September 13, 2006

It all goes back to A Pope

Wow, really interesting stuff on Glenn Beck today. Before I get started, if there's anyone out there who wants to pay for a subscription for me to be an Insider, I'll gladly take your money. Back to the show. Glenn was talking about why it's so bad that there's this 'Docu-drama' coming out about the assassination of President Bush, and he brought up a very relevant correlation: In WWII, there was a drastically high percentage of soldiers that were just out of boot camp who, in their first encounter with the enemy, the first time they ever had a German in their sights, would not pull the trigger. Glenn didn't have the exact figure in front of him, but said it's something like 70%. They had obviously been trained to shoot in boot camp, but for some reason (which is the topic of today's blog), they just couldn't do it. The Army noticed this, and decided to change from the circular targets for target practice to the silhouette of a human. Amazingly, this decreased the amount of soldiers who wouldn't/couldn't fire on the enemy for the first time down to 30-40%. Still, that's a high percentage when you're fighting to preserve your country and way of life, so further changes were made, Glenn said something about video games being developed (which I'm not sure about...they didn't even have Pong until the 70's, right?), yada yada yada, now we have killing machines.
Think about the psychological effect the Army was trying to use there. Some 70% of the n00bs on the front line could not associate getting a high score on the target with downing an enemy combatant. On a simpler (or...more simple?) level, they had to be conditioned by sight to do something that they know is usually wrong, in this case killing someone. They knew to some degree the stakes of the war, but knowledge gets cancelled out when we have guns pointed at each other. Have I made my point yet?
Okay, now what Glenn was alluding to was that this psychology of "seeing first" applies to things like the assassination flick. We all know it's wrong, it's an inherant feeling in each of us that a president shouldn't be assassinated. There is something seriously wrong with "exploring" that idea with a living president, and especially a sitting president! Do the liberals and democrats care? Of course not! You'll get stupid activist groups like PETA all fired up over a 30 second commercial where a man rides a dog because "it'll encourage people to try it," but a movie where the President of our country is killed? Sure! Why not?
Okay, so why did I write this copycat of the last 1/2 hour of Glenn's show today? Why didn't I just tell you to go to his site and look for this info? Well, I think you can go further with that idea, as I've already posted about. Yes, dragonb, I did have to go after Desperate Housewives, because that's one of the "nicer" enemies to righteousness. That's the one that we "probably shouldn't watch, but at least it's not the Gay/Lesbian dating show on MTV." Every single time we compromise with sin is when Satan gains more power over us. We get conditioned, and in short, we get duped.
In the same spirit of having our soldiers in the middle east so we don't have to battle the terrorists here at home, we need to battle the pervasiveness of sin in all forms, even the little ones, so they don't grow into humungous fights about "rights" later on. That's my two cents.

7 comments:

dragonb4 said...

nice post. Sounds like you enjoy Glenn Beck as much as I do. I enjoy the blend of serious commentary with strong sarcasm mixed with a healthy dose of humor.

Good point about the Housewives. :)
The question of where to draw the line comes up quite often without people realizing it. We examined our tv watching habits and decided to move the line. That means we took Housewives, all CSI's, Cold Case and a few others out of the line up. Isn't it time that we actually became more moral as a culture and society? Has that ever happened?

dragonb4 said...

oh, must have missed the part of Glenn Beck that explained your title since I don't get it?

Jim said...

Well, it alludes to a couple of things, not in any particular order: the final challenge in the Da Vinci Code has the clue, "In London lies a knight A Pope interred..."
The other is a quote from that same Pope referenced, Alexander Pope, that I already cited a couple posts ago. The thing about the vice, and the rhyming, and the good point.

SalGal said...

You'll be happy to know I've given up Housewives for Lent. I'm still keeping CSI and Medium, though. A couple of others that shall remain nameless. No more lap dancing for extra cash. No more sending the kids to Thailand on spring break. You've cured me, bro! ;-)

SalGal said...

Oh, and I'm going to confess to killing Jonbenet.

Jim said...

Well, it's about time! I knew that Captain Highpants guy didn't do it.

dragonb4 said...

Captain Highpants...that makes me laugh every time. love the reasoning also...don't give the guy his 15 minutes of fame, that's all he wanted.