In the March 9, 2025, edition of her "Letters From An American," Heather Cox Richardson made the following comment:
Lately, political writers have called attention to the tendency of billionaire Elon Musk to refer to his political opponents as “NPCs.” This term comes from the gaming world and refers to a nonplayer character, a character that follows a scripted path and cannot think or act on its own, and is there only to populate the world of the game for the actual players. Amanda Marcotte of Salon notes that Musk calls anyone with whom he disagrees an NPC, but that construction comes from the larger environment of the online right wing, whose members refer to anyone who opposes Donald Trump’s agenda as an NPC.
In The Cross Section, Paul Waldman notes that the point of the right wing’s dehumanization of political opponents is to dismiss the pain they are inflicting. If the majority of Americans are not really human, toying with their lives isn’t important—maybe it’s even LOL funny to pretend to take a chainsaw to the programs on which people depend. “We are ants, or even less,” Waldman writes, “bits of programming to be moved around at Elon’s whim. Only he and the people who aspire to be like him are actors, decision-makers, molding the world to conform to their bold interplanetary vision (links added to original).”
Here is my thought.
What is most important is not what Elon Musk, or any other spokesperson for the "right wing," says about you. That's just name-calling. What is most important is what you, yourself, think about your power, competence, and "agency."
Is there anyone reading this blog posting who might say that there is "some truth" in the idea that we are, actually, all NPCs? In fact, we might well argue, our government has gotten beyond our control. We might not like to admit it, but when it comes to governmental decision-making, many of us might well conclude that there are very few individuals, indeed, who are "Players." We tend to be "observers," not "actors." There might be quite a few reading this blog posting who would "hate to admit it," but who would stipulate to the fact that what they do, or think, or care about individually, just isn't all that important or impactful, in terms of insuring that things go the way they think they should, or the way they want them to, in the larger world that we all inhabit together.
RGPs, those "Real Game Players," are quite the opposite. Their actions make a difference. Even their thoughts make a difference; what they say makes a difference.
What is sometimes called the "American experiment" in self-government is premised on the idea that "we, the people," are in charge of the government, that we are all, in fact, real "Players," and that our actions can and will determine the future.
Abraham Lincoln urged us all, in his Gettysburg Address, to ensure that a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people" would not perish from the earth. It is the "by the people" part of that statement that is the most important, as we think about whether we should be classified as NPCs or RGPs.
Of course, you can't be a RGP unless you actually spend some slice of your time actually working on impacting the government, and the government decisions that affect us all. There isn't any "self-government" if we are not involved in government ourselves.
So, NPC or RGP: Which one are you?
Foundation of Freedom
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