american history Archives

Homefront: The Revolution is everything wrong with America

By the most recent estimate of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), there are just under 300 non-governmental militias active in the United States. Though the specifics of their agendas vary, their shibboleth is what’s often labeled “insurrection theory,” the supposed right of the body politic to take up arms against tyranny, no matter its source. What constitutes tyranny is rather open to interpretation—one group, Posse Comitatus, rejects the validity of both fiat money and driver’s licenses, along with more familiar grievances about income tax and gun control—but, in every case, there is a common antagonist: an overbearing, conspiratorial government…

Feature

The forgotten politics behind Contra’s name

Do a quick Google search of “contra.” Browsing the first few pages, you should see a saturation of links about the videogame—the now-primary version of the word—sprinkled with other definitions. Next in the deck is contra as preposition: “against, contrary, or opposed to,” suitingly enough. Then, a “contemporary New York cuisine” restaurant; contra-dancing, a folksy flirty form adaptable to many musical styles; the second album by Vampire Weekend; and eventually, peeking through before being closed out again, you’ll stumble upon the elephant in the room. Contras are the name of the group of soldiers from Nicaragua that Ronald Reagan cultivated…

Article

Why Fallout 4’s 1950s satire falls flat

War may never change, but Kill Screen does. Back our Kickstarter to help support our print relaunch! Fallout 4 takes us back. Back to the beginning. Back before the bombs fell, and before the world of the Fallout series took on its mutated, feral, apocalyptic form. But what did that world look like? The Fallout series has, since its inception, hinted at a world before nuclear annihilation that resembled, in its culture and its design, the 1950s, rather than the 2070s, which is the decade in which Fallout’s “Great War,” a two-hour series of nuclear blasts that decimated the planet,…

News

Stay a while and be a good gardener

Sign up to receive each week’s Playlist e-mail here! Also check out our full, interactive Playlist section. A Good Gardener (PC, Mac, Linux) IAN ENDSLEY AND CARTER LODWICK Unlike games like Harvest Moon, A Good Gardener is not your grandma’s gardening game. Well, actually now that I think about it, the story of A Good Gardener might be most recognizable to someone like your grandmother. Set during WWII, the game puts the player in the role of someone planting a “victory garden,” which is the term the US government used to encourage citizens to join the war effort by growing their own food. In A Good Gardener,…

News

Save Brooklyn from the British before saving it from itself in this videogame

Believe it or not, Brooklyn existed before the days of beard wax, tasting menus, and lazy trendpiece shorthand. Brooklyn 1776, which launches for iOS next week, is about those earlier days. Much earlier. August 1776 was not a calm time in American history. George Washington (maybe you’ve heard of him?) was fresh off a victory over British forces in Boston and had travelled south to defend New York City. To put it mildly, the odds were against Washington and co. But, well, you’ve heard that story before, haven’t you? As developers Creative Good put it: “General Washington and his new,…

News

In case you needed another JFK conspiracy, here’s Pollen’s

There is, as your tinfoil hat-wearing friends are likely to tell you, no shortage of conspiracy surrounding the assassination of John F. Kennedy. There are the claims about the second shooter or someone on the grassy knoll. There are shadowy figures in conspiracy lore like “dark complected man,” “badge man,” “tin hat man,” “umbrella man,” and “black dog man.” Yes, those are all real, and at least everyone can agree that men are the problem. For good measure, the 1979 House Select Committee on Assassinations—yes, that was its real name—declared that there was probably a second shooter while passing the…