Today’s blacklisted American: Head of software game company forced out because he expressed a pro-life opinion
No freedom of speech allowed in the software
and gaming industries.
They’re coming for you next: John Gipson, the co-founder and president of the software game company Tripwire, has been forced to step down because he had the nerve to issue a single tweet expressing support for Texas’s new anti-abortion law.
The tweet quickly generated intense controversy. Many individual gamers called for a boycott of Tripwire’s games, sharing tips on how to hide listings for its products in Steam’s online game store or making donations to women’s charities in Mr Gibson’s name.
Supporters of the Texas law also responded, with the original tweet clocking up nearly 13,000 replies.
But Shipwright Studios, a “work-for-hire” studio that contributed to some of Tripwire’s games, wrote it was ending a three-year relationship because of Mr Gibson’s comments. “While your politics are your own, the moment you make them a matter of public discourse you entangle all of those working for and with you,” Shipwright Studios said. “We cannot in good conscience continue to work with Tripwire under the current leadership… [and] will begin the cancellation of our existing contracts”.
Tom Banner studios, the creator of one of the games that Tripwire publishes (Chivalry 2), also came out condemning Gibson, as did several of his partners at Tripwire.
So what evil thing did Gibson say? Here is the entire content of his tweet:
Proud of #USSupremeCourt affirming the Texas law banning abortion for babies with a heartbeat. As an entertainer I don’t get political often. Yet with so many vocal peers on the other side of this issue, I felt it was important to go on the record as a pro-life game developer. [emphasis mine]
The highlighted words reveal a fundamental truth. If you are pro-abortion, you can speak your mind anytime, in as public a forum as you choose, and you will face no negative consequences — which is as it should be.
Be someone like Gibson and make one somewhat mild comment in support of limiting abortion, however, and you will have your life destroyed. Though about half the nation, at a minimum, has consistently agreed with Gibson and opposed abortion, and even larger numbers have consistently opposed abortion on demand at any time during a pregnancy, the leftist mob rule that today rules our culture will no longer allow those people their freedom of speech. State this relatively common opinion publicly and the mob will gather with torches and pitchforks to burn you at the stake.
In other words, the game is badly rigged against conservatives. While the left is free to spout its agenda anywhere, anytime, and in any forum, often forcing that agenda into places where such politics are inappropriate, the right is hounded, blackballed, censored, cancelled, and oppressed if its supporters dare to even whisper their point of view.
The left had better wake up and rethink these ongoing oppressive tactics. Very soon, the only choice the right will have to survive will be to become as intolerant as the left, if only in self-defense. For example, why should any conservative gamer now have any interest in buying products produced by Shipwright Studies, Tom Banner studios, or even from Tripwire itself? None, I say. Burn their products, find other games to play.
In fact, find out what new games John Gibson plans to issue and buy those instead.
What goes around comes around, and I see this intolerance resulting in harm to both sides, merely because the left has decided it knows it all, cannot be questioned, and is willing to hurt anyone who disagrees.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
No freedom of speech allowed in the software
and gaming industries.
They’re coming for you next: John Gipson, the co-founder and president of the software game company Tripwire, has been forced to step down because he had the nerve to issue a single tweet expressing support for Texas’s new anti-abortion law.
The tweet quickly generated intense controversy. Many individual gamers called for a boycott of Tripwire’s games, sharing tips on how to hide listings for its products in Steam’s online game store or making donations to women’s charities in Mr Gibson’s name.
Supporters of the Texas law also responded, with the original tweet clocking up nearly 13,000 replies.
But Shipwright Studios, a “work-for-hire” studio that contributed to some of Tripwire’s games, wrote it was ending a three-year relationship because of Mr Gibson’s comments. “While your politics are your own, the moment you make them a matter of public discourse you entangle all of those working for and with you,” Shipwright Studios said. “We cannot in good conscience continue to work with Tripwire under the current leadership… [and] will begin the cancellation of our existing contracts”.
Tom Banner studios, the creator of one of the games that Tripwire publishes (Chivalry 2), also came out condemning Gibson, as did several of his partners at Tripwire.
So what evil thing did Gibson say? Here is the entire content of his tweet:
Proud of #USSupremeCourt affirming the Texas law banning abortion for babies with a heartbeat. As an entertainer I don’t get political often. Yet with so many vocal peers on the other side of this issue, I felt it was important to go on the record as a pro-life game developer. [emphasis mine]
The highlighted words reveal a fundamental truth. If you are pro-abortion, you can speak your mind anytime, in as public a forum as you choose, and you will face no negative consequences — which is as it should be.
Be someone like Gibson and make one somewhat mild comment in support of limiting abortion, however, and you will have your life destroyed. Though about half the nation, at a minimum, has consistently agreed with Gibson and opposed abortion, and even larger numbers have consistently opposed abortion on demand at any time during a pregnancy, the leftist mob rule that today rules our culture will no longer allow those people their freedom of speech. State this relatively common opinion publicly and the mob will gather with torches and pitchforks to burn you at the stake.
In other words, the game is badly rigged against conservatives. While the left is free to spout its agenda anywhere, anytime, and in any forum, often forcing that agenda into places where such politics are inappropriate, the right is hounded, blackballed, censored, cancelled, and oppressed if its supporters dare to even whisper their point of view.
The left had better wake up and rethink these ongoing oppressive tactics. Very soon, the only choice the right will have to survive will be to become as intolerant as the left, if only in self-defense. For example, why should any conservative gamer now have any interest in buying products produced by Shipwright Studies, Tom Banner studios, or even from Tripwire itself? None, I say. Burn their products, find other games to play.
In fact, find out what new games John Gibson plans to issue and buy those instead.
What goes around comes around, and I see this intolerance resulting in harm to both sides, merely because the left has decided it knows it all, cannot be questioned, and is willing to hurt anyone who disagrees.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Have you read the Babylon Bee’s CEO’s take on this? Its a pretty good take. Basically the people at the game studio are clowns.
https://boundingintocomics.com/2021/09/07/babylon-bee-ceo-shares-open-letter-to-tripwire-games-after-president-steps-down-after-supporting-texas-new-pro-life-law/
The Left is using the pro-business “the company is king and workers should have no rights” mantra against you. You red-baited unions to where only reds join them. Put down your Fountainhead…and pick up your Bibles to where it says you cannot serve God and Mammon. Social Conservatives lost their way…and need to have unions to cripple woke companies. Reagan is not your Lord.
Jeff Wright:
Could use some narrative thrust, here.
Here’s a comment about the picture of the constitution with the red X across it…
‘Harmful Language Alert’: National Archives puts WARNING LABEL on US Constitution and Declaration of Independence
https://www.rt.com/usa/534197-declaration-independence-constitution-harmful/
“It was no joke, however. The link on the label leads to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) statement on “potentially harmful content,” defined as reflecting “racist, sexist, ableist, misogynistic/misogynoir, and xenophobic opinions and attitudes” or being “discriminatory towards or exclude diverse views on sexuality, gender, religion, and more,” among other criteria”
Jeff, for many years union leadership was consistently allied with early Progressive thinking, that promoted the dependence upon our elites (of which they were a well-connected part) that we see today. The academics, activists, and moguls of the Church of Woke have supplanted them, with the condescending arrogance of their soft hands and inflated egos, and built upon the Leftist foundations laid by Big Labor.
In their earliest days, unions were of benefit to worker and society, for they counterbalanced the power held by large-scale industrial owners. They were the training wheels workers needed to learn how to function in an industrial society … but as Progressive class condescension and blind faith in economy-of-scale grew more pervasive, those wheels got quite rusty to the point of slowing them down and/or being unreliable.
And union leaders can be as greedy and short-sighted as any Wall Street or Big Tech mogul.
My father was a UAW skilled tradesman … through his eyes, I saw the good/bad/ugly of dependence upon such leadership by the rank-and-file. And in 38 years of working as an engineer in American manufacturing, I perceived that unionization is – at best – of marginal benefit in some industries, and often either impotent in the face of management, or even Part of the Problem as they made demands that eroded job security. (And don’t even get me started on public-sector unions!)
Unions that keep as much focus on what the rank-and-file is delivering to assure the success of their employer, as they are on what the rank-and-file is getting in wages and bennies and/or the number of dues-payers, have my respect. But in most cases their emphasis on the latter – and running to government to make life difficult for companies who stand up to that – led to the offshoring of jobs we have seen in the past four decades.
BTW, Reagan is not God, but the economic ideas he advocated resulted in a better lot for anyone who took the initiative to build on the opportunities facilitated by those ideas. It is how my career has been able to succeed. Unions work against taking that initiative, both in fostering the perception of the rank-and-file that they don’t need to take it – and imposing restrictions, written and unwritten, against the worker bees buzzing beyond their assumed place.
A brave priest speaks out, speaks truth to power and hypocrisy: https://youtu.be/b0LNt9b_kXI
without getting into it, i’ll just pop this in here..
Introduction to Microeconomics
Lecture 12: Labor and Unions
Murray N. Rothbard [New York Polytechnic University 1986]
https://youtu.be/t8J8C9DkYr4
1:27:44
Cotour: Magnificent. Every Catholic should watch this priest’s sermon.
I am glad to see you back. I hope all is well. I had been thinking of emailing you to find out if all was well.
However, please don’t change your nickname. I don’t like people doing this because it leads to confusion.
Mr. Zimmerman:
If the current Pope weren’t also a leftist, he would (and should) excommunicate Biden. The degenerate Catholic Church needs a revolution from within.
Questioner: Yes. And it appears to be happening. See the sermon in the youtube video provided by Cotour above.
Questioner:
I wrote and posted these observations a while ago as they related to the subject of Christianity and the Catholic church. And I was bluntly asked by a poster to, “Just go away”.
The Catholic church is a business and like any business, any corporation, is but an opportunity for perversion and corruption. And we can all see how the many corporations willing to be extorted and essentially controlled by the likes of BLM demonstrates. Which is not to say that the Catholic church does not do good works.
But its leadership is clearly politically aligned and panders to politics and a political philosophy which is Leftist as it surrenders Christ and his teachings. That can not be good.
1. The business of religion of all stripes at every point in human history has been used and abused in the quest of the few in pursuit of control and power over the many.
2. The business of religion of all stripes at every point in human history has acted not always in the interests of what they have purported to represent themselves to be acting in the interests of.
3. The business of religion of all stripes at every point in human history has been used as a ruthless tool in the abuse of power in the furtherance of business and politics.
4. The business of religion of all stripes at every point in human history selectively teaches the exclusion of some.
5. Humanity needs God, spirituality and religion and must be cognizant of their nature as it relates to those subjects and where the business of religion and politics can deliver them.
6. All intellectual structures, entities and concepts of man have the potential to be perverted, corrupted and the power derived there of abused. JGL 4/3/21
To be fair, The business of religion of all stripes can be replaced by “any substantial organization”. The issue has very little to do with the purpose – religious or otherwise – of the organization.
A good set of comments here, with fine links..
The Struggle Continues.