Every Intellectual Dark Web Think Piece Ever Written

I was going to vote for Kamala Harris but then I remembered the crisis of ethics in video games journalism.

I consider myself a classical liberal. I listen to people from all across the political spectrum, including moderate conservatives like Jordan Peterson and avowed leftists like Tim Pool and Dave Rubin. I’ve voted for members of both parties, and I’m registered as an independent. Every year when Election Day comes around, I consider first and foremost what each candidate is going to do to promote good governance and preserve the liberal values that have made Western civilization flourish.

I voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020 because I thought he was the better choice on free speech and the economy. But after the January 6th insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, I couldn’t fathom voting for somebody who had tried to overturn the results of a free election by inciting a lynch mob against his own vice president. I thought Kamala Harris was a flawed candidate on some of the most important issues, like social media censorship and Israel’s right to kill indiscriminately defend itself, but I was inclined to vote for her because I thought she was going to safeguard the traditions and institutions that have made the United States the greatest country in the world.

Then I remembered that in 2014, an aggrieved blogger accused video game developer Zoë Quinn of trading sexual favors with a journalist for positive coverage of the game “Depression Quest.”

Although the rumors turned out to be false, they reminded me why Trump resonated with voters so much in the first place. Since the early Obama administration, the wokescolding left has increasingly extended its reach into every facet of American life, beginning with education and the workplace and eventually intruding into people’s private lives, even taking over forms of entertainment like video games. More and more studios have embraced woke practices like employing women, while media critics have viciously attacked traditional gaming demographics by demonizing all the things that make video games fun, like the unrealistic physics of women’s breasts. When gamers finally had enough and righteously struck back a decade ago, the media and political elites slandered the gamer movement as a misogynistic harassment campaign.

I consider myself a level-headed person, but just remembering this made my blood boil. If the woke left can hire women to make video games about mental health and not expect them to get death threats, then what’s to stop them from toppling the very pillars of Western civilization, like freedom itself?

I swore on January 6th that I would never again help a uniquely dangerous demagogue like Trump come anywhere near the White House. And I still fear that a second Trump administration may usher in the end of Constitutional government in America.

But I’m also afraid that the crisis of wokeness in gaming is symbolic of a cultural rot that pervades every aspect of our existence.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve asked my friends and acquaintances to keep track of the ways woke moralism is seeping into their daily lives. My neighbor’s coworker’s aunt’s friend told me that her coworker’s cousin’s daughter’s roommate has started using she/they pronouns. A distant relative who still occasionally responds to my texts says my nephew painted his fingernails black and talked about getting his ears pierced for his 18th birthday. A colleague of mine panicked when she saw a sign that said “Free Parking” and thought it said “Free Palestine.” I’ve been banned from my family’s Thanksgiving until I apologize for calling Michelle Obama a “darky.”

Woke insanity knows no limits. Whatever else you may think is at stake in this election—the fate of democracy, the future of world order, the success or failure of emerging technologies like AI—it pales in comparison to the importance of inoculating the American public against the woke mind virus.

Kamala Harris and the Democrats won’t do a thing to stop the virus. They can’t, because they’re already been infected. Harris long ago caved to the radical wing of her party when she failed to commit to the only moral position on the Middle East conflict: that Israel must be allowed and equipped to exterminate every last Palestinian man, woman, and child destroy Hamas. She’s called for the weaponization of the federal government against her political opponents for doing nothing more than breaking the law. And her stepdaughter looks like someone who would live in Bushwick.

Donald Trump, meanwhile, is far from the optimal choice for president. I voted for Nikki Haley in the primary because I prefer her foreign policy and appreciate her sophisticated understanding of the three branches of government (God, Israel, and Ronald Reagan). And I would have enthusiastically supported Ron DeSantis if he had won the Republican nomination. But the grim reality of our predicament is that either Trump or Harris will be the next president. And Trump is miles ahead of Harris when it comes to beating back the woke mob.

For those of us who believe Western civilization is worth defending, the choice on our ballot this year is stark. Will we have a president who fights for gamers’ rights or voting rights? Robust breasted women in video games or a robust system of checks and balances in government? Illiberal anti-woke-ocracy or postmodern neo-Marxist mob rule?

The choice is this: Trumpism or barbarism. And it is our choice to make.