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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 5401461" data-attributes="member: 58197">It wasn't so long ago that the gaming community itself was the target of a viewpoint that accused us of being Satanists and driving teens to suicide. That's something I consider a direct attack. And it led to real consequences for quite a few of us. Books were burned over it; people were harassed and punished for playing a harmless game. Ask the folks on this very board if you want to hear the stories.In the grand scheme of things, the Satanism craze of the '80s was a passing mania fueled by a handful of cranks. Even so, we gamers only caught the edge of it. There were people who did prison time because of that mania. Now consider that there are similar views out there which have a much wider base of support, a much longer and uglier history, and people with much bigger megaphones promoting them, both in and out of the political arena. Take a moment and I'm sure you can think of some.There was a time when I would have agreed with your statements above. I have the luxury of not being personally a target. A number of my friends, however, do not have that luxury and they must cope with wholly justified fears because of it. There are things far worse than having your books burned.I subject my own viewpoint to criticism all the time. That doesn't mean I feel the need to subject it over and over to the same criticisms; there comes a point when I conclude that I have examined Criticism X sufficiently, found it invalid, and don't need to reconsider it every time somebody trots it out.I follow politics closely and spend a lot of time reading opinion pieces from across the political spectrum. I seldom have trouble distinguishing between somebody with something new to say and somebody regurgitating the same old boilerplate. I'm not saying that's what Mr. We-All-Know-Who-He-Is does in his books (like I said, the writing put me off them before I ever got to the heavy political stuff), but when I run into regurgitated boilerplate, I don't feel I'm losing much of anything by tossing the book aside.If the store is putting signs in the window promoting political view X, and I am buying from that store, then my gaming dollars are going in part to pay for that window and that sign. Depending on what the sign says, I may have problems with that. There are cases in which those problems are big enough for me to not buy from that store.I don't have time to investigate the political activities of every company I buy from, but if they shove it in my face, I'm not gonna ignore it.</blockquote>

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