The desire to translate events like Qaddafi’s death into video games is an attempt to simplify complex issues into patterns that we can recognize and make sense of, with predictable rules, defeatable “bad guys,” and the hopeful celebration of an “epic win.”
Rachel Wagner
Rachel Wagner is Associate Professor of Religion and Culture at Ithaca College. Her latest book, Cowboy Apocalypse: Religion and the Myth of the Vigilante Messiah (NYU, 2025) charts the myth of the “good guy with a gun,” connecting America’s frontier beginnings with visions of the end of the world.
