It's Easy to Criticize (But Cut It Out)

Some months ago, I wrote a politics post, which I framed as primarily being about third parties, but I also addressed this idea that that young people might not vote for Biden (primarily because of his stance on Palestine), and the conflicting attitudes that engendered from the “experts.” And I included a long quote from Democratic lawyer Marc Elias who was doing exactly what liberal podcaster David Rees said he wouldn’t do, and what liberal commentator (and former lawyer) Elie Mystal said one shouldn’t do: scolding people (especially young people) for saying they wouldn’t vote for Biden by fuming about how Trump would definitely be worse.

Well, the race is quite different now—what a difference nine months can make!—and yet many things haven’t changed.  I still hear Elias going off on those rants (although I tend to just fast-forward through them nowadays, because I know them by heart, and also they make me a bit queasy).  Look, Elias is a brilliant (and relentless) lawyer, and he’s out there fighting for voting rights in states across the country, and I’m so glad he’s doing it.  I have a great deal of respect for him.  But that doesn’t mean I can’t also criticize him when I think he’s wrong.  And he’s kind of a jerk on this topic.

See how it’s possible to like and appreciate someone and disagree with them?  Kind of like when people say they don’t agree with Biden’s take on the Israel/Palestine conflict (which is now morphing into the Israeal/Palestine/Lebanon conflict).  Instead of responding to that with a knee-jerk “but Trump would be worse!” perhaps it’s worthwhile to consider the closing words of Mystal’s article from The Nation that I quoted last time:

The people saying they won’t vote for Biden know that Trump would be worse.  They’re saying Biden should be better.

And, while Harris isn’t Biden, she definitely inherits his policies via guilt by association if nothing else.  Of course, if you believe Trump and Vance, those policies have ceased to be Biden’s policies altogether: they’re Harris’ policies now.  This is, of course, somewhat silly ... as Trump also said, the vice-presdient “makes no difference.” Harris was probably in the room when these decisions were made, but to imagine that she had any real control over them is just dumb.  So the truth of the matter is, we don’t actually know whether Harris’ approach to the Middle East would be as controversial as Biden’s.

But that, of course, is the problem.  She’s had plenty of chances to distance herself from the pro-genocide position, but has taken none of them.  At the Democratic convention, they had the opportunity to highlight pro-Palestinian voices, to vet the speeches ahead of time, to show the world that even people who disagree with her administration’s actions would still support her in the election.  Nope.  Not a single Palestinian-American voice was allowed on the stage, being instead consigned to hold protests outside.  And I’ve heard plenty of people say that this is the right move for her: that, by picking a side, she can only make things worse.  Which, maybe, is true.  But of course if you’re taking that attitude, then you just have to accept that some people are going to take the silence as proof of being just as bad as Biden.

And, yes, I use the term “pro-genocide” advisedly.  If you pay any attention to what Netanyahu and the members of his cabinet actually say, you know very well that they are remarkably open about their goals to eliminate the Palestinian people from the Earth, and that’s kind of what “genocide” actually means.  “The deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group” says Dictionary.com, quite succinctly.  When the deputy speaker of the Knesset says “Now we all have one common goal—erasing the Gaza Strip from the face of the Earth”, or when the Heritage Minister says it would be okay to nuke the population because “there is no such thing as uninvolved civilians in Gaza” (this presumably includes all the children: nearly half of the Palestinian population is under 18), or when the Defense Minister says “we will eliminate everything”, or when the major general in charge of the military in Gaza says “you wanted hell, you will get hell” ... when those are the things they say out loud, I’m not sure anyone can reasonably accuse me (or anyone else) of using the phrase “genocide” in an inflammatory way.  I consider it quite matter-of-fact, actually.

And the problem with sending a country a shit-ton of bombs and then saying that you had no idea that they were going to be used for whichever atrocity-du-jour they’ve been used for is that that only works if you then stop sending them bombs.  Which, you know, we haven’t.  Saying, “well, we told them that this was unacceptable and then just gave them more bombs” is not taking an anti-genocide stance.  So you can say my language is deliberately inflammatory when I call Biden’s policies “pro-genocide” if you like, but I stand by my statement that it’s more factual than incendiary.  And now they’re bombing even more people with the bombs we’re faithfully continuing to supply them with?  It’s utter insanity, I tell you.

But I digress.  I was reminded of this whole “scolding” thing yesterday while watching Robert Reich.  Now, I really like Reich.  Possibly because, like me, he’s an old liberal—twenty years older than I, even.  Possibly because he’s a short guy, like me (5 inches shorter than I, even).  Mostly because we agree on just about everything, and he can explain things pretty well on YouTube, which is defniitely a skill.  So I was a bit surprised to hear him say this:¹

Why is this not getting through to people: why are there still so many people who are willing to say, well I’m going to go with Trump ... you know, why are they voting against their own self-interest?  ...  I mean, what why are people voting, or willing to vote, against their economic self-interest?  I really don’t quite know, except that, you know, ... for so many years, so many people have been so devastated by the economy ...

— Robert Reich, The Saturday Coffee Klatch, 9/28/24

I suppose that, one of the things I like the most about Robert Reich is that he’s a nearly 80-year-old man who doesn’t sound like a typical old man.  And I suppose that’s why I found this particular quote so disappointing: because here he does sound like the old guy shaking his head about “these kids today.” Note that, in this particular video, his regular co-host Heather Lofthouse² is out sick and he’s talking instead to Michael Lahanas-Calderón, one of their producers who happens to be a member of Gen Z (as Michael puts it earlier in the video, “the oldest of the Gen Z’s, yes”), so maybe that’s partially responsible for his falling into the trap of the rambling-old-man-speak.  Here’s another, perhaps more telling example, after discussing the recent announcement by Chapel Roan that she was not officially endorsing Harris:³

But don’t they, Michael, don’t they understand that Trump would be worse!  That is, if ... you’re making a choice here.  I mean, by not making a choice, you’re making a choice.  By not voting for Harris, you are essentially voting for Trump.  Don’t they understand this, your friends, your generation?

Ummm ... yeah, Robert.  They understand that Trump would be worse.  But, if Harris can’t inspire them to give a shit about politics, if it seems like she’s promising more of the same old horrible crap we’re already living through, they just might not bother.

The weird thing (at least to me) is that these same pundits seem to understand it perfectly when the shoe’s on the other foot.  Listen to any given batch of them talking about how the ridiculosity that is Mark Robinson could discourage Republican turnout:⁴

This is what I think you’re hoping for if you’re Kamala Harris: that there’s some category of people in North Carolina that are just like, “These guys are too crazy, I’m not gonna ... I’m just not gonna bother this year.  I’m taking this year off.”

— Tim Miller, Inside the Right, 9/22/24

This sort of perfectly describes my father, who hates Trump, but almost certainly can’t bring himself to vote for a black woman.⁵  But, when it comes to young people feeling the same about Harris, people just don’t seem to get it.

Don’t get me wrong: I will be voting for Harris, personally.  I actually think she’s been rather energizing in this race, and, far from being someone who didn’t know who she was before becoming vice-president, I’ve actually voted for her before, both when she ran for Attorney General in 2010 and when she ran for Senator in 2016.  Plus she had some great YouTube moments making Trump appointees look dumb in congressional committees.  And, while I think she won’t be as firm with Israel as I’d like, I agree with Cody Johnston (of Some More News) that she at least represents a break from the generation of Israel-is-always-right old white guys, of which Biden is hopefully the last.  So at least there’s a chance that she’ll be better than Biden, and that’s good enough for me.  But, if you’re a younger person (or even an older person) who thinks it isn’t good enough, that she damned well ought to come out and say she’s against murdering Palestinian children no matter how evil Hamas is ... well, I totally respect that position too.

People have various reasons for seemingly voting against their economic interests. In the case of my father, and many others, I’m sure, it’s simple racism.  In the case of many other working class folks, it’s just that they’ve been told all their life that capitalism is good and socialism is bad, and from that perspective voting for anyone other than a Republican seems a bit insane.  But these things are changing.  Only the oldest among us truly remember McCarthyism, and even the Cold War is a fading memory.  So the boogeyman of communism doesn’t hold the power it used to, and equating socialism with communism, when we have modern counterexamples like France and Sweden,⁶ is also falling a bit flat these days.  And, while racism is certainly still going strong in our country, it does seem to be going more and more underground.  Today’s younger generations not only have lived with diversity all their lives, but they’ve lived with the pain of late-stage capitalism and seem to instinctively understand that there must be a better way.

And some of what appears to be “voting against one’s own economic interests” is just plain evil marketing campaigns launched by rich people, who desire nothing more than to continue to be rich (and not to collect any more peers).  For decades, rich people convinced poor white people that poor black people would take their jobs, their homes, and their American dreams.  Nowadays they’ve mostly switched to convincing poor people both black and white that it’s the immigrants coming for their bounty, but it’s the same playbook.  And it might be easy to think that people that buy into these messages are dumb, but that’s oversimplifying the issue: people who are struggling will often latch onto any message, especially the ones that are slickly produced, and there’s no point in being naïve about the fact that advertising works.  Getting upset at the victims of these evil marketing campaigns is sort of missing the point.

So I’d love to see less of people railing against young people for not voting against Trump, and railing against working class people for “voting against their interests,” and more people pushing Harris to do more to try and reach these cohorts.  I think she’s doing great in many ways, but could she be doing better? Absolutely.  And the polls are too close for her not to try.

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1 If you want to follow along, here’s the video; jump to around 14:09.

2 Heather is also the president of Inequality Media, who produces those videos.

3 Same video, around 11:20.

4 Again, follow along in the video at about 8:26.

5 You may recall that I said recently that my father claimed he’d vote for anyone the Democrats put up, unless it was Biden.  Well, his sexist, racist ass is kind of eating those words now.

6 Yes, yes: neither France nor Sweden is technically socialist.  But then neither are any of the policies that Republicans label as socialist.  So I think it’s a fair correlation.

You know I never could say anything in 20 words or less

This week, one of my oldest friends from the Heroscape scene (who also happens to have been an actor as a teenager and young adult, though he’s out of that game these days) came over to our house to play Heroscape with me and the two smallies (neither of whom are all that small these days).  It was great fun, and perhaps I’ll write up a more complete report of the day’s festivities next week.  For this week, I’m pretty exhausted, and it’s a short-post week anyhow.  So I think I’ll just leave it there for now.

Engage the Annihilation

Well, we’ve had our new Heroscape sets (called “Age of Annihilation”) for a few weeks now, and my middle child and I have been playing several games.  I think at this point I’ve played, or played against, every figure in the new wave except the dragon.  (Xenithrax, like pretty much all dragons, is tricky to fit into smaller armies due to her cost.)  I thought it might be worthwhile to give my initial impressions on the new units.  (If you’re not a Heroscape player or fan, this may be less interesting for you.  Sorry ‘bout that.)

The Polar Bears

The Frostclaw paladins and their hero, Knight Irene, are some great looking minis.  Anthropomorphic armored polar bears with metal clawgloves?  Just bad-ass.  They also have a fun trade-off during the game: they’re either very slow with decent attack, or have decent speed and crappy attack, and, unlike most squads, you can make that choice on a figure-by-figure basis.  You can play the Frostclaws with Knight Irene, or choose any of 6 other champions to bond with.  You can put them into an army with Sir Dupuis to boost his attack, with Concan to boost the bears, or with Sir Gilbert (who can also be their champion) to get some movement boosts.  Not to mention that Knight Irene is valiant, so she can hang out with the minutemen.  Lots of cool options.

But, of course, most of those units didn’t really need the help (especially the minutemen).  And the Frostclaws introduce a new, weird rule: they’re the first ever common unit with multiple life points.  Apparently, you’re supposed to put the wound marker on the map beside the figure, and then you’re supposed to move the wound marker whenever you move the figure, and also make sure that you don’t mix up wound markers when the figures are adjacent to each other, and it’s just a hot mess.  With the result that most people (e.g. when I’ve watched people using them on the Internet) just put the wound markers on the polar bears’ heads, like a little hat.  In our house we call it “the helmet of shame.” It’s kinda ... dumb.  Sorry.  Also, when I ran them, I ran them with the wizards and familars, so I didn’t get as much out of them as I might have if I’d paired them with any of those exciting Jandar units I mentioned above.  But I don’t really do Jandar units that often (and plus I was trying to use as many new units as possible).  So, I dunno ... I was a bit underwhelmed, overall.

But, they do look cool.  Really ... fucking ... cool.

The Pirates

There have never been pirates in Heroscape before, and it was always considered a major omission.  Now all of a sudden we have 7 different units: an admiral, two captains, two pirate heroes, and two unique pirate squads (4 members each).  This is moderately cool, and I was looking forward to playing them.  I think in general they did not disappoint, although some of the individual units may underwhelm.

First of all, we decided to forgo using Admiral EJ-1M the first time around, and this was definitely a mistake.  On the second play-through, I did take him, and I thought he was pretty damned awesome.  His first power lets you fool your opponent with your order marker placement, which is always fun, but it’s that Boarding Party special attack that really makes the unit.  And the four-armed robot mini makes a pretty imposing figure on the board.

The knaves of the Silver Scimitar are your main pirate squad: they get to pick a captain and then bond with either that captain or any pirate hero,^* disengage for those sneaky guerrilla hit-and-run tactics, and an extra attack die to encourage them to do just that.  It’s a bit too bad that it’s a unique squad—it’d be fun to field multiple squads of these guys—but they’re pretty powerful, so I get it.  The sculpts are pretty fun too: this is the first Heroscape unit where the species is just listed as “various”; the 4 squad members look like they might be 2 orcs (Heroscape orcs are blue, for whatever reason), a mostly human, and ... a four-armed green guy.  No clue what that one is.  But they look cool, so that’s what matters.

The rest of the units are a mixed bag.  Fia Bonny the Void Siren is probably the better captain; Bok-Bur-Na, the Marro captain, looks cool enough, but I found him a bit underwhelming in play.  Fia is ostensibly a human, though I guess she’s wearing some sort of space armor, ’cause she looks way weirder (and cooler) than your standard human.  I suppose Bok-Bur-Na’s powerset is more useful, but he’s also significantly more expensive, so I still say Fia is the better choice.  (And there’s no point in taking both because of the way the Knaves’ bonding power is worded.)  Meanwhile, your other choice for a pirate squad, the exiles of the Sundered Sea are, according to their card, also a pack of mongrels, but their sculpts look way more consistent.  Having some range (even if it’s only 3 times per game) is nice, but Stealthy is not as useful as First Assault in my opinion, and they have no bonding, so I wasn’t as impressed with them as with the Knaves. 

Finally, the two pirate hero options are Dorim the Bulkhead Brawler and Killian Vane III.  Dorim has a cool sculpt, but he has one power that’s literally useless unless you’re bonding with him, and he costs 100 points, so I wasn’t really sure he was worth it at the end of the day.  Killian is more affordable, adds an area-of-effect special attack, and he looks like a proper bad-ass pirate.  Having only a single power is slightly disappointing, but overall I thought he was a decent choice if you want to run a pirate army.

The Revna Heroes

At several points in Heroscape’s history, two (or three) units are designed together, but somehow they end up not getting released together.  With the results that, when the first unit appears, everyone scratches their head and says “hunh?” And then eventually the other units show up and everybody goes “ooooh ... now I see.” And here’s another case that falls in this unfortunate bucket.

The problem with Misaerx is that there are no other Revna warrior heroes.  Which makes one of her powers utterly useless.  The other one, Life Drain, is a tough sell on a figure with only 4 life: in many cases, you’ll never get a chance to use it before you’re wiped out.  At 50 points, she’s almost cheap enough to be considered a filler, but even then there are better options at 50 (Me-Burq-Sa, Tarns, Eldgrim + Marcu, etc).  So I don’t see a lot of utility for her until we have a few more options to fill out this faction.

It’s also worth noting that I also fail to see the value of adding yet another general.  (The “generals” are basically just a way to group units into vaguely coded groups, like “the really good guys,” “the nature guys,” “the really bad guys,” “the military guys,” etc.)  We originally had 5 generals, which seemed like plenty, and then we added another one, which also seemed like plenty, and then we added another one, which was starting to seem like overkill, and now Revna is the newest (and eighth) general.  Did we need this?  I’m trying to keep an open mind, but so far it appears to be yet another flavor of “the bad guys,” which isn’t even adding anything fresh or unusual.  Not a fan so far.

The Evil Kyrie

There are two new Utgar (a.k.a. evil) kyrie: Loviatäk and a new, evil version of Raelin.  These are perfect to combine with an existing unit, the minions of Utgar, which are already beasts.  Minions only have two weaknesses: they’re slow, and they’re expensive.  These two ladies are not helping with the cost, but, if you take both with your minions, they do help with the speed.  Not to mention that Loviatäk makes the minions even more deadly by letting them reroll dice that don’t show skulls (and, remember: every skull from a minion counts as two skulls).  Combine that with Raelin sitting there lowering your defense dice and you’re just screwed.  Before this new wave, your only choice for Utgar kyrie were Taelord (useful but expensive) and Runa (not particularly useful).  Raelin and Loviatäk are not only way more useful, but both are cheaper than either of the previously extant options.  I played against this army, and, let me tell you: it was pretty terrifying.  Once you take out at least one of the red ladies it gets a bit easier, but it’s tough going up until that point.

The Wizards and Familiars

The most awesome thing about this new faction is that all the figures are just crazy awesome looking.  Ewashia is a cool blue squid lady, and Raakchott looks like a plant-based wendigo.  Ewashia’s power to drop water tiles (three times per game) keeps her useful on every map; Raakchott’s powerset is hard to use, but it can be kind of cool.  The two familiars, Kita and Onshu, are cute as hell, but also alien-looking, which is fun.  Neither add a huge amount of power on the battlefield, but they’re cheap, and the Command Familiar power means you’re not wasting an order marker on them (at least until all your wizards are wiped out), so that’s fine.

I really enjoyed playing this faction, and I hope it gets expanded in the future.  There are currently no medium beasts at all in the game, and the only other small beast is a community custom, Otar (which I did use in my army).  There plenty of other wizards in the game, of course, but none of them have the Command Familiar power.  So I’m looking forward to seeing what they do with this faction in future waves.

Closing Thoughts

Overall, I’m pretty happy with this new wave of Heroscape.  They didn’t all hit it out of the park, but that’s always the case.  And of course some people will disagree with my assessments, and that’s reasonable.  But I think that, on the whole, if you were a fan of Heroscape back in the day, you should absolutely get these new sets.  And, if you’re new to the game, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed by the update.

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* Interestingly, this bonding power lacks the typical “After revealing an order marker” language, which means it could eventually end up becoming ‘Scape’s second ever double-bonding chain.

There's just a blind spot in my memory

There’s been some sickness going through our house this week, and I’m just not capable of the mental acuity necessary to put up anything resembling a coherent blog post.  Hopefully next week will be better.

Technicolor pachyderms is really too much for me

This week, our new Heroscape has finally arrived!  We got the prepainted versions of the new master set as well as what they’re calling a “battle box” (which is basically just a mini-master set).  So we slapped all the terrain together into a basic map and my middle child and I have played two games so far with the new figures, trying different configurations and combining with some of the classic figures to fill in gaps.  So far, I haven’t managed to win a game, though it’s been pretty close both times.  They seem to be having a good time kicking my butt, so I’m happy enough to provide the experience.

Our smallest child isn’t interested too much in playing, though she likes to watch and provide a running commentary.  And a fairly snarky one at that.  She also likes the mapbuilding aspect, and the map has been getting slowly larger and more elaborate as the week goes on.

She also displayed some interest in taking a non-Heroscape figure we found while gathering supplies in my office and working up a custom card for it.  In just a couple of hours, she managed to work this up on her art tablet:

I should be clear that, while I did help with the wording a bit, all the graphics and layout is completely her work.

Anyways, that’s how we’ve been spending our week.  Maybe I’ll have a more formal review of the new set next time.