On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society Read Free Page A

violent crime in the United States. Vast numbers of Canadians have caught the virus of violence, the "acquired violence immune deficiency," and as they ingest America's media violence, they are paying the inevitable price.
    This process is occurring around the world in nations that are exposed to media violence. The one exception is Japan.
    If you have a destroyed immune system, your only hope is to live in a "bubble" that isolates you from potential contagions.
    Japan is an example of a nation living in a "violence bubble." In Japan we see a powerful family and social structure; a homogeneous society with an intact, stable, and relatively homogeneous criminal structure (which has a surprisingly "positive" group and leadership influence, at least as far as sanctioning freelancers); and an island X X
    I N T R O D U C T I O N T O THE PAPERBACK E D I T I O N
    nation with draconian control of not just guns but many other aspects of life.
    Thus, the Japanese have very few cultural, social, "forebrain"
    violence-enabling factors working against them, so we do not see nearly as much violence in their society. But they (like any nation that has a significant number of citizens with "acquired violence immune deficiency") are like weapons, sitting loaded with the safety off, just waiting for someone (another Tojo?) to pull the trigger.
    The bottom line is that Japan can "accept" a higher degree of midbrain violence-enabling in the media because that variable is being held down by all the other factors. For a while.
    But this restraint can defy gravity for only so long. Certainly their recent terrorist nerve-gas attacks have been sufficient to cause some soul-searching as Japan examines the degree to which media violence is causing its citizens to accept violence as a viable alternative.
    Most of the world has not been able to protect its citizens.
    Governments around the globe, try as they might, have not been able to keep their immune-deficient citizens in a bubble. And they will never truly be able to control violent crime unless they stop infecting their children.
    "Just Turn It Off," or "Let Them Eat Cake"
    One common response to any concern about media violence is,
    "We have adequate controls. They are called the 'off switch. If you don't like it, just turn it off."
    Unfortunately, this is a tragically inadequate response to the problem. In today's society the family structure is breaking down and even in intact families there is enormous economic and social pressure for mothers to work. Single mothers, broken homes, latchkey kids, and parental neglect are increasingly the norm.
    Through herculean effort, parents might be able to protect their own kids in today's world, but that doesn't do much good if the kid next door is a killer.
    The worst thing about the "off switch" solution is that it is so blatantly, profoundly racist in its effect, if not its intent, because I N T R O D U C T I O N TO THE PAPERBACK E D I T I O N xxi the black community in America is the "culture" or "nation" that has borne the brunt of the electronic media's violence-enabling.
    In this case, poverty, drugs, gangs, discrimination, and the availability of firearms all predispose more blacks than whites toward violence. These factors defeat the first filter; then the absence of the second, midbrain filter becomes noticeable.
    Bronson James, a black Texas-based radio commentator whose show I was on, observed that this is identical to the genocidal process in which for centuries the white man used alcohol in a systematic policy to destroy the culture of the American Indian.
    For a variety of cultural and genetic reasons, the Indians were predisposed toward alcoholism, and we dumped it into them as a crucial part of the process that ultimately destroyed their civilization.
    The pumping of media violence into the ghettos today is equally genocidal. Media violence-enabling in the ghetto is the moral equivalent of shouting, "FIRE!" in a crowded theater. As a