Category Archives: news

Stars Earn Stripes (Is a Terrible, Awful, Idiotic Abomination)

Posted on August 3, 2012 by | 4 comments

When I was watching the bad acid trip that the Brits were passing off as the opening ceremonies of the Olympics, I saw an ad for an upcoming NBC reality show called Stars Earn Stripes.

For those of you too lazy to watch the YouTube video, Stars Earn Stripes is essentially a collection of B and C level celebrities (and Terry Crews) who are put through elements of basic military training and then tasked with carrying out “missions” (i.e. blow stuff up).

Naturally, the reaction of both myself and everyone I was watching with went a little something like this:

Ironically, this is one of the “missions”…

Despite the ad touting that “In the end, it’s all about understanding one thing… true bravery… It’s about honoring our veterans and our law enforcement officers…”.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that a show where a bunch of people are given a couple months of watered down military training in an environment more or less free from danger and label it as comparable to the pain, sacrifices, stress, and general hardship of the actual military is about as far as you can get from honoring them. One of the guys I saw the commercial with had been in the military himself, stationed in Afghanistan, and he asserted that the idea of the show was offensive (as did everyone else in the room). Indeed, restoring some faith in humanity, the reaction of pretty much everyone to Stars Earn Stripes has been more or less this:

Marking the first time comments on a YouTube Video have been mostly intelligent and well-reasoned…

Let’s break it down here. Stars Earn Stripes is presenting:

  1. A Sanitized View of War
  2. A Glamorized View of War
  3. An Insult to Anyone who is or ever has Been Involved in War

First, let’s address the sanitizing or “white-washing”, as some critics are calling it. Stars Earn Stripes still has ten days to air, however, I think it’s safe to say that the actual decisions and consequences on the show are nothing like what they are in reality. The ad boasts that they will use “Real Explosions” and “Live Ammo”, as if this somehow adds weight or danger to the show. You what other shows have been using live ammo and real explosions for years?

Mythbusters

Deadliest Warrior (Sorry I couldn’t find a Gif for this)

…Or pretty much any show having anything to do with guns and explosions…

See, the celebrities might be in some danger- but hardly anything that you can’t find on other shows, and nothing on the level of what combat soldiers have to deal with. On top of this, I’m guessing that the celebrities aren’t going to actually kill anyone, or have to grapple with the moral and psychological ramifications of doing so. In fact, the celebrities will never have to worry about any of the basic aspects of military service that soldiers are expected to deal with- constant danger, the possibility of being disabled (if not killed or captured or tortured) for life, the possibility of killing and innocent civilian by accident, or (for the female contestants) the rampant problem of rape. Terry Crews is a tough guy, I’m sure, but I have my doubts as to how he’d react actually witnessing someone (on any side of the conflict) killed. Let’s face the facts, Stars Earn Stripes is not going to show you bodies in all their gory reality. This isn’t war- this is Hollywood.

Second, let’s talk about the glamorization we’re sure to see hear. Of course Stars Earn Stripes will present the celebrities having little breakdowns, or getting dusty or bruised, but even John McClane got pretty trashed in Die Hard.

But the military isn’t just concussion grenades and contusions- there’s plenty of… well- boredom to it. I’m not saying this to put down the armed forces, I’m just trying to offer an accurate picture here. There are toilets to be scrubbed, mess halls to be cleaned, uniformed to be creased and beds to be made. There’s paperwork and basic maintenance. Are we gonna see the Stars Earn Stripes celebrities get chewed out for not having left six inches between their blankets and their sheets? I doubt it.

Thirdly, the combination of the previously mentioned points creates a completely and wholly inaccurate picture of the conditions the men and women of the military find themselves in. Stars Earn Stripes isn’t about the military, it’s about a highly fetishized aspect of war. And make no mistake- we’re not talking about just the military here- we’re talking about war. Without the past decade or so of nonstop conflict in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere, it’s highly doubtful that Stars Earn Stripes would even exist, after all, what’s the point of doing a show about the military if you can’t jam it full of explosions? An almost assured side-effect of this lousy and poorly thought-out attempt to “honor” the troops (i.e. make money off of them and their hardships) is the glorification of war. It doesn’t matter if you’re the most dogged pacifist or hard-line advocate of “just cause”- we all know that war itself is not something that should be portrayed this way. Maybe you think war is wrong, maybe you think war is right- you never think war is pretty. As William Tecumseh Sherman, perhaps the most brutal general of the Civil War, put it “There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but, boys, it is all Hell.”

The guy who burned Atlanta to the ground just by glaring at it would know….

It cheapens war. In the off chance that you want to hear my full rant about this, here’s the link. The simple version is that this drastic level of ignorance when it comes to the bloodshed- you know, the actual war is not only an insult to the military, but to any and all victims of war, and a direct attack upon the basic decency and dignity of humanity at large.

I’d say that NBC’s heart is in the right place, only I don’t think that’s true. I think this show is a calculated plan to manipulate emotions and capitalize off of human suffering. This has nothing to do with honoring anyone- this is about lining wallets.

Again, to NBC I submit this as my closing remark:

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Republicans, Marriage Equality, and Inevitable Social Change

Posted on July 27, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Freedom to Marry has set up the Win More States Fund with the goal of influencing legislation in Maine, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and Washington. Interestingly, the fund’s largest donors so far have been a group of major donors to the Republican party.

Freedom to Marry is one of the many organizations in the US that support and fight for the legalization of same-sex marriage

And this isn’t just excitement over a few novel Republicans donating insubstantial amounts; the group collectively donated $1.5 million, which is half of the fund’s stated goal. Ken Mehlman, the former chair of the RNC (Republican National Committee) (I’ve heard that they’re a big deal). The group of donors, including Mehlman, has founded a Super PAC (American Unity), which defines itself as a PAC that “supports GOP political leaders committed to advancing the rights of gay and lesbian Americans”. The PAC’s first donation was $1 million from Paul Singer, hedge fund CEO and major donor to the GOP.

This shows quite the shift, especially compared to popular (if slightly under-informed) consensus about party alignment on the gay marriage debate.
Freedom to Marry quotes Mehlman talking about his decision to donate:

“Supporting the right of adults to marry the person that they love is consistent with Republican and conservative principles. A party that ignores reality and demographic change is a party that loses a lot of elections and becomes less relevant.”

Freedom to Marry’s Win More States Fund targets Maine, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and Washington State

There were a lot of predictions that opposing gay marriage would just cease to be a respected opinion in the US, and it seems that that’s what’s happening now. Mehlmen’s statement is practical – he does say that the position “is consistent with Republican and conservative principles,” but this issue would not be being addressed if not for the huge social movement over the past few decades. That IS sort of how democracy is supposed to work – but I think that we will always hear more people saying things like “Those people have to change in order to survive politically” than things like “They can take the job and shove it … I’m trying to do the right thing.”

But that’s how things work, I guess. People have a tendency to distrust things that are different and strange, and so social change with respect to accepting and adapting to differences usually has more to do with social pressure (and shame) than with lots of miraculously-timed personal insights. The fact that our opinions and actions are inseparably intertwined with the popular sentiment is not news. And while political moves responding to trendy or controversial social issues might be occasionally disingenuous, there’s no arguing that they can instigate actual change.

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Boy Scouts of America Maintains Ban on Gays

Posted on July 17, 2012 by | Leave a comment

About a week ago, I had added my name to a petition being sent to a member of the BSA (that’s Boy Scouts of America) Board of Directors, demanding that the organization’s notorious ban on gays be overturned. A few minutes ago, I found this article at BBC World stating that the board had unanimously rejected the petition.

 

See, I’m an Eagle Scout. I worked my up from cub scouts. I’ve been to the camps, memorized the oaths, and folded the flags. I’m proud of the skills I’ve learned. I’m proud of the leadership training I’ve had. I’m proud of the values of civic duty, environmentalism, and honesty I’ve been given. And I am so very deeply ashamed that even now, an organization that’s been synonymous with decency and helpfulness is choosing to maintain a policy of unabashed bigotry.

 

According to the BSA, homosexuals (both men and women) are prohibited from holding leadership positions in the BSA. Despite maintaining a “don’t-ask-don’t-tell”-esque policy, any individual (employee, member, or even volunteer) who is found to be gay is expelled from the Scouts. The reason given for this was that

“The vast majority of the parents of youth we serve value their right to address issues of same-sex orientation within their family, with spiritual advisers and at the appropriate time and in the right setting,”

-Chief Executive Bob Mazzuca.

Now let’s just run with that. What Mazzuca seems to be asserting here is that the reason for banning gays from the BSA is that a scout’s first introduction to the controversial topic of homosexuality should be with his parents/pastor/etc. Now maybe you could point out that in this culture, the chances that a kid is going to be exposed to the concept of homosexuality before his parents introduce it to him is pretty dang high. Maybe you could point out that it’s really not something you have any actual control of, and that Mazzuca’s reasoning is just an insultingly shoddy veil for the fact that Mazzuca and the rest of the board just don’t want gays in period. But if we live in a world where a kid won’t encounter homosexuality except by introduction of his parents, there’s still a pretty gaping flaw in that already questionable logic.

 

You remember the bit where I was talking about the stuff I did in boy scouts? Where I said I’ve been to the camps, memorized the oaths, and so on? Yeah, I did more than just that. I shot guns. I fished. I learned to set snares. I threw knives and axes. I used bows.

 
In short, I learned how to kill things.

I gotta ask, which is the more traumatic? Learning that my scoutmaster likes other guys, or learning to shoot a deer or gut a fish?

Surely if I can be trusted to tie knots, use knives, and start fires, I can be trusted to learn that homosexuality exists without going insane and re-enacting Rambo: First Blood, right?

I could only find GIFs from Rambo IV, but the principle is the same…

Interestingly enough, I was exposed to homosexuality in Boy Scouts. Despite Mazzuca’s assertion that the BSA takes no part in bringing up sexuality with its members, the scout troop I was with did take it upon themselves to have a showing of A Time to Tell, an informational video on sexual molestation. The film opens with the host asserting that “…It might feel uncomfortable presenting this subject to an 11 to 14 year old male audience for which it is intended, however, it is because of the unique physical and psychological changes young men experience in adolescence that the subject of sexual molestation should be directly addressed.”

 

Huh- so bringing up the extremely dark and painful subject of sexual abuse is both right and necessary, but any discussion of homosexuality should not be touched.

 

But let’s ignore the lousy excuse offered by the BSA board, and look at some other reasoning. One might try to take up the same line of reasoning used in the argument against gays in the military. That close quarters between straight and gay scouts will make for some seriously awkward and uncomfortable dynamics, and essentially prevent the troop from functioning with the kind of camaraderie it’s intended to have. Of course, I could use the whole logic of “people-sexually-attracted-to-each-other-can’t-work-together” to make a case for segregating men and women. The assumption at play is here is the idiotic old myth that gay guys are attracted to all other guys and just can’t help but act on their impulses.

Case and point.

Ok, so gay guys really don’t have any reason from being just as prepared and honorable as their straight counterparts, but what about scoutmasters? Surely gays shouldn’t be in charge of troops of young men!

Here’s where I think the clincher really is. Once upon a time, people didn’t make any distinction between being gay and being a pedophile. Just take a look at this horrific 1950s PSA labeling pedophiles and child molesters as “homosexuals”.

Crazy, right? If you want to see another interesting take on this, there’s an old Law & Order episode that deals with the whole gay/pedophile distinction not existing in the 50s. But of course, that was all more than half a century ago, and while at the time this may have been the reason against allowing gays to take up leadership positions in the BSA, it really can’t be maintained today.

 

I guess what makes it worse is that as a boyscout, I encountered so many other scouts who were foul, lazy, irresponsible- even some who were outright bullies and sexists. I find it tough to stomach that I had to stand alongside some really lousy kids while a boy who truly embodies the oath and scout law is excluded simply because he’s gay.

 

But apparently that’s what the board thinks makes a good scout- not his values, not his actions. Not his honesty, his courage, or his work-ethic. His sexual orientation, to Mazzuca and his cronies, is apparently more important than any of that.

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Where’s the Counter-Culture?

Posted on July 3, 2012 by | 4 comments

In my last post, I grossly oversimplified a Marxist concept called “Alienation”. Today, I’ll be grossly oversimplifying the Marxist concept of dialectics.

Don’t give me any of that “Hegel said it first!” crap.

Boiled down to its basic components, it functions more or less as Newton’s third law of motion. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and that applies to society as well. Every spirit of the times is accompanied by a little inverted version of itself- or at least, its key values. Now according to dialectics, the conflict between these two opposites ultimately resolves in an evolved combination of the two, but in this post, we’re only addressing the first part.

Or at least, we would be if I could figure out what today’s counterculture is…

Think about it…

Look at the 1950s. For all the white-picket fences; sagely, pipe-smoking fathers; dutiful housewives/mothers, general patriotism and decency, and terror at the prospect of infiltration by degenerate Commies, there were greasers and bikers.

Despite the 1950s conjuring up images of idealized suburbia, this decade was the one that gave birth to rock and Hells Angels. Trafficking and dumping excrement and urine on their initiates doesn’t quite mesh with the general ideals of the time.

The same can be said for the sixties, which produced the hippies and the civil rights movement in the face of an otherwise conservative culture desperately trying to maintain the status quot.

Or the 70s, whose militancy and pessimism were a rejection of the peace, love, and hope values that arose during the previous decade.

Or the wildly egotistically and self-centered 80s producing (or at least, nurturing) anti-establishment and anti-corporate punks culture.

Even the 90s saw rise to goths, opposing the (comparatively) cheery and consumerist zeitgeist of the time.

So why not our era?

The Occupy Movement? I did consider them, but they don’t really fit the profile.

Despite being viciously cracked down on by the powers-that-be, the OWS protestors never really presented anything shockingly antithetical to the values we hold today. At least, not entirely.

Violence is (almost) universally decried as a means of protest and social change by all but those doing it. While America hasn’t seen much of it, continued rioting in Europe could very well mean not so much a brief outburst of rage as a entirely new perspective on what is and isn’t acceptable in society in general.

That’s one way of calling for social change…

Hipsters? I did briefly consider the whole Indy/Hipster movement as a possible subculture, and generally despised, the hordes of lost lumberjacks wandering the streets really don’t stand for anything that mainstream society is opposed to.

You are NOT a lumberjack and this is NOT Ok…

Annoying? Absolutely. Opposed to the spirit of the time? Not really. At most the hipster culture is guilty of desperately trying to cling to childhood nostalgia in the face of creative bankruptcy (see Evan’s post) and espousing thriftiness in the middle of a major economic depression (see my old post).

Bros. Everyone hates ’em, from their obnoxious machismo to their flaming skull t-shirts and spray-on tans.

Problem with this group is that it’s not a new group- just the latest reincarnation of the same kind of people. The same basic mentality can be found clear on back in Shakespeare’sRomeo and Juliet, which essentially starts with a bunch of bros crashing a party to pick up girls.

the 1890s, when “Bros” were called “Chums”…

Ok, so what if we look at what we have in society today and just invert it? What’s the major defining element of our generation? Technology. Internet and smartphones. Social media and memes. Anonymous and scams. The opposite of all this would be the primitivist subculture, right? The people who don’t wash or shave and live in compounds in the middle of nowhere.

And while it makes sense theoretically, we’re just not seeing a vibrant primitivist counterculture or even subculture. Even when you add in the survivalist subculture (in case you don’t know, those are they guys who think the gum’mint out ta git ’em), there’s still not exactly a rising trend in people learning how to skin squirrels or live in total harmony with the earth-mother.

What about these guys?

This site (which I’ll be delving more deeply into next week) really does seem to have an actually beef with contemporary culture- specifically in regards to men. Offering instructions on how to polish your shoes, store your fedora (you’re expected to have one, and if you don’t, to go out and get one), shave (or trim your beard, if that’s your thing), throw a punch, or patch a hole in your drywall (holes may be caused by punching it). In a lot of ways, the reverence this site has for the “traditional” concept of what a man ought to be like is reflective of a more general reaction against skinny jeans and YouTube comment section debates. While the site itself has a devoted cult following (and not a ton else), I have seen this general sentiment expressed, and I’m seeing it expressed more and more. Granted, I might be too close to the issue to be seeing it clearly- I myself think guys wearing skinning jeans should be put in stocks for all the village children to throw dead animals at- but perhaps you’ve run into this too. Just last night I heard a comedian complaining that the current generation were (in short) wimps. Gone, he said, were the days when you could chuck a television set out of a hotel window after some drug-fueled rock band had just given human decency the finger via a seven minute guitar solo. Another comedian remarked that “Our fathers would never take the crap we’re taking… the founders revolted because of a 3% tax increase- we won’t even riot when we’re being forced to strip down at an airport!”.

There is doubtlessly a certain mystique and appeal to the figure of powerful, well-dressed men, sitting around roaring fires, puffing on cigars and sipping aged scotch to celebrate that they were in complete control of their lives. Plenty of guys today would give their right arms to be Don Draper.

Though ideally minus the aggressive lung cancer and liver failure…

And interestingly enough, this general “Manly” reaction against emotionalism, appearance (over functionality), pacifism/nonviolence, and interdependence has elements from each of the cultures I described above. There’s the primitive concept of being free from dependence on technology that bears a similarity to the DIY slogans espoused by the “Manly”. There’s the “if you gotta punch a guy, you gotta punch a guy” mentality that seems related to the Black Bloc protest tactics. The simplicity of the Hipsters is here, and even the general “I am Man, here me roar” vibe seems to be a more sane version of Bro machismo.

But that’s all just a theory. Might be true- might be just a passing fad, though if it is just a fad, then we’re back at square one with a rather uncomfortable question.

If there is no counter-culture- what does that say about our culture today? Have we reached a point where we’re so pluralistic and tolerant and multicultural that everything’s acceptable- or is there just nothing substantial to rebel against? If there’s no antithesis, is there even a thesis?

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Supreme Court, Media Slips, and general un-with-itness

Posted on June 30, 2012 by | Leave a comment

When I was a kid, I pretty much imagined the adult world as a complex and efficient system abounding in efficiency, professionalism, and self-restraint. The more I interact with the real world, though, and see how and why things get done, the more I’m convinced that society is perpetually on the brink of collapse.

This is sort of comforting, because it means that I will actually fit into this society of flawed individuals. There were a few things about the Supreme Court ruling on the health care mandate that reminded me of this on Thursday –

First,

source: News Wrong On Individual Mandate article.wn.com
source: jimromenesko.com

These things. CNN and Fox have gotten enough news coverage for their slipups, but the the fact that 2 out of the 3 major US news cable networks reported incorrectly in haste – on a supreme court ruling, no less – is fairly disconcerting. The race to report the news made everyone scramble semi-ridiculously on Thursday, and CNN and Fox happened to be the ones to scramble in the wrong direction. One could consider the NYT’s release conservatively paced, and they only waited for 20 minutes before reporting. What’s more, at least CNN apologized for the error –

“CNN regrets that it didn’t wait to report out the full and complete opinion regarding the mandate,” the NYT quoted. “We made a correction within a few minutes and apologize for the error.”
Fox news released: “Fox reported the facts as they came in,” even though they reported that the mandate was found unconstitutional. This in contrast with CNN’s staff memo: “We got it wrong and we take that very seriously.” CNN’s release didn’t even try to weasel their way out with the fact that the mandate was technically ruled unconstitutional under the Commerce Clause: “CNN reported that fact, but then wrongly reported that therefore the court struck down the mandate as unconstitutional”.

The strangely tabloidic media buzz surrounding the Supreme Court decision was reflected in the protesters and supporters of the mandate outside the building Thursday (the Washington Post has a pretty interested slide show of the crowd here), which included a few of these:

I have no grand conclusion about all of this1 – these were just instances of a not-entirely-together social infrastructure in the past week.2

1I never do
2This title is less catchy than Evan’s
Also, I couldn’t figure out how to make this relevant but this photo also came of the debacle, which is another cause for sadness.

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Why We Need Graphic Violence

Posted on June 27, 2012 by | 8 comments

Once upon a time, a lion was sent to the king of Sweden. After it died, its skin and bones were sent to a taxidermist so that the animal could be stuffed and preserved- the only problem was that this was the eighteenth century, and the taxidermist had never seen a lion before. His resulting work was this:

With only the most cursory knowledge of what a lion was, the work turned-out something that looks like it was pulled straight from a Looney-Tunes episode.

I’d suggest laughing at that picture for as long as you can- the rest of this post is going to be pretty unpleasant.

Most people’s Facebook news feeds are made up of snippets of conservations between friends, invitations to apps you’ll never use, the occasional rant, and baby pictures. Most people, but not so much me- only I do get to see pictures of babies, but more on that in a minute.

See, I grew up in the Middle East, specifically in Syria. For those of you who don’t keep up with the news (at all), my adopted homeland is currently in the grips of a brutal civil war. One of the ways the rebels and dissidents spread news is through social media- especially Facebook, and having “liked” such pages as “Syrian Days of Rage” and “Syrian Revolution 2011”, my news feed is mostly comprised of grainy YouTube videos of soldiers declaring their defection to the Free Syrian Army (FSA), or pictures of mass protests, or of a solitary Republic flag tied to a streetlight. Or a baby.

I warned you before that things were going to become unpleasant- again, if you’re sensitive, stop reading now.

This picture was of a baby who was killed in Gaza during the short-lived but brutal Gaza war in the early weeks of 2009. It was a bombing that killed the child. It was burned so badly the skin still on it had been turned soot-black, and was tight and shiny. You might mistake it for one of those life-sized baby dolls if two broken femurs hadn’t been sticking out where the legs should have been, or if the flesh around the left arm hadn’t melted off the bone.

It was frozen like that. Eyes closed and head rolled back so that against all reason, it looks like her or she could have been sleeping. The body’s held up by a Red Crescent paramedic, and there are no words in any language that will ever describe the look that’s on his face.

There are more of them. A young man on a hospital bed, the right side of his jaw ripped open and hanging against his neck, smiling as best as he still can and gesturing the peace sign. A man killed in a shelling bombardment, held together with white gauze and bedsheets.  A little boy, dead on the floor, drenched in blood and the right side of his body blown off.

That last one was from earlier today.

Last week, I mentioned how this generation is living in the longest war in American history, three times as long as WWII. I want to underscore this. I’m twenty one, and more than half of my existence has been during a period of uninterrupted conflict. I was eleven years old when the US went to war in Afghanistan, and today I could join up to fight in that exact same war. In a couple years, we’ll have kids going to high school who have never had a day of peace.

But this isn’t about that. I’m not here to rage against war, or take a stand for it. I’m not going to throw up my hands and declare that we’ve always been at war with Eastasia.

Though it wouldn’t too far from the truth…

I’m not going to talk about what war does to us so much as I’m going to discuss what we do to war.

Let’s face it, for many of us, the current wars the US (and other nations) are involved in don’t affect us much. We’re not on rations, or ducking into bomb shelters, or being told that if we don’t carpool the Axis wins.

Not in so many words, anyways…

Whether a village in some valley in central Afghanistan is controlled by American or Taliban forces really doesn’t change our plans for the day. A harsh as it sounds, whether or not people are killed in Afghanistan doesn’t have much bearing on anyone but the families of the deceased, and it’s there that the problem lies.

See, we have had a problem in our society for a long time, but with the advent of the internet and similar technologies, it’s becoming worse and worse. Alienation. If you’ve heard it, it was probably in relation to Karl Marx, talking about the separation of workers from the ability to control their lives.

Because we’re dealing with some rough stuff, here’s a picture of Marx smiling…

In a more general sense, it’s simply it’s the separation of things that should naturally go together. Profit shouldn’t be separated from work, and work shouldn’t be separated from profit. Merit shouldn’t be separated from recognition, and recognition shouldn’t be separated from merit. Above all else, actions shouldn’t be separated from consequences- only that’s exactly what we have today.

Most of us are more than willing to wolf down a juicy hamburger, but how many of us would be willing to watch the cow be killed, let alone kill it ourselves? How many of us who wear shirts and shoes made in sweatshops would be willing to stand in the sweatshop hurling profanities and threats at the twelve year-olds hunched over the machinery? How many of us enjoy the advances of the civil rights movement would, back in the 60s and 70s, face off police dogs, hoses, and fire-bombs?

See, we’re a nation that enjoys the hard work of other people. We’re a nation that doesn’t like getting its hands dirty. We’re a nation that has no problem sending kids off to fight, kill, and die on some windswept ridge in Afghanistan because we don’t have anything to do with them afterwards. War is cheap for us. The men and women of our armed forces are expendable to us. Again, I’m not trying to condemn or vindicate the wars we’re in, but what I am saying is that we can’t make reasonable decisions about war until we’re actually confronted with the ugly, bloody, gritty consequences of it. We need pictures of the dead. We need them shoved in our faces on a daily basis. We shouldn’t be able to turn on the news without seeing rubble, the smoke, the wounded, or the dying in graphic detail. For all the outcry against violence in our media, the truth of the matter isn’t that the problem is with violence, but with violence that has been tailored to give us satisfaction and strip away all meaning to it. War, for good or ill, is all for nothing unless we actually understand it. Can we honestly say that we’re acting in the same way now we would be if we actually had to witness the consequences of our actions?

Until then, we’re just the same Swedish taxidermist, making ridiculous travesties out of things we don’t understand. We need graphic violence.

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