of attention from the media because of his CONSERVATIVE immigration opinions. Well, mainly the backwards language associated with them, particularly using the word "nigger" which, I think, is way more offensive in America than in Finland but still has been considered rude for over 20 years. "I didn't know it was offensive, I live in the countryside!" he said, also angering the rural population. As the MP has not even finished comprehensive school, my 15-year old little brother has outstudied him. Curse you, Victor D'Hondt!
</rant>
LCS is guilty of most of the same crimes as the Conservatives. They have people work on them, have child workers and combatants, kill people to advance a political agenda...
I guess it's the same thing as in GTA, to once again compare LCS with another game where the good guys are, by most standards, bad. It's the subtle differences that make up a good GTA gangster and a bad one. Both kill people, innocent or otherwise, fight the cops and corrupt the justices. But the good gangsters never backstab their friends. The good gangsters are, except in tight spots, laid-back and friendly. The good gangsters have concerns other than wealth. Values, even!
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That said, the ideals of the PESLP are opposed to how the LCS generally acts. The LCS actually does a lot of stuff that the Arch-Conservatives want to do. There's:
Killing people for being Conservative. (Free Speech)
"Enlightenment". (Human Rights)
Being armed to the teeth. (Gun Laws)
Prostitution. (Women's Rights [Sometimes])
Stealing and publishing people's secrets. (Privacy Rights)
Working their members to the bone. (Labor Laws)
Depends on who plays the game, and some plain don't count.
Killing people for being conservative? What about pacifist runs?
Enlightenment? Possible to go through the game without it.
Being armed to the teeth? Pacifist/Melee run (melee weapons are still legal at L+ gun control laxs.)
Prostitution? You live without it without any problems.
Stealing and publishing people's corporate/police/justice/radio/TV/CIA/research secrets? That's not personnal datas. The COE documents might count, but most of the times, they blur the line between personnal data and professional ones.
Working their members to the bone? I always thought LCS members have decent living conditions. If not, they would lose juice.
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LCS in general does a lot of things they criticize the Conservatives for doing, but the sweet irony of it is intentional.
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I will stress that I won't implement any changes to the Liberal Agenda (because I believe in consensus and respect Jonathan S. Fox), but I do want to say something that at least outline my game design philosophy.
You want to be heroes.
I play games for fun; I don't play them with the belief that what I'm doing is somehow good or heroic or nice. That my characters are sane or worthy of being loved. There is a separation between me and the character that I control, and I am a observer watching the character does what he wants to do.
There is a reason why I considered most FPS protagonists to be evil genocidal people. They may speak nicely, wear fine suits, never betray their friends, fight for their family or even for deeply-held values. But it does not matter for all the people they mow down (who are unable to defend themselves due to poor AI) and all the crimes they committed in pursuit of their goals. The LCS is even worse: at least a mercenary/soldier has the excuse of putting money on the table. The LCS has voluntarily became psychos to pursue a limited set of ideals that many people may not even care too much about (for example, in previous versions of LCS, Elite Liberals didn't care much about the military: as long as you're environmentally friendly and don't use nukes, go invade Iraq! Today's LCS don't care about universal health care either, though tomorrow's LCS may).
And the reason I don't see this as satire is because...
There is little to no satire of the Liberal Agenda because the Liberal Agenda isn't being satirized. It's not that it's too subtle and hard to notice; it simply isn't there. This game is a Liberal fever dream. It's about frustrated Liberals getting to go out there, throw away their principles, and FORCE people to see their ways. If you change the goals, if you "corrupt the world" so that the win condition isn't likable, you undermine that. It would be about... what? People pursuing made-up goals with ridiculous methods? That's not wish fulfillment for frustrated Dennis Kucinich Liberals anymore, and it's not wish fulfillment for Conservatives either.
...because the idea of using violence in order to get people to see things their way is far too common in this world already and is generally accepted and paraded around as acceptable and tolerable. Wars waged on ideological grounds are seen as automatically justified in the US press, meaning that it's alright to, say, blow up a couple of cities and wage a counter-insurgency campaign to turn a dictatorship into a liberal democracy. The United States also suffers from the (declining) threat of domestic terrorism, both left-wing and right-wing. And I'm sure the right-wing terrorists and left-wing terrorists have really sympathetic goals motivating why they decided to do what they do, but they are also seen as extremist and it is this extremism that may be responsible for them resorting to terrorism rather than, say, participating in the legal political process and expecting a real chance of electoral success. And even then, a satire against violence doesn't quite work: in the LCS game, torture is justified by saying "The terrorists would do worse to us" (which seems to imply kidnapping and brutal interrogation tactics)...so torture is being used to prevent torture. So a satire based on criticizing violence really doesn't work, at least for me, because our society generally accepts and rewards violence, so long as it is being done for "correct" purposes.
So if an LCS satire couldn't work satirizing violence...then what could it satirize?
To me, L+ and C+ are meant to be extremist. It's not meant to be a horrible place (well alright, it's horrible for a C+ world because we're viewing the game through the eyes of the LCS), but it is meant to be one we're slightly unsettled to be living in. Not used to yet, like we're just arrived to a foreign country with strange habits and funny hats. We're supposed to feel a sense of "culture shock" for the L, M, and C players who view this game. For example, the LCS supports police elections. I haven't even heard of police elections before playing LCS, though I have later learned that the Black Panthers also supported these sort of elections. Police elections aren't bad, and it's possibly likable maybe, but it's certainly weird for someone who just started off playing this game without any knowledge of the Black Panthers. "Animals are people too" also once caused you to talk to animals...and I know of no extremist group that actually does believe this sort of thing.
The LCS' proposed changes may be ideal certainly, but they are certainly worth noting for non-L+ players, and are not simply treated as "L, but better" as some of the current Liberal Agenda topics seem to be. It is there that I see the most plausible way for LCS to engage in satire, by engaging in slippery slope fallacies, logical conclusions, and complete overreactions. Of course, this also implies that the LCS does not represent Dennis Kucinich Liberals...which could help to explain why I have a different view from Fox.
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So a satire based on criticizing violence really doesn't work, at least for me, because our society generally accepts and rewards violence, so long as it is being done for "correct" purposes.
I agree with your premise, including your criticism of video game violence as unrealistic and unheroic in general. But in my view, the fact that our society accepts political violence so readily is precisely why LCS works as a criticism of political violence. Satire takes something real and exposes it to ridicule. If people didn't actually believe in political violence, it would be like mocking unicorns and fairy dust. It wouldn't mean anything.
We're constantly surrounded by news of political violence, especially in the middle east, but elsewhere as well. You see young people smash windows and throw rocks and start fires during angry protests, and it accomplishes nothing but wanton destruction. Liberal Crime Squad turns you into the perpetrators of that violence against society, and invites you to extend it to a ridiculous level and trudge through the obvious hypocrisy, then rewards you and says it actually works. You shoot people for gun control, kidnap for civil liberties, steal for economic justice. And it works. When the game supports you and reacts positively to your violence, if you experience a sense of dissonance and notice how oddly the game world works, then bingo. You win the prize for seeing through the nonsense.
Most people in Western society think they already know this, and say they reject terrorism. But I don't think they really get it. In World War II, western powers believed that strategic bombing to raze cities and burn down homes would break enemy morale and end the war early. That theory only actually worked once, when it was elevated to the point of dropping nuclear bombs. We regularly impose economic sanctions that cause hardship and arrest economic development for common people in the name of pressuring their government. Even today in Israel, retaliatory destruction of homes and draconian crackdowns on civil liberties are carried out in an attempt to punish terrorism. We regularly demonize violence carried out by enemies, then idealize it in the name of freedom.
LCS isn't preachy. It's just a game. The point of the game is to have fun, not to change minds, and fun is paramount. But I do believe that most people who play the game will walk away feeling a sense that such radicalism represents a disconnect from reality.
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For the L+ Army Issue, I always thought it should make a Black Army reference.
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By the way, is conscription Liberal or Conservative? In Finland, it's definitely the latter, but these things differ from country to country. It can be presented in a very Left-Wing sense - having everyone do their share of the national defence cuts expenses and allows more public funding for schools etc.
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Conscription is universally unpopular. There are so many people in the US that we're able to maintain a fully professional military with minimal difficulty. For LCS purposes, it would be a Conservative policy. As with free speech, this issue would be reversed if the game were about playing as the CCS (the CCS would fight to oppose conscription and support free speech).