Noisewar Internetlainen

People have forgotten how tough things used to be. This is true of both the today’s recession and Mega Man 9. The market is in near panic right now, if you go by the put option prices that have hit all time highs. Check out the ^VIX volatility index for an idea how that looks… you’re looking at a spike in FEAR.

But somehow I’m not fazed yet. People in this recession don’t really know how bad the coming depression will be. People in the coming depression won’t know how bad the Great Depression was. And those who lived during the Great Depression just vaguely remember how rough depressions before that had been. Short memories are so divinely human. We think politics today is more corrupt than before, or wars are more pandemic, or racism more intolerable.

Is that why we crave nostalgia? This idealized summary of the good of the past? Mega Man 9 faceplants me in a slab of nostalgia. What was it about the originals that made them stand the test of time and technology to be fun to this day?

I like to think Mega Man was the first game character in tribute to gastronome Brillat-Savarin, who famously said “you are what you eat”. Mega Man begins as weak as the player, and as he culls the weak theme-bots and usurps their collective powers into his own, he evolves at the player’s will. Mega Man was the ultimate predator.

And he was a man of character. His arsenal was fought for, not given. His name implied great size, but he is as dimmunitive as Alexander Pope, yet this mechanical everyman has every bit as much wrath. He’s a blank slate, a surrogate for all our platforming victories, yet a myth for our ignoble deaths to those goddamn spikes.

Boy, do I crave real men to lead us today. How can anyone who remembers the long shadows of men like Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, or Andrew Jackson, bear to vote in this coming election? How did the Republicans become the antithesis to every fiscal stance they claim? How did Democrats become raging hypocrites, hating the very people they propose to help? If video games have gotten too easy today, then life certainly ain’t churnin’ out winners.

“Satan is wiser now than before, and tempts by making rich instead of poor.”