Benoit murder-suicide - an insanity plea

Nancy and Daniel Benoit. RIP

This year is the 10 year anniversary of Benoit's murder-suicide. Way back doing the "Monday Night Wars" when WWF/WWE and WCW were going head-to-head and pushing the bounds, trouncing even Monday Night Football in ratings, I was a huge wrestling fan. I watched both promos, jumping back and fourth, and "The Crippler" Chris Benoit was one of my favorite wrestlers. His skills were amazing and he brought an intensity to the ring that kept you glued to the match. In other words, and unrivaled performer.

When ever something like this happens, people always try to make sense of the matter. Try to figure out why something happened, why someone did what they did, when no one expected it. A lot of people are saying Benoit was out of his mind, that he went crazy, that he was insane. Truth is we'll never know, the only ones who really know why are dead.

But based on what we know, is that insanity explanation going to fly in court? Let me say this first, I'm not excusing what he did. All I'm doing is following the road of 'is Benoit insane' and testing to see if he fits the legal definition of. Why? Just to give some kind of concrete foundation to the term "insane".


Lets start with what we do know.
- According to Chavo Guerrero he sent out a series of bizarre text messages just before his suicide.

- According to Chris Jericho what Benoit did was vastly out of character for him, that no one expected it. Also according to Jericho, Eddie Guerrero's death weighed very heavily on Benoit. Jericho also mentions bizarre behavior from Benoit, such as paranoia.

- According to, Nancy Benoit's sister, Sandra Toffoloni, there was strain on their marriage, and a lot of personal strain after the deaths of Victor Mar (ring name: Black Cat), Ray Traylor (ring name: Big Boss Man), Eddie and others, deeply affected Benoit. Also according to her there was a lot of self-medicating going on between Nancy and Benoit.  Additionally, according to her he didn't display the typical Alzheimer's symptoms. Toffoloni also revealed that Benoit spent two whole days alone in the house with the bodies of his wife and son, as well as a WWE official mentioning to her that Benoit had attempted to book a flight for the show he was scheduled for.

- According to Sean Allen Morley (ring name: Val Venis), at the Benoit home there were open alcohol bottles everywhere.   

- Researchers at the Sports Legacy Institute released findings that demonstrate Benoit as having Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy. Having suffered the same sort of brain injury that NFL players have suffered that caused them to sink into depression and hurt themselves or others.

- Benoit's method of suicide was to rig his weight lifting machine to hang himself. A method that took an enormous amount of strength, and therefore, demonstrated to be thought out.

Lets now synthesize all this. Benoit has suffered brain injury consistent with what NFL players have suffered. There was in all probability alcohol and/or drug abuse, brought on by both personal and professional pressures. Benoit himself displaying odd behavior from the paranoia observed by Toffoloni to the bizarre text messages received by Chavo, and the strange behavior observed by Jericho. Behavior that had been observed as on-going during the last year and and a half of Benoit's life. That he had spent several days alone with the corpses of his family, with the thing that occurred to him being trying to get to work. His ultimate method of suicide being one which was difficult and took great strength to do.


So that's what we do know (I'm not even going to entertain bullshit like the Kevin Sullivan conspiracy theory, Kevin gave him a push in WCW even after the Kevin and Nancy divorced, Sullivan was behind Benoit winning the championship, I don't think there's any credence to this). What legally constitutes as "insanity" depends on what state/circuit a given court happens to be in. The important thing to focus on is if the person is "insane" at the time the act was committed. The other thing to consider is that it doesn't have to be any one single factor behind this. We'll go through each of these standards.

McNaughten Rule:
Under this rule, insanity will be found if because of a mental disease/defect the defendant:
- Did not know that his act would be wrong. 
- Did not understand the nature or quality of his actions. 

So based on what we know, regarding Benoit's behavior and the medical report, it is very likely Benoit had a mental illness/defect as a result of brain injury coupled with substance abuse.

We don't know enough to consider whether Benoit knew what he was doing was wrong.

Going by what we know it is possible that Benoit did not understand the nature of quality of his actions at the time he did it, because of the brain injuries he sustained? He did stay in the house alone with the bodies of his family. No calls to the authorities, or any mention of what happened, instead just trying to go back to work. He just killed two people and he's trying to book a flight to make a show? Did he really understand what he was doing when he did it? There is an argument there to be made that Benoit did not understand the nature and quality of what he just did. It might be mostly conjecture, but there is something going on there and a picture can be scratched together from it.

There is an argument that Benoit was insane under this rule.

Irresistible Impulse:
Under this rule insanity will be found if because of a mental disease/defect the defendant is unable to control his actions or conform his action to the law. 

Benoit has been observed by those closest around to him to be displaying strange and bizarre behavior. We don't know enough to be able to tell whether Benoit was unable to control himself, but if his acts of paranoia, such as driving different routes to the gym everyday, taking different cars, if there was some compulsiveness to that behavior, then it may point to him being unable to control his actions at the time he committed the murders.

We just don't know enough to argue whether or not Benoit was insane under this rule.

Durham Test:
Under this rule insanity will be found if the crime was a product of a mental illness. 

As I mentioned, Benoit was displaying strange and bizarre behavior, and the medical reports are consisted with brain injuries. So there is a strong argument that everything combined resulted in some sort of mental illness.

That said, it was very likely, based on what his family and friends have said about him, that the murders were a product of this mental illness. His closest people didn't see it coming, and he was behaving strangely for awhile, so more than likely something was going on in his head.

Under this test, there is an argument there for insanity.

Model Penal Code:
Under this rule insanity will be found if because of a mental disease/defect the defendant lacked the substantial capacity to either"
- Appreciate the criminality of their conduct. 
- Conform their conduct to the requirement of the law.

Based on what we know, this one is hard to tell. Did he understand what he was doing was criminal at the time he did it? Maybe. Maybe not. If he's refocusing on work with two dead people that he's just killed, maybe he was so out of it that he didn't appreciated the criminality of what he did.

From what we know, there's a weak argument, mostly conjecture, but there's still enough there to work with, and things do lean towards insanity.

...

So there it is, had Chris Benoit gone insane when he committed murder, under three of the legal standards of insanity, based on what is known, quite possibly. He was quite likely insane in both the "he's want himself" sense, and in the legal sense. Had he not killed himself, had he gone to trial, it's certainly possible that he's be found Not Guilty by reason of insanity. Does that mean he'd walk for what he did? I doubt it, he's probably be institutionalized.

So what's my take on this as a fan of his ten years after? Do I think he should be inducted into the Hall of Fame? Hell no! Because of what he did the attention will always be on the double murders, not on his skills as a wrestler. Do I think WWE should continue to pretend that Chris Benoit doesn't exist? No. Because he did exist, I don't think he should be glorified (like don't release any blu-rays focused on him, but have an archive of his matches), but by pretending he didn't exist just fuels the kind of infamy/mystique around him.  People know why he's treated like he doesn't exist and new fans who hear about him are going to get curious and look him up. In fact, it's reached the level of being an internet meme. In other words he'll never be erased.

Ten years ago when it happened, WWE made the right decision. But ten years later today, I don't think they should go out of their way to show him, but also shouldn't go out of their way to pretend he never existed anymore. But also, Benoit is an example of what can happen to someone when the perfect storm of personal and professional pressures, substance abuse and brain injuries all come together. Why it's important to seek help, because that shit will eat you. Was he a monster for what he did? YES. But monsters don't come from nowhere...

The angry rantings of an Asian-American: Why I hate the "Progressive" Left part 1

The main reason why I hate the Pro[re]gressive Left is simple and it really boils down to this, I'm not weak. I'm Asian-American, Filipino to be specific, so that makes me a minority in the US. I'm not sure what chain of logic leads them to think so, but somehow for the Pro[re]gressive, that means I'm weak.

So how did I get to that conclusion?

More often than not, I'll see some young upper-middle class kid saying they're fighting against racism, sexism and bigotry. So on the surface I ought to be friendly towards them right? I mean after all they claim to be fighting for me.

Well here's the thing... I never asked them to. I never needed them, nor wanted them to "fight" for me. Their "help" was never needed, is not needed, and never will be needed. Combined with age and personal experience, I've been around a bit. I've been to my share of crazy parties, seen my share of drug use and their aftermath, and buried my share of friends.

A little bit of background. 

I was born the in early/mid '80s, early enough that I still have memories of the '80s. So I grew up though the '90s, becoming socially aware of things around the mid to late '90s ,and becoming politically aware around the mid '90s and formulating my views in the late '90s and into the early 2000's. Essentially my socio-political views came out of the end of Bill Clinton and into the era of George W Bush's presidency. During all of that I ran with multiple circles of friends, I ran with a circle of video game and anime nerds and at the same time I ran with a circle of crazy party friends. So I had a pretty varied social circle of friends. I'd go from one night hanging out at a 24-hr diner talking to friends about Gundam Wing and how the Tallgeese was the most bad ass of all the Mobile Suits, while the next night I'd be drinking a poorly made cocktail (that was just all alcohol) and spending the night with a wild punk rock chick, who wore black all the time and liked to spin fire on her free time. 

These circles of friends I've ran with came from all strata of society, all races and social classes. In short it was a microcosm of assimilation. We had the kids with parents who had money that would host the parties when the parents were away, and the poorer kids who lived in the shady neighborhoods who had the hook ups. No one gave a shit what you were as long as you were cool. The crazy parties I went to had people in our late teens, some of us had just graduated, while others were about to. Then in college there were frat hangouts I had gone to. No one cared about "privilege" or "oppression".  

On that note, college was also something completely different back the from what I've been hearing that it's turned into. Many moons ago, I took a class at San Francisco State University that was an objective and academic look at the three big Abrahamic religions. One of my classmates was a practicing Muslim. So when we got to the section of Islam, he was having a hard time stepping out of his faith and analyzing the religion from an outside view, and the idea that the Koran wasn't the perfect word of God but yet another religious/cultural text was a concept that seemed to even scare him. It wasn't till the prof conceded that what we were doing would amount to blasphemy. In a polite and articulate way, the proffessor essentially said that his feelings didn't matter.

But this being 2004, and all of us there having some vague memory of the '80s and a time called the Cold War, and of a scary ass country on the other side of the world called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics that jailed people who didn't agree with the government and who had over 100 nuclear missiles aimed at us, no one was offended, no one was crying about their feels, no one ran to the nearest safe space, and no one got fired. Perhaps it was because we all had perspective on what oppression really was.

My classmate persevered in the class, and presumably gained new insight into his faith. He didn't lose his shit, he didn't freak out, didn't accuse the professor of anything and tried to get him fired. He didn't go complain to someone that he was being oppressed, nor did he go

Back in my day, "Bonita Tindle" is something that never could happen. Back then people were much more grounded and it took a lot more than some White guy with dreads to set them off.

During this time period, I easily fell into one of the many forms of Liberal. Conservativism at the time was exemplified by then President George W Bush and his first term administration, with people like John Ashcroft. In other words, my personal liberal views were forged in the era where "Compassionate Conservativism" was at it's height. My views were forged with the last fading memories of the Cold War and stories of the oppressiveness of the Soviet regime, and in the era where factions of Protestant Christianity, factions including the apocalyptic, belief in the Book of Revelations faction of Protestant Christianity, were trying mold society into their own ideal image.

So where does that put me in terms of what's going on today? 

Well I see this shit happening all over again. Only this time it's extremist jackasses on the left who are trying to mold society into their own ideal image. I really couldn't say why I didn't turn into a whiny-ass, unable to function in society, crybully. Maybe it was old school parents who didn't buy into the bullshit new-age hippy style of parenting. Maybe it was the fact that for a part of my life I lived under the threat of nuclear annihilation, and shared half the planet with a big brutal oppressor. Maybe those things helped me keep perspective. 

I didn't worry about "microaggression", I didn't worry about a "racist White patriarchy", probably because I saw us come out of the Cold War without glowing green and seen us as a society make it past that knife edge period in history. Now why am I constantly bringing up the Cold War. Well, to put it straight, I don't think these 20 year old millennials know what evil is. They weren't there for the Civil Rights movement, they weren't there for the horrors of Vietnam, and they weren't there for the fear of the Cold War.

Many of these millennials were born after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War. Though they would be old enough to have memories of 9-11, so maybe that theory is a bit off. 

So that's where I came from, a nerdy kid who befriended some people who would go one to become crazy parties, in the backdrop of a transition of the geopolitical order from the old Cold War era to the new era that came, from the Cold War to the War on Terror.

In other words... I seen a lot of shit! Seen a lot of shit, gone though a lot of shit and I'm still standing. Still standing and still plowing forward.

So that said... How did I get to the conclusion that the Progressive Left sees me as weak? Well, not to toot my own horn, but I've got quite a bit of experience behind me. Compare that to the experience that the typical college SJW has. Now, after doing that, what could possibly make any of these SJW types think that someone like me, needs them to fight for them?

Well there are a few things that got me to that conclusion

First their paternalistic, view of minorities, that we seem to need them to protect us and clear the roads for us. They have it in their heads that we need them to, not make society more fair, but instead to make it harder for White people. Essentially, they want to give White people a handicap, implying that minorities are inferior to Whites and need a handicap bonus to compete with them. This first point also ultimately shows their racism. They're trapped in this weird "White guilt" mindset, that everything is White people's fault. Now I'm not going to say that Colonialism in the early 20th Century didn't cause problems but that's a topic for another day. Here's the funny thing though, if White people have the power to cause all these problems, then the existing inverse is that White people have the power to fix all these problems. Heads, it's White Guilt, tails it's the White Savior Complex (by that I mean this idea that White people have the responsibility to fix the social problems of minority communities, and remove the obstacles that minority individuals face because they have the "power and privilege" to do it), two sides of the same racist coin. How is this racist? It's racist in that the premise is that White people need to fix the problem, as opposed to minorities having the power themselves to overcome obstacles and fix the problem ourselves. Look motherfucker, I can overcome my own damn obstacles without you. You are not needed, you never were needed, and you won't ever be needed.


This is also sexist, in that it becomes sexist when you replace "White" with "men". It's essentially the same argument. That we need to give handicap points to one side so they can compete with the other.

Second, well as the old saying goes "who died and made you king?" I can't even begin to get into the level of arrogance that it takes for them to think that they deserve to be given power, so I'm just not going to. Now the reason I take issue with this, is that given my background, vs the background of your average UC Berkley SJW undergrad, what gives them the right to tell society what's what under my name? Subheading A, what makes them think that I need society changed for me to make it? Subheading B, even if I needed society changed for me to make it through, what makes them think they know what changes I need? Hinde mo alam ako!

Third, what makes them think that I need them to be a voice for me? That I need them to be a voice for me in both volume and content? I mean case in point, Democrat Sally Boynton Brown. Look dumbass, I don't need you to shut people down for my benefit. Are you implying that I am so weak that I need YOU as my advocate? That I am so weak that I need a White person to be an advocate for me (what was I saying a little while about about White Savior Complex)?! This is the paternalistic crap I was talking about earlier, that these people seem to think they need to regulate people's individual conduct. They think that because they have "power and privilege" that they have some kind of warped sense Nobelesse Obilge to use that "power and privilege" to bring down the "racist White patriarchy" so minorities like me can make it in this country. As if we didn't have the knowledge and power to do it ourselves.

Given those three factors, the only logical conclusion that can be reached, is that they think racial/ethnic minorities remain in a position of weakness. Such weakness, that someone as naive and fresh faced as them are in a position where they can help us. Maybe it's just me, but this level of arrogance, or this level of delusion, just burns my ass. It perpetuates this concept that minorities are weak and unable to make their own way in this country, which the example of countless successful minorities in this country prove false. In other words, it attempts to brainwash minorities into thinking they're weak and that they need the "White Savior" to clear the way for them, because they can't make it otherwise.

There are other reasons, why I just out right hate the Progressive Left, usually related to their other deranged unhinged views on things, but I'll save that for later. But I did mention the Cold War several times so I will go into that a bit.

The Cold War ended in 1991, Progressive Leftism arguable blew it up into the mainstream with the Gamergate controversy that started in summer of 2014. So people born the year the Cold War ended were already 23 or so years old. In other words, they don't really have a real reference point for what constitutes "oppression". They don't have any real cognitive memory of the Cold War, nor is there any real kind of connection with historical material to the era. I read stuff on the Cold War and for me, it's childhood, for them, it's something that happened a long time ago.

In other words, they don't know what evil is. The horror stories of Communist regimes is too far in proximity to them, so for them "oppression" is now something that makes them emotionally uncomfortable. Something that hurts their feelings.

When I was a kid, probably into 1993 and 1994, we still heard about and learned about the horrors of Communist regimes of the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China. I went to a private school and we were introduced to history earlier than the public schools were, so we watched a lot of interviews with Communist defectors, and I recall one movie about a family that fled East Berlin into West Berlin on a hot air balloon, so we got to see a depiction of life in East Germany, with the Stazi watching everyone. We heard stories of oppression from people who actually were oppressed, oppressed by some of the most iron fisted regimes in history. But not just that though, there was also a proximity in time when we were learning all this, it either was still happening, or only happened a few years ago. I remember in 1993 or 1994 we watched VHS recordings of the Berlin Wall getting torn down. Then in 1995 we had the Bosnian genocide, we followed that very closely in school.

Now these college millennials haven't really been exposed to the same kind of thing. The Bosnian genocide was something that happened far away, by a regime that couldn't come here and hurt us. Then in 9-11 and the subsequent War on Terror, we saw the Taliban collapse in a matter of days, we saw Saddam's regime collapse in just as short amount of time. We saw the 2011 surge that saw the end of some of the major insurgency actions like in Falluja, and in the same year we saw the end of Osama bin Laden. The War on Terror is no longer on the forefront of public thought. We don't have regular forces boots on the ground against ISIS, so for the general public, it still remains as something far away.

Having not been exposed to these kinds of things, the reasonable assumption is that they don't have a really concrete reference point for what is "evil". Now I'm sure there are other reasons, but the fact they the equate the most minor slight as "aggression", the constant othering of someone who simply has a different political view as "a Nazi" and therefore evil. I mean shit, even segre-goddamn-gration is making a come back. The reasonable conclusion is that they've never experienced actual evil. Because if they had, then they wouldn't be wasting energy on non-sense like "microagression" and "cultural appropriation". It's that or they're really just that weak due to leftist helicopter parents who moved aside all personal obstacles from them and therefore never really had a chance to grow.



Now has things in the US been harder for me because I'm Asian-American? To tell you the truth... I don't know. I really don't and you want to know why? Because most of my life I've been busting my ass to get by, finishing my BA, getting a job, going to law school and finishing my JD, getting a job again, and prepping for the Bar. I've been too busy working hard to make something of myself to really notice, let alone give a damn. You know what I was told as a kid? To work harder. Oh you didn't succeed? It wasn't because of racism or what ever other -ism, it's because you didn't work hard enough. If you want to change things, then go and get into a position of power and change things from there. Some people have it harder than others and that's just life. You can work hard and carve your way to the top and change it from there yourself. Or you can bitch and cry and wait till someone else does it for you.

So there it is, where I came from and why it is only natural that I would find myself in direct opposition to the Progressive Left who claims to be my "ally".

So apparently taking a Gaullist view of a matter makes you a Nazi...

Recently French presidential candidate, Marine Le Pen stated:

"I don't think France is responsible for the Vel d'Hiv..."

"I think that generally speaking if there are people responsible, it's those who were in power at the time. It's not France..."

"I consider that France and the Republic were in London during the occupation and that the Vichy regime was not France..."

 
This view was ultimately held by the Fourth Republic that replaced the gouvernement provisoire de la République française (GPRF). That Petain's Vichy regime was an illegal government and not the legitimate government of France. The two factions that would come to form the Comité français de Libération nationale (French Committee of National Liberation) were based in London (de Gaulle) and in Algiers (Giraud). That said, did Le Pen say anything wrong here?

Charles de Gaulle's GPRF has been seen as the legitimate government of France after the collapse of the Third Republic. The establishment of the Vichy government has been considered illegal on several grounds.

First issue was the absence and non-voluntary abstentions of a number of  Senators and Deputies as well as coercive manipulations by pro-Nazi Pierre Laval (subsequently executed via firing squad for treason by the GPRF). This puts the vote granting powers to Marshal Philippe Pétain, in question and makes Petain's assumption of power suspect.

The second issue is that parliament couldn't delegate it's powers without control of it's use. In effect, that is what it did when it granted full powers to Marshall Petain. The vote essentially gave Petain dictatorial powers and was the end of the Third Republic if it wasn't already dead.

Third, was that the constitution made it impossible to question the regime's republican form. A form utterly rejected by Petain's French State.

Essentially the Third Republic didn't just collapse under the weight of the Wehrmacht assault and Hitler's demands, it was dissolved under dubious circumstances. Vel d'Hiv happened under the governance of the French State, not the Third Republic, and certainly not the GPRF that the Fourth Republic grew out of.

So if we take the view that the Fifth and Fourth Republics were successors to the GPRF, which carried the torch of republic after the dissolution of the Third Republic, the yes, like Le Pen said, France and the Republic were in London.

Look at this way, in Star Wars, the New Republic founded after the Empire's defeat in Epi. VI was a continuation of the Galactic Republic. Taking the view the Left has on this, is akin to holding the New Republic responsible for the atrocities carried out by the Empire. It's the same as saying the New Republic was responsible for Jedha City's destruction as well as planet Alderaan's.

Where does that put the Fifth Republic though? You ask me, tracing it's linage and republican tradition to the Fourth Republic, to the GPRF, and ultimately to the Third Republic, the Fifth Republic has the responsibility of bringing to justice the criminals of the French State that perpetuated it's wrongs against the citizens of the Third Republic. If the survivors of Vel d'Hiv were French citizens, or Jews that fled to France for safety from the Third Reich, then as successors to the Third Republic, the current Fifth Republic has the responsibility to drag those French State perpetrators to justice. Not because the Fifth Republic had anything to do with the State's atrocities, but because by extension the Fifth Republic is responsible to the people who were under the protection of the Third Republic.

Since the French State doesn't exist, then that responsibility is to pursue the individual perpetrators. Once they are all dead, that's it, they're dead, the French State is dead, the officials of the State that carried out the atrocities are dead, there's no one else to come after. Time to turn the page on that chapter of history.

I find it funny that adopting the view of one of the few of the utterly broken and demoralized Third Republic who wanted to continue the fight against Hitler, makes you a Nazi. Say what you will about Charles De Gaulle, that he was an ego maniac who quite possibly had a messiah complex when it came to France, who compared himself to Jeanne d'Arc. That he was hard headed and got along just barely enough with Roosevelt and Churchill to fight Hitler and Mussolini. The fact remains that he never gave up the fight against the fascists and he was able to ultimately rally the various French colonies, and French nationals who still wanted to fight into a single unified body, the Free French. The fact remains that he, along side General Henri Giraud, formed the Comité français de Libération nationale, and later formed the GPRF when the Free French 2nd Armored Division lead the charge into Paris and liberated the city from the fascist's army, the Wehrmacht.

And now all of a sudden, his views are Nazi views? The man who commanded the French Army's 4e Division cuirassée, one of the few French Army units winning victories against the Wehrmacht, the man who later went on to continue the war against the Nazis when his demoralized country no longer had the stomach for it. The guy who was on the hitlist of actual fascist regimes. His views are now "Nazi" and "fascist" views? Yeah ok...

General Charles de Gaulle, for all his personal flaws, has done more to fight the actual Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei than any of these black block "Antifa" Storm Divisions ever have with their rioting and terrorist acts they carry out against their imaginary Nazis. So excuse me while I laugh my head off when a Leftists cries "Nazi" at someone who voices a Gaullist point of view on an issue. By the time Germany was invaded the GPRF's Armée française de la Libération fielded over 1 million troops and marched right into Germany along side the British and the Americans, and if we include the Normandie-Niemen squadron that de Gaulle created, along side the Soviets. The first of the Western Allies to reach the Rhine and the Danube was the French 1st Armored Division. The French 1st Army also clashed with the Nazi Waffen Schutzstaffel (not the German Wehrmacht regular army, but the Waffen-SS an actual wing of the Nazi Party, you know, actual Nazis) in Operation Nordwind and other engagements. So what have Leftists today done to fight actual Nazis as opposed to their imaginary Nazis.

Yeah excuse me while I laugh my head off at Leftists calling views held by de Gaulle (refusing to associate the French Republic with the atrocities of the French State, declaring that the Vichy regime was "not France") as "being a Nazi".

What ever it's worth, I am getting sick and damn tired of this culture of guilt that the Left likes to push on people who aren't brown on black. Between the purges and trials carried out while the GPRF was in power, and subsequent trials under the Fourth and Fifth Republics many of Vichy authorities who actually carried out the Nazi's policies have been imprisoned or executed. Is it regrettable that some of them escaped judgement well into the 1990s? It most certainly is. But if there's any fault to be found with the Fifth Republic it's in dragging it's feet to bring these collaborationist to justice, not for the actual acts committed by another government.

Basically what I'm trying to say is, "you didn't do it, so you have nothing to feel guilty about." My family comes from the Philippines, should I be resentful at Spain and the United States for what they did to my ancestors? No, that would be stupid, the people that carried out the wrong are all dead (though contemporary Leftists would probably encourage me to still be angry at the "evil White colonialists"). And soon within the next few decades, if it hasn't come to pass already, the Vichy officials who carried out Nazi policies, who haven't already been executed, will be all dead. When that comes to pass, then what? Will the Left continue to hold citizens of the Fifth Republic responsible for the actions of the French State? People with absolutely nothing to do with it? People who very may well be children and grandchildren who fought under the Cross of Lorainne? Sure maybe there would be some argument if the Fourth and subsequent Fifth Republics were continuations of the French State, but they were continuations of the GPRF and by extension the Third Republic.

At least with Japan the argument is there that the current State of Japan is a reformed continuation of the Empire of Japan, given that the Emperor Jimmu's line continues to reign and the current constitution is technically a heavily altered (granted it's been altered beyond recognition) Meiji Constitution. There's some basis there to keep hounding the current Japanese government for apologies and reparations for WWII. But the Fifth Republic doesn't even have that level of ties with the French State.

Should the atrocities of the French State be forgotten about? No, certainly not. But on the same token, there is no need for self-flagellation and assuming the sins of another, Jesus already did that for all of us. Did you round up Jews and put them on a train to the ovens? No? Then stop hitting yourself, feel free to flagellate and hit the guy who actually carried out the deed though.

Do I support Le Pen, no not really, I'm largely neutral towards her the way I was largely neutral towards Donald Trump. I'm sure she's wrong on many issues and might just be pandering to an enraged voting bloc with populist rhetoric. But in this regard, I don't really see anything wrong that she said. I just see more of the Left looking for something to complain about like they've been doing in the US. Though I do also find it funny that the Left is supporting a banker over a woman in this final round of election in France, how many of the same people in the Left in the US who back Macron were the same people that were saying if you didn't back Hillary you hate women?

"Bros on the Road": Final Fantasy XV Review (PS4)

Overall Score: 4/5

B

Gameplay: 4
In terms of the gameplay, FFXV definitely moves the franchise forward, but there is still room for improvement. Given Final Fantasy Type-0 and before that Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core, we could see the Square-Enix was starting to move away from the menu based combat interface. Even in FFXV's prototype form, Final Fantasy XIII Versus, the battle system was to be more action oriented.

Having played though parts of, or the entirety of FFVI, FFVII, VIII, X, X-2, FFVII:CC, FFXIII and FF Type-0, I don't necessarily see this as a bad thing. And this free roaming sort of action-style battle isn't anything that Square-Enix hasn't done before, I thought the system was very reminiscent of Star Ocean 3's. Is this the only way to evolve the series? No, but for a flagship franchise like Final Fantasy, I think it's the correct way to go. For instance, I think Trails of Cold Steel is a phenomenal game that uses a menu based combat system, but the game is also a little more niche, as opposed to a big flagship, bread and butter, franchise like Final Fantasy. In other words evolving the series in this direction will more likely draw in a larger audience.

Exploration is done in one massive screen/interface, ala Grand Theft Auto. There are no longer a world map/town screen/dungeon screens. You can run out of town and straight into the wilderness, or be out in the wilderness enter a cave and be in a dungeon without a change of screens. It all just seamlessly flows together. While at first it might have seemed like a radical departure for a Final Fantasy game, making it open world, in practice it simply feels like a natural evolution of the franchise. Given that exploring the world map for out of the way dungeons and towns with rare goods was a part of JRPGs in the past. In short it works very well for an RPG. The world can be traversed via on foot, in your car, on chocobo, or later on, via aircraft (I don't want to call it an airship since it's pretty small this time around).

Like with games like GTA or Red Dead Redemption, FFXV has a real time, day-night timer. Nighttime bring stronger monsters so it's suggested that the player find a hotel, or a campsite to bed down for the night. Doing this also tally's the group's experience points, no longer is exp tallied at the end of every battle. Night time is also when you'll see the more traditional Final Fantasy monsters like Bombs and Iron Giants, though you'll still see some old staples during the day. During the day you mainly encounter wild animals that actually become cooking ingredients for Ignis to use. One side quest actually has you going after a Behemoth after Gladiolus has a hankering for Behemoth meat.

Combat this time around is done in a field where the player has free roam and can run in any direction with the left analogue stick, and attacks are carried out with the O button. Attacks vary depending on which way the player has the stick tiled. The player also has the ability to dodge and parry, with parrying being done though very forgiving QTE inputs that are done in a way as to not be annoying or cause instant death/game over. There's no longer a battle screen, rather enemies are seen on the main interface and battles are triggered by encountering them (ala Xenosaga or Trails of Cold Steel). Rather than going into a separate screen the game goes into a battle mode, escaping battles is done simply by just running out of the battle zone. You have three support characters, that while you can give them orders (this game's equivalent to Limit Breaks) but you can't take direct control of them. Though they will also support you, they will come and heal you when you have your HP down and are staggering.

This is my first place of critique, only the O button is used for attack (though you do get a one hit warp-strike attack with the T button which strength depends on how far away from the target you are). Meaning the game lacks a combo system and battles ultimately just become mashing the O button. Not a huge deal, but the gameplay could have been made a bit deeper by integrating in a Xenogears style combo system where combo attacks were done though pressing S, T, O, and X in different orders. By adding in a combo system like this, players can learn new and more powerful moves to use.

The second point I would hit on, would be the weapons, the firearms in particular. This time around, instead of character classes, the player character, Noctus (I'll call him Noct from here on) is a jack of all trades and uses all weapons. When the game was still Versus, the player was able to take control of Prompto (the gunslinger) and target weak points on enemies. I would have carried this mechanic over to the firearms in the form of an aim-down-the-sight or scope mode, and also given Noct access to rifles, and shotguns instead of just handguns. As it stands, in the game, other than flying enemies and weak enemies, Noct's handguns are hardly useful. I would have made the firearms very powerful but at the cost of them only being powerful on weak point hits and having to manually aim for those points.

The third point, is the magic system. The magic system has some really good and really bad. First the good, across the map there are elemental draw points where Noct can absorb energy from, you can then use this energy, in combination with various items to craft your spells with. The spells then become consumables that you equip like weapons. Herein is one of my issues with magic in this game. It does get a bit annoying having to craft more spells mid battle. Instead I would have taken from FFVII's materia system. Instead of crafting spells, I'd have the mechanic as crafting materia, or to stick with the game's theme, crystals. Here, rather than being used for spell casting, magic points (MP) are used for evading and warp-striking. I would have given those a separate meter or have them draw from the Stamina meter instead. The other thing I take issue with, is there seems to be some level of friendly fire with magic. You can't order the team to go to a specific point, so when you cast an area of effect (AoE) spell, they take a slight hit plus what ever negative status effects the spells give. I'd have just made them immune to the player's offensive magic. So essentially, I'd have the mechanic being crafting your own materia/magic crystals and having magic drawn from you MP points, as had been traditionally done.

Summons return, only this time, the player has no control over who is summoned and when . It's not completely random, there are certainly conditions where they would become available. When this happens you'll be prompted to hold down the L2 button to trigger the summon. The list of summons is relatively short this time around, certainly no where near FFVII and FFVIII's number of summons. I think this is a bit of a step back, I would have liked to take direct control of the summon like you did in FFX, just have a time limit for how long you have control. Built on that, Square-Enix could even add an extra mechanic where the more often a particular summon is used, the greater the bond between that summon and Noct and therefore the longer they stay on the field.

As mentioned earlier, you can use Chocobos to get around, but now if you have your bird sufficiently leveled up, it'll come and assist you in battle. Either supporting you, or attacking your target.

Another relatively new element to be brought into FFXV is the ability to customize your characters and your car. Though character outfits are fairly limited and there aren't any new ones to buy at the stores in the game ($5 says we'll see DLC for stuff like SOLDIER or SeeD uniforms for them). Your car on the other hand is a wholly different story. You can change the colors, the color patterns and decals of the Regalia, as well as upgrade the car later. This isn't just limited to the car, you can even customize the colors of your Chocobo and decorate it with medals you've earned from winning races with it. Yup, the Chocobo races are back.

I ultimately settled on this

Stability: 4
For the most part the game runs stable. However I did run into a couple hiccups. I've had one or two instances where the game didn't come out of sleep mode, and I've had one instance where I was streaming the game to my Vita and had the PS4 crash at the exp tally screen. I was still able to load a previous save and continue past the point of where the game crashed. So there wasn't anything that would be considered a game stopper.

Graphics and Visuals: 4
The game looks great, however some aspects doesn't look all that much better than the PS3, in fact, I'd go as far to say that Metal Gear Solid 5 on the PS3 had better looking on-field character models (though FFXV certainly has MGS5 PS3 beat in terms of cutscene models), and possibly environments that looked just as good. This is probably due to the fact that FFXV was originally FFXIII Versus being made for the 7th gen consoles. It's by no means ugly, but on the same token it also doesn't really seem to push the PS4 in the way the FFVIII pushed the PS1.

I did see a few texture glitches here and there, I mainly noticed with this plant life having fuzzy texture depending on distance and camera angle.

Plot: 3
The best way I can describe the plot is "strong but short". The game really focuses on the relationship between Noct and his friends/bodyguards/retainers Prompto, Ignis and Gladiolus, and the player really does begin to care about these four. On an interesting note, the Lucian government, and by extension Noct and crew were based on the Yakuza gangsters of Japan. Noct and crew were inspired by young gangsters and their entourage. Despite being removed from the Fabula Nova Crystallis mythos, the plot still focuses around the Crystal in the possession of the Kingdom of Lucis, and using the Crystal to save the world from an encroaching darkness. A literal darkness where the nights have been growing unnaturally long without explanation, and while it's dark, powerful monsters called daemons prowl the countryside. The overall theme of the plot is a take on "the hero's journey" (the most famous telling of this theme being Luke Skywalker's story), that sees Noct growing from an unsure and somewhat apathetic Prince, to a King determined to fulfill his duty.

Despite the fact that I've put in 90+ hours in the game, the vast majority of that time was doing side missions and hunts. On that note all of these side quests happen in within the Kingdom of Lucis (most of which is under Imperial occupation, resulting in run ins with Imperial Army units, and raiding Imperial Army outposts). While you do visit locations in other countries such as Altissia, Tenenbrae and the Niflheim Empire, but you don't get to explore those lands much and are largely confined to one area/city. Which is actually a bit of the shame, while the plot takes effort in the relationship between the four guys, the antagonists by contrast, save for Ardyn Izunia and Aranea Highwind are rather one dimensional. Emperor Iedolas of the Empire, at the end of the day is just out for world domination. Imperial High Commander Ravus was somewhat interesting but no one to write home about. Now on the other hand, Chancellor Ardyn Izunia's character is fleshed out a lot more, given a backstory and complicated motives that you wouldn't guess, but there was still room to further develop his character that would have given his true agenda a greater emotional impact.

While the last chapter of the game did have a strong impact, but it could have been made greater had the player had the chance to travel the land in the ruined world and rally people for one last desperate push to save their world. There was an opportunity there for an everyone-standing-behind-the-King/The-King-carrying-everyone's-hopes-and-dreams-on-his-shoulders moment. A moment like that would have been the exclamation mark at the end of Noct's development.

The plots to previous Final Fantasy games like VII, VIII and X were much stronger than XV's. Those three had much more development, especially VIII and X, of the villains. FFVII gave us two villains, a fallen hero turned madman and a cold hearted Paul Ryan libertarian wet-dream corporate president. FFVIII gave us a villain who arguable did what she did because she just wanted to escape a cursed fate and survive. With a secondary villian doing what he was doing to avoid another world war that had happened prior to the game's start, and quite possible the reason the main characters all ended up together the way they did. Then FFX gave us one villain who was just trying to protect his people from annihilation and subjugation. While another set of villains took advantage of the situation to impose their totalitarian order on the world. Here, the Niflheim Empire is simply doing what it's doing for the sake of expansion and being the dominant superpower. Emperor Iedolas was said to be a wise and benevolent ruler in the past, but the game never goes into what changed him. Things can be speculated and implied, but there's no concrete character development that explains it. Iedolas certainly isn't as developed as the other secondary villains in previous games were.

On the other hand though, Ardyn Izunia is a much better villain than the Fal'Cie or Bhunivelze of the Fabula Nova Crystallis mythos. Ardyn came off as enigmatic, on one hand he helps the player, but at the same time he is Chancellor of a hostile nation, but yet his dress and attire is much different than that of the other Imperial higher ups. By contrast the Fal'Cie just came off as lost children looking for their parent (Bhunivelze), like a crappy, whiny version of Xenogear's Gazel Ministry. But at least the Gazel were biologically programmed to do what they were doing, being part of a biological superweapon's self-repair system, the Fal'Cie just did what they did because they missed their "Father" Bhunivelze. Bhunivelze himself isn't any much better being nothing more than manipulative and petty, and only using others for his own ends. I can name the antagonists of FFVII, FFVIII, FFX, FFX-2, even after years of having last played them, off the top of my head. I can't even name a single Cocoon Fal'Cie off the top of my head. Sure I can name Pulse Fal'Cie, Cactaur and Titan off the top of my head, but that's only because those two characters have been Final Fantasy staples for quite some time, so that almost doesn't even count. As a villain, Ardyn is certainly far more interesting and much better written than the villains of Fabula Nova Crystallis. In fact, now that I think about it, I'd say he's one of the better Final Fantasy villains, better than Sephiroth and Kefka (oh yeah FFVI fanboys, I straight up went there!). However the rest of the Empire though is largely forgettable as villains, unlike the Shin-Ra Electric Power Company of FFVII.

To sum it up, the plot was good, there was great focus on the four main guys, and on the antagonist... but that kind of came at the expense of the rest of the characters. Case in point, the emotional impact of [spoiler]'s death was less than the impact of [spoiler]'s injury, let alone having the same kind of punch that Aerith's death did in FFVII. That's just a result of [spoiler]'s character not being as developed, they had their scenes in the story, but they weren't enough of a presence for the player to really emotionally invest into, and care about this character. Another example would be [spoiler] who has an obvious crush on Noct, but that isn't expanded on, nor is there any sort of resolution to it.

Part of me suspects though that they just wanted to get this game out, given that it's been rolling in development hell for some time, and that they needed to get a numbered Final Fantasy out to get people to forget about the XIII series and put that all behind us. I really just can't think of a good reason/excuse for such a short plot, given the story in open world games like Red Dead Redemption and the plots of past Final Fantasies. Which I suppose it's fine, but FFXVI is going to need more in the in the plot department, no excuse otherwise.

Though, while people gripe a lot over DLC and getting nickle and dimed over them. In this case, I think it would be good to release a few, it would give Square-Enix a chance to flesh out more characters, like Aranea Highwind. There's a time skip between the last two chapters and dialogue in the last chapter states that she's built up quite a reputation. A DLC chapter focusing on her and her exploits during that period would certainly be a nice bonus.

Perhaps this was the game that should have been Final Fantasy XIII...?


Art and Music: 5
I found the art direction to be very reminiscent of Final Fantasy VII and VIII which is no big surprise given that Tetsuya Nomura was heavily involved in XV's development. The game very much has that modern era with magic feel, though I'd say it was closer to FFVIII's feel than VII's dystopian feel. A convo I had with cosplayer and "old coot gamer" (her words) "Cinnabunny" I mentioned how the four seemed like they could have been another class of SeeD candidates from a Garden in FFVIII, an idea she was in agreement on. And speaking of the characters, they very much have Nomura's style.

Four buddies out on a road trip, the titular "Bros on the Road"

Where the characters from the Kingdom have a modern Western look to them, the Empire's characters mostly have a fantasy/medieval look to them, despite being an advanced military superpower equipped with modern small arms, tanks, walkers and airships. The generic Magitek Troopers are clad in medieval style armor, looking like Crusaders armed with assault rifles, or like cybernetic samurai. While the other uniforms worn by Imperial troops (officers I'm guessing) look much like WWI era greatcoats, or Cold War era Soviet uniforms. Even mercenary Aranea Highwind's outfit looks like a stylized feminine knight armor.

Biggs and Wedge in their latest incarnations along with their commander Aranea Highwind

A pair of Magitek Troopers

Along with different designs the characters do have different accents though they don't vary by much. Cindy speaks with a Southern drawl. Ardyn sounds somewhat like Jeremy Clarkson where as Ignis speaks with a more dry sort of English accent. Personally I would have liked to see the Imperials speaking with either French or German accents.

Though the region where the game is set isn't a homogeneous landscape. While you only catch glimpses of it, the Crown City looks like a major North American city like Los Angeles or Toronto. The area around Hammerhead is reminiscent of the deserts in eastern California, with Hammerhead and the other outposts having a kind of dusty feel that would remind one of Barstow or Hesperia. Then moving west you'll find the city of Lestallum, which looks very much like Havana, complete with all the classic cars. A few of the forested regions also feel like some of the National Parks or Forests in the US.

Promprto and his crush Cindy

While the Kingdom of Lucis takes cues from locations in North America, Altissia takes cues from Venice and Rome, compete with gondola rides to get around the city and a Colosseum to watch monsters fight each other. It has very much an old world European city of water theme going.

Altissia, looks like a nice place to live

Then there is the Imperial capital Gralea. Unfortunately we don't get to see much of Gralea beyond an industrial looking area and the Zegnautus Keep which in actuality is a massive aerial fortress stationed above the city. In fact, I can't even find a good picture of Gralea to use. From what we see around Gralea and the Keep, it has a very cold industrial feel to it like Midgar from FFVII does. Hopefully we'll get some DLC that shows us more locations in the world.

On to the music, the music was composed by Yoko Shimomura, who's past work included most of the music for Street Fighter II and the soundtrack for Parasite Eve. The sound track is pretty much what you would expect from Final Fantasy, which certainly isn't a bad thing, it actually reminded me quite a bit of FFVIII's soundtrack. Like most other RPG soundtracks, FFXV's has a wide variety of tracks to fit the mood, in fact, FFVX's soundtrack even has multiple battle themes, giving it the most number of battle scores in its sound track. Having a wide variety of tracks, FFXV's OST has the classical style with Latin lyrics, that was introduced with One Winged Angel and has become something of a go-to in the video game industry when something epic sounding was needed. To the more sleepy sounding music of Hammerhead. To fit the tone, Lestallum's music has something of a Spanish feel where as Altissia has guitars and accordions.

Final Verdict: Definite Buy
At the end of the day I would certainly go as far as to say this with the Final Fantasy game that people wanted after Final Fantasy XIII. No one really wanted XIII-2 or XIII-3, fans just wanted it to be done and over it and moved on from. And that's what FFXV did. Fans were mad that FFXIII lacked any towns. Fans didn't really warm to the Fabula Nova Crystallis mythos. Surprisingly enough, Square-Enix listened, towns were back, and we got a whole new mythos, along with a more action oriented gameplay, that was new but still familiar at the same time. If this is a sign of things to come, of where the franchise is going to go, then I'm pretty optimistic for it's future.

Given that the game has been out for awhile, unless you're a fan of the franchise or the genre, I wouldn't pay full price. But it is a game that any gamer could enjoy. I didn't find any of the main dungeons or bosses to be crushingly hard. It's a game that even casual gamers can enjoy. The game's opening tagline, even before the title screen is "A Final Fantasy for fans and first-timers" given that a friend of mine who's played WoW and had no prior interest in Final Fantasy made this his first PS4 game, I say it lived up to that tag.

Freedom for some is freedom for none.

Ok so things have died down a bit over Richard Spencer getting clocked in the face.

Some people have cheered on the attacker because Spencer is a Nazi, other have said that it was an act of cowardice on the part of the Left.

First off, just who is Richard Spencer?

He's a White supremacist and president of White nationalist think tank National Policy Institute. He calls for a homeland for the White race and calls for "peaceful ethic cleansing". Overall a pretty rotten individual. The guy is a piece of shit, there is no argument on that one. The world would be a better place if he just went out into the desert and lived as a hermit.

But is that enough to physically assault someone, and therefore revoke their right to free speech (yes I'm aware the 1st Amendment applies to the government and not private parties)? Let's be clear here, Spencer wasn't physically attacking anyone, just voicing his views. If there is going to be a time where it is acceptable to physically assault someone for their speech then where are going to draw the line?

Are we going to draw the line at "evil" and "hateful" ideology? That sounds nice and reasonable, but the fact of the matter is, while there is an absolute evil, that absolute evil is surrounded by grey area. Is maliciously killing another person evil? Yes. Is accidentally killing someone with no intent to do so evil? Well it could be, like if someone was driving drunk. Is killing someone in-self defense evil? Well the law says no... but it also says you could go too far...

That being said, what happens when we start getting into that gray haze around the evil core? Many Christians see abortion as evil and a pro-choice stance as an evil ideology. Ok, so if the standard of where we draw the line then is what is "evil" and "hateful" then logically it would follow that because someone from a particular group or mindset, or just of a particular thought saw someone who was voicing support for a pro-choice view, that it would be permissible to punch that pro-choice person in the face.

While yes there are limits to the 1st Amendment but here's the thing, those limits are whether or not the government is allowed to censor someone's speech. It has nothing do to with permitting acts of violence on an individual for non-protected speech. State regulations and limitations on the 1st Amendment are also set on the basis of public order, as opposed to controlling thought. Spencer was punched for what he said, not how he said it.

So again, where do we draw the line? On that note, who's the one who gets to decide where the line is to begin with? Because of that grey area that surrounds the things that are universally considered evil, that's an axe that swings both ways. Say it is ok to punch someone in the face on the basis for political speech, is the Left willing to accept being punched in the face by someone on the Right who sees them as an emerging Mao Tstung? If the answer is yes, then well I guess the Left better get caught up with the Right when it comes to self-defense preparations. If the answer is no, then why should they be exempt from getting clocked in the face while the other side isn't?

Say we do allow for violence to be inflicted on a person on the basis of unpopular speech. How far should that violence go? Why stop at a punch and why not go the whole nine yards and just stab or shoot the speaker to death? After all, they're evil right? And the only thing for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing right? I doubt more than a handful of radicals will argue that Nazis aren't evil, so why shouldn't it be acceptable to just shoot a Nazi or some crazy right winger even if they're not physically harming someone?

Well there's been just as much evil on the left as there has been on the right, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and the Kims have killed countless people in the name of Communism. So if people on one side have the freedom to start attacking people on the other side for nothing more than their speech, then the people on the other side also have the freedom to punch the other side as well. Otherwise we have a situation where only pre-approve opinions are allowed. That's not freedom, there's no freedom of thought there.

And is that where we want to go? Where only prescribed ideas are acceptable. Well ok, if that's where you want to take us, then what happens when you're out of power and it's the other side that gets to decide what is right-think? What happens when you're getting knocked in the face, or just out right shot? Not because of anything you did, but because of something you said...

I've been called a very opinionated person in the past. Lately I don't agree too much with the Left, in fact it see a lot of the ideas the Left is floating to be out right repugnant and down right insidious. Is it ok then for me to punch an SJW hipster square on the nose as hard as I can, not because he was threatening or assaulting me, but because he was saying that minorities are too weak to get by without the help of "privileged" Whites? Is it ok for me to cave in his face?

Remember, the axe has to swing both ways unless we want thought police, if we're even going to be swinging the axe around to being with. If you want thought police, then I sure hope you're ready for the proverbial gulag when the other side becomes the thought police.

There's also an underlying sense of arrogance on the side that would argue that it is permissible to physically assault someone based upon their speech. It shows a distinct lack of faith in those around them. Think about it for a second, if someone is spewing insane despicable ideology like Nazism, than reasonable people wouldn't give that person a second thought. They would quickly go out of business in the market place of ideas on their own. But instead, the, I guess I'll call them activists, sees a need to physically attack them to silence them. As if they have the exclusive domain of knowing what should and shouldn't be allowed into the market place of ideas. It shows that the activists thinks they know better than anyone else.

Well who died and made you king and gave you authority to decide what ideas I do and don't get exposed to? I'll decide what I will and won't take seriously thank you very much, especially if I've been around a tad bit longer than you have been.

I've heard the argument that Spencer is too charismatic and could one day get people to carry out his bidding, and that's why physically assaulting him is ok. Well, thing with that is that line of reasoning can be used to justify assassination for something that someone might or might not do. Is that a road we want to go down on? Sure it's one thing when it's someone you don't like who gets whacked, but what if someone else sees your side as the bad guys and it's someone you support that gets whacked? Is that something you're prepared to accept as a reality?

Now if Spencer was out causing violence, under US law it would be legally justified to even go as far as fatally shooting him depending on what he was doing. Acts of violence is a wholly different story. If Spencer was running around assaulting people, trying to burn down buildings with molotov cocktails, trying to run people over with his car, then yes by all means shoot the fucker dead. Shoot him dead and anyone else with him being a danger to other people.

And that's the thing beyond a narrow set of circumstances, like murder, like subjugating other's individual rights, there's a bit of grey area and degrees of evil. So if you're going to argue that it's ok to censor someone with violence based upon the content of their speech, then you'd best be prepared for the other side to the do the same thing to you. Because in that grey area one person's evil conduct is another's permissible conduct. You might think that speech from some radical feminist like this (satire or not) is permissible, but another may take this as evil in the level of Nazis... so does that mean it's ok for someone to come punch Lori Day in the face? Or you if you're speaking in support of it in public? The other thing to consider though, if violence based upon speech content is the road you want to go down on then that fist might not even be a fist at all, it could be a blade, it could be a bullet. Is that really a road you want to go down on? Is being on the receiving end of violence, potentially lethal violence, for the contents of your speech something you are prepared to accept?

No?

Well that's the reason courts have ruled the way they have, courts are very reluctant to restrict speech based on content. Equality would mean that the axe must swing both ways. If it's permitted to assault one extreme, then it's permitted to assault the other extreme. Otherwise there really is only freedom of thought so long as you pick an approved thought to have. And who gets to have the power to choose what approved thought is? The mob? The State? The Party? It doesn't matter because as long as there is someone who is in charge of deciding what is right-think and there is a mechanism to enforce that, there is no freedom of thought.

So why even swing the axe at all? That's why you would still be charged with a crime even if the person you committed the criminal act on deserved it like a Nazi would. Does he deserve to get cracked in the face? Sure does. Should he? No. In law the principal is generally that words are not enough to allow for assault. Same principal here, words alone, generally, aren't enough to justify violence.

Personally I'll take freedom over any sort of content filtering by any random person with no State authority. At least a state authority has to act within the confines of a system, a random person punch people in the face because they don't like what they have to say is acting under nothing more than their feelings.

No the Dreamcast didn't get killed by PS2 hype, the PS2 really was just a better system

So every now and then I'll see a article on the Sega Dreamcast on Facebook and almost always there are comments declaring that the system was killed because of the PS2 hype train. This kind of implies that the PS2 wasn't a better system and it only came out on top, not on it's merits but on it's marketing blitz.

I am going to say that the PlayStation 2, genuinely was a better system.

Before I get called a PS fanboy or some other crap like that, I have both systems. I had a Dreamcast right next to my PS2 back in 2001. I liked the Dreamcast, it was a good system, it's just that the PS2 was a great system, and I'll explain why.

The first thing that comes to mind is the PS2's DVD drive. Back in 2001, DVD players were no where near as ubiquitous as they are now. A 2-in-1 system was a big deal since now you didn't need to spend another couple hundred dollars for a separate device to play movies on. I remember I specifically bought a 3rd party remote control so my dad could use my PS2 as a DVD player. It was great for multimedia, but it also gave a benefit to game developers. They now had a bigger storage medium, and therefore bigger games. Bigger in more ways than one. Developers now had more options, multiple audio tracks if they wanted, multiple control schemes if they wanted, or more content.

Or cut scenes like Yuna's concert in Final Fantasy X-2.

A single layer PS2 DVD stores up to 4.7GB. In comparison a Dreamcast GD-ROM disk holds around 1GB. That's over 4x the space giving developers more freedom in what to put into their games and how to implement things.

Next is the hardware. I don't want to talk too much about the hardware and specs since that can be debated till the sun burns out. Though the PS2 was more powerful (not by too much) and it did have better looking games.


To be as fair as I could I found two games that were held up for graphics on both systems that came out around the same time period in each of their respective console's life span. It just wouldn't be fair to compare a Dreamcast game to something on PS2 that was made after the Dreamcast was continued, like Zone of the Enders 2 or Ace Combat 05, when developers really started figuring out how to squeeze the most out of the PS2 (one could argue the Dreamcast wasn't around long enough for developers to really get out it's full potential). On the left we have Shenmue which came out in Japan in 1999, the year after the Dreamcast was launched in Japan. On the left is Metal Gear Solid 2 which came out the year after the PS2 had launched in Japan. Compared to Ryo, the Russian mercenary looks to have more detail and more crisp detail. Compare Ryo's belt buckle to the buckles on the mercenary's equipment harness. I'll admit I might be comparing apples to oranges a little bit given that one screenshot is outdoors while the other is indoor, but I tried to find the screenshots that bring out the games visuals the best.

But at the end of the day, graphics aren't everything, and I only wanted to briefly touch on this.

Then there's the control. Oh the controller. Fuck the Dreamcast controller, there I said it. By 2001 I've played the NES, SNES, Genesis, PS1 (OG controller, Dual Analogue and Dual Shock), Saturn, and the N64. I would easily consider the Dreamcast controller to be one of the worst. I'm not going to complain about the shape since that's something that's largely subjective, but I will call the Dreamcast controller obsolete.

Why is the controller a big deal? Well the controller is the way the player interacts with the game's world. The more versatile the controller, the more the player can interact with the world. Be it more things the player can do, or the more in-depth the player can interact with the world.

When the Sega Saturn came out in 1994 it came out with this controller. One D-pad and eight total buttons (6 face buttons, 2 shoulder buttons), that means at least 8 functions that the player can do in the game's world.

In 1997 the PlayStation came standard with the Dual Shock controller. Two analogue sticks and 10 buttons not counting Start and Select (4 face buttons, 4 shoulder buttons, and two more buttons integrated into the sticks). This controller worked very well for multiple games, especially action shooter games, and it's layout would become the standard for gaming controllers from then on out.

So what the hell was this...?!

I honestly find this design baffling. It has only six buttons, four face buttons and two triggers, a single d-pad and a single analogue stick. The single stick is a real head scratcher for me given that the dual stick design already proved itself in how well it works for First Person Shooters like Medal of Honor and Medal of Honor: Underground, for Third Person action games like Siphon Filter, and has been very intuitive even for flight simulators like Ace Combat 3. Love the controller all you want, but at the end of the day this controller design was a step back. The lay out would have been great when the Saturn came out, but when the Dreamcast hit the US it was already 1999. 

This is a big deal, because this controller quite possibly limited how developers can make their games. Lets take Zone of the Enders. ZoE took full advantage of the PS2's dual analogue design to control your mech in three dimensions. The left stick moved you around while the right stick allowed you to look around in all directions, you're ability to look and move was very precise.  Having two sticks made moving and looking in a three dimensional environment very intuitive. 

Compared to the PS2, had the Dreamcast continued on past when it was discontinued, unless Sega introduced a new controller with dual analogues, Dreamcast games would have gotten the same criticism that the PSP gets in terms of 3D action games. Metal Gear Solid 3 is considered one of the best games in the PS2's library. Hardware issues aside, had the game been ported to Dreamcast, because of the lack of four buttons and a stick, the game would have to play like either MGS: Portable Ops or MGS: Peace Walker in order to be playable. MGS:PO was very awkward compared to the console games, and your actions in MGS:PW were limited to compensate for what the PSP was capable of control and gameplay wise. 

Part of the reason the PS2 was able to bring out a lot of these great games was because the controller was able to make developer's ambitions a reality. I can conclude this because many games made use of every or very nearly every button. MGS3 in the form that it came in on the PS2 literally could not be done on the Dreamcast, not without a new controller design. MGS3 on Dreamcast would have been like MGS:PW. Other games like Devil May Cry or Onimusha would have worked well on the Dreamcast's controller, but others like Red Faction would have had to be gimped to compensate for the controller. 

Then there is networking/internet capability. I certainly have mention that. There's certainly no argument that Sega had a one-up on Sony in that regard and the Dreamcast, while not the first, was certainly a pioneer in online console gaming. But it lost that edge it have over the PS2 with the introduction of the PS2's Network Adapter in 2001. Given a choice would you rather play Unreal Tournament on a Dreamcast, or on a PS2?

Of course this isn't to say the Dreamcast wasn't good, this certainly isn't to say that it's library wasn't good. The original Soul Caliber remains on of the best games in the franchise. While hard as balls, Ikaruga is certainly one of the most fun overhead shooters. Aero Wings 2 is definitely a fun game for the aviation enthusiast, like a more realistic version of Pilot Wings. I would definitely love to see the Dreamcast library ported over to the PlayStation Network and to Xbox Live. But did the Dreamcast fall prey to a giant unstoppable hype machine? No, it was simply a case of "may the best system win" and PS2 came out on top. Sure the PS2 had a lot of media hype at it's launch, but it talked the talk and walked the walk.