Stratego ® is a strategy based board game for two players. Each player controls pieces representing individual officers (commanders) and soldiers in an army. The objective is to find and capture the opponent's Flag, or capture enough enemy pieces so the opponent can’t make further moves. Players can’t see each other’s pieces, so disinformation and discovery are important facets contributing to the conduct of gameplay. (Wikipedia 2014)
Sid Meier's Civilization is a strategy based video game created by Sid Meier and Bruce Shelley in1991. The game's objective is to "Build an empire to stand the test of time": it begins in 4000 BC and the players attempt to expand and develop their empires through the ages from the ancient era until modern and near-future times. Civilization was originally developed for DOS running on a PC. It has undergone numerous revisions for various platforms. (Wikipedia 2014)
In 2008 a guy named Barack Obama swaggered onto the world stage and declared he was president of the United States. It’s said “declared” he was president because to this date he hasn’t proven any particular acumen for the conduct of said office. His world-view is apologetic for American exceptionalism, he’s a blatant and politically divisive racist noted for his whining and argumentative “in-your-face” manner of destroying bi-partisan negotiations in Congress. Where foreign policy is concerned; it’s as schizophrenic and omnidirectional so as to present all sides of an issue while latching onto none as his national policies are psychotic and confrontational for their excess of paranoid meanness extended toward Republicans and conservative organizations.
The one major thing noted of Obama was his grasp on his Blackberry® smart-phone; then the obvious signature of connectedness to the social media gigantism would soon evolve worldwide. He was connected. He was cool. He was young and vital and energetic. He was a Madison Avenue ad-man’s # of delight because Jack Kennedy was reincarnated as a man of color. He was seen as America’s visible escape from its history of social injustice and white-man’s burden for years of slavery which just happened to have been the product of Democrat Party control. So, go figure where the popularity came from.
Obama is credited with having been the first to use the interconnectedness of social media to coordinate flash mobs for support at scheduled campaign events. His connectedness drew him to the youth vote like a boil on a debutante’s butt. It’s there, it’s not really all that good for you but it is recognizable as being there. He also is a product of the late stages of board games and the birth of electronic video games. That’s the reason for the allusion to Stratego ® and Sid Meier’s “Civilization” ®.
To Obama, war and foreign policy for America are abstracts; games he played with as a child. They set up his understanding of the world and how conflict was resolved on game boards and specifically in theory. Political theories are debated and rationalized over game pieces moved about the board. Strategies are developed and set in motion according to well defined rules and regulations. Actions may only fit into the world created on pressboard and plastic. The shapes of continents don’t change at the whim of potentates and prime ministers; presidents and despots. Everything fits neatly on the face of the game board and everybody goes home at the end of the contest.
It would be nice if Obama’s theoretical universe came somewhere near reality as we know it in this world. Inaction is viewed as assent to aggression and as weakness when a nation thirsts for the wealth of a neighbor. Action isn’t a necessity in Obama’s world when spewing the pabulum meant to assuage the aggressor is seen as the only course of action to prevent the conquest of weaker nations. Talk is cheap as aggressors absorb those more feeble and incapable of protecting themselves.
Obama is a man believing his game board theory is all he needs to control the aggressive actions of a man and his men who see the conquest and assimilation of Ukraine as a right. In fact people die when the games are played on a global scale and with real weapons. Obama’s infantile concepts developed in a theoretical game play are going to blow up in his face.
And we’ll have to pick up the bloodied bodies of the innocent.
Thanks for listening
