Quote:
Originally Posted by darrianation
I really shouldn't get into this one but who do you think these people are?
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It isn't a question of whether they have it coming or not, it's a question of whether a war should be used for entertainment.
I first stared thinking about this when the TV show 'Cops' was big. I watched it a few times and I got my kicks from it like everybody else, but I started thinking about what was going on in that show. Here's my take on Cops (then I'll relate it to this):
Cops pretends to be info-tainment, teaching us about police activity and the like. Perhaps it is in a way, but mostly cops is about watching a drunk fat guy in a stained t-shirt running barefoot down the street from the sheriff.
OR to put it another way, Cops is about watching a guy whose already got a screwed-up wreck of a life and laughing as (or at least being entertained as) he finally hits rock bottom.
Now I'm not saying this guy doesn't have it coming, that it isn't his fault he's in this mess. I'm saying that even though he brought it on himself and he probably deserves it, I don't need to use his wrecked life for my entertainment.
I'm sure the reader can see how this connects with war footage. I'm not making a case for or against war, I'm making a case against trivializing horror for entertainment - and low grade entertainment at that.
One of the consequences of the internet -good or bad - is our new ability to see just about anything. We can watch war footage, we can get porn, we can watch anything right now, without hardly a minute to think about it. There is no middleman to ask whether we should.
I'm not in favor of a middleman, a big brother standing around telling me what I should or should not do but I am in favor of a responsible, thoughtful citizen who considers his actions.
Just because I can watch live footage of some guy raping a 10 year old (actual video widely available last week) does not mean that I should and as a free citizen I have to make that decision myself. Further, watching something like that and then claiming I'm only doing it so I can be reminded of how evil some other people are is a damn lie.
Similarly, although perhaps not as grotesque, I don't have any need to see an Apache helicopter kill insurgents or anyone else. If I were a soldier getting training, or a journalist or even attending a lecture or preparing a paper, that would be different - then I would have a reason greater than getting my kicks. But I don't, and neither do most of us.
Watching video of people being killed for the purpose of getting a cheap thrill is a bullshit way of getting your jollies and making some specious claim about the value of 'witnessing how real the world is' is a damn lie. War is serious, our soldiers aren't fighting and dieing so somebody can sit on a couch and relieve his boredom between bong hits.
Darrianation, I hope I have made clear what I was getting at by my earlier posts - not a defense of the enemy, but rather a call to take serious things seriously and to consider one's own actions.