Politics and Games

 One of things that I like about games is that they are a refuge from politics. I think in general people should try to get along and put aside their differences to play. This seems like an important practice. So I hesitate to bring politics into this blog. Generally I think it is wrong for Iranians to say that they musn’t play Israelis. But it gets more difficult at times. I know that Duda (a very strong Polish grandmaster) refused to shake hands before a game with a Russian chess player who was very vocal in his support of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. So it can be difficult to separate politics and sport when things get very heated.

On the other hand, I am an American living in Taiwan. So I don’t really have a lot of avenues to express political opinions or to try to take action. This blog obviously doesn’t have a large readership at all but I have made some attempts to publicize it in various places and that has brought in more people. Facebook seems like a giant morass that feels impossible to engage with.

So, I guess I just use this as my soapbox so to speak and say that I think the situation in the US is wildly out of control and Trump is wildly out of control and ICE is wildly out of control. It’s really hard to imagine that things could get this bad. I have family in Minneapolis and definitely worry about the situation there. I also grew up in a pretty multi-cultural college town and was close with a lot of people who were immigrants.

Basically, I knew Trump 2.0 would be bad (see my post after the election) but the way things have played out really seems unbelievable. (There is definitely part of me that thinks it is not real). It’s just really amazing that the whole system of checks and balances could fail so totally.

Part of me sometimes thinks I should leave my family and return home and join protesters on the streets. But I am not sure I have the mental fortitude to put myself in that position. So for right now I will have to be satisfied with saying something here.

I would just like to urge people to try to be careful and try to stay safe but at the same time to do their best to resist tyranny in their own country as much as possible.