Tore Olson

I've spent a lot of time looking at the Red Dead Redemption video games, and in Red Dead 2, Arthur Morgan, the protagonist, the minimum number of people that he kills during his adventure is somewhere around 900.

That is an absolutely bizarre overinflation of violence that took place.

I mean, there were outlaws who had committed homicide frequently, but

There's only a handful of outlaws that even kill the dozen people, right?

So like, you know, looking at someone with hundreds of, I mean, it's just completely bizarre.

Nevertheless, right, there are these famous outlaws.

I mean, I think Jesse James is a sort of classic example.

But what gets lost in the story of Jesse James is that his bloodshed, his fighting, his bank robberies, they had a lot to do with politics.

He is really a leftover from the Civil War rather than this sort of Western antihero.

You joked about him, you know, about the villains wearing black.

Well, the James gang would actually sometimes wear all white because they wore the garb of the Ku Klux Klan.

Right.

They would wear robes to signify their allegiance to southern democratic politics because they're these leftovers from the Civil War.

Right.

They've been fighting in Missouri against Republican Union oriented U.S.

forces.

Right.

So, you know, politics infuses all of this.

Usually it's Democrats shooting at Republicans and Republicans shooting at Democrats.

I mean, this is what is largely true of the outlaws of the West.