So the Department of Homeland Security is tapping Science Fiction writers now to come up with new ways to think about terrorist attacks...
Actually it's rather appropriate for them to do this since many of the scare tactics used by the Bush Imperium are more fiction than fact. If you're going to scare people, then why not use the writers who can come up with six different ways to blow up the world before breakfast and make you think each of them really happened?
Then at least when the expected retort of "You're just making that stuff up" hits they can honestly respond with "Yes, in fact, we did!"
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This isn't really news. The military has been working hand-in-hand with many of the the companies that make video games for years, encouraging them to produce violent and warlike situations. When objections have come from educators who see danger in youngsters spending hours and hours blowing up "enemy soldiers" and in newer editions even killing cops and raping "hos" these game players become immune to violence in reality and, indeed, have difficulty differentiating true-life reality from the thousands of hours' worth they have spent practicing it on video. All this military training is now free to the government. Yet standing accused of exactly this for many years, the game-producers piously claim these games simply encourage better eye-hand coordination.
This is simply bringing to a new level the ability to continue and even more dehumanize the enemy, making him even easier to kill, by making him appear as a space monster.
It would be curious to think of the enormous amounts of creative energy that could be unleashed by these young program designers if they were to, say, invent a game that was challenging and beneficial to humans, wouldn't it? Imagine the potential for new and creative games that would encourage youngsters to find ways to fight global warming, find ways to save the dying and dead coral reefs around the world, suggest plans for the development of better fishing habits, as the oceans are already over 70% "fished out" (just check the price of fish at your local supermarket) or engineer products which would endeavor to help third world nations to make their water potable on a scale small enough to be used by individuals instead of being controlled by the tribes, religions or whatever powers of the moment.
Yet none of these, it would seem, have that catch, that hook to grab the emerging testosterone spurt which so engages young males and makes them much prefer loud noises, gory scenes and explosions to these more scientific pursuits which would benefit the entire world. It is said the Jesuits had a phrase about children: Give me a child until he is 6, and he's mine for life. With the military quietly shadowing the producers of video games and no doubt funding them through a series of phony companies and shell-game monies, the military seems to have taken that old Jesuit belief and run with it, to their eventual benefit, as we turn out young men who are now ready to try to exterminate whatever they are told to, even if their innate good sense tells them not to. They have now been so programmed by years of these games, they now blithely shoot cops and anybody else who gets in their way of achieving their goal, and it helps so very much if they can distance themselves from the enemy by believing that they are somehow different from themselves.
Even, in this new wrinkle, other-worldly.
Whatever happened to "ET"?
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