Thanks for the great comment. I’m actually drafting a response for you in the next couple of days (RL has been beating me up). I want to give you a good response that addresses everything you mentioned, so bear with me for a bit until I get it all finished up

It’s been obvious for years that the military industrial complex is very keen on First Person Shooters. You also must have been living on a rock not to notice how games that include the concepts of “Elite”, “Special Forces”, being a “Warrior”, “Marine” are heavily promoted and fly off the shelves.

The USA reminds me of pre First Word War German Prussia. The military is a sacred cow, the above mentioned words “Marine”, “Warrior” have a special significance in the culture and with the younger generation.

It may interest you that in WW2, about 75% of the soldiers did not shoot at the enemy since they did not want to kill another human being, source;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.L.A._Marshall

This was seen as a problem to be addressed by the military. Hence increased aggression training, repetitive shooting exercises at human like targets (operant conditioning).

FPS shooters aiming at killing in realistic environments have been funded by the US military. One of which is

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America's_Army

They also fall over themselves in giving access to military equipment, tanks etc. if you want to make pro war film. You will not have access to this kit if you are anti military. The culture itself is now so marshal after 10 years of “War on Terror”, that companies can exploit the deaths of real people by making games like COD. Yes you can be a special forces *elite*, *warrior*.

The youth are clearly being indoctrinated. Now these games by themselves will *not* turn you into a raging psychopath, I think that idea is absurd. What they will do, over a prolonged period of time is de-sensitize you – operant conditioning.

Killing is now quite high tech, with people operating consoles and joy-sticks to kill 100s of people at once. Take a look at these 19 year olds machine gunning children and then laughing about it. I don’t think you’d find many WW2 US Soliders like that, but then they were not subject to years of looking at people remotely through screens and killing them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xH9xSHcFreY

If you watch the full version, they are fully compus mentis that they are machine gunning kids in the rescue vehicle, the dude just says, “don’t bring kids to a war”.

I suggest you read some poems by Thomas Hardy and John Betjemen. Also read, “War is a Racket”, a book by the most heavily decorated marine in US History. War is basically hell.

The US establishment now heavily promotes war, and the kids are lapping it up. War is now entertainment, and people are also acting as apologists for it. I suppose Thomas Hardy and millions of others died for nothing since there warnings go unheeded.

I had the same moment of naivete. Reading it kind of made me freak out for a bit. Probably where the post came from