Murder is fun

by Kenneth Todd Ruiz
Managing Editor

I derive great pleasure in killing people. Style is important when snuffing the candle of another person’s life.

Whether the death blow comes from a well-placed headshot from a sniper rifle, or stealthy strike from behind, one should put a little thought into their work.

Too often will some slob stand out in the open and unload an entire magazine in unfocused fury, catching nothing but air.

Beyond the innumerable Americans I have assassinated, I have slain Spaniards, butchered Britons, murdered Mexicans and executed Ecuadorians, Germans, Russians, and Koreans with equal prejudice.

Most of whom, regardless of national origin, respond to their sudden demise with the same four letter soubriquets for me.

Along with several million people worldwide, I enjoy using the fruits of 21st century telecommunications for playing abhorrently violent games over the internet.

To claim that they are lacking in socially redeeming value, however, would be false.

Politicians from both sides of the aisle like to play to the polls and pump their fists in the air as they decry the moral slide of America’s youth under the influence of the entertainment industry.

When I was a young child the blame-du-jour fell on Ozzy, then Rambo, and now it’s Super Mario.

When Dylan and Eric gave up on living and blew away a dozen of their classmates in Littleton, it was first-person shooter Doom we were told to blame. Last month, parents of some car-jacking kids blamed Grand Theft Auto III for their criminal behavior.

Here’s a newsflash: crime and violent behavior has been around a lot longer than video games.

These jackasses would have committed the same crimes regardless of the games they were playing.

Sorry, but it’s a species thing. Surviving millions of years of a violent kill-or-be-killed existence is hard-coded into the DNA. There is a little Nietzschean abyss within each of us, and not embracing our propensity for foul deeds is a certain path to actualizing them.

To live in our socialized world where acts of violence are considered unacceptable conflict resolution, exorcising some demons with the catharsis of virtual violence is a useful outlet.

The moral repugnance of political figures condemning the fake violence of a video game sounds hollow when the same people authorize and promote very real acts of horror on an enormous scale that kill tens of thousands of flesh-and-blood people.

There is more than a subtle difference between liquefying someone’s online avatar with a ray-gun and dropping 5,000 pound bombs near children.

This week congress moved closer to passing a law that would limit the sales of games they don’t like, which effectively translates into censorship.

Here’s my proposal to you, Congress: I will tolerate you taking away my violent entertainment, whether it is movies or games, if you can go cold-turkey and avoid killing any people for one full year.

Kenneth Todd Ruiz, a senior journalism major, is managing editor of the Campus Times. He can be reached by e-mail at kruiz@ulv.edu.