Stahl

Within the Stahl piece I was highly disturbed by the section concerning diplomacy - or lack thereof - as a central theme of many video games, in line with the Bush Doctrine. As Stahl states on p. 118:

A dominant recurring theme is a strong disdain for diplomacy andpreference for force, which can be heard in the Bush administration’s mantra, ‘‘Wewill not negotiate with terrorists.’’ The War on Terror, in contrast with the Cold War, is especially suited for such rhetoric. The U.S. relationship with the Soviet Bloc, while hostile, did not preclude negotiation. The new enemy, the rogue state, is often coded as ‘‘insane’’ and thus beyond the reach of reason. The public face of many games, in the form of promotions and advertisements, tells a similar tale.

Recently, I was confronted with the frighteningly successful tactic of painting the enemy as unreasonable of irrational. It is a convincing argument, when true, because an irrational or unreasonable person is often all but impossible to put up with - but on a small scale, this sort of judgment call may be fairly harmless. On a world scale, and as a war-time propaganda strategy, such judgments are what prejudice and discrimination feed on.

Another section I found interesting was when Stahl points out that video games are often employing the idea of small "black ops" missions or specialized teams to mimic real special-ops teams. As Stahl says, "The appearance of such themes plays a part in the naturalization of the U.S. military’s ongoing self-transformation to a global police force that functions secretly with small rapid deployment teams in a context of low-intensity warfare. (118)" Such insidious propaganda is nauseating, and I am even more disturbed by the ideology driving it. How is it possible to react to these massive campaigns? Why aren't we aware of the intentions - how can we be so oblivious? The military and the video game companies depend on our ignorance, and or buying into their messages willingly and happily. I am so overwhelmed by that kind of macro control, I feel helpless to repond to it with any conviction.

As an ending aside, I was struck by this passage:

These are the rarest questions: In the ‘‘how’’ of killing, what do video
games reveal or conceal about the ‘‘why’’ of killing? This is an especially
urgent question given the manner in which war games are increasingly aligning
with real-time news coverage of war. (118)

I have the smae question, and no real grasp on the answer.