I don’t stay up much on the whole gamergate thing, for reasons that will become clear enough in a moment. But I found Todd VanDerWerff’s article over at Vox interesting, Gamergaters Don’t Think It’s About Ethics in Journalism. They Think It’s About Colonialism. For those of you who are blessed with having never heard about it, gamergate is basically a great big whine on the part of the traditional gaming community who think that the girls and the darkies are going to pollute the insular fun of their Call of Duty games. I think the best way to think of gamergate is to imagine three ten-year-old boys inside a tree fort with a sign on the outside that reads, “No girls allowed.”

This article is in reference to an article by Gita Jackson at Boing Boing, We Are Not Colonists. According to her, the traditional gamers feel as though they are settlers of a world with their distinct culture. And now, they feel all these “foreign” elements are coming in and taking over. This is, of course, a ridiculous notion. No one is trying to stop people from getting their vile kicks from Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto.

I think the “colonization” paradigm is a useful one. But it describes the situation from the inside. Jackson asked the question, “Are there ‘natives’ to non-physical spaces?” Of course there aren’t. What makes one a native is to be born and raised in a place. These gamers are just as much immigrants as anyone else. But most of all, no one is taking anything from these guys:

But I also think it is simpler than this. The complaints of the gamers are exactly the complains of any group with power that sees that power threatened. It is really just about privilege. I don’t think the irony is missed on anyone that these aggrieved games are generally straight white mans of the middle class and up. The whole of gamergate can be seen as a microcosm of the American power elite’s clinging to power — or a replay of the aggrieved white male of the 1970s, trying to deal with the increasing public power of women.

From what I can tell, the ultimate fear of these basement dwellers is that people are starting to look down on them. And I think they are right. I think the portrayal of women in almost every game I’ve ever seen will gradually be seen sort of like Playboy magazine. But having the world think that you aren’t creepy, immature, or both is not something anyone has a right to expect. But expecting things you have no right to is the very definition of privilege.

Via The Vermont Political Observer, we learn that No Good Deed Goes Unpunished. Go read the article and the ones before it — it’s fascinating. But the basic story is that an eighth grader who was studying Latin noticed that Vermont did not have a Latin motto. So she requested that Senate Minority Leader Joe Benning pass a law to add one. And it was a really great on: Stella quarta decima fulgeat, which means “May the fourteenth star shine bright,” a reference to Vermont’s status as the fourteenth state. But since I’m writing about this, you probably already know what happened.

People heard that the Senate was trying to create a Latin motto and they freaked out. Let’s list some of the more amusing comments:

• Kevin P Hahn: “How about ‘go back south of the boarder'” [The Swiss border? The Austrian border? Or just that short Italian boarder who stays with us on weeknights?]
• Phil Salzano: “My question is, are we Latin, or are we Vermonters? Alright then, English it is…” [Even better: make it Vermontish.]
• Zeb Swierczynski: “ABSOLUTLY NOT!!!! sick and tired of that crap, they have their own countries.” [Well, had.]

This last one goes along with a number about how people need to know how to speak English. This is curious, because the original use of the word “illiterate” was to describe someone who could not read and write Latin. It is also funny how many people claimed that poor Senator Benning was “dumb” and “idiotic.” If ignorance is bliss, these must be some of the happiest people in the world!

What bothers me most about these reactions is that it shows that many Americans don’t even value the European traditions that they so often use to attack other cultures. So it is no longer a question of the United States being the most recent and greatest expression of western culture, it is that the United States is just this singularity that has no beginning and no end but rather just is. This represents a very big problem for me. I still think that there is much to be said about the “great books” approach to education. I want to be more inclusive, but I understand the wish to celebrate the western journey from Homer to Virgil to Dante — Greek to Latin to Italian. But to not know that intellectual history is submental and does not speak well of the United States as the greatest empire in human history.

Digby noted something else: “the conflation of Muslim with Mexican.” But it isn’t limited to that. To these people, all that seems to matter is that these other places are foreign. These are the same people, after all, who hated France because its government didn’t go along with our government in the invasion of Iraq. The only foreign country these people like is Israel, and that’s quite recent. And the only reason they like Israel is because it kills a lot of people who these conservatives hate even more.

An eighth grader requesting that the state create a Latin motto is a great example of American ideals. The negative reaction to it is a great example of American reality: ignorance, fear, and hatred under the guise of patriotism. It’s also the predictable outcome of our terrible educational system. But conservatives want to “fix” this system by making it even worse. Don’t let students know about the actual history of the world. Just start with Thanksgiving (1%), run through the Revolutionary War (50%), teach the Civil War as unnecessary because slavery was dying anyway (20%), explain how the income tax is unconstitutional (10%), and jump right to how Ronald Reagan saved the nation (19%). Give a multiple choice test and call it, “Education!” We don’t need no stinkin’ Latin!