[Kotaku] In Case You Missed It, Reagan Was A Scumbag

[Vexii]

Article: https://kotaku.com/in-case-you-missed-it-reagan-was-a-scumbag-1845719331

America's 40th president was a lot of things: a right-wing talk radio host, a Hollywood actor, a Red Scare monger, a charismatic liar. A great leader wasn't one of them but for some reason Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War seems keen to revive that long-standing conservative fantasy.

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I can also only guess why, in an otherwise cynical single-player campaign full of untrustworthy spies and conflicting truths, Treyarch and Raven Software chose to portray Reagan, whose legacy is now marked by scandal and disgrace even in many centrist circles, as a commander-in-chief of unimpeachable integrity and clear-sighted decision making.

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Much more in the article, but yes. The glorification of Reagan in Cold War seems to me to smell an awful lot like right/alt-right fantasy and deification than a true-to-life depiction of a president embroiled in scandal, subterfuge and helping to create a society enveloped in class warfare. It's quite similar to how much of the UK seems to remember Winston Churchill, a man who, yes, got Britain through the war, but was also himself a roving racist and a despicable piece of shit.

This is clearly propaganda, and stupidly takes me back to the "Big Mama" conversation in MGS4 where she talks about how soldiers in PMCs in that universe were raised, trained and shaped entirely by FPS video games. I can't believe I'm saying that. Between bringing Kevin Spacey in (albeit before he was called-out, though I can't seem to find a single instance of Sledgehammer speaking out against him? Correct me if I'm wrong) to this depiction of Reagan, it seems clear to me where the political interests of the IP lie, at the very least. (Except, of course, videogames about WAR aren't political lmao)

And as there are so many younger people (many of who may read this forum), please do a little research on Reagan before you decide that he's the dog's bollocks because a video game told you he was.

 

[Ushay]

Can't say I disagree here OP, especially with the Winston Churchill example.

Its a shame history teaches otherwise. I haven't even played the game yet but had no idea Reagan was portrayed like this..

 

[ClickyCal']

Not surprising. In a few decades, blackops 20 will probably have pro Trump propaganda.

 

[Fachasaurus]

6-6-6

 

[Deleted member 3017]

Fuck Ronald Reagan

The CEO of Activision is a hardcore Republican who donated thousands to GOP members this cycle. Fuck Bobby Kotick.

 

[Tygre]

Waypoint also went in on this frankly abhorrent deification of Reagan:



Reagan was a piece of shit who's administration treated HIV as a joke, and his glorification by Treyarch is downright despicable.

Hope everyone's looking forward to Trump getting the same whitewashed treatment in a few decades.

 

[Castamere]

Not surprising. In a few decades, blackops 20 will probably have pro Trump propaganda.

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Nah it'll be Bush in the Iraqi war. We just need a little more distance.

 

[Plidex]

Welp, my interest in Cold War has died.

 

[P-Bo]

I did miss it--but then that'll happen with 20-some years of conservative upbringing. Thanks all for constantly bringing this up.

 

[WillyBubba]

Wasteland 3 did it better.

 

[SunKing]

Reagan and Trump should be proof enough NOT to elect celebrities to the highest seat of power in the United States. And definitely not worthy in the slightest of reverence.

 

[Dre3001]

Reagan was basically Trump with more charisma and could speak coherently.

 

[ClickyCal']

Nah it'll be Bush in the Iraqi war. We just need a little more distance.

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Yea probably. Trump accelerated how quick people could normalize Bush though, so maybe sooner.

 

[Rover_]

Call of Duty and US Propaganda, name a more iconic duo.

 

[AHA-Lambda]

I just finished the campaign yesterday and he's barely in it at all. He only appears for about 5 mins

 

[Linus815]

Welp, my interest in Cold War has died.

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rofl lets not pretend CoD isn't constantly full of shit like this year after year

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare faces Russian backlash

Latest game from Activision Blizzard criticised by users for its portrayal of Russia.

www.bbc.com

and black ops has ALWAYS been obnoxiously pro america regardless of the era it took place in

 

[entremet]

I mean, it's a military shooter lol.

They're all pro war, pro imperialism propaganda.

 

[steejee]

I don't have any interest in CoD to being with, but seeing his digitally recreated face in the CoD: CW ad made me roll my eyes so far into the back of my head I could see my brain.

If it was Yager attached to the game, it would have piqued my interest to see how they'd rip cold war fantasies a new one.

Instead it's a CoD game, so I knew it'd be full on Reagan worship.

 

[Odesu]

Call of Duty is and will always be a deeply conservative deification of the American Soldier and the american war machine. Reagan was an integral part of that so, naturally, he has to be deified to.

Call of Duty absolutely loves to paint a fictional, bureaucratic "elite" as the faceless bad guys to act non-partisan while also still painting every soldier on the ground as an objective force for good, necessary to fight the (mostly either russian or brown faced) evils of the world. But obviously that goes right out of the window if that faceless elite of decision makers gets an actual face with conservative star Ronal Reagan.

 

[groovyalex391]

I'm definitively no fan of Reagan but he was pretty neutrally represented in the game, you could have swapped him with any generic president model and his role would be the same. Maybe after the war crime rewriting that they did with MW2019 I'm just numb to COD politics.

 

[Starlatine]

I'm betting 50 bucks theres a "keep politiks out of games" comment right after

lo and behold its the first fucking one

 

[krazen]

Here's a Proto-Run the Jewels El-P/Killer Mike collab had a great track that summed up his presidency. The problem (well genius) with Reagan was that he used his popularity as an 'aw shucks' actor to push heinous shit. A podcast I am listening to called him the first 'reality tv show' President and there's truth to it. As opposed to our current buffoon who marries his awful policies with race baiting theatrics, Reagan was smart enough to know if you rebranded policies and sold it with a smile, the American public would buy it from neo-cons to liberals.

So giving cash to the 1% off taxpayer dollars? "Trickle down economics".
Militarizing the police against poor people? "War on Drugs"

And even though the Soviet Union was walking wounded during the 80's he was able to play up Communism as the same threat as it was decades before so now usually secretive democracy destroying CIA ops ("Oh shit, that dude we put in charge is a murderous dictator? Our bad") were now overt with 'freedom fighters' used lovingly for motherfuckers that were terrorists across the globe.

The only thing you could have said about him is that as racist as his policies were, at least he kept them to just dog-whistle level but guess what

Ronald Reagan's Long-Hidden Racist Conversation With Richard Nixon

In newly unearthed audio, the then–California governor disparaged African delegates to the United Nations.

www.theatlantic.com

A century from now when people look at the fall of the West as a general empire, Reagan and Thatcher will be the first names on that list.

 

[GTAce]

EDIT: Tree'd

 

[Dyle]

Fuck Activision as always for glorifying the military industrial complex and supporting oppressive governments around the world

 

[julia crawford]

Waypoint also went in on this frankly abhorrent deification of Reagan:



Reagan was a piece of shit who's administration treated HIV as a joke, and his glorification by Treyarch is downright despicable.

Hope everyone's looking forward to Trump getting the same whitewashed treatment in a few decades.

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I'm guessing this is the recent bit with Rob and two guests. It's a great segment.

 

[Plidex]

rofl lets not pretend CoD isn't constantly full of shit like this year after year

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare faces Russian backlash

Latest game from Activision Blizzard criticised by users for its portrayal of Russia.

www.bbc.com

and black ops has ALWAYS been obnoxiously pro america regardless of the era it took place in

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I should explain, I haven't played a CoD in years, I only got interested after seeing the Dualsense implementation.

 

[Begaria]

Wasteland 3 did it better.

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Yuuuup. The whole Robo-Reagan thing was fantastic. Portraying him as a bumbling AI repeating the same lines over and over again while being a terrible leader controlled by a group of people desperate to stay in power...huh. Reminds me of another President.

 

[Shake Appeal]

They went easy on him.

 

[Maturin]

This Reagen deification I saw in the first trailer for CODBLOPS is why I had no wish to play this right-wing trashfire.

 

[collige]

No lies detected. This part is particularly poignant and always gets overlooked in the context of discussing Reagan in 2020:

Maybe after four years of Trump Black Ops Cold War was supposed to offer a call back to a more respectable time when political leaders of deep conviction with clear moral compasses guided the country through tough and divided times. We're in a pandemic after all, and some actual leadership on issues of literal life and death would be much appreciated. Of course, Reagan oversaw his own national health crisis—the AIDs epidemic—and he didn't give a shit about it either. In fact, his administration started out by making fun of it.

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He also has a rape accusation against him too, which I guess no one ever cared about. Same goes for him being on tape laughing at racist jokes with Nixon too.

 

[thevid]

Not surprising. In a few decades, blackops 20 will probably have pro Trump propaganda.

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Should be easy to adapt to the COD formula. Shoot lots of minority BLM terrorists. Plot twist is Fox News betrayal calling election for Biden.

 

[VAD]

I don't know, America is painted as a land of assholes in this game and Reagan appeared in 2 scenes just to say basically « yes go kill some bad guys ». I did not walk away from the solo campaign thinking the good guys from America won, quite the contrary according to what I understood from the game, American imperialism was a worldwide threat and the Cold War was detrimental to everyone on earth. The characters in the game were all untrustworthy murderers.

 

[CrichtonKicks]

I mean Black Ops 2 had Oliver North make a cameo appearance and act as a consultant on the game so this really shouldn't be surprising...

 

[GTAce]

This Reagen deification I saw in the first trailer for CODBLOPS is why I had no wish to play this right-wing trashfire.

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Same, and it's Activision (and, well, CoD).

 

[bes.gen]

yeah will not touch this, trailer already irked me with "merica fuck yeah" tone when it was released, but thought maybe they'd have more nuanced story.
adaptive triggers sounded cool, but will pass. a game requiring half of your hdd is already no go as well lol

 

[Euron]

I always think back to this any time I see Reagan praise. Reagan's the answer to "what if we had Trump but competent and personable?". His demeanor and personality made people gloss over his horrid policies.

Putting Reagan on a pedestal is honestly my biggest reason for wanting to avoid Cold War. Not that the other games in the series had great politics but the circlejerk of Reagan they seem to be doing is especially tone deaf if not willfully in celebration of his worst ideals.

 

[Zor]

I just finished the campaign yesterday and he's barely in it at all. He only appears for about 5 mins

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What little of him is there is bad enough.

 

[ZeroMaverick]

This is why I'm skipping Cold War.

 

[Doomguy Fieri]

It's definitely not alt-right propaganda to slurp Ronald Reagan. I bet a lot of elder folks in your life who you think are pretty reasonable and smart remember old Ronald Reagan fondly.

 

[MegaManTrigger]

Why do people look at Ronald Reagan so fondly?

- He treated the HIV epidemic as a joke (given his religious upbringing...gee I wonder why)
- His economic policies resulted in millions of Americans that lost their jobs, and raised a generation of delusional idiots who think that tax cuts would cause an economic trickle down effect.
- Fostered relationships with dictators and was involved in weapons trades that fueled both sides into fighting further
- His actions directly resulted in the terrorism mess that we see today

If you look at his policies, he was the huge turning point for Americans (in a negative way).

 

[zerodeefex]

NGL, when he walked in during that scene, I stopped playing. It was too much for someone who grew up to immigrant parents during his presidency. It came with my 3080 and I, honestly, hadn't really looked at the game so wasn't sure what to expect. It was interesting at first but the obvious deification of Reagan made me nauseous. He had such a negative impact that we are feeling in full force today.

 

[Deleted member 5596]

I just finished the campaign yesterday and he's barely in it at all. He only appears for about 5 mins

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5 minutes of not showing how much a piece of shit he was.

 

[Kaldaien]

Why do people look at Ronald Reagan so fondly?

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Because he raised taxes to pay for government programs. Any president who does that has their head screwed on correctly. All other Republican presidents increase spending while lowering taxes...

 

[CrichtonKicks]

It actually should have been Carter during the initial scene since it took place before Reagan was inaugurated.

 

[M. Wallace]

Good thing I don't play COD single player.

 

[Pancracio17]

CoD is american propaganda, and it has been for a while

 

[8byte]

I mean, it's inline what Call of Duty is? It's a franchise that appeals to American "excellence" machismo bullshit. I haven't bought one of these games since MW2 on PS3, and I have zero intention of ever buying another one.

 

[krazen]

Should be easy to adapt to the COD formula. Shoot lots of minority BLM terrorists. Plot twist is Fox News betrayal calling election for Biden.

Click to shrink...

LOL. It's going to be 'Urban Lives Matter', the main guy the team gets intel from is going to be a black guy so 'it can't be racist' and the surprise will be that it's actually an organization secretly funded by a government that's supposed to be a stand in for the CCP, and sprinkle in a bit of Q-anon saying that despite his flaws, Trump was the only one who stood up against them, lol. Throw in a badly edited cutscene of farmers suffering during the trade war with them using great depression photographs as an inspiration during this reveal.

What's funny is COD was always jingoistic but it's gotten so bad it just feels like a parody now. I can't tell if the developers are that much in on the right wing bubble, or are they liberals pushing out stereotypes of what they feel the heavy right wing fanbase expects.

 

[Kevin Shields]

Play the freaking game before spouting off nonsense... Do people have any critical spirit at all anymore? Reagan is basically a talking head in the game and says I give approval to do this mission, with the mission at hand having all kinds of moral ambiguity by the end of it. Play the freaking game first people or do we know just love to lambast things after seeing a headline or an article without giving any personal research or consideration at all?

 

[PeskyToaster]

Is this just based on the trailer? I don't think you'd have a great opinion of the US or anybody in that room based on what actually occurs in the game. Reagan only shows up for that scene and gets a voice line at the end I think. I've said it before but I think the read that Call of Duty's actual stories are American propaganda isn't really true. It glorifies the soldier on the ground for sure but the US is usually making things worse in a lot of these campaigns.