I wanted to talk about Jack Thompson’s latest disgusting scheme (he said he would donate $10.000 to charity if someone made an absolutely revolting game about going on a murder spree against real members of the video game industry, then someone did it, and he said his offer was just “satire”, then the Penny Arcade guys donated the $10K to charity – in his name – and now he wrote a letter to the police asking them to arrest the PA guys…), but everything that could be said about that has already been said elsewhere.

So, instead, I’m writing about one of the possible ways that that creep could be successful:

Equating someone’s stated goals with the person himself.

Consider that example: Jack Thompson says he wants to prevent school shootings and cop killings… by banning violent video games.

Now, preventing school shootings and cop killings is a laudable goal, certainly. But:

1. Thompson doesn’t really want to do that, he only craves attention, fame and money
2. there’s no relation between video games and violence, several studies have already indicated so
3. none of his attempts, if successful, would actually lower real life violence
4. his methods have been despicable – lies, personal insults, threats of lawsuits against people for simply disagreeing with him.

However, to a certain… let’s say, “more intellectually-challenged” segment of the population, it’s easy to make the jump from:

- Jack Thompson is trying to prevent cop killings

(which is already untrue, but let’s even imagine that it was true, that he was simply misguided instead of being what he is)

to:

- Anyone who opposes Jack Thompson’s methods, or criticizes him, is in favor of cop killings.

To anyone who uses reason, that’s absurd – there’s no way to logically conclude the second from the first (even if the first was true, which it isn’t). But it’s easy to get confused, and perform that leap of “logic” – “he says he’s in favor of X, so anyone who criticizes him is against X”. Or the other way around.

It happens the same way, but on a larger scale, with a certain current American president. He says he’s fighting terrorism. Whether he actually is, or not, isn’t important – anyone who disagrees with him or his methods, or criticizes him in any way, is “supporting terrorism”.

Just like anyone who opposed Senator McCarthy was “a communist”. He said so, and people believed him.

People, please think a little more about things like this. A person isn’t defined by his stated goals, which are usually laudable, but by his actions – and you aren’t against those goals when you notice that his actions don’t actually do anything to accomplish such goals… and say so.