Bullets For All
27 March 2026
Some nights when I’m feeling aimless and wistful for my youth, I fire up a trusty old computer game—Halo Custom Edition. A little background: Gearbox Software ported Halo Combat Evolved to Windows and Mac in 2003, a couple of years following its initial heyday on the original Xbox. While the PC port retained much of what made that original console release so groundbreaking, Gearbox’s effort was criticized for falling short on a technical level to the point that it would eventually cast a shadow over future attempts to bring a definitive version of Halo to PC. This all flew completely over the head of an adolescent version of myself who, upon playing a boxed copy at a classmate’s sleepover in between making comedic PowerPoints, would go on to discover this customizable multiplayer-centric follow up and how to properly install it without the need to rely on someone else's activation code.
Halo Custom Edition, as the title suggests, was an updated version of Halo PC that allowed enterprising players to create and host custom content for several thousands of others to enjoy. The potential modifications ranged from map environments, to equippable weapons, to the entire look and feel of the game itself. These mods immersed people inside fully three-dimensional digital worlds unlike anything found in Halo Combat Evolved; the greatest efforts would surpass map environments from the original game in the minds of those who got to experience them. Coming bundled with minor enhancements sorely lacking from the original Halo PC release, Custom Edition would—more or less—become the preferred multiplayer version of Halo on personal computers for several years. Halo 2 also experienced a delayed release on Windows in 2007 with its own set of issues, but outside of this, no other official version of Halo came to PC until 343 Studios brought the similarly technically-plagued Master Chief Collection to Steam in late 2019.
While it stood on its own for several years, the Halo PC community was always an afterthought among the wider gaming culture at the peak of Halo mania, seemingly by design. By the time Halo 3 came out on the Xbox 360 in 2008, I had even made what felt like a complete, permanent switch away from that dusty old game from a bygone era. Time marches forever on, but it sure felt like innovation happened a lot quicker back then. As we now stare down the latest oncoming attempt to convince video game players to buy a repackaged version of something they already own in Halo: Campaign Evolved—yes, that’s really what they’re calling it—Custom Edition is poised to get buried further beneath the rubble of the eternal cycle of video game releases, remasters, remakes and rehashes. That’s a shame, because I think it’s still an enjoyable game to fill some of those quieter moments of life, at least, under the right circumstances.
The day is October 27th, 2025, a Monday. The Department of Homeland Security shares a Halo themed ICE recruitment ad across multiple social media services, presumably in an attempt to piggyback on the brief resurgence Microsoft’s A-list gaming franchise is experiencing upon the announcement of an upcoming release. The vertical slice of video game imagery mixed with ill-conceived white nationalist propaganda depicts Master Chief—the main protagonist of the series—in the driver’s seat of a Warthog, a four-wheeled ground assault vehicle sporting a rotating gunner station on its rear. As the allied marine gunner stares ahead at whatever exists out of frame, Chief appears to be admiring the distant scenery of the expansive Halo ring off to the side, surely knowing what must be done. A thick sheen of chromatic aberration covers the entire foreground, evoking a certain kind of nostalgia one might hold for a near-faded memory. White text surrounded by a faint outline hovers just above the scene, simply stating:
DESTROY THE FLOOD
JOIN.ICE.GOV
That afternoon, I catch a glimpse of this social media blast from the federal government in one of the usual places we go. There is considerable backlash from those who view this as a desperate ploy to twist people’s fond memories of a video game for a political purpose. I see accounts lurking elsewhere in the replies who are completely on board with the post, more than I would’ve expected, but I tell myself these must be fringe zealots or inauthentic users. The experience leaves me feeling a combination of disgust and anguish before I scroll to the next item and forget all about it a few minutes later.
Later that night, surely beyond a reasonable hour, I find myself playing Halo Custom Edition again. The game type is Race, the map Sidewinder, the server mostly full at around fourteen or fifteen players. In Halo's Race mode, you drive as many laps as you can around the map instead of trying to rack up the most kills. While this specific mode has become one of my favorite ways to play, Sidewinder is not exactly the platonic ideal of a Race map. The sharp, jagged inclines and awkward placement of checkpoints make the prospect of building up vehicular speed range between frustrating and impossible, especially as opposing Warthogs cross between the central pathway to shoot you down.
When you play one of these antiquated server-based online multiplayer games, you tend to run into the same players on a consistent basis. This kind of game isn't often greeted by new faces, especially when it's not available on digital storefronts and requires a few hoops to jump through before getting started. The vast majority of people looking to play Halo on PC these days are just going to hop on the Master Chief Collection. People who played Halo Custom Edition in the aughts might not have a reason to return or may have completely forgotten about this version, but every so often, one of them pops back in. I was one of those players, so I feel a sort of kinship with those who share this experience.
As the Sidewinder race starts to progress and it appears there won't be enough votes to skip to a new map, I settle in to take a break and shitpost defiantly—a socially acceptable activity, even in a game with such limited player counts per server. A player logs in with a name I don’t recognize. He comments about how he’s surprised at the number of people who still play here, a familiar refrain. We reminisce about old times. He’s curious why there are so many Spanish speakers on here these days. I start to list out a few reasons I believe that may be the case, namely how the low system requirements and long-since defeated copy protection make this a compelling option for people around the world who may not have access to greater resources.
I took Spanish classes for a handful of semesters in the heady days of my youth, but I’m in no way fluent or remotely conversational. That said, I can read these base level discussions found in the chat window of an online video game and get a fairly solid grasp of the overall message and tone. I understand much of what these players are saying, and I've even had some pleasant conversations with the aid of a translation program. One particularly kind fellow I sparred with a while back was curious about my life as an American, and upon listening to me timidly ramble about mundane life obligations in a language I’m not comfortable with, asked me if I was happy. A piece of me still exists within the momentary lead up to the answer I’d eventually tap out to him from the translator window on my second monitor.
After some banter and spirited discussion in the chat, the Sidewinder race begins to wrap up. The mysterious new-old player thanks us and wishes us well, but seconds before signing off for good, he drops a couple of quick lines:
“By the way, I think it’s great that Trump is making Halo cool again"
"This game will have a huge resurgence with the MAGA crowd. Hopefully you guys are on board too”
It's important to understand that the roots of the modern right-wing movement lie in online video game culture. Gamergate—a mid 2010's-era harassment campaign weakly disguised as an attempt to hold female video game journalists accountable—is now considered by many to be not only the rise of the Alt-Right movement, but also a turning point for our mass online social environment in the direction of outrage, misinformation and continuous discourse. I can tell you from firsthand experience that the culture found within mainstream online gaming spaces has traditionally skewed male and was always replete with vulgarity and general disregard for concepts such as social justice or humanism. Games developed for female audiences were mostly seen as an afterthought for decades, furthering this already exacerbated gender gap over time and cementing the perceived sensibilities of video game enthusiasts for a generation.
The nascent yet quickly ascendant Alt-Right would soon energize the entire right-wing base in the United States to launch a joke candidate into the White House over a uniquely vulnerable opponent, all while supercharging a decades-long plan to warp American society further towards techno-feudalism, white supremacy and religious authoritarianism. The movement itself may not have explicitly been a boys' club, but many of its central policy concerns such as workplace equality initiatives, inceldom and the physical appearance of female characters in popular media surely originated from a masculine, heteronormative perspective. Today, the Alt-Right is just the right. Donald Trump is well into his second non-consecutive term as President and many clout chasers who waited in the wings for their extreme Alt-Right-adjacent ideas to be mainstreamed now occupy governmental roles across all branches. The rights of women and various minority groups have long since been stripped and are set to be further infringed upon, among countless other societal rollbacks put into motion by this administration. Those who attempt to resist will be met with force in the streets.
When fired from a certain gun, a bullet can pierce more than flesh and bone. It has the power to shatter preconceived notions, defense mechanisms, the levels of irony and detachment we drape ourselves in. Violence is the ultimate equalizer, the single most effective one-on-one debate tactic. You might not be able to change somebody's mind within this siloed off information ecosystem we all exist under, but you can absolutely turn it off.
On January 7th, 2026, a masked ICE agent shot and killed an unarmed woman in Minneapolis who was trying to escape in her vehicle. Her neighbors surrounded the nearby cadre of ICE agents, demanding accountability for the cold-blooded murder they just witnessed at the hands of an, at the time, unidentified operator. Although several phone-recorded and bodily-mounted camera angles exist, including bodycam footage of the alleged killer using a misogynistic slur following the incident, the communal documenting of this event not only failed to protect Renee Good's life but also did nothing to slow the creep of this modern day Gestapo through the streets of her city. Days later, surrounded by phone wielding protesters and masked thugs alike, Minneapolis resident Alex Pretti was wrestled to the ground and shot dead by federal agents after attempting to shield a defenseless woman. In the wake of this atrocity, an unidentified agent caught on video had this to say:
"It's like Call of Duty! So cool, huh?"
For all its faults, the American left—in whichever manner you wish to conceive of this nearly shapeless concept—has been modestly successful at developing effective resistance tactics in the face of injustice and onslaught carried out by an increasingly authoritarian state. Protest movements not only help strengthen solidarity among local communities, but also act as incubators for effective messaging and sloganeering. "Abolish ICE" fits concisely into a digestible hashtag for online promotion and is neither more or less than what needs to be said about an unaccountable, violent, government-sanctioned goon squad that terrorizes supposed Democrat cities for the benefit of the Executive Branch's oppressive project. It's a nice thought, a worthy goal to strive for, but much like "No Blood For Oil", "My Body, My Choice", "Defund The Police" and "Black Lives Matter", these words cannot stop bullets.
I admire people who stand up for what is right when faced with impossible circumstances. The tides of history are not turned by great men as some would have you believe, but rather the torrent of righteous individuals across vast backgrounds who struggle for change through their combined efforts. There have been countless unsung American heroes who put their livelihoods on the line to advocate for the targets of repression. Despite this bloody saga, protesters in Minnesota showed the rest of us that it's possible to break ICE, if only temporarily, through sustained community organizing.
Unfortunately, it's becoming increasingly clear that nonviolent direct action such as this cannot be an effective long-term method for mass political upheaval in the face of this overwhelmingly anti-human force. While pockets of organized resistance will pop up elsewhere, Minneapolis exists as a unique case within in a largely atomized society. ICE has a level of funding comparable to the defense budgets of first world countries and is being deployed across the country to carry out further deportations of undocumented immigrants. ICE agents have arrived at major American airports to nominally assist with security detail as the partial government shutdown has left thousands of TSA workers without pay. Speculation is beginning to mount that ICE agents will swarm polling stations in key districts as experts project a Democratic landslide in this year's primary elections. Many of these locations will not be equipped to handle this presence, and it's hard not to fear the worst.
ICE agents have a fundamental, systemic lack of training that would make the average American policeman blush. What they lack in preparedness, they make up for in technological advantages. They use facial recognition apps to populate a database of individuals they encounter in public. According to reporting by Ken Klippenstein, the Department of Homeland Security conducts online surveillance operations on US citizens who organize anti-ICE protests. I fear I am risking more than I know by putting these words on the internet, as the DHS has recently displayed a proclivity to subpoena online platforms for information about private individuals who criticize their actions.
These agents conceal their identities in public for fear of retribution because they know what they're doing is wrong. They abduct people, force them into unmarked vehicles and lock them away in concentration camps, separating families and causing untold human suffering. The justify their brutality by using made-up lines that a bunch of dead people drew on a map. They remain unaccountable for their violent crimes and, as things heat up both metaphorically and meteorologically, are set to expand these activities to a city near you. They are the foot soldiers for a transformative project of unaccountable, dictatorial governance in the United States.
All this has been to say I'm not surprised the Afghanistan war-era video game franchise that valorizes militarism and celebrates the destruction of a monolithic alien outgroup was used as propaganda material for this ideological project; it was predestined. Tactics utilized in America's Middle East forever wars have come home to roost. Civilians are now viewed as targets by armed individuals under the purview of the state, and the powerless will be stripped of their rights at a moment's notice. Presidential memorandum NSPM-7, a dangerously vague proclamation enabling American citizens to be labeled as terrorists, appears to already be in motion as nineteen people were successfully labeled as Antifa members in a courtroom and convicted of various levels of crime in relation to an accidental shooting of a police officer at a July 2024 protest outside of an ICE facility in Alvarado, TX.
Those currently in power seem to harbor nostalgia for a time when most people looked the other way from ongoing corruption, war profiteering and elite criminality, in the same way that rank and file Republicans might look to a romanticized white-picket-fence version of the 1950s with a twinkle in their eye, or, to the point, how people from my generation might reminisce about a beloved piece of media from our youth. A world dictated by the whims of the nostalgic is doomed to lie in stasis at best; progress is antithetical to their entire concept of reality. Rose-tinted glasses definitionally cannot provide a clear view of the past, or the present.
I don't believe there is anything wrong with indulging in surface-level nostalgia and I'm not here to argue that the concept itself is inherently fascist. It wouldn't be healthy to live in the past for the rest of your life, but I think it's equally unhealthy to live without some capacity for hindsight. The issue we run up against is that fascists who use nostalgia as a cynical onboarding tool have identified a simple truth that too often gets lost in the hustle and bustle of consumer culture: old things can still be good, sometimes better than their modern equivalents. I agree with this perspective, I'd even go as far as to say it's a core part of my identity, which might lead me to question and second-guess myself. Digging a bit deeper though, we come to understand that fascist propaganda often relies on aesthetics over materiality. There is a significant difference between a picture of an old school gaming setup emblazoned with the caption "look what they took from us" and a real-life hobbyist who frequently chooses to play computer games on a thirty-year-old CRT display instead of a widescreen monitor he paid over two hundred dollars for. People who have fully lost themselves inside this neo-reactionary movement don't value human passions beyond their use as a cudgel against their enemies, the Halo-themed ICE recruitment ad makes this abundantly obvious.
At this juncture, it's impossible to predict how all this will end. We passed every off-ramp to sanity and compromise so long ago I can't even remember what they looked like, and now we're careening straight through the warning signs into a dark, cavernous pit. We all might actually be stuck on this deadly roller-coaster ride despite what we thought were our best efforts to avoid such a fate. Still, perhaps there remains a version of freedom in acknowledging what we can and cannot control in this life.
I plan to attend my local No Kings protest this weekend, for what it's worth. When the time comes, I'll cast my ballot in support of my preferred outcomes. I'm going to donate more of my unneeded clothing and personal belongings to a local immigrant-focused charity organization in the near future. It may even be possible that the act of publishing my views on the internet here and now matters in some unquantifiable way. And then, some other night when I'm staying up past my bedtime and sitting at my desk, I might log back into Halo Custom Edition, play a few rounds and clumsily try to peck out something approaching intelligible Spanish in the chat. After all, I'm just one guy. I could never bear the weight of the entire world on my shoulders.
There's no point in letting this moment steal our joy or narrow our horizons. The xenophobes are wrong on so many levels, not the least of which is their willful blindness toward the value discovered in other cultures. Some of the most impactful relationships I've made over the internet were with people in other countries. I even made time to visit online friends while I was in Portugal earlier this month, and I would do it again in a heartbeat. Individuals who go through life without being exposed to anything beyond a homogenized social environment are the problem, not the immigrants.
We cannot let this cultural backslide whittle away our belief in the innate goodness of human beings. I still believe that most people, if given the choice, would pursue a life filled with what is meaningful to them, secure in the knowledge of others who share that experience. Moneyed interests would have us believe we are each others enemies. So far, that seems to be working out for them. I hope I live to see a day when it isn't the case anymore.