Love American Law? Then You’ll Love Magic: the Gathering
I loathe American government. I loathe Russian Government. I loathe Chinese government. I loathe any government that places its game and its global domination efforts over the well-being of life. All of the current world powers…all of them…abuse and exploit those they claim to be championing. These governments are simply complex businesses that have made our social strife one of their lucrative business models. They are all participants of the same existentially invalid pyramid scheme game that destroys the environment that sustains our existence: Economy. This is what the law is centered around. Property and wealth. Not quality of life for all.
Many of the same principles construct both the law and trading card games. A glaring difference to me is that instead of dueling a player such as yourself, you duel a representative of the game. It is disturbing that the law has so much power and dominates our existence. MTG can help you with your American law “career” just by learning the structure and replacing the rules text with statutes. There are around 23,000 MTG cards/motions and there are people that not only know them all, but know how to manipulate to win with the rules text in them. The structure is turn based attacks by the State and if you cannot afford a better Commander(defense counsel), you are probably going to get demolished. The (White) House almost always wins. The State plays a card(files a motion) and you have no choice but to either attempt to counter it or take the damage. Many people take the damage just to get to the next turn because fighting it usually requires loss of resources that they will need later. Many people choose to sacrifice those resources because the game, and our time in it, is short.
Rules text in MTG is the text in the card that permits or limits your ability to do things. Rules text in law is the statute that permits or limits your ability to do things. In the following example the +1, -2, and -7 are the rules text:
If the State files the “Academic Probation” card/motion in response to your “Adversary of Tyrants” card/motion and chooses the 2nd section, your “Adversary of Tyrants” card/motion abilities can’t be used because the rules text says so.
All rules text is to keep the system/game functioning from start to finish. Rules text is not for the protection of each opponent but the profiteering authority of the lords, even if the specific rules text helps one of the duelists(prosecution & defense). Decisions by representatives of the lords are based on their interpretation of the rules text of the lords.
The game is consuming for players but lucrative for the lords that created it. They are both pay to play.
I’ve never played Pokemon but I saw the cartoon when I was younger. I will use Pokemon for this analogy as more people understand the concept. In this battle of you versus the State, defense and prosecuting attorneys are the Pokemon chosen to battle on your behalf.
If you lose your battle, you can appeal it but if representatives shut you down, you have no recourse. As long as the game was played within their interpretation of their rules, the irrationality or injustice of the decision is irrelevant. “We followed the law!” Police will beat you and incarcerate you if you do anything other than accept the arbitrary judgment by their precious masters, then tell you to write those masters a letter. You really shouldn’t fight over words but abuse of authority permitted anywhere is permission for it everywhere. Judges often rule, at least in severity, based on that judge’s like/dislike of the duelist. Most things in this society are constructed around like/dislike because of corporate pandering to sell things.
People that have never played are unaware of the cheats, loopholes, cheats, advantages, cheats, tricks, cheats, cheats, cheats, etc. Many do not have the memory/ability. The lords change the cheats, loopholes, cheats, advantages, cheats, tricks, and cheats as they go along. For those of us that do not exist bound in flag, cross, or other authoritarian symbolism, the law is null and void based on its arbitrariness, its profiteering, its abuse by representatives and enforcers, its dehumanization, its placing the corporate construct over all life, its hegemony, its forced debt slavery and resource competition, its double standards, its geographical determination of rulings, and of course, because its enforcers are violent sadists feigning compassion.
I don’t say you’ll love Magic the Gathering just because there are rules or how arbitrary those rules are, it’s also how mentally and emotionally consuming the game can be. There are many ways to exist in this world but the State applies the rules of its pyramid scheme economy game to everything in existence yet the rules only apply in that game. Magic the Gathering rules don’t apply in Pokemon or Warhammer or Call of Duty or Boggle or Chess or Candyland. If you want to live in MTGland or Lawland or Candyland, you have to abide by their rules no matter how unjust or irrational. Otherwise, you don’t get to play with the other reindeer. Some of us are not permitted to leave Lawland, though we desperately want to. We are trapped, then the State punishes us harder for the guaranteed resulting behaviors from being trapped. Game night is every night and you don’t have a choice in the game or whether or not to play. If you refuse to play(the State’s version of behave is dehumanizing, procrustean, and fucking disgusting) you get placed in a box where you are forced to play. If you still refuse, you lose snacks and phone calls. If you still refuse you get placed in an even smaller box(solitary/SHU) where you remain until you can be coerced/convinced/threatened/ultimatumed into playing. Inmates labor on the economy clock just like you do, they just get paid next to nothing, $0.25/hr in their program assignment. $2/day to fight fires. If they refuse their program assignment, they are coerced with ultimatums. Loss of phone calls, visits, snacks, etc. If you don’t go clean a corridor they won’t let you talk to your family. Prisoners are exploited the most in this society, so it is to prison I will go with severe documentation of the State destroying human lives along the way.
I have never seen someone kidnapped off the street and forced to play Magic: the Gathering. Without you doing battle with your peers, the lords have no standing, revenue, or authority. As long as you get your little promo pack, your cheap pile of federal debt credits, then you’ll give the lords that standing. Most people love battling with their peers. Most people love the game. Celebrities are not our friends. They condition the poor that they depend on for their luxuries, to desire things that are socially, individually, and environmentally destructive. They condition us to want the dehumanizing construct. For example, Post Malone. This degenerate rapper spent $2,000,000 on a single card while people in his community are struggling for basic needs and warring with one another as a result. Another example, Kill Tony. You wouldn’t picture him as being a corporate tool because of his content but if you listen, he is nothing but. It isn’t the advertising for juevo-trimmers or coffee sticks. It’s the worshiping the system that depends on our social misery that makes him and other celebrities nothing but corporate robots with fans. Humans and other life are suffering because of this MTG construct enforced by police. That’s why they are at the comedy show to begin with. Laughing only masks suffering, it doesn’t cure it. When two people got into it, Tony made a big applause break announcement that the police had taken the two to the local concrete and steel revgen box so their families can be exploited by JPay, Aramark, Tiger, SecurusTech, GTEL, etc. Having people cheer for two of their peers suffering then getting punished with more suffering for not masking their suffering like the cowards around them. Sick. “If we act like we aren’t suffering and pretend those two are the ones with the problem, we can continue our purposeless, bread & circus, labor for wealthy suits existences!” Tony Hinchcliffe played the “Disorderly Conduct” card with the contrived applause from his fanbase against someone that actually generated attention for, thereby helping him. Unrelated, or maybe not, Redban is sexually depraved. Celebrities push the arbitrary rules text that furnishes their luxuries, which always results in social strife and division. You can do whatever you want to whoever you want as long as it fits within the arbitrary scribblings of wealthy suits. A wealthy authority scribbling things is not existentially valid morality. If MTGs Constitution called for the slaughter of Natives and referred to them as savages…would you still play MTG?