MtG and Politics
MtG and Politics
I apologize for the absence from writing. I needed to clear my mind and focus on more important things in life for a little bit. Over the past week or so I've started to shift some of my focus back towards Magic and see that the community, especially on Twitter, is just as politically driven as ever. Maybe even more so now that the debates are ramping up and election time is getting closer. This article is not to prove one side right or wrong politically. It's also not to cause backlash, which I know I'll get for this piece. I just want to share my views so people have an understanding of where I'm coming from and why I believe what I believe. I've caught tons of heat over comments I've made about politics on twitter, especially over the past week, and even more so from the MtG community. A lot of said heat is usually people calling me names and being overly aggressive because I'm an "alt right-wing nut" as stated by a well known Magic personality. If this is a community that preaches inclusiveness, then why so much hatred for those that believe differently than you and aren't afraid to voice their opinions? The community as a whole has accepted you for who you are, why not accept those that are different from you?
Left/Right Wing Politics
Most of the community is very left from my views. I've seen most of the community openly admit to supporting candidates such as Bernie Sanders, a self-proclaimed democratic socialist. I'm not going to argue that being a good or bad thing that he's getting support. Good for him. I don't believe he'll win but I wish him the best in his endeavors and hope he does right by the people in the event he does win. I'm pretty openly conservative in my views on politics and am willing to argue my side pretty strongly on most issues that I have some awareness of.
To give you some background on me, I grew up in a reasonably large town in the northwest part of Indiana about 40 minutes or so from Chicago in a single parent household. I spent a lot of time with my grandparents as a child because my mom worked so much. My dad wasn't in the picture through no fault of his own, but that's a topic for another day. My grandparents actually are registered Democrats. My grandfather was a union man. He worked in a local machine shop and my grandma was the secretary for a couple of different Deans at a school within a local branch of Purdue University. My mom tried to keep politics out of the house as much as possible. She didn't even vote, let alone believe in one political affiliation over another. Given the region of the country I lived in (my grandparents lived in the same town), my grandparents were considered upper-middle class. They weren't rich but could afford to take a vacation once or twice a year if they wanted. Because they were as well off as they were my grandpa would always tell me that he votes Democrat because he can't afford to vote Republican. He thought they taxed his income too much. This was probably true given his income comparative to the average in the area and because union wages are typically higher than the average company and because they weren't quite high enough to where it didn't effect him come tax time. Because of this belief he had and had taught me I grew up believing you needed to be rich to be a Republican therefore I leaned more towards being a Democrat because I didn't see my family as rich despite them owning a house and two new cars which got traded in and upgraded every 5-10 years or so.
I ended up joining the military after high school. I saw the last couple of years of the Bush administration, the entire Obama administration, and the first couple years of the Trump administration. What I saw of the Bush administration just wasn't enough to sell me entirely on switching sides although the military itself is generally pretty conservative. Once 2008 came around and Obama was campaigning, I felt that he was the better candidate of the two. I felt he had better talking points as well as his ability to sell the people on them was good enough. He made people believe in his movement and what he wanted to do with the country. As his presidency went on however, I felt he continuously failed to follow through on his promises. By the end of his first term I had flipped sides. I felt that basic rights were being taken over by the federal government when it should belong to the individual States except in the case something isn't outlined by state law as it states in the Constitution. I saw more and more federal regulations on things and attempts to override the states and their decision making. The thing that really did it for me was the downsizing and restructuring of the military as a whole. There was a program that was sold as transitioning out those that have a history of getting in trouble and moving around those that might fit into other jobs better that their current one. This was supposed to fix the stagnation in the ranks of some jobs and fill gaps in others. It did to an extent, except they went too far with transitioning people out which ended up creating gaps everywhere and making those that were there to do the work have to work harder to make up for the lack of people. A perfect example of this was the IA, or Individual Augmentee assignments the Navy offered. These were offered to sailors that wished to work for up to 18 months out of their normal job and work with the Army on various job assignments from being on a PRT(Provincial Reconstruction Team) to detainee operations doing various prison guard type duties. The people on these assignments may have but typically didn't have any experience in their job description while deployed. There was a training period for 2-6 months depending on the job, but outside of that there was limited field experience. I'm a perfect example of this. I was trained as an aviation electronics technician for the Navy, more specifically I was trained to repair various communications equipment within an aircraft. I went on one of these IA deployments to essentially be a corrections officer for about a year after only 2 months of training.
Once I noticed what was going on I strengthened my belief in a strong military. The military is supposed to be the best of the best in their individual job fields, why are[were] we getting rid of them? Because they screwed up early in their career? That seems pretty corporate America to me. Train the new guy to do the job of the guy with 15 years of experience just because the new guy works for less money. I like corporate America and I'm all for capitalism where it fits but when you need the best of the best, like in the military, let's keep it that way.
As the Obama administration went on I noticed more and more gun regulations throughout the country. I also noticed something happening between the State Department and the Mexican government. This turned into the Fast and Furious scandal in which we as a country were essentially selling guns to the cartels via black market. With the cartels having drugs dealt and other gang activities going on this side of the border, I figured we should be able to protect ourselves, not just from them but from other gangs and violent people here in the states. There was various forms of rhetoric used in this argument by the left. The most popular of which was something along the lines of "just call the police, that's what they're for." My thinking, having had some training in firearms use and safety, was it takes 10 minutes for the police to show up if I dial 9-1-1 but it takes seconds to pull out my gun to deter a potential criminal from harming myself or my family. Now, this isn't something everyone is comfortable doing and if they're not that's perfectly fine. I've met plenty of people that are uncomfortable being around firearms. But for those of us that are comfortable around guns, why can we not choose to defend ourselves as such? Why does the majority continue to get penalized for the actions of the minority. In this case the law abiding citizens of which there are hundreds of thousands if not millions vs. the violent criminals of which there is a fraction of that number. There's definitely arguments for both sides here, but if you look at things from this perspective just 50 years ago there was firearm safety classes taught in elementary classrooms. You could open up a catalog and order a gun and have it shipped directly to your house. Now, most firearms safety courses won't take students under 18. You can order a gun online but it has to go through a local dealer for a background check before it can be transferred to you. There's also a waiting period even if you were to go into a store to try to purchase a gun. The last I checked, in my home state there was no wait period for a long gun(rifle or shotgun) and a 10 day wait period for a hand gun with the wait period being waved for those holding a concealed carry permit. In Washington, the state I currently live in, they recently set a 10 day wait on all firearms as well as limited the number of firearms and ammo you could purchase in a 30 day period. Now we have candidates like Joe Biden tapping in adamantly anti-gun advocates and former candidate Beto O'Rourke. Guns aren't for everybody. I get it. My big question is why put more checks in place? Why take something away from law-abiding citizens? People are killed every day by drunk drivers and we blame the person. We don't talk about banning cars. But when someone gets shot and killed we blame the gun and talk about more gun laws to the point of potentially banning them. Let's actually sit down and come up with something that makes sense for everyone. Let's not punish the majority for the stupidity of the minority.
Then there's healthcare. Obama did a great job selling the people on affordable healthcare through the Affordable Care Act a.k.a. Obamacare. It had a pretty rocky start. It was delayed multiple times for various reasons. The website had issues staying running. Once it was finally in place people found out they would face tax penalties for not having insurance. Once you were finally able to get into the online marketplace for insurance through the program you found that your rates were exorbitantly higher than normal. During this time I had my then wife's aunt and uncle living with us. My wife tried to help them get insurance through the marketplace as they were on limited income and didn't have full time jobs. For two adults in their early-mid 60s, they were looking at paying roughly $1200 a month for healthcare, with no kids and no preexisting conditions. The average employer health insurance costs at the time in the San Diego area, where I was currently living, for a similar couple was about $350 a month. This is quite the opposite of affordable and the administration as a whole caught a lot of heat on the back end for this one because of it. People weren't able to keep their doctors like they were promised. People were paying 3 times what they were previously paying, or more in some cases. Now we're talking about candidates like Bernie Sanders wanting to bring in a Medicare for all plan. Given the last time the federal government got involved in the health insurance industry it went over quite terribly if you ask me, this is a bad idea. Another thing I have issues with in his plan specifically is that he said taxes will go up for everyone middle class and up. Now, right now this doesn't concern me because I don't think I would fall into that category but seeing as I'm working on getting into an apprenticeship through the local chapter of the electricians union I would reach that status within a couple of years given the earning potential as I progress through my training and as I become a certified journeyman. I don't want to be taxed to the point that I'm unable to move up in the socioeconomic ladder.
Taxes. As I stated with Bernie Sanders' healthcare for all plan the people that are middle class and up on the socioeconomic ladder will be taxed more and I'm afraid of that because of what I'm working towards personally. I don't want to fall into that category and see $45 or $50 and hour on paper but on my pay checks see $25 an hour because I'm part of the "middle class." We already pay an incredible amount of taxes. Our income is taxed by the federal government. Most of us see state taxes taken out. Then there's FICA. To go even further, some counties tax your income as well as some cities. Then there's people like where I'm from where taxes potentially gets really complicated. There's a lot of people that commute to Chicago to work because the job selection for their specific industry is better there but cost of living is significantly cheaper in Indiana. They see both Indiana and Illinois taxes come out of their pay as well as everything else. Also, Chicago, and the county it's in is one of those places where you pay city and county tax on your income. Now that we're through all of that we need to buy things, non-food things. Those are taxed at varying rates depending on where you live. It also goes up seemingly randomly. I'm sure there's an explanation as to when, why, and how much, but we never get that explanation really. Then, when you get settled in your career and family life, you decide to buy a house. Guess what part of your bill is with that house? Property taxes. That's right, you pay the state some amount of money that goes up every year based on the arbitrary number assigned to your property known as property value. The more your house and land are worth, the more you pay in taxes. And because the market has dictated that land never loses value your property taxes will, at best, stay the same from one year to the next. It typically goes up however. Now, on top of all that, you want to raise our taxes more? For something people can get just by getting a full time job? No thanks. I get that the job market in some areas isn't the greatest. And that's not any one persons fault really. That's just circumstance at this point in the game. We've been an independent nation for over 200 years now. But when people find themselves in a financial rut like that they need to have initiative. Make something of yourself. Go find a job. Apply to new jobs every day. Network with people. I'm friends with you, you have a job, is your company hiring? You have a friend that works for company "x," are they hiring? In today's society networking is key. I got the current job I'm at because of my girlfriend. She happened to be friends with someone in HR from a previous job they had together as well as working there herself. Networking also helped me find out about the internship for the union and where to go and how to go about applying while working at my current job from speaking with a person that went through the process with the same union.
This country is great because of the opportunities we are given. This country is great because of the diversity among it's people. This country is great because we the people have a voice. "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." This is what our country is about. Uniting as one despite our differences to provide the best possible outcome for the people. Quit spreading hatred and disdain towards those that have different views than you. There is such thing as a peaceful and respectful debate. If you can't keep your emotions out of it and keep from getting aggressive in your argument then please refrain from being open about politics, especially when most of your followers are there for the content you create whether it be Magic or some other game. Hopefully this clears up some of my thoughts and beliefs to those that care. To those that don't, hopefully now you at least have an understanding as to why I believe what I believe. Now get out there and sling some overpriced cardboard.
I ended up joining the military after high school. I saw the last couple of years of the Bush administration, the entire Obama administration, and the first couple years of the Trump administration. What I saw of the Bush administration just wasn't enough to sell me entirely on switching sides although the military itself is generally pretty conservative. Once 2008 came around and Obama was campaigning, I felt that he was the better candidate of the two. I felt he had better talking points as well as his ability to sell the people on them was good enough. He made people believe in his movement and what he wanted to do with the country. As his presidency went on however, I felt he continuously failed to follow through on his promises. By the end of his first term I had flipped sides. I felt that basic rights were being taken over by the federal government when it should belong to the individual States except in the case something isn't outlined by state law as it states in the Constitution. I saw more and more federal regulations on things and attempts to override the states and their decision making. The thing that really did it for me was the downsizing and restructuring of the military as a whole. There was a program that was sold as transitioning out those that have a history of getting in trouble and moving around those that might fit into other jobs better that their current one. This was supposed to fix the stagnation in the ranks of some jobs and fill gaps in others. It did to an extent, except they went too far with transitioning people out which ended up creating gaps everywhere and making those that were there to do the work have to work harder to make up for the lack of people. A perfect example of this was the IA, or Individual Augmentee assignments the Navy offered. These were offered to sailors that wished to work for up to 18 months out of their normal job and work with the Army on various job assignments from being on a PRT(Provincial Reconstruction Team) to detainee operations doing various prison guard type duties. The people on these assignments may have but typically didn't have any experience in their job description while deployed. There was a training period for 2-6 months depending on the job, but outside of that there was limited field experience. I'm a perfect example of this. I was trained as an aviation electronics technician for the Navy, more specifically I was trained to repair various communications equipment within an aircraft. I went on one of these IA deployments to essentially be a corrections officer for about a year after only 2 months of training.
Once I noticed what was going on I strengthened my belief in a strong military. The military is supposed to be the best of the best in their individual job fields, why are[were] we getting rid of them? Because they screwed up early in their career? That seems pretty corporate America to me. Train the new guy to do the job of the guy with 15 years of experience just because the new guy works for less money. I like corporate America and I'm all for capitalism where it fits but when you need the best of the best, like in the military, let's keep it that way.
As the Obama administration went on I noticed more and more gun regulations throughout the country. I also noticed something happening between the State Department and the Mexican government. This turned into the Fast and Furious scandal in which we as a country were essentially selling guns to the cartels via black market. With the cartels having drugs dealt and other gang activities going on this side of the border, I figured we should be able to protect ourselves, not just from them but from other gangs and violent people here in the states. There was various forms of rhetoric used in this argument by the left. The most popular of which was something along the lines of "just call the police, that's what they're for." My thinking, having had some training in firearms use and safety, was it takes 10 minutes for the police to show up if I dial 9-1-1 but it takes seconds to pull out my gun to deter a potential criminal from harming myself or my family. Now, this isn't something everyone is comfortable doing and if they're not that's perfectly fine. I've met plenty of people that are uncomfortable being around firearms. But for those of us that are comfortable around guns, why can we not choose to defend ourselves as such? Why does the majority continue to get penalized for the actions of the minority. In this case the law abiding citizens of which there are hundreds of thousands if not millions vs. the violent criminals of which there is a fraction of that number. There's definitely arguments for both sides here, but if you look at things from this perspective just 50 years ago there was firearm safety classes taught in elementary classrooms. You could open up a catalog and order a gun and have it shipped directly to your house. Now, most firearms safety courses won't take students under 18. You can order a gun online but it has to go through a local dealer for a background check before it can be transferred to you. There's also a waiting period even if you were to go into a store to try to purchase a gun. The last I checked, in my home state there was no wait period for a long gun(rifle or shotgun) and a 10 day wait period for a hand gun with the wait period being waved for those holding a concealed carry permit. In Washington, the state I currently live in, they recently set a 10 day wait on all firearms as well as limited the number of firearms and ammo you could purchase in a 30 day period. Now we have candidates like Joe Biden tapping in adamantly anti-gun advocates and former candidate Beto O'Rourke. Guns aren't for everybody. I get it. My big question is why put more checks in place? Why take something away from law-abiding citizens? People are killed every day by drunk drivers and we blame the person. We don't talk about banning cars. But when someone gets shot and killed we blame the gun and talk about more gun laws to the point of potentially banning them. Let's actually sit down and come up with something that makes sense for everyone. Let's not punish the majority for the stupidity of the minority.
Then there's healthcare. Obama did a great job selling the people on affordable healthcare through the Affordable Care Act a.k.a. Obamacare. It had a pretty rocky start. It was delayed multiple times for various reasons. The website had issues staying running. Once it was finally in place people found out they would face tax penalties for not having insurance. Once you were finally able to get into the online marketplace for insurance through the program you found that your rates were exorbitantly higher than normal. During this time I had my then wife's aunt and uncle living with us. My wife tried to help them get insurance through the marketplace as they were on limited income and didn't have full time jobs. For two adults in their early-mid 60s, they were looking at paying roughly $1200 a month for healthcare, with no kids and no preexisting conditions. The average employer health insurance costs at the time in the San Diego area, where I was currently living, for a similar couple was about $350 a month. This is quite the opposite of affordable and the administration as a whole caught a lot of heat on the back end for this one because of it. People weren't able to keep their doctors like they were promised. People were paying 3 times what they were previously paying, or more in some cases. Now we're talking about candidates like Bernie Sanders wanting to bring in a Medicare for all plan. Given the last time the federal government got involved in the health insurance industry it went over quite terribly if you ask me, this is a bad idea. Another thing I have issues with in his plan specifically is that he said taxes will go up for everyone middle class and up. Now, right now this doesn't concern me because I don't think I would fall into that category but seeing as I'm working on getting into an apprenticeship through the local chapter of the electricians union I would reach that status within a couple of years given the earning potential as I progress through my training and as I become a certified journeyman. I don't want to be taxed to the point that I'm unable to move up in the socioeconomic ladder.
Taxes. As I stated with Bernie Sanders' healthcare for all plan the people that are middle class and up on the socioeconomic ladder will be taxed more and I'm afraid of that because of what I'm working towards personally. I don't want to fall into that category and see $45 or $50 and hour on paper but on my pay checks see $25 an hour because I'm part of the "middle class." We already pay an incredible amount of taxes. Our income is taxed by the federal government. Most of us see state taxes taken out. Then there's FICA. To go even further, some counties tax your income as well as some cities. Then there's people like where I'm from where taxes potentially gets really complicated. There's a lot of people that commute to Chicago to work because the job selection for their specific industry is better there but cost of living is significantly cheaper in Indiana. They see both Indiana and Illinois taxes come out of their pay as well as everything else. Also, Chicago, and the county it's in is one of those places where you pay city and county tax on your income. Now that we're through all of that we need to buy things, non-food things. Those are taxed at varying rates depending on where you live. It also goes up seemingly randomly. I'm sure there's an explanation as to when, why, and how much, but we never get that explanation really. Then, when you get settled in your career and family life, you decide to buy a house. Guess what part of your bill is with that house? Property taxes. That's right, you pay the state some amount of money that goes up every year based on the arbitrary number assigned to your property known as property value. The more your house and land are worth, the more you pay in taxes. And because the market has dictated that land never loses value your property taxes will, at best, stay the same from one year to the next. It typically goes up however. Now, on top of all that, you want to raise our taxes more? For something people can get just by getting a full time job? No thanks. I get that the job market in some areas isn't the greatest. And that's not any one persons fault really. That's just circumstance at this point in the game. We've been an independent nation for over 200 years now. But when people find themselves in a financial rut like that they need to have initiative. Make something of yourself. Go find a job. Apply to new jobs every day. Network with people. I'm friends with you, you have a job, is your company hiring? You have a friend that works for company "x," are they hiring? In today's society networking is key. I got the current job I'm at because of my girlfriend. She happened to be friends with someone in HR from a previous job they had together as well as working there herself. Networking also helped me find out about the internship for the union and where to go and how to go about applying while working at my current job from speaking with a person that went through the process with the same union.
This country is great because of the opportunities we are given. This country is great because of the diversity among it's people. This country is great because we the people have a voice. "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." This is what our country is about. Uniting as one despite our differences to provide the best possible outcome for the people. Quit spreading hatred and disdain towards those that have different views than you. There is such thing as a peaceful and respectful debate. If you can't keep your emotions out of it and keep from getting aggressive in your argument then please refrain from being open about politics, especially when most of your followers are there for the content you create whether it be Magic or some other game. Hopefully this clears up some of my thoughts and beliefs to those that care. To those that don't, hopefully now you at least have an understanding as to why I believe what I believe. Now get out there and sling some overpriced cardboard.
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