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Wolverines!

Yep, once their server stops being attacked, the United States of Earth's new online game 2011: Obama's Coup Fails will be going gangbusters among players like DarthMal, FirstInfantryUnit, and EnemyWithin, all of whom quite evidently have too much time on their hands.

[DarthMal has, at last check, assembled a Patriot Army of over 7,000,000 loyal supporters.]


The game is really a quite capitalist enterprise aimed at bilking survival fantasy and gaming addicts out of their money ala World of Warcraft. You can play for free, but you cannot really get ahead until you start spending money.

[David Corn, writing for Mother Jones, notes that despite the Obama coup and Glenn Beck's death of an aspirin overdose in a FEMA relocation camp, the notion that [Ron] Paul can become president may be the most far-fetched fantasy of their entire enterprise.]

And, I'd argue, the money that these guys are spending on the game won't be going to GOPAC or to stockpile ammunition.

So far the reaction to this all is mild: HuffPo is bemused rather than outraged, and--ironically--Alex Jones of Prison Planet is outraged that the likes of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Michelle Malkin [whom he sees as government shills] are being portrayed as Patriots.

Just goes to show, I guess, that even the rightwing fringe has a righterwing fringe, which has a lunaticrighterwing fringe.

Unsurprisingly, there are those who don't get the joke. At Pam's House Blend they are already invoking David Niewert's much-overblown eliminationism meme to link it to the militia movement, and are drawing comments like this:

Don't be surprised when some of these badly named 'patriots' who are all actually the most loathsome of traitors to the Constitution decide to use this for a roadmap for violence in 10 or 11.


I am sure that it is only a matter of time before more of the blogosphere gets up in arms [oops, was that a military metaphor?] about Obama 2011, and starts demanding that everyone denounce it.

Which will in turn drive more and more folks to check it out and inevitably send more and more dollars into the coffers of the United States of Earth.

If you play this game, be advised, there are a lot better, more interesting games out there.

If you denounce this game, be advised that you lack any real sense of perspective.

Think of it this way: Saturday Night Live once pointed out that the US military was probably not that interested in recruiting young men who spent their time as boys playing with GI Joe dolls instead of going out there and kicking the shit out of other kids on the playground.

The same is undoubtedly true about the risk factors associated with potential militia recruits playing an online game.

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