Black Friday, Libertarianism, and Cupcakes

In the same vein as the now-trendy divorce parties, I thought about throwing a Black Friday party on April 15th this year. Being the culinary nerd that I am, I envisioned cupcakes with fondant “Here Lies US Internet Poker” tombstones, truffle-dusted “freedom fries”, and black (squid ink) pasta. But then I realized that BF fell on a Sunday, so I already had plans: grinding online poker.

Of course, playing on Merge isn’t as glamorous as a lot of options for US players a bit over a year ago. It’s true that I could have left the country, but opted not to (at least for the time being). There’s still money to be made grinding at home in my PJs, and for now I’ll take that. Also, playing live more often has made me a much better poker player in the last year; despite the fact that I undoubtedly played fewer hands compared to the same period the year before.

In a quote that I used at the beginning of The Superuser, C. S. Lewis said, “Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.”

As a disillusioned libertarian, that’s a quote I’ve believed in for a long time, and certainly has relevance to online poker. One positive of BF is that it has made many people think about the many injustices enacted by the US government, especially for poker players.

The only thing I believe in more than cupcakes is freedom. Lame pastry jokes aside, I often dream about a theft-free society; a society where donning a uniform or having a title doesn’t give someone the right to steal under the guise of doing it “for the good of America.” We’re taught from an early age to respect authority, as if those people are privy to some kind of secret where they know exactly what is right for over 300 million people. There is no such secret; there is no one way that works in my mind except allowing people to live their own lives.

Of course, every big shift in ideology has to start small, and if there is a silver lining in BF, I hope that it is making us more critical of the forces that rule us in America. I hope it encourages all of us to think about the rules we may have supported in the past just because we personally like them, and to understand that forcing our own ideologies upon others is a fruitless and lame attempt to make us feel that we’ve won an argument.

Grossly simplified, I think many arguments actually look like this: say a politician is running on the platform that all cupcakes should be chocolate (surely campaigns have been based on less important matters in the history of the US). Some people would think, “I love chocolate cupcakes! I support that,” and forget that not allowing people that like vanilla cupcakes to have them is crazy.

I can only hope that Black Friday gets us a little closer to fighting for vanilla cupcakes even if we only eat chocolate. I may not agree with your taste in cupcakes, but I feel strongly about you having the right to choose your flavor—and to eat any dessert you choose while grinding online poker.