American (and the world) are glued to their televisions. Watching the war unfold live in our living rooms has become part of our everyday lives. But even ignoring the obvious bias of the media conglomerates, the coverage seems woefully hollow. The fancy graphics and “embedded” reporting help us the ignore the dark reality of this invasion. We are “shocked and awed” by the constant flashes of light without ever considering that these hyperreal lightshows are killing human beings. Scott Rosenberg has an excellent article on Salon.com that he aptly titles ‘CNN and the denial of death’:

“War kills people. Whether you feel that this war is justified or not, whether you agree with Bush’s decision to invade or not, you cannot truly “support our soldiers” without acknowledging the skull beneath the skin of battle—without staying conscious of the fact that everyone involved, on both sides, is in mortal jeopardy as long as this war proceeds.

For all the whizzbang 3D maps and crawling newsblip texts and live satellite feeds and pyrotechnic skyline shots, the hyperactive screens of the cable news channels have no room for this one truth. And to me that makes the whole medium feel like a lie.”

It is difficult to imagine a more anesthized method of consuming warfare. Even the rhetoric that cable channels (and warmongers, who are increasingly one-in-the-same) use to describe the conflict helps to soothe the reality of immense destruction. The “shock and awe campaign” is much easier to stomach than “bomb the living hell out of them and strike the fear of God into anyone who ever dares to cross us”. “Collateral damage” is a much more comforting phrase than “the justified and wholesale slaughter of innocent people”.

Viewership of television is a passive activity that encourages us to consume its simulations. Unfortunately, in this case, the simulation we are consuming is preventing us from experiencing the reality of mass death and destruction. Human beings are dying in the name of “liberation” and our beloved America is solely responsible.