Alec Baldwin Join Us

The accidental shooting on set of a western movie by Alec Baldwin could be an opportunity for him to truly do something great, an incredible occasion to do something more than the regular paltry gestures of actors like Sean Penn. A connection between violence in movies and violence in reality is absent save the disproportionate amount of violence in media.

Apropos safety on movie sets due to the Alec Baldwin Affair we should also be talking about reigning in the violent movie industry. There is no proven relationship between real world violence and violence in media. Violence in media is a perpetuation & free propaganda for the military industrial complex. Children would stop playing war games if adults did the same. Even though I was not on the front lines of war l don’t watch war movies. When we were conducting flight ops, bombing targets in Iraq the videos were broadcast all over the ship. Trophy footage of carnage is a thing of the past or should be. I don’t tell war stories. Most vets I know that served in times of war don’t watch war movies. I am sure this isn’t a wholesale fact but I want it to be.

There is no visible connection to the war like culture the Buffalo shooter came from or the nazi azov battalion that his government has armed. Why is it so hard to face who we are? Those who do not hunt find it easy to absolve themselves as if voting democrat makes one a conscientious objector.

The nihilistic digital stream of consciousness is hard to pin down to deconstruct. That’s why curbing violence in video games was a dismal failure in the 90s. The warning label system only works for parents who are responsible. As an outcrop of the military industrial complex it’s easy to see how urban warfare franchises act as training simulators for would-be mass shooters. Spike Lee’s movie Clockers portrays 90s  video games as urban warfare simulators. When I was playing the original Grand Theft Auto in the 90s the rampage mode was the most attractive feature. While being a mass shooter was not a mission in the game the architecture both rewarded the mayhem and deployed escalating battalions of police. Video games are reflections of reality, not the source of it. The rampage mode provides cross roads where militarization meets the prison industrial complex. As art video games reach their mark here and I do not believe this causes violence but it should teach us something.

The phenomenon of cop shoot cop or suicide by cop always facinated me and provided me with an avenue to understand myself. Suicide is not easy, so some, or arguably all, try to do it by the hand of authority. Pointing a toy gun at the police unbeknownst to them with the intention of suicide. Coming to the resolution while being pursued in place of arrest and incarceration. Cop shoot cop is in the performance art of children trying to get attention from their parents by misbehaving. I knew I was delinquent because of cop shoot cop, but, even though I could see it, I had no power to control myself.

Powerlessness is the human condition. After one goes to war and sees the massive machinery of it. This idea that we can legislate our way out of school shootings is a part of the fiction of non-participation in the sins of our government (as the Russians are learning now). Alec Baldwin this might be your moment to do something that really matters. Launch a campaign against violence in media using your tremendous clout. We are all cogs in the machine, relieve yourself of your guilt. Join us!