People have made pinball machines themed after plenty of properties over the years, from Terminator 2 to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Pinball is a cultural staple, and odds are if you’ve never played it before, you’ve at least been in the room with a machine at your favorite local bar or restaurant. But because of its cultural ubiquity, there are plenty of cursed pinball machines out there, and that now includes one based on the January 6, 2021 insurrection on the United States Capitol Building in Washington D.C.
The monstrosity in question is currently on display at the Conservative Political Action Conference taking place in National Harbor, Maryland. If you’re unfamiliar with the event, it’s exactly what it sounds like: a gathering place for American conservatives and sometimes foreign correspondents to talk policy, complain about woke cancel culture, and apparently also stand with Israel in its genocide of Palestinian people. But on the showfloor, there’s also merch and a pinball table based on a violent attempt to overturn a national election that resulted in the deaths of nine people.
Images and videos of the machine are circulating on social media, and it appears to be from Freedom Dawg Games, which typically creates free, virtual Pinball games. It seems the company is advertising those services with the real Insurrection Pinball machine. As illustrated in the video, playing the game means also seeing “over 200” recordings from January 6.
Funnily enough, the machine itself uses the term “insurrection” as Republlican lawmakers and candidates have been trying to downplay that label. Maybe because they’re in an insulated space, everyone just lets the facade drop? But those on the outside are reacting with astonishment at the continued denial of ex-president Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss.
Pinball has been around long enough that it has been used for political demonstration on both sides of the political spectrum, including a 2013 art piece meant as a comment on a Republican dumbfuck Todd Akin’s claims that a person’s body has a way to shut down conception if they’re a victim of “legitimate rape.”