I really don't see how it could be true that US citizens are "meh" about military action. We treat military casualties in the single digits as tragedies. We're somewhat less adverse to collateral damage, but compared to Vietnam, let alone the wholesale firebombings of WWII, even that is (and I hope everyone will pardon me for saying it) pretty minimal.
That's the essence of Pinker's point-- the more aware we become of each individual death, the less violent we become, but the more violent we feel. Violent video games are probably the pinnacle of expression of that: our culture is so safe and so risk averse that we become upset by 100% fictional violence which hurts literally no one.
And I feel the comparison between murder and rape is pretty much invalid, for the reason you state. We do have a very serious rape problem, and again, it is obviously not because of all the rape video games out there, or glorification of rape in our culture. It's because real men do not learn to respect real women in the real world.
So now we make machines to kill for us. Pretty soon they will be nearly autonomous. All to remove our guilt.
My ex-boss, was a sniper in Vietnam. One phrase he hated over all others was "kill them all and let God sort them out". He always labeled those who used that as pussies. He had no respect for them.
We got all sorts of good stories out of him about his time over there, but never anything involving killing other people. That was discussed only with people who were there and even then rarely. He could tell us how he could take parts off a moving car from a long distance but never would mention the obvious connection.
I am quite sure a lot of them are sociopaths or just bastards. But did we give them any other choice, the nice guys don't even finish last, they just die first.
I bought and read SEAL Team Six: Memoirs of an Elite Navy SEAL Sniper. In it, the author says that all snipers need to have a really strong faith, philosophy, or something like that to guide them so that they don't lose control of themselves and get intoxicated by the power. When you have someone in your scope, you really can feel like God, the decision to kill or let live is yours. He says that's why it was so easy for someone like the Washington sniper to get carried away and go on a killing spree. If you don't have something strong in you to guide you and keep you under control, you'll go wild, in his opinion.
"We treat military casualties in the single digits as tragedies."
There's obviously a huge difference between television "mourning" for a stranger, and knowing the pain of losing someone you care about, or experiencing violence first-hand. And frankly, most of the statements you hear in response to military casualties are, at some level, driven by politics.
I don't believe that becoming aware of death makes us less violent, and I don't believe it makes us more violent. I think the general effect is to intellectually separate us from the horror of real violence.
That's the essence of Pinker's point-- the more aware we become of each individual death, the less violent we become, but the more violent we feel. Violent video games are probably the pinnacle of expression of that: our culture is so safe and so risk averse that we become upset by 100% fictional violence which hurts literally no one.
And I feel the comparison between murder and rape is pretty much invalid, for the reason you state. We do have a very serious rape problem, and again, it is obviously not because of all the rape video games out there, or glorification of rape in our culture. It's because real men do not learn to respect real women in the real world.
Again, that's what we should be talking about.