Second Life Republicans Scare Me
Fri Jan 04, 2008 at 11:51:56 AM PDT
Yes, I know I owe y'all a Kossack Fullstop diary.
Last night I popped in-world at random to check on a few things, and accepted the General's invitation to accompany him to a Second Life Republicans meeting.
Oh. My. God.
At first, I thought that they were just trying to out-General the General. I mean, come on - a shrine to Ronald Reagan? With worshipping poseballs and everything?
No, they're serious.
I was worried because I'd been working construction at Celestial Requiem. I figured overalls and boots might be a little casual for weighty political debate. I was wrong.
I barely got to stare at the Reagan memorial in stunned disbelief before I was ported in. I found a seat in the back and spent most of the evening fending off pickup lines and giving out copies of my clothing, but I did manage to pay attention to some of the meeting.
My impressions:
- I try to be wearing clothing when I tell people I find something offensive. I'm funny that way.
- I thought the Conscious Lounge events were chaotic, cat-herding exercises in topic derailment. My most abject apologies - and aren't Republicans supposed to be good at organizing? My God, talk about the lifeboat committee on the Titanic.
- Look, I'm a gamer. I've been playing D&D for damn near thirty years. Combat is a necessary, integral part of the game. I'm familiar with humor and conversations involving death and combat, and it takes some time to make me uncomfortable. It took them five minutes.
- Did anyone else notice the welfare-hating Republicans had a tip jar to donate money to pay tier? Did anyone else notice that no one had paid it?
- There were times when they sounded surprisingly decent and normal, enough that I caught myself thinking "We can talk to these people. They're not too bad. We can find some common ground." before they'd start in on abolishing all taxes and killing brown people.
- As insulting and condescending as they are towards liberals in public, IM is a different story altogether.
- I was expecting primary candidate fights like there are here. When they discussed their candidates, which wasn't nearly as often as the moderator wished, it was more in the manner of a hypothetical comparison as to which virulent disease you'd like to die from.
So, did any other Wellstones make it out okay? I left when they started befouling my beloved NIN - what happened after that?
