Writer's Block: Day of German Unity

[pyat]

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thebitterguy has a good answer for this.

Simplicity. Hee hee hee.

Though, I guess some people get nostalgic for anything, mainly because they were younger when it happened, I guess.

"Ah, give me the glory days of WWII, when everyone knew what was right and what was wrong, and moral choices were clear!"

Comments

[commanderteddog.livejournal.com]

The blue guys were good and the red guys were bad! Simple enough.

Ugh, I agree. Young enough to not grasp what was going on, at least, or sheltered to the point where it didn't hurt. I got to see When the Wind Blows as a kid. That will mess you up GOOD. I like some (okay, a lot!) of the media of the 1980s, but the media was the result of the culture at the time and I don't think that anyone really wants to return to all of the culture of the 1980s, despite how appealing it seems.

The Doomsday Clock as just been replaced by the Homeland Security Advisory System in terms of "THREAT RIGHT NOW". You'll never see it before yellow, much like how the clock never made it beyond 17 minutes to midnight.

[anidada.livejournal.com]

(Please disregard previous comment. I was confused as to what you meant in the last paragraph. :)

[nottheterritory.livejournal.com]

I have a fun, albeit kind of politically wacky game about the Cold War called Twilight Struggle. It was published a few years ago, when Iraq and September 11th were still fresher in everyone's mind. In the designer's notes at the end, the designer's write:

At the end of the day, Twilight Struggle represents a bit of Cold War nostalgia. In a world of stateless enemies, for whom our destruction is an end in itself, the Cold War seems a quaint disagreement about economics. As religious chauvinism shoves aside ideology, we yearn for a simpler time absent of invisible menaces, fighting for cherished principle against an enemy that we understood. So let us once more pound our shoes, grab the hotline, and stand watch in Berlin. The Cold War is over, but the game has just begun.

Though I like the game, I'm pretty certain I would consider the designers right wing nutbars if I knew them in person. I don't really agree with the sentiment, but I can kind of understand it - I'm not in the same place as the designers but this at least shows me where they are on a map, if you will...

[thebitterguy]

Is Twilight STruggle a good game, though? I've heard a lot about it and it sounds interesting.

We should add that to the Board Game day itinerary.

[nottheterritory.livejournal.com]

To be honest, I don't entirely remember - it's been a while since I played it. I certainly enjoyed it, but I seem to recall that it had some serious flaws which have probably been erratta'd by now.

The other issue, of course, being that it's strictly a two-player game. You and I could play it - you know, after we play Star Warriors and Leviathan.

*ducks *

I really am interested in playing them it's just that we live in different cities and in the last year I've gone from having little time on weekends to having really _no_ time on weekends. Someday, when the bunny is older...

cold war nostalgia

[postrodent.livejournal.com]

Ah, those halcyon days when we might be vaporized at any moment! What are we offered now? Being swept away on a boiling tide of stinking, poisonous floodwater, liberally salted with debris and corpses? Yeah, thermonuclear annihilation looks better all the time.

[paka.livejournal.com]

Um, I kinda miss Twilight 2000, does that count?

I suppose it's simplicity if everyone involved were the bad guys. Seriously, what simplicity? We basically created the situations in Afghanistan and Iran that we're now wallowing in.

[mrs-dm.livejournal.com]

Gorbachev reportedly announced to the American people, "We are going to do something terrible to you: we're going to deprive you of an enemy."

In his book, Archetype Revisited: An updated natural history of the self, author Anthony Stevens points out that for most of the 20th century, those in the West had only to look to the East to see what Evil was (e.g. Nazi Germany, then Stalinist Russia). But with the collapse of the "Evil Empire", he says, the Western Shadow had to seek other suitable recipients for its projection. He claims the West found it first in Iran, then Iraq etc.

I would argue that individuals in the West have increasingly found projections of their own Shadows (unconscious contents they'd rather not face) closer to home. I think you see this in a greater intolerance within cities and communities for others' political and social views. Perhaps this is why there is more of a "culture war" going on in the U.S. and Canada in the last decade wrt red states vs blue states, religious fundamentalism and opposition to gay rights. When there was a common enemy (communists), people seemed to pull together more. It's just basic social anthropology and tribal psychology, I guess.