Let me try to draw some pictures which are already familiar to you, then try to thread them into a portrait of what is of ethical importance as we try to arrive at some rules of engagement in our fight with the Left, and the Evil that stands behind it.
Tapestry #1: Looney Tunes vs Megatron
In the late 1960s, while the Vietnam War still raged, a national campaign arose in Washington against Saturday morning cartoon shows because of the violence they “glorified” for children. I think this was about the same time Warner Brothers began airing watered-down versions of its Looney Tune characters from theaters, which in truth, were really for adults, all the way down to the classical music. A lot of slapstick violence, exploding cigars, especially from the cartoon duo, Road Runner and Wile E Coyote.
As you all know, Wile E Coyote was blown sky high, to smithereens, fried to a crisp, and squished like a bug under the weight of a falling safe, piano, or rocky cliff daily, while trying to catch that bird. Beep Beep! After which he limped off but always showing up new and fresh next Saturday.
Anyway, people just laughed it off, and appeals to Congress didn’t seem to get anywhere, in part because most people believed this anti-violence campaign was really an indirect attack on the makers of sugary cereals, the principal advertisers for kids’ shows.
In fact, this thesis has since been reproven again only in the past few days, for while the anti-fat-kid campaigns move apace, not a peep can we get from the Squeaky Left about the accessibility of the most violent cartoon games imaginable, even as we now have been able to attribute at least two mass killings in recent years to unbalanced obsessions with interactive “cartoon characters” and graphic blood and gore.
But, leaving this debate in the dust, in 1972 I loaded up my family and flew off to Japan for a three year Army tour near Tokyo; land of Mt Fuji, sumo and Kamen Rider.
So while in America the chattering class screamed about custard pies in the face of talking ducks that went “Splattttt” or “Boooing,” (and Watergate, too) Japan had turned graphic violence into a retail industry, which carried my young son, every day from 2 til 5, in front of the TV to watch his favorite heroes duel, Karate style, every bad guy on the planet.
My wife and I discussed this for it was a kind of violence we weren’t familiar with. It sure wasn’t the same as a wascally wabbit whacking a fwying pan. As a kid raised on Looney Tunes, I believed that a kid could tell the real from the fake, and the Japanese characters had such an element of fakery and make-believe to them, and most weren’t really human, but machines anyway, it seemed harmless enough.
Of course that fakery had a purpose. In both the human hero-formats, such as Kamen Rider (above) and the graphic art formats such as the forerunners to Transformers, except for the star and chief villain, most of the other action characters were indeed mechanical robots of some sort, and when they were destroyed (killed ) they exploded into a million pieces, depending on what the technology could provide. (The Japanese later decided that graphic cartoon art was much more effective and “real” than real-life choreographed fights, since they hadn’t figured out how to detach an arm, leg or head on stage.
Since nothing was in English, I only assumed the Japanese industry had their own Squeaky Nipponese Left, to whom they had to proclaim that these weren’t real people being decapitated, but machines—who never bleed, ergo, no nightmares—and besides, kids can tell the difference.
Well we know where Manga, Anime and the Japanese cartoon industry has taken us since, for in them you will find the pioneers of the entire gaming industry in America, including now, not just killing, but graphic rape and other carnal athletics, to pump up the player, so to speak.
Tapesty #2: Real Killing versus Pretend Killing
Americans know that 60% of our casualties in Afghanistan are by IED’s (buried roadside bombs), while much fewer are killed or wounded by direct fire such as small arms. But the opposite is true about previous wars, Vietnam, Korea and World War II, where the majority of American GI’s wounded or killed came from direct machine gun or rifle fire. Old style infantry combat. The same goes for the enemy we killed. In those days, few soldiers ever came face to face with an enemy soldier, and then, only with bayonets raised, not rifles. Mostly killing was a longer ranged affair.
Why this is important to note is the comparative moral and practical perspectives of real soldiers versus gamers. For soldiers who have killed other men across a firing plain, usually 200 yards or less, they almost never saw their faces, or the bullet hit. Or the mess it made. They may have seen an enemy go down, a shadowy, half hidden silhouette lurch and disappear, but could never see that .223 caliber round enter and leave a tiny hole on one side of his head, and a hole you can put your fist in as it came out the back.
Bottom line: the gory stuff we see in most films these days, and in all video games, the real soldier in the field almost never sees—unless it is his own buddy next to him, and the shooter is that German Mauser 200 yards down range. A friend’s, not an enemy’s, head being blown off is as close as the GI ever came to the kind of gore gamers wallow in, which is not a pleasant memory for any trooper.
I’ll leave it at that for awhile, for we are searching for an operating ethic in a time of diminishing humanity in our world; distinguishing between the real flesh and blood soldier and the pretend soldier and his cartoon/mechanical alter-ego.
There is no question that people who actually kill “for a living” have a completely different perspective than people who kill for play (and fun). The infantry rifleman rarely knows that he has even hit his target, much less made a kill, while the gamer (and the emphathetic theater-goer) wants, even needs (for extra points) to get a close-up of the slow bleed out of the corner of the mouth, or the splatter of brain matter out the back.
No real soldier ever sees any of this. But he still has nightmares anyway.
The gamer sees all this on his console. He knows a clean-through kill shot when he can get it, but also knows he gets graded down for taking it. I have this on good authority that the clean shot, which every real soldier takes if he can get it, only earns a few points, plus a lot of catcalls from others on the game-site. But if he risks those easy points (after all, it isn’t real, so no real risk) to use his joystick skills in stealth to sneak up behind the enemy instead, then grab him by the throat and stuff a grenade down his throat, then dive to cover just as the enemy is blown to a thousand little pieces, blood and body parts graphically displayed like fireworks…then he can get some real points! And high-fives from his co-players. See?
Who does this in real life, other than sadists? Or is this how sadists are made? No American soldier is trained to be a barbarian, while that is just what video games elicit; sheer barbarism and blood lust.
(As long as we have a 10th Amendment, I suggest, just as towns and cities did back in the 1980s with bong pipes and hookahs; ban their sale within the city limits. True, they can’t ban their possession or accessibility entirely, and it would be problematic for states, but this will hurt sales, and advertisers. This is also where the rubber meets the road between little-l libertarians and true conservatives, for this plague attaches itself to the less protected common man and his family, as we already know, which is why the Left wants them to have full use to this violent outlet, so they can then preach against guns, while never acknowledging that gamer violence or the mental illness that can trigger it, exists—-but pianos falling from the sky do. This is where little-l’s become shills for the Left.)
The Last Tapestry: The Commingling of Man and Machine, or what to do about the Dorcs
This all comes down to just when does human become inhuman? The Japanese used a device to circumvent humanity in order to justify killing things that seemed to be human, but weren’t. Later, in film and fiction, we gave them emotions, and human needs, making them appear sympathetic, but in the end, they still weren’t human.
I’m not sure if machines evolved toward humanity or mankind regressed toward machinery, but we’ve watched this develop in American cinema for years (Blade Runner one of the best) and where men become machines though surgery, Steve Austin, The Six Million Dollar Man, 1970 one of the earliest, down to an absolutely horrible recent film, one of the Wolverine films (not sure which), I found myself watching last week because I was sulking after I had broken a shoe lace and the Rice-a-Roni hadn’t cooled.
Is art imitating life, or life imitating art?
The reality of “up-grading” humankind mechanically seems to sell in some philosophical and science circles, but all we’re seeing in real life, really, is humanity being down-graded not just in film but in the popular culture. In the rap subculture I get the distinct impression that “ho’s” are not exactly quite human either. And no male is expected to treat them that way.
So today, we have many among us who see many humans as less than human, in Ayn Rand’s view, people who have returned to the primitive, or tribal, as aborigines who only see humanity in their own tribe. All others are meat.
So what to do we do about people who are intentionally created this way; in that muck and slime of Evil’s tar pit called the public schools?
The Unshriven Dorc
When you understand the conditioning we’ve been subjected to these past forty years, just by sticking our big toe into the popular culture, (which comes from raising Gen X’ers) you can have at least a little sympathy for those fully immersed in the culture today.
I call them Dorcs, after Tolkein’s orcs, but not really the spawn of Evil, rather the spawn of His spawn, for Lucifer does have special creations out there who actually design the factories and put out this product. Lucifer has been at this a long time in America it seems, and we didn’t even know He was in town…in those places. Did we?
Unlike Tolkein’s orcs, Dorcs can rise up into higher levels of management. (CS Lewis inferred this in The Screwtape Letters, where Satan’s workshop was set up like a bureaucracy.) But it was Tolkein’s orc, who was actually created in Evil’s muck, who walked, ate, and breathed like humans, but who only had one purpose in life, which was to do his Master’s killing, that brings us to the modern Dorc.
If you’ve read the four-part Lord of the Rings tales, you know the role orcs played in those stories, for they died by the thousands and almost never had speaking parts. It’s interesting that when I first read those books in the 1960s, and they were taught in college English, no one really raised the question why Tolkein, a Christian philosopher, would introduce creatures beneath dignity and beyond repentance and forgiveness (unshriven), and then, over five books, kill them off even quicker than Clint Eastwood could clean up a Mexican street gang, and at least as remorselessly.
I don’t recall any similar creatures in fiction, and wondered why Tolkein would create them. He must have been hinting at something.
But here we have creatures who are not “born” like men, but have almost all the other human characteristics, except they have born into them a instinctive enmity for Man, much like a hyena has for a baby wildebeest. If they see a Man their first instinct is to jump him and kill him. In fact, that was their only purpose.
So one-dimensional were these reactions that if men saw them first, their response was essentially the same, kill or be killed; no exchange of pleasantries, no how-do-you-do’s, no parley, just weigh in and cry “damned be him who cries “hold enough.” (MacBeth).
In The Silmarillion (published after Tolkein died) you get a clearer picture as to how orcs were created, and why, and by whom, for that book was not about heroes and romances but a struggle between pure Good and pure Evil.
It’s in this context that we confront the Devil’s spawn today, only, since they didn’t get dipped into Satan’s muck and slime until the third grade, we can’t just up and slay them and push them over a cliff. It’s against the law.
All law.
But still we have to deal with them, and hurt them, and push them back, for their nature and purposes are known to us. They have been simmering in the witches’ brew pot for 18 years plus, and when they emerge they are trying their dead-level best to “destroy” us (come up with your own images), and like orcs, we can’t go around them and we can’t sit an parley. But because we are human, even if they are not (in the laboratory sense), we have to stay within certain rules that apply to us, our civilization, and our humanity.
So, the playing field isn’t level from the beginning, for if given the chance, and protection, they would kill us as casually as stepping on a bug, for they are unshriven, beyond redemption.
What to do?
Well, first we go back to Looney Tunes and start with custard pies and exploding cigars.
No, really.
I could care less about their souls, but I suspect God has a different point of view. But I do know the average Dorc doesn’t like all sorts of things – fear, inconvenience, discomfort, pain – all high among
them.
So it’s not hard to come up with an escalating scale of responses, always dictated by them; e.g, a sharp swat with a newspaper across the nose or a dead rose bush will deter the vast majority, who will suddenly decide this war is no longer filled with easy gratifications and no accountability. ( I have a scale that runs from custard pies, stinkypoo juice, and manure to a baseball bat across the shins, which hurts like hell, I might add. That gutted-fish talk was just a rhetorical device.) In round two, there will fewer, in round three, still fewer, as the pain is escalated. It’s an easy prescription, once you understand the nature of the Dorc and his relationship to Evil’s spawn. You can even do this at home, or alone in your car.
(I’d sure like to have a go at those factories that produce them, though. Different rules would apply to the faculty spawn.)
Our humanity demands that we turn Dorcs back with a force plus one greater than the force they exert on us, allowing them to retreat, for we know most will break off at the first sign of resistance. But other than that, the original rules of engagement should apply, as with the original orc of Tolkein; when you see them, and you have a clear shot, take it.
That’s what we do. Make them hurt and make them afraid. And stay out of jail. (Moral implication, meet practical implication.)
Dorcs are real, and why I adopted the rolled-up newspaper years ago is because I’ve known I have to fight them with one hand tied behind me, while they are really, really trying to destroy me—
—-at least until they get too rambunctious.
