Red Dead Redemption 2-Elliptical Politics (Reupload)

Summary

In this critical analysis and reupload of Red Dead Redemption 2 by Admiral V, the intricate layers of the game are unpacked, revealing Rockstar's nuanced exploration of American identity and moral values. The video examines the ambivalence between technological admiration and social critique, as well as the way Rockstar engages with contemporary politics through historical lenses. The discussion is led with a skeptical view of Rockstar's narrative choices, questioning why certain themes and characters are portrayed with particular biases, especially regarding race, gender, and historical interpretation.

Highlights

• The game praises Rockstar's artistic achievements but questions its moral and political messages. 🌟
• RDR2 is seen as more of an indictment than an homage to American history. 🇺🇸
• The narrative explores modern political perspectives through historical settings. 🏛️
• Admiral V critiques how Rockstar handles complex social themes with subtle bias. 🎭
• The video debates whether the game promotes nihilism and moral particularism. 🤯

Key Takeaways

• Red Dead Redemption 2 offers impressive graphics and storytelling but critiques American identity and history. 🎮
• Rockstar’s satirical take on politics reflects both past and present societal issues. 🕵️‍♂️
• Character development in RDR2 opens debates on morality and justice in gaming. 🤔
• The game explores deep themes of race, gender roles, and political correctness. 🌍
• Admiral V critically examines Rockstar’s portrayal of societal norms and values in RDR2. 🔍

Overview

Red Dead Redemption 2, a visually stunning game, delves into complex American themes. Admiral V unpacks its narrative, asking whether Rockstar's portrayal is fair or biased. The game oscillates between tribute and critique, reflecting on America's legacy and its morally gray areas, as explored through characters like Arthur Morgan and Dutch van der Linde, whose stories intertwine with political and social commentary.

As a deep dive into both past and present politics, RDR2 blurs the lines between historical homage and satirical fantasy. The creator Admiral V questions Rockstar’s storytelling choices, especially around race, gender, and societal values, highlighting potential biases. The depiction of characters like Sadie Adler and Dutch raises questions on justice, identity, and morality within the game's universe.

Rockstar’s attempt to craft a world filled with moral ambiguity and social critique is seen through Admiral V's analytical lens. The video questions the game’s narrative choices and the portrayal of American history, doubting if the game aligns with a fair depiction or leans towards a critical, nihilistic view of America’s past. The introspective analysis paves way to question the developers' intent in mirroring contemporary issues.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 05:00: Introduction and Game Review Red Dead Redemption 2 is highly praised for its impressive graphics, dynamic story, and character development. Although the gunplay could be improved, the game offers a rich and deep experience with seamless transitions across its world. Overall, it provides great content relative to its price.
• 05:00 - 10:00: Moral Themes and Interpretations This chapter delves into the moral themes and interpretations present in Rockstar Games' Red Dead Redemption 2. It compares the game's achievements to those of The Witcher 3 and other Rockstar titles, acknowledging Rockstar's artistic and technological accomplishments. The discussion highlights Rockstar's tendency to use centrist satire to explore American life but criticizes the game for leaning towards moral particularism and nihilistic defeatism. Despite not aiming for historical accuracy, the nuances of the game's themes are scrutinized.
• 10:00 - 15:00: Character Analysis and Social Commentary The chapter entitled 'Character Analysis and Social Commentary' explores the themes and messages conveyed in the video game Red Dead Redemption 2. Although Dan Houser, one of the game's developers, describes it as an 'interactive homage to the American rural experience,' the author of this chapter perceives it more as an indictment of American society. The game includes poignant moments, such as the proposal scene between characters John and Abigail in the epilogue, yet the overarching narrative suggests a critique of America's foundation on moral hypocrisy and corruption. A further perspective is shared through a quote from Dan Houser in a vulture magazine article, supporting the classical influences present within the game.
• 15:00 - 20:00: Political and Historical Context The chapter discusses the intention behind Red Dead Redemption 2, highlighting that it aims to reflect present-day issues through its historical setting. It emphasizes that the game doesn't draw direct parallels to contemporary political figures like Donald Trump or Barack Obama. Instead, it seeks to convey a broader sensation from the 19th century that resonates with current societal issues, providing an indirect commentary on today's challenges without explicit references.
• 20:00 - 25:00: Race and Representation Issues The chapter 'Race and Representation Issues' primarily discusses how modern political movements such as feminism and neo-Marxism can trace their origins to historical contexts. Particularly, it critiques the game 'Red Dead Redemption 2' for addressing these roots in a way that is more suggestive than explicit when commenting on current political climates. The chapter is set against the backdrop of the game's storyline, which is based in 1899 and follows a group of criminals led by Dutch Vanderlin—a northern idealist with a profound disdain for the South.
• 25:00 - 30:00: Historical Accuracy and Criticism This chapter discusses the dual perception of Duchess as both a proto communist and a freedom fighter. While he takes from the rich, redistributing wealth to himself and those he considers worthy, he views his actions as those of a freedom fighter rather than a criminal. The narrative highlights the difference between these perspectives and implies an understanding of this distinction is key to grasping the gang's purpose. Furthermore, the gang is characterized by its diverse group of members.
• 30:00 - 35:00: Cultural and Societal Reflections The chapter, titled 'Cultural and Societal Reflections,' delves into various ethnicities, mentioning women, blacks, whites, a Mexican, and a black Indian mulatto. The central character is Arthur Morgan, a 35-year-old man nurtured by Dutch from the age of 15, developing a sort of father-son bond between them. The narrative primarily traces the disintegration of the gang's unity as they are persistently on the run from the Pinkerton Detective Agency. Interestingly, Rockstar, the creator, depicts these detectives as villains compared to the van der Linde gang. As the storyline progresses, Arthur begins to question the intentions of his surrogate father, Dutch.
• 35:00 - 40:00: Narrative Techniques and Critiques This chapter explores the narrative techniques and critiques in storytelling, focusing on the story of Arthur, a man who contracts tuberculosis after an altercation with an infected individual. This incident is viewed as poetic justice, implying that his life of usury and crime is morally bankrupt and leads to karmic retribution. The narrative examines how, despite player agency influencing the story, certain events remain unavoidable, such as Arthur's sickness. A significant storyline involves Arthur helping his fellow gang member, John Marston, escape with his family, underscoring themes of redemption. On a surface level, the story can be seen as Arthur's journey towards redemption, further enriching the narrative's moral complexity.
• 40:00 - 43:32: Concluding Thoughts and Messages In the game 'Red Dead Redemption,' a revealing conversation between Arthur Morgan and Reigns Fall, an Indian chief, delves into the deeper themes of the series. The conversation unveils the idea that one cannot truly change who they are at their core; they only become more of who they are over time. This concept suggests that Arthur Morgan, who made choices towards the end of his life to help others and do good, was inherently a good person. This insight into his character aligns with a major theme of the game, emphasizing personal growth and redemption.

Red Dead Redemption 2-Elliptical Politics (Reupload) Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 [Music] by most measures Red Dead Redemption too is an amazing title it has extremely impressive graphics even when not considering the game scale and depth it has a well paced dynamic story with remarkably good character development in the world space is extremely well crafted with elegant segues and transitions from one landscape into another the gunplay is still pretty terrible but in terms of both quality and quantity the content $2 ratio is
• 00:30 - 01:00 really only rivaled by The Witcher 3 in previous rockstar titles thus the men and women at Rockstar Games no matter what my opinions are on other facets of their game definitely deserve a lot of praise for their technological and artistic achievement here Rockstar is famous for its use of centrist satire when exploring the grey areas of American life but Red Dead Redemption too often seems to trend toward a kind of moral particularism and nihilistic defeatism while Rockstar has never claimed absolute historical accuracy in
• 01:00 - 01:30 any game they've developed dan Houser called Red Dead Redemption to quote an interactive homage to the American rural experience unquote but honestly to me the game came off more as an indictment than it did a homage the game definitely has its moments like John's proposal to Abigail in the epilogue but the overwhelming since I got was that America was built on a foundation of moral hypocrisy in corruption in a vulture magazine article Harald Goldberg quotes dan Houser saying that despite its classical influences
• 01:30 - 02:00 Red Dead Redemption 2 isn't meant to be just a period piece as most movie westerns reflect the era of their making Dan says he hopes the game speaks to the present quote elliptically but not literally you know we don't have this person meant to be like Donald Trump in this person like Barack Obama it's more this sensation that we found interesting in the 19th century that spoke to us and I hope it speaks to people about today's problems unquote now to Dan's credit there aren't any direct ties in the game to a particular modern figure however
• 02:00 - 02:30 there are definitely ties to modern perspectives within modern political movements like feminism Theo Wright and neo Marxism without a doubt these movements can trace their roots back to this era but Red Dead Redemption too often used these roots to comment elliptically but not literally on modern politics and not in a very impartial way the story takes place in 1899 and centers on a gang of criminal out laws led by an idealistic leader Dutch vanderlin a northern man with a deep-seated hatred of the south
• 02:30 - 03:00 in some ways Duchess a proto communist in so far that he insists on taking from the rich and redistributing their wealth to himself and whomever he deems worthy but in his mind he's a freedom fighter not a criminal there's a difference of course there is a goddamn difference and when you figure out what that is you'll know what the hell we're doing the gang has a diverse cast of characters men
• 03:00 - 03:30 women blacks whites a Mexican and even a black Indian mulatto the protagonist is a 35 year old man named Arthur Morgan who was raised by Dutch from the time he was about 15 thus the two men have a semi father-son relationship the plot is essentially an unraveling of the gangs cohesion as they continually flee the Pinkerton Detective Agency whom Rockstar interestingly portrays as villainous relative to the van der Linde gang as time goes on though Arthur slowly begins questioning both his surrogate father's motivations in
• 03:30 - 04:00 the life he's led as a criminal near the outset Arthur unknowingly contracts tuberculosis after he beats up an infected man from whom he was collecting a debt the insinuated poetic justice is that usery is evil and that karma caught up with him while the player can have an impact on how the world develops it's only to a point Arthur will always get sick question is life choices help his fellow gang member John Marston escape with his wife and child and then he'll die on the surface it's a story about a man on a path to redemption but
• 04:00 - 04:30 the rabbit-hole goes deeper there's a revealing conversation between Arthur and reigns fall and Indian chief in the game that potentially reveals the major theme of the Red Dead series a long time for me to learn that you could never change a person we only become more who we are some would view this as an insinuation that Arthur Morgan was really a good man after all because he eventually died helping others thus he became more of who he was
• 04:30 - 05:00 originally but who was Arthur originally he didn't start out his life like this and how many people did he end up killing in order to quote-unquote help others how many of his fellow citizens did he betray as he went around robbing murdering and stealing likewise Dutch vanderlin started out as a two-bit criminal and in the end he betrayed his supposed ideals and morals for self gain while he abandoned his surrogate family if we pay him back and look at Red Dead Redemption - from a bird's-eye view and examine what it's most critical of the
• 05:00 - 05:30 game is commenting on American identity just as much as its commenting on Arthur Morgan and Dutch vanderlin as individuals while the game definitely has some politically incorrect moments there's also a fair amount of virtue signaling that many gamers might have missed at first I had some real sympathy for Sadie Adler since she lost her husband and home to a gang of murderous thieves but as the story progresses her behavior becomes more and more reminiscent of modern notions of female liberation she throws a temper tantrum with Pierson the camp cook when he asks her to help prepare vegetables as if
• 05:30 - 06:00 this was beneath her or somehow sexist Arthur takes her aside and listens to her rant about how she and her dead husband shared all the work on their homestead Arthur could have pointed out to her that Pierson himself was a man doing the same work as her or that the rest of the women in the camp really didn't have any issues sewing washing dishes or doing menial tasks but instead he concedes to her righteous indignation and takes her into town with him on some errands along the way Sadie opens and reads one of Pearson's letters and proceeds to make fun of him and
• 06:00 - 06:30 emasculate his character I haven't heard from you in some time so I pray to the Lord above your health has not deteriorated further wait listen since we last call responded I have traveled widely making no small name for
• 06:30 - 07:00 myself before you ask I am still yet to take a wife but I can assure you it's not for a lack of suitors maybe I could have chalked this up to her simply being spiteful and overbearing or that it was rockstars way of making fun of her but
• 07:00 - 07:30 at one point in the game when the gangs camp is under attack Sadie can be seen taking on not one not two but three armed men in hand-to-hand combat as if a sassy attitude could overcome body weight higher testosterone levels denser bone mass and muscle fiber or the use of firearms most fans will claim that Arthur Morgan is a well-crafted fence sitter never really taking a stance on any issue in some instances he even appears to be critical of feminism so I'm graduated from chopping vegetables to shop in such a goddamn house you my
• 07:30 - 08:00 friend what do you think about women's suffrage oh thank you sir you are a true progressive how much you cost anyway we've had a nice way to talk to you a late oh I didn't know I was talking to a lady excuse me overall though I would say Arthur Morgan takes a pro feminist stance more often
• 08:00 - 08:30 than not if you know where to look within the game there's much difference between women and men most of both are off how's your friend getting on with those new clothes now some ladies should be wearing in my
• 08:30 - 09:00 opinion but each to their own I suppose I'd be very surprised if you had a lady my friend I've had my share interestingly Roger Clark the voice actor for Arthur had this to say in an online interview quote I wanted to bring across a certain vulnerability to Arthur which is something I don't think westerns have addressed as much as they possibly could have when we think of the genre we think of the strong masculine
• 09:00 - 09:30 protagonist and I think it's important to show that there's a definite vulnerability to the male ego two male characters and I think we might get a lot less toxic masculinity if we address that men are fragile too or at least as capable of being vulnerable and scared unquote now do I think that Arthur was portrayed as feminine no he's pretty alpha actually but he repeatedly praises mrs. Adler's disagreeable nature and encourages her downward spiral into the very kind of supposed toxic masculinity that Roger Clark thinks he was addressing in his performance the game
• 09:30 - 10:00 quite bizarrely celebrates Sadie Adler's descent into a psychotic break and ponds it off as female liberation the Overton Window in gaming has been pushed so far toward female inclusion recently that even Rockstar is beginning to concede ground take note of the mission the noblest of men and a woman where an Arthur is tasked with finding and interviewing various legendary gunslingers both the white male gunslingers turn out to be cowards who lied about their exploits while the Mexican is practically dripping with
• 10:00 - 10:30 testosterone and the woman black Belle is arguably the toughest of them all now this is not to say that there were no female gunslingers or outlaws but they were exceedingly rare and the only reason the press picked up on them at the time was because they were exceedingly rare another noteworthy moment was when Arthur Morgan met a black doctor whose wagon was stolen by racist whites without pause he drops everything he's doing and gets to work retrieving the stolen wagon while giving angry commentary about the injustice of it all the thing is by this point Arthur had beaten a farmer in front of his wife
• 10:30 - 11:00 robbed a train full of his fellow citizens on vacation stolen some Cowboys sheep killed half the town of strawberry and Valentine in various shootouts and robbed the grave of an old lady yet for some odd reason Arthur had an issue with a random black man being robbed of his wagon because according to his bizarre moral code a life of crime is totally permissible as long as you don't target victims based on race excuse me
• 11:00 - 11:30 I didn't mean any offense please I don't get you mean I'm very sorry sir you have yourself fond day and I apologize for any offense I meant in averting the coals what are you drinking mister nothing sir nothing at all why are you acting so strange I don't mean to I'm sorry for any offense how could you have offended me I have no idea but I had no idea how I ended the last fellows and they stole my wagon on the count of my impudence
• 11:30 - 12:00 stole your wagon fetcher they did not my medical practice I suppose I was helping folk and I wasn't popular I was undercutting a competition or I was too colored braless irritating in nature or I was some know-it-all big city slicker here to demean some good old boys and my fine work does that variety my sense was a source of some conjecture so they undercut me
• 12:00 - 12:30 that was my impression still compared to the guttin castration defenestration a crucifixion they offered me no great love my medical practice to free with my wisdom and services which way they go down the road that awake to this scene is fairly over-the-top
• 12:30 - 13:00 sure white southerners have historically not been kind to colored folk but the writers overdid the whole I'm sorry for any offense I may have caused bit I understand that they were going for a comedic caricature ization of the mistreatment of blacks in the Jim Crow era but Arthur would have at least been somewhat familiar with what the doctors overly apologetic behavior was alluding to granted Arthur's from the southwest and not the deep south but it's still a little odd that he's entirely unaware of the concept of southern bigotry against blacks later on Lennie summers even has
• 13:00 - 13:30 to explain the very concept to him while they're on a mission to rob a Lemoine Raider outpost this scene was a really cheesy way to show how colorblind Arthur is and how virtuous he is for it this wasn't about exploring the black experience in the south or anything else it was poorly done virtue signaling that gave players some bad white people to shoot at later here's something else to consider in 1900 about 90% of the African American population lived in the south and only about 1 percent of the total black population was employed as professionals the reason I bring this up
• 13:30 - 14:00 is because the doctor in this scene speaks of having angered the locals because he was quote undercutting the competition this is an extremely odd thing to assert though given the context most white folks in the south at the time wouldn't even give a colored barber their business let alone a colored doctor moreover bearing in mind the previous statistical figures there would have been roughly 8 million potential black clients for 90,000 black professionals not all of whom were doctors the reality is that this colored fellow being the intelligent man that he
• 14:00 - 14:30 is would have no reason to assume the risks of attempting to provide his services to the racist unwelcoming citizens of Rhodes when he had a giant tamped market of african-americans elsewhere the games writers throughout the story make it abundantly clear that it's wrong to discriminate based on race but what's interesting is that they often do so while repeatedly discriminating against the entire white southern population and by the end of the story Dutchess motley crue has practically genocided the O'Driscoll's the braithwaite's and the Grays bunch of
• 14:30 - 15:00 no-good white trash monks these drunkards Hillbillies and slavers good honest thieves like us we're bound to be moralize errs in a place like this oh you are bad this old crap huh don't you understand those bastards have changed everything that wasn't good work I took pride in my
• 15:00 - 15:30 work they took it away pissed on my leg old man some jobs thanks for saving some legacies damn you damn I still exist
• 15:30 - 16:00 [Music]
• 16:00 - 16:30 ain't got nothing we'll have a little chat with Romeo and Juliet here so what do you think about what fine folks around these parts know real nice exactly on the one side we've got the gray family Scots degenerates drunkards the local law you couldn't make this
• 16:30 - 17:00 stuff up rich is Croesus and on the other their mortal enemies the braithwaite's moonshiners hypocritical both rolling we believe in gold and in the middle of it all you got some inbred retelling of Romeo and Juliet the game also repeatedly uses instances of spoken racial bigotry as a means to justify physical violence for example when an NPC needs to be dispatched they often
• 17:00 - 17:30 make some offhand racist comment before the player is instructed to kill them [Music] greaser huh I cannot believe someone gave a greaser a job we live in strange times next we'll be hiring Negros guess
• 17:30 - 18:00 you were right only an idiot would give a gun yes we did bison will shoot you
• 18:00 - 18:30 too if you don't get what business is it here's what we another red flag for me in the game was the introduction of the character Charles Smith with whom the player is supposed to sympathize because his father was a freed slave and his mother was an Indian Charles Smith to me is a case of rock star trying to check too many victimhood boxes sure there were definitely cases of Africans massagin aiding with natives but what Red Dead Redemption 2 story will never allowed too is that many Indian tribes
• 18:30 - 19:00 held slaves themselves until after the Civil War the game insinuates through Charles backstory that all Native Americans saw Africans as their equals and that it was really only white folks who didn't you know Dutch is different most do you do with a black father an Indian mother the case my father was a colored man he
• 19:00 - 19:30 told me he lived with our people for a while number of three Monday and we were forced to move from our lands the three of us fled I was too young to really remember much all the life I've been on the run a couple years later some soldiers captured my mother took us somewhere we never saw her again we drifted around he was a very sad man and the drink out of meinhold on him around 13 I just took off on my own the
• 19:30 - 20:00 reality is that just as there was disagreement within the white American community about the place of Africans within society the same held true for Native Americans in fact to this very day many people of mixed African native ancestry are not considered true Native Americans by some tribes the second red flag with Charles was when he invites Arthur on a bison hunting trip and he has a brief monologue about how his people lived as one with the Bison even going so far as to insist that he and Arthur should kill only one and no more
• 20:00 - 20:30 shortly thereafter though they stumble upon two white men who have been killing multiple bison and leaving their corpses to rot when confronted the two men revealed that they were actually hired to do this and to blame it on the natives [Music] damnit tell us you're dead okay whoever paid to kill as many as we could and
• 20:30 - 21:00 make it look like it was Indians maybe he'll go tell his friends now what happens to poachers okay I'm gonna see if there's anything
• 21:00 - 21:30 worth taking from their camp up catch up with you later [Music] the game appears to want the player to take this scene seriously as some grave injustice and to use it to elevate the moral standing of Charles and Arthur but Arthur and Charles Rob cheat and murder
• 21:30 - 22:00 people for a living how exactly are they morally superior to these two men now I realize that Charles himself points out their gangs own hypocrisy on several occasions but to me it appears that this was a cheap mechanism by which Rockstar was attempting to have its cake and eat it too moreover the game promotes a legendary animal hunting system revolving around killing the most rare of animal species in the region not to mention that Arthur himself leaves the corpses of animals behind to rot after killing them I suppose this was due to development limitations but still the Bison hunting
• 22:00 - 22:30 mission came off as a heavy-handed virtue signal from someone who watched Dances with Wolves way too many times and never considered any other sides of the story box burning was a common tactic used by Native Americans to hunt bison that involved setting simultaneous fires on all four sides of a herd American historian Larry Schweikart recounts that some folks traveling the plains in 1804 observed entire herds charged from Indian fires another strategy employed by natives was the buffalo jump which involved lorina herd
• 22:30 - 23:00 after an Indian dressed in a buffalo skin once the herd was at full speed the man would lead the herd to a and leap to a small ledge while the Buffalo careened over the edge to their deaths both strategies led to extreme waste and inefficient use of resources survived Cartwright's quote estimates made in the 1850s suggest that Indians harvested about four hundred and fifty thousand animals a year and some think the figure was far higher than that after stripping the best meat in some useful parts the Indians left the
• 23:00 - 23:30 remainder to rot the stench permeated the Prairie for miles and many a pioneer came across acres of bones from Buffalo killed by the Indians before they moved on unquote while Europeans definitely over hunted the Bison one of the reasons the Bison are still around today is because the American government classified them as a protected species and they created reservations for them now this is not to say that Europeans didn't do anything wrong here General Sherman was particularly pragmatic and brutal in his push to subdue the natives and he encouraged policies that would
• 23:30 - 24:00 reduce the number of bison in the plains as a direct means of undermining the ability of Indians to resist Western expansion however he used the very same brutal pragmatic tactics in his decimation of the southern population during the Civil War and yet pop culture only seems to demonize him for the former not the latter the very same military force that is often praised for the destruction of the Confederacy was almost immediately turned around onto the Native American population and the Bison in the West again though some
• 24:00 - 24:30 scholars today believe that the American bison were already on a trajectory toward extinction even had the u.s. not begun expanding further west droughts had historically kept the southern plains mostly free of bison between 500 and 1300 ad and during the 19th century droughts of more than five years duration struck the Great Plains four times at roughly 20 year intervals during the same time Native Americans have begun using horses and modern firearms to hunt the Bison with increasing efficacy and the very introduction of horses to the Indian
• 24:30 - 25:00 Plains cultures most likely call sustainability problems for the Bison as millions of horses fed on the same prairie grass and drank from the same water sources as them all of this happened on top of any US Army policy in the second half of the 19th century thus the demise of the American bison probably should not be reduced to any factor and most likely warrants and more nuanced than detailed discussion and analysis moreover I don't think we learned anything from history when we produced the Indian Wars to a one-dimensional affair where and only
• 25:00 - 25:30 the Europeans are considered the aggressors the Plains Indians themselves had been fighting with each other over this region for centuries this is not a justification for the fate that befell their glorious cultures but let's be honest had they been able to kill off all the Europeans or halt their expansion they probably would have done so without mercy in a separate attempt to avoid depicting Native Americans negatively Red Dead Redemption too uses the Skinner gang during John Marsten's epilogue to replace Native American violence against settlers on the
• 25:30 - 26:00 frontier it would have been politically incorrect to depict any facet of Native American behavior negatively but since the writers probably still wanted to portray some of the savagery of the West and the frontier they just pretended there were gangs of dirty old white men running around taking scalps and burning folk alive while I'm an admirer of Plains Indian culture these people were not innocent of any wrongdoing the Cheyenne for example often captured white female settlers and used them as prostitutes one such account is of Catherine German and her sisters in 1874
• 26:00 - 26:30 her family originally from Georgia was camped in western Kansas while in transit to Colorado just moments after breaking camp the family was surprised by Indians within minutes the wagon was in flames the mother father and three older siblings Rebecca Johanna and Steven were killed in scalped Catherine and her three sisters Sofia 12 and little Julia and Addie aged 7 and 5 respectively were then carried off Catherine and her sister Sophia were repeatedly raped during their captivity both were traded back and forth from one
• 26:30 - 27:00 brave to the next with their worth being measured in horses their experience was not uncommon either yet you'll rarely hear about it or others like it in any mainstream accounting of Native American behavior here's another example of Red Dead Redemption twos bias when Arthur encounters a US Army defector who owes Leopold Straus money he's very mean and belligerent at first until he sees that the man has a Native American wife then his heart softens and the game gives you the opportunity to absolve his dead
• 27:00 - 27:30 so for some reason miscegenation is the key to Arthur's heart this scene also leads players to believe once again that Native Americans were totally fine with men from out groups taking their women as brides also interestingly for all Arthur knows this fellow could have kidnapped this woman not unlike Charles Smith's mother was kidnapped by American soldiers when he was a child the game also massages the theme of European exploitation of the environment
• 27:30 - 28:00 there's a dynamic logging site that evolves as the player progresses through the story at the outset it's full of trees and bustling with human activity by the end of the game though it's completely barren the sentiment the player is left with is how horrible exploitation was in the American frontier which in many ways it was but pop culture for the last several decades has relentlessly demonized the historical actions of Europeans in this regard while falsely promoting all indigenous peoples of the world as saintly custodians of Mother Nature and I've
• 28:00 - 28:30 grown quite tired of it the natives of Easter Island literally cut down all its trees and yet most of us know Easter Island for its amazing statues in the rich cultural history of its people not its environmental exploitation the Aborigines of Australia permanently changed much of the continents landscape by burning down forests and underbrush and yet most of us know Aborigines for their didgeridoos in boomerangs not their environmental exploitation most of the pollution in the ocean today comes from a handful of rivers and third world nations and yet it's mostly white people
• 28:30 - 29:00 who are encouraged to have fewer children to save the planet while third-world errs continue to have unprecedented amounts of babies which European technology and modern medicine have allowed to thrive Evelyn Miller a fictional writer in the game even ends up killing himself over some kind of warped sense of guilt and confusion about European ideals conflicting with the natural wonder of the great American landscape speaking of a European committing suicide because of guilt tied to his ethnic identity here's Lenny summers we're counting a story of how his father obtained his previous
• 29:00 - 29:30 slave masters watch in a way but his brother my father hated with an almighty passion he'd beat the slaves almost nightly whip him raping one night my father was getting a whoopin for the crime of being born but it's horrible bastard when his sister-in-law the Masters wife walks in now fearing for my father's life she
• 29:30 - 30:00 told her brother-in-law to stop well not only did he not stop he beat her to next date his brother the master shot him dead the whole plantation cheated the master gave my father his dad brothers watch and told him as he did so Todd will catch up with us all a year later he set
• 30:00 - 30:30 them free and hanged himself the very next night just go away I'm sorry I'm really sorry well well you're sorry yeah I heard you but I mean at one point in the game a US Army colonel is vilified for withholding vaccines from the natives sent by the federal government and once again they depict
• 30:30 - 31:00 Arthur as somehow morally solvent by making him display how upset he is about it again though Arthur at this point has killed God knows how many of his fellow citizens and for some reason he suddenly cares about Native Americans dying from smallpox Colonel Faber seems to think the natives have broken some promise they never made apparently he's punishing them by withholding vaccines sent down by the federal government true I was supposed to oversee the administration of vaccines now I hear the wagons been diverted why would he do such a thing be honest I truly don't
• 31:00 - 31:30 know they say he didn't have a very good war so maybe he's trying to start another one is that what you think I'm trying to find out and he knows I'm trying to find out he'd love to provoke me almost as much as he'd love to provoke these poor bastards meaning minute spite the fact I think he's a horse's ass he knows I think that so we're just stuck here trying to make the best of things this is the best huge decision
• 31:30 - 32:00 either you got a lazy eye or lack of respect which is it for ain't got no lazy eye no respect for the likes of you well maybe when your mother's finished mourning your father I'll keep her in black on your behalf later on in the mission the fine art of conversation the US Army is further reduced to a one-dimensional caricature of historic treaty violations with the Indians the colonel even makes comically over insults - rains fall Arthur over here's
• 32:00 - 32:30 a plot to arrest and hang the only captain who's been an ally to the natives and after this you help the guy escape while killing countless army soldiers all of whom were to assume our evil I guess because the general said some mean things to a native the game also takes some jabs at one of the greatest European inventors of all time at the outside of the side mission a bright bouncing boy Marco Dragic a proxy for the real-life Serbian American scientist Nikola Tesla demonstrates his remote-controlled boat to a potential investor in San Denis and
• 32:30 - 33:00 at one point a man resembling Thomas Edison Tesla's real-life rival heckles Dragic claiming that he's a fraud this is clearly a reference to the current wars between Edison and Tesla in which they argued over AC in DC power supplies the writers at Rockstar Games repeatedly just a Tesla's overall character and depict him as rude and egotistical as despising and looking down on his adopted American home and as a sniffily manipulator out to swindle investors and
• 33:00 - 33:30 traitors Tomic Londo great still the investors will not come just a couple of old ladies and the more the same radhaji demonstrates his radio operated boat actually took place in Madison Square Garden and was witnessed by quite a very
• 33:30 - 34:00 large crowd of spectators who were so all struck by Tesla's boat that some believed there was a monkey inside that was trained to pilot it Tesla toyed with the onlookers by instructing them to ask the boat questions like what is the cube root of 64 and then he would flash the answers with lights attached to it however the scene in red did depicts Dragic as actually believing that the boat itself truly possessed some kind of basis for life at first I figured this was rockstars way portraying Tesla's real-life prank but eventually an
• 34:00 - 34:30 observer asks Dragic if he has military applications in mind for his toy boat and he replies very seriously that the boat is the quote transmigration of the soul in real life Tesla indeed intended his technology for military use and I highly doubt that he actually thought of radio wave operation as the transmigration of the soul the writers also placed some very odd notes in the guy's laboratory suggesting that his real-life goal was to take over the world with automatons haha I guess now Tesla was certainly a very strange
• 34:30 - 35:00 fellow as our most highly creative geniuses with a tactic memories but he was probably one of the very few truth philanthropists we've ever seen especially in the robber baron age despite his inventions and ideas having revolutionized civilization and making everyone around him extremely wealthy Tesla died an extremely poor man while still dreaming of providing the world with limitless energy it's quite interesting that rockstar poked fun at him when their company literally would not exist without his contributions to the modern world and when they
• 35:00 - 35:30 themselves nickel-and-dime consumers with various microtransactions what's also odd about rockstars jabs at Tesla is that the game includes an entire mission on the invention of the electric chair and the writers all but openly declare how immoral the concept was seeing how Thomas Edison funded the electric chairs development and it used an alternating current instead of direct current method it would have been more fitting to take some jabs at Edison rather than Tesla Edison was privately against capital punishment but had been electrocuting animals publicly
• 35:30 - 36:00 using alternating current in hopes that it would tarnish the reputation of Tesla and his partner Westinghouse in any event the electric chair may arguably be immoral as may be capital punishment in the modern era however depicting the real-life inventor of the electric chair as rockstar did is not fair or accurate Alfred P Southwick the real-life dentist who came up with the idea did so after observing various lineman being killed by high voltages while working on electric street lamps these men had been
• 36:00 - 36:30 rendered unconscious and killed pretty much instantaneously the Southwick saw the potential for more humane method of execution than hanging which in some instances could take up to 30 minutes to kill an individual if the proper calculations were not made to snap their neck after falling now it's true that the first electric chair execution didn't go very well but William Kemmler convicted of murdering his wife with an axe was rendered entirely unconscious after the first passage of a thousand volts while subsequent attempts were
• 36:30 - 37:00 necessary to stop his heart and the damage done to his body was pretty gruesome the man was not conscious for any of it essentially Rockstar is making fun of Southwick and his colleagues for their arguable ignorance and deluded senses of morality with the advantage of 20/20 hindsight perhaps this is because they're against capital punishment that would be odd though since the entire game is centered around the player dispensing their own capital punishment using various means of violence sure the game often rewards the player with karma points for sparing people's lives but there are entire missions that revolve
• 37:00 - 37:30 around enforced the player to kill people in revenge it's easy to view rockstars narrative as being focused on the moral ambiguity of life but in reality the game has its own sense of justice and it's not very impartial there are times when the karma system tacitly approves violence by simply not punishing the player for it for example the player can kill Lemoine Raiders and members of the KKK typically without losing any karma now say what you want about whom you deem racist bigots and xenophobes but they all have a right to live and be left alone so long as they
• 37:30 - 38:00 do likewise moreover the van der Linde gang is honestly no better than the Lemoine Raiders both go around stealing from people they think owe them something and then they redistribute the wealth as they see fit now a while back I tweeted out a series of comments about red Dead's depiction of the KKK and I'd like to highlight here that I got some things wrong technically after Nathan Bedford Forrest called for its disbandment in 1870 the claims numbers did decline and they didn't rise again until 1915 when it was revived by William Joseph Simmons rockstar was correct and so far that the
• 38:00 - 38:30 numbers in 1899 were declining he'll the claim was practically non-existent then however rock stars depiction of the Klan as a marginal organization full of self-mutilating retards gives players the impression that Southern society at the time was becoming more progressive but this conflicts with rock stars other simultaneous narrative of a backward racist white southern population remember how Sam Houser said that he wanted to comment on the present elliptically but not literally well this
• 38:30 - 39:00 is what he's doing here and scenes like this he's using a kind of historical ellipsis to state that modern white identitarian are marginal idiots becoming increasingly irrational as a post-racial society moves on without them in any event the Klan wasn't full of stupid men and it doesn't do anyone any favors to pretend otherwise least not African Americans if the Klan were full of low IQ self-mutilating retards whom we can safely consider subhuman and thus commit violent acts upon and good conscience that wouldn't exactly reflect positively
• 39:00 - 39:30 on african-americans who were terrorized by them in general the claim is probably one of the most liberally portrayed organizations in the history of the u.s. which isn't to say that it is or ever was entirely peaceful and wholesome either the claim has blood on its hands but in truth most of us know very little about its history beyond the one-dimensional pop-culture narratives about the South for example most people have it in their heads that white Southerners were murdering thousands upon thousands of blacks every year but
• 39:30 - 40:00 between 1882 and 1968 according to the n-double-a-cp a grand total of 3,000 446 lynchings of African Americans occurred in the entire US now to be fair that other murders and mutilations committed by the klan in white southerners that are not reflected in these figures a new initiative pulling heavily from the efforts of african american scholar monroe work catalogued the total number of african-american lynchings at about five thousand between 1835 and 1964
• 40:00 - 40:30 while knowing can claim to have catalogued each and every instance of racial violence in the US during this time span these figures do give us a general idea of how much lethal vigilante justice occurred in America during this time in an attempt to account for any lynchings and racial violence not reflected by these figures let's say that white American mobs and individuals killed about 10,000 African Americans between 1835 and 1968 that's over double any official account that I'm aware of to put these figures
• 40:30 - 41:00 into perspective African Americans have killed about three hundred and twenty four thousand fellow African Americans in the last 35 years alone that's about nine thousand each year which suggests the possibility that blacks have murdered just as many blacks in a single year as did the Klan in its entire history between 1866 and 1968 now this is not a justification for the lynchings but southern violence against blacks has been exaggerated and mythologized to
• 41:00 - 41:30 such an extent that rational discussions about it are no longer possible the Klan came about after the end of the Civil War when the overwhelming majority of blacks still lived in the south and vastly outnumbered the whites there what folks truly seeking to understand the situation need to take into account is that within the span of half a decade white Southerners had all their infrastructure destroyed their economy was in shambles and millions of former slaves suddenly outnumbered them and had equal political rights that's an extreme amount of change that no one in their
• 41:30 - 42:00 right mind should expect to go smoothly moreover if you examine areas of the world that have transitioned rapidly from white leadership to black you can begin to understand a little further why southern whites reacted the way they did black Haitians literally killed all the French when they took over the colony in 1791 including the women and children the Confederates even cited this as one of their fears of a liberated black popular again though this is not an attempt to portray the clan in a positive light the
• 42:00 - 42:30 point here is to try to understand the motivations of white Southerners beyond the notion that they were just stupid irrational inbred trash speaking of which Red Dead Redemption 2 also furthers the myth that there's a high occurrence of incest in the south bring back the monarchy given half the chance progress is a dirty word in these parts unlock incest excuse me I don't want to marry my cousin Matilda I want to marry
• 42:30 - 43:00 interestingly because of frequent first
• 43:00 - 43:30 cousin marriages Pakistanis in the UK account for the majority of defective births their Jews also have neurological disorders because of their high level of endogamy and certain Indian groups suffer from high occurrences of diseases due to recessive genes moreover looking at a map showing the distribution of consanguineous marriages throughout the world it's pretty clear that white countries actually have the least prevalence of it yet it's really only the American South that is continuously portrayed as inbred
• 43:30 - 44:00 moving on though in the fictional city of San Denis modeled after New Orleans there's a eugenicist on the streets ranting about the purity of the white race and once again Arthur Morgan feels the need to virtue signal about how all races and ethnicities share the same aggregate potentialities I explained using real science why we whites are under attack and what we must do to
• 44:00 - 44:30 fight back under attack people aren't the same sir I mean white people are the same and all the other races are trying to kill us I don't want to die sir I got friends is Mexican friends is Indian don't blacks Irish Italians good and bad no I've no good white people are bad white people
• 44:30 - 45:00 don't worry you serve our meal food how can you possibly believe in equality I've never heard such nonsense all my natural-born days this man believes people are equal speak for yourself sir speak for yourself I'm sorry you just call me a fool a fool
• 45:00 - 45:30 a fool [Music] the scene is obviously Rockstar having a go at modern white identity politics now while some of the basic sentiments conveyed here are based on historical fact the man's behavior is an insincere parody I'm assuming this character is based off of Madison Grant who wrote a book in 1916 called the passing of the
• 45:30 - 46:00 great race in it he articulates concerns over miscegenation emigration and declining white birth rates but nowhere does he express worry that the other races are quote trying to kill us his concern was that unending emigration from non Nordic countries would inevitably lead to an extinction of America's Founding anglo-saxon stock in a fractured political landscape what I find terribly amusing about all this is that while the Atlantic writes articles about how crazy Madison grant was the
• 46:00 - 46:30 Huffington Post is celebrating white replacement with a tongue-in-cheek video about how terrible White's are going to be treated in 2044 when they're an absolute minority now think what you want about all that but the consensus in the early 1900's was that Northern Europeans despite having different cultures and languages were more or less a genetic stock of people it's true that in the early 1900's franz boas was flushing out his own brand of anthropology but in 1899 both the public and the scientific community overwhelmingly viewed race as a very
• 46:30 - 47:00 legitimate concept it would take franz bose and his colleagues a very long time in a lot of scientific fraud to convince the public otherwise the reality is that this gentleman should not have been presented as some two-bit nutcase on a side street views very similar to his own were widely printed in major journals newspapers and other publications Rockstar purposefully depicts him as a weak man forgotten by a progressive society that was moving on because Rockstar wants to combat the
• 47:00 - 47:30 revival of racial science today remember Dan Hauser wants to speak to the present elliptically but not literally given the historical context however it really is odd that a murdering bank robbing petty criminal like Arthur Morgan would feel so strongly about what this fellow was saying perhaps this is because Rockstar wanted to convey how morally bankrupt America was by portraying a gang of Outlaws as its moral superior that explain a lot of things that Dutch vanderlin utters throughout the game hey
• 47:30 - 48:00 Bill you were a sharpshooter in the cavalry weren't you what when we get there maybe you could help with the suppression fire I never said I was no sharpshooter that's right what was it the nation's most loyal latrine digger wasn't that I thought and I fought well so you always tell us tell me something you could do with learning them Indians were savages plus math there boy watch it only type of savage in these
• 48:00 - 48:30 parts a moonshine swill and pompous inbred local Dutch I saw things out I don't doubt you saw things bill but your tiny little mine was too small to comprehend what you saw what you saw was people who lost everything to savagery savagery of peasants failures come from Europe to reap some awful vengeance on God's last creation without romance we are nothing but monkeys so the
• 48:30 - 49:00 small-minded scientists keep telling us the thing is Dutch is little more than a criminal opportunist who blames Society for his own shortcomings as an individual man now it's true that as the story unfolds Arthur begins to question Dutchess morality and the writers definitely begin to depict Dutch any more negative light for example it's pretty clear that Dutchess using the plight of Native Americans for his own ends initially I was tempted to view this as an unequivocal vilification of
• 49:00 - 49:30 him and perhaps a wink and a nod to Malcolm X's accusation that white liberals typically use minorities as a political football but by the end of the game the writers appear to blame the corruption of Dutchess values on Micah the gangs blond-haired blue-eyed Aryan who constantly fails that the women in the camp who insinuate to Lenny that he shot a lot of blacks and who eventually betrays the group to law enforcement now don't get me wrong Mike it was a creepy piece of [ __ ] but that doesn't mean his character wasn't serving another purpose in this regard the vilification of the
• 49:30 - 50:00 Pinkertons is notable this is my offer mr. Morgan bring in van der Lyn you have my word you won't sweat well I ain't gonna swing anyways agent Milton you see I haven't done anything wrong aside from not played the games - your rules spare me the philosophy lesson I've already heard it from Mac calendar Mac calendar he was pretty shot up by the time I got
• 50:00 - 50:30 to him so really it was more of a mercy killing slow but mercy you enjoy being a rich man's toy dear I enjoy society flaws and all you people venerate savagery and you will die savagely all of you know we're all gonna die some of us sooner than others good day mr. Morgan
• 50:30 - 51:00 enjoy your fishing kid while you still can this is not to say that the Pinkertons did no wrong or that the robber barons were without sin the Pinkertons often busted up unions and worker demonstrations while the robber barons monopolized the free market but it's one thing to discuss the shortcomings of law
• 51:00 - 51:30 enforcement and market monopolies and it's another to portray a gang of communists to criminal out walls as their moral superior the game also demonizes the father of Arthur's love interest to marry Linton because he viewed Arthur as a reject unfit for his daughter the story tries to justify this by making the father and family turn into degenerates themselves thereby promoting the idea that life is entirely a crapshoot in random that Mary's family was really no better than Arthur and that her father had no right to judge him or to try to influence Mary's
• 51:30 - 52:00 marital decisions now in European societies a woman should definitely have the final say in whom she marries but it's a father's duty to impart in his daughter a set of values and morals that will enable her to choose a good husband Arthur Morgan was a common thug and Mary's father had every right to be wary of his daughter's infatuation with him to give credit where credit is due however Mary was actually raised pretty well by her father and so far that while she was attracted to Arthur's bad-boy personality and chiseled jawline she
• 52:00 - 52:30 refrained from marrying him even after becoming infatuated with him a second time later in life she resisted his allure once more and saw him for what he was but I think the writers did this to gain sympathy for Arthur rather than to celebrate a woman making the right long-term decision because of her father's influence in fact the writers try very hard to get the audience to feel sympathy for Arthur and several other members of the gang save for Micah bill Pierson and Kieran while Arthur is constantly making fun of antagonizing or berating the former
• 52:30 - 53:00 individuals he always seems to be praising Lenny Charles and Xavier I do not wish to hear about what you got up to in the Navy mr. Pierce we were stranded at sea 50 days and you unfortunately survived keeps you saying it does it seems we've done a treat on you give me a drink or something your
• 53:00 - 53:30 own damn drink in our absence mrs. Adler here has been looking after things for mercy now we're all fishing together how do you know I'm just looking for a good place to drown you keep saying that but I don't kill you so we are more than
• 53:30 - 54:00 even on that front come on you don't mean that you better believe me the rivers around here famous for the smallmouth bass fell I met show me a couple spots you want to join me I can't fish with you you're far too good come on come on eight join me show you a couple of my tricks he knows people you're gonna start seeing things change
• 54:00 - 54:30 okay hey I always enjoy round with you kid you know hey you two any time now to be fair the attempt to portray anyone in the gang as a victim came off really odd Arthur continuously speaks of the fact that civilization is encroaching on their way of life and that society doesn't want people like them anymore but when exactly did society want people
• 54:30 - 55:00 like the vanderlin gang running around sure occasionally the story alludes to how they robbed from the rich and give to the poor and a cringy attempt to appear as virtuous Robin Hood types but honestly I felt far more sympathy for the folks they were robbing from and killing than I did for them all I could ever think about were the coal miners the farmers the store clerks and all the other American working folks who had their own hardships to deal with but who never resorted to criminal enterprise to solve them by the end of the game I really didn't like anybody in the vanderlin gang I really did appreciate
• 55:00 - 55:30 the epilogue and so far that it was pleasant to watch John Marston become a responsible father and I also enjoyed Abigail's sense of satisfaction when she was able to build her family a proper nest the thing is instead of working hard to pay off his debt John uses the money from his gangs robbery and Blackwater to buy out his range from the bank well I'm not exactly a big fan of how banks operate or how they've engaged in usury this doesn't exactly justify John Marsten's behavior while other men in the game literally died as they tried to
• 55:30 - 56:00 live honestly John Marston got ahead in life by stealing in the end he was just as big of a parasite as the slightly well-to-do folk he in Dutch often resented and everything John got in the end was because other people suffered the whole presentation of Abigail and John's Redemption is one that suggests to people that you can just go around whoring and robbing your whole life and still fix things in the end and if you can't then well it's because civil society is cruel and won't let you start over with your new wholesome life of family values with all that money you
• 56:00 - 56:30 stole in fact the game regularly obfuscates morality by behaving as if one act is as meaningless as the next take for example how Sadie Adler and John Marston discussed the ambiguity of bounty hunting we'll take $200 from sheriff who might be crooked himself to go get a bounty but we won't take $2,000 from an outlaw just to let him go if that kind of offer is tempting to you then go right ahead but not when you're on one of my jobs I
• 56:30 - 57:00 never said I was tempted by it I just said it was an odd thing how we take money from one but not the other everyone got to choose what their loyalty sales state if a bounty hunter wants to last the loyalties got to be to the one that's issuing the bounties plain and simple I got a reputation on this world so everyone with the price on their head deserves you sure no I don't
• 57:00 - 57:30 know usually if I got into who deserve what second gets every poster if the price is high enough you got to trust there's a reason they said it perhaps it's an odd thing to John because at his core he's a man with no sense of moral responsibility to society at large the
• 57:30 - 58:00 fact that he's confused about this at all is really quite telling and ironically gives some credit to the concerns of the eugenics movement John Marsten's father was a drunk who was blinded in a bar fight and his mother was a prostitute and Jack their son despite everyone's best efforts didn't escape the cycle on his family either that's three generations of social delinquency so in the end Arthur died trying to save John so that John could save his son who ultimately became just like his father
• 58:00 - 58:30 now I'm not a proponent of eugenics myself but I don't deny the validity of its underpinnings and I find it comical that Rockstar story makes a concerted effort to condemn it while their characters behavior often supports it in any event one of the reasons that Western society has thrived until now is because we've had strong religious and cultural institutions that put pressure on these types of folks who were predisposed to criminality and interestingly Rockstar repeatedly trashes Christianity have I been bad again mr. Morgan I'm
• 58:30 - 59:00 sorry I was different you like the first to put his hand in the collection box you won't be the last rest a little easier knowing Church has been taking more than they need off poor folks since time began what do you want
• 59:00 - 59:30 [Music] I'm not quite sure I'm not coping very well with life my friend he won't send me the message he won't I've been here for four years now to be
• 59:30 - 60:00 fair the church is painted in a somewhat positive light at times but it's conspicuously only when a monk asks Arthur to help him free some Latino slaves from an underground market or when the church is represented by a black woman so for me rock star's view of Christianity varied based on whatever narrative they wanted to prioritize at the moment so is there an overarching message within red dead redemption to most people will say no in that I'm a total Nazi nutjob for having made this video but more often than not the game
• 60:00 - 60:30 is highly partial to a critical perspective of America and of the Europeans who built it while it generally refrains from criticizing or satirizing the historical involvement of non-whites in a negative way that said the narratives in the game stack up on top of each other in a very particular way Dutch vanderlin is initially praised for his ideals but later condemned for his betrayal of them on one hand this could be Rockstar showcasing how the behavior of white liberals self-delusional and sometimes disingenuous behavior can add
• 60:30 - 61:00 up to a net negative for the minorities and outcasts they claimed a champion on the other hand Dutch Arthur and John never truly escaped their past just as rains fall said men never really change but rather become more of who they are through its satirical commentaries and expose 's Red Dead Redemption too says as much about white America that it was built on a rotten foundation and that there's probably no redemption for it even within the tiniest nooks and crannies of the game there are often details that tend to support this conclusion the game also without much
• 61:00 - 61:30 question promotes moral particularism and nihilism but interestingly only up until matters of race and sex enter the equation Sadie Adler once told John Marston that we all have to decide what were loyal to in the end suggesting that it really doesn't matter what were loyal to it just matters that were loyal to something but what if some of us decide that were loyal to race ethnicity and traditionalism would Rockstar ever portray such behavior as being morally inconsequential