In case you missed it, Reagan was a bastard

The 40th American President was a lot of things: a right-wing radio host, a Hollywood actor, a Red Scare dealer, a charismatic liar. A great leader wasn’t one of them but for some reason Call of Duty: Cold War Black Ops seems eager to rekindle this long-held conservative fantasy.

I can only guess how many hours and how many indie game budgets were spent meticulously detailing every crack, mole, and weathered discoloration on 70-year-old Ronald Reagan’s face so he could tell a room CIA ghosts in a steadfast, fatherly voice. insurance, to go and commit crimes in foreign countries.

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

Instead, Reagan provides the game’s clear moral line, reminding the player that no matter how much the fog of war or spy nations use to influence geopolitics, the intentions of the United States are good and its security and domination must be preserved at all costs. .

The scene featuring Reagan begins with a political aide complaining that Cold War Black Opsthe protagonists are too paranoid in the face of obscure Soviet threats, and later that illegal clandestine operations could explode in the face of the administration. CIA agents, presented as the world’s tired badasses, retort that everything they do is illegal and if they don’t act innocent people will die. When a a secret service agent enters the room, everyone is silent, gets up, puts out their cigarettes. Reagan walks in, full of boast and his big boss’s pants tight, to break the bureaucratic impasse: the Soviet threat is real, the fate of the free world is at stake, and you and your spies will blow up everything you do. must ensure that the United States remains the top dog.

It’s a caricature swinging dicks without an ounce of irony that might even make National review to blush. The real Reagan, of course, had a soft spot for return channel sabotage, illegal CIA operations, and blow things up. As the New York Times reported a year ago based on recently unsealed documentsThe 1980 presidential campaign surrogates with whom Reagan worked closely admitted to trying to block Iranian hostage negotiations in order to prevent Jimmy Carter from winning the election.

The infamous Iran-Contra scandal saw the United States sell arms to Iran to fund right-wing rebels in Nicaragua who kidnapped, tortured and executed men, women and children. contrary to Black Ops Cold WarsReagan, who is very familiar with the details of every CIA operation, the real one claimed he was unaware of people in his own administration breaking international law to fund death squads in South America. Eventually, fourteen Reagan administration officials were indicted, including Lieutenant-Colonel Oliver North, who at the time was on the National Security Council, and later continued to consult on Black ops call of duty II.

Most of Reagan’s hagiographies focus on his Cold War bluster, perhaps because his legacy on the home front is even more damning. Morning in America is inevitable in Cold War Black Ops. What are you defending? Booming capitalist markets and low inflation rates, of course. But in reality, the warriors of the Cold War protected the plundering of the American working classes by turning unregulated markets and the fight against unions into anti-Soviet virtues. Reaganomics seen the rich get richer while the minimum wage continued to stagnate.

Meanwhile, Reagan blamed the misery deep on the “welfare queens” and drug addicts, escalation of the war on drugs and pave the way for the modern prison industrial complex that disproportionately incarcerates and deprives people of color, especially black men. More funding went to police departments under Reagan, and the newly implemented mandatory minimums sent more people to jail. All this in the context of a campaign on racist appeals to state rights, small government and individual liberty aimed at undermining federal voting and desegregation legislation.

What is strangest Cold War Black OpsReagan’s nostalgic tribute to Reagan is that he does not come in the years of Bill Clinton’s surrender “the era of great government is over” in the face of Reagan’s legacy, or the world war “with us or against us ”of George W. Bush against terrorism, or even the unfair Reagan bootlicking the Republican primaries of 2012 and 2016, but in 2020, a year when even the so-called flagship of Reagan’s principled conservatism leave him mask of their corrupt and reactionary faces then knocked him over with a van so Donald Trump could tweet nice things about them.

Maybe after four years of Trump Cold War Black Ops was meant to offer a call back to a more respectable time when deeply convinced political leaders with clear moral compasses guided the country through difficult and divided times. We are in a pandemic after all, and real leadership on the issues of life and death would be greatly appreciated. Of course, Reagan oversaw his own national health crisis – the AIDS epidemic – and he didn’t care either. In fact, his administration began making fun.

Do I want to fight to save America from Reagan? No I do not. And fortunately Cold War Black Ops don’t force you to. What I’d love to do is play a time traveling bounty hunter and roll Reagan’s ass before The Hague. Because, in case any of the best-selling games of the year gave you the wrong impression, it was absolute crap.