Militainment

After reading the article I had a few thoughts regarding Stahls argument.  The first thing that popped into my mind was the thought that I don’t believe that his argument really applies to other cultures nearly as much as it does to the American culture.  That’s obviously not to say that other kids and young adults do not partake in the playing of violent video games or that they do not consume some sort of militainment, but I do believe they consume it in a totally different way. 

America has an unmatched fixation and emphasis on its media, in every form that is presented to us.  When watching the clip in class on militainment it really brought to my attention that even as we as a country were fixated on the initial stages of the conflict in Iraq, the media was simply presenting it in a way that focused more on capturing, or retaining, their audiences (American public) attention as opposed to presenting the facts at hand.  At the time we must have been too entranced by the overall situation, but when looking back at it now it was not only evident, but also unfortunate that the media was more concerned with commercializing the conflict as opposed to covering it.  This leads me right to my main point, which is the American public, adults included, is losing its ability to think about and view war in a critical way and from another’s perspective.  Media skews and puts whatever spin they choose on covering conflicts overseas, so for the majority of the general public who follow these conflicts through the means of national media outlets, their knowledge consists of what the media feeds them.  The scary part is that what the media feeds us is more profit driven than fact driven for the most part.