continuity of changes. The point is that events transformed you into an
advocate of peace, if not an activist against war. Do you agree?"
"Yes."
"This is exactly what the Players do not want, and why that critically
defining footage never aired. If people saw war for what it really was, they
would not support it. We‘re not that stupid, and we are that squeamish
when it comes to viewing a neighbour‘s corpse. "
"I‘m confused… by which I mean more than usual. Last week you
said airing the slaughter in Vietnam would have enhanced
enlistments."Scuffing the sand with her foot, she said, "I told you this was
an inevitable consequence of maintaining their particular brand of national
image from the cradle to the grave—their brand being a skewed vision of
duty, patriotism, and honour. If television coverage was as relentlessly
stark in presenting reality, as it is now lopsided vanilla, most people would
see the insanity just as most people saw that the core message of the peace
marchers was peace."
She took a slow breath, and quoted herself. "The nature of the
protesters‘ actions was to peacefully demonstrate for peace in the face of
tremendous political and social pressures. In that case, television coverage
unified people of like mind, some of whom had contributed to the carnage
and came back to say no more. Others left everything they loved behind,
breathing and intact, and came to this country. Television coverage of
peace promoted peace, because that was the nature of the event. So yes,"
she came out of her review, "I‘m saying that intimate coverage of war
would promote war, but in the same way that throwing yourself off a cliff
while wearing a flag would promote hang-gliding. Most people are
smarter than that—some aren‘t. Those who were proactively influenced
were the extremist patriots, who reasoned that if the government says a
colourful cotton sheet is a good airfoil then they‘re going to flight school."
She skimmed off a thin pane of water with her heel, and a mirror of
translucence burst from her foot, collapsing in sheets on either side of her
ankle.
"The media sanitises atrocity, which anesthetises the public to make
human aberrations acceptable," she said, "as if they exist in small
numbers, under extreme circumstances, that we can somehow better by
reporting them." She looked my way. "The corporate giants that sanitize
reality do so under the banner of maintaining a prescribed level of taste, to
allegedly protect our sensibilities." She tapped my thigh with the back of
her hand. "Think about it; what‘s sensible about war that needs to be
protected? Who sets these levels of acceptability, and why? For that
matter, who tells the public what movies to watch through the re gulation
