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Here’s What You Are Expected to Applaud Today
Apple has pulled all Civil War games from the App Store, because history is a macro-aggression. The description of the games is as horrifying as you’d expect:
Ultimate General: Gettysburg is a Tactical Battle Simulator that allows you to lead thousands of soldiers in the famous Battle of Gettysburg as commander of either the Union or Confederate army.
And there’s the problem. So the game has been pulled from the App Store. Also gone: this utter moral catastrophe.
Join General Alexander, loyal follower of Abe Lincoln, for a Civil War reenactment. Search original battlefields for clues and letters left by members of a secret society. These individuals hid millions of dollars in gold, cash, and coin. Scour over 20 hidden object levels while advancing through time from the Battle of Fort Sumter (1861) to Lee’s surrender at Appotomattox (1865). Cross rivers and grassy knolls to unearth Hidden Mysteries of the Civil War.
It’s gone. It had a picture of — well, you know: The F word. Civil War 1862 is gone as well, and good riddance!
The game gives a unique wargaming experience on iPhone and iPad and includes 14 historical battles from the American Civil War in 1862, thirteen of which can be played as either side.
We can worry about the people who would want to play on the wrong side, but it’s better just to ensure that they can’t.
I don’t think we’ve seen a moral panic this idiotic since Frederick Wertham was finding hidden pictures of female genitals in the musculature of superheroes.
BTW, this is currently available on the iTunes store.
But not, you suspect, for long. This, however, is assured a long, long life.
It has an in-app purchase that lets you enable your “repression” settings. It costs 99 cents.
Published in Culture, General
This book I wrote is currently unavailable on Amazon:
Why?
I suspect because of the flag on the cover. It was the flag used by the Indian Nations which sided with the Confederacy. (You can still get it from Osprey.) It was number 16 on the Osprey best sellers list for Civil War books. (Number 12 was my book on African-American Soldiers in the Civil War.)
This. Is. Madness.
Seawriter
So i guess I should burn my copy of Ironclads then? After all, you can indeed play the CSS Virginia ….er, the Merrimack rather.
I preferred things when they were merely ridiculous.
You write for Osprey! I love those books.
And now we enter the phase of this regime where we start rewriting history and expunging “enemies”.
I wonder if Gone with the Wind soon will be.
This is utterly and completely horrible. It is stupid, childish and so foolish as to actually damage our ability to be a culture that can even defend itself. Never have a seen such a stupid over reaction. I weep for my country. My only hope now is this will fade as the flavor of the month and people will forget about and move one to making all toilets unisex and mandating that you can only use a public restroom if you are accompanied by a transgendered person.
I still hope in my heart of hearts that the Left is beginning to over reach and there will be a backlash and we will roll some of this back. If we continue like this we will become so wacky by the end of Obama’s term that the country will insist on a return to some normalcy. Won’t it?
It’s unfortunate about Ultimate General: Gettysburg. I bought my version on Steam.
For what it is worth, the Confederate campaign is harder than the Union one.
Seawriter: Oy. Did they tell you it was being removed?
This is really, REALLY insane.
Also time for Melanie Phillips to write a volume 2 of The World Turned Upside Down. She certainly has plenty of material.
It’s funny that in one of the call of duty games, you can play a terrorist shooting innocent civilians in an airport (and don’t get me started on Grand Theft Auto), but a game based on the Civil War is undecent.
They will regret this but once, and that will be continually.
Hey, I get it. Oregon Trail pushed me within a hair’s breadth of a murderous rampage on more than one occasion. I can only imagine the hazards of Ultimate General: Gettysburg.
The stupidity of the Left isn’t even funny anymore.
Man, fond memories for me, too.
Wait a minute- I read James post and promptly went into the App Store. Successfully downloaded a Gettysburg game.
Could it be that James is pulling our legs?
No. Not that it affects me financially, nor was it surprising I was not informed. It was work for hire. On the other hand, it offends me morally, because the book was not pro-Confederate. It would be like removing a book about the P-51 Mustang because the cover shows a P-51 shooting down a FW-190 with a swastika on the tail.
Seawriter
Credit where credit’s due, this (most likely) left-wing writer at Gizmodo and the commenters below the article all seem to agree that Apple is going way too far here.
I have so many of the essential histories.
If you are interested go to my website for a full list of my titles.
Seawriter
That’s a heck of a list! Congratulations, and thank you again for elevating the site with your presence (I think I’ve expressed gratitude before, for your reviews; I’ve certainly felt it).
The links James included still work, but when you click on the “Buy” button, it takes you to the iTunes App store, where you get a message that says “The item you’ve requested is not currently available in the U.S. store.”
So, I don’t think he is puling our leg.
Okay, but the fact remains – I was still able to download a Gettysburg game. Maybe they’re having to go through them one by one to block them?
OK. I just searched on Gettysburg in the App store on my phone and found one Gettysburg game titled “Cannon Shooter USA:Battle of Gettysburg” Downloadable for free.
Maybe the publisher pulled the games above, not Apple or maybe Apple hasn’t found them all yet.
I searched for “Civil War Games” and the game above was the only game in the search results.
So maybe it is a one-by-one thing.
I just bought your signed Space Shuttle Launch System book.
Wow, when I go to your page at Amazon it is completely gone (that specific book I mean); it’s like it never existed. Reminds me of those old Soviet encyclopedias where they erase fellow commies from group photos as they were purged. Amazon has declared it a non-book.
They’ll be coming next for you Comrade Lileks! Your website is full of images celebrating the repressive heteronormative white patriarchy of the 1950s.
Don’t worry, they’ll be back. PROVIDED:
So Orwell was apparently off by 31 years. Otherwise he was pretty much spot-on.
I’ve been seeing stories about how
It kind of feels like our country is now acting as Ben Affleck writ large.
I have no affection for the Confederate flag, but removing it from the General Lee and taking down Civil War games because they (of course) use the symbol is insane.