Sullivan, in an excellent piece on blogging's liberation from editorial strictures, points to what he calls a "great reflection" by the NYT's David Carr on the instantaneousness of social media and modern war. Here's Carr's wrap up:
So now that war comes to us in real time, do we feel helpless or empowered? Do we care more, or will the ubiquity of images and information desensitize us to the point where human suffering loses meaning when it is part of a scroll that includes a video of your niece twerking?...
As war becomes a more remote, mechanized activity, posts and images from the target area have significant value. When a trigger gets pulled or bombs explode, real people are often on the wrong end of it. And bearing witness to the consequences gives meaning to what we see.
Doubtless meaning is given. But in going back to Carr's question of helplessness or empowerment, the latter is hard for me to see. Empowered how? In "caring more" because we witness the utter powerlessness of war's innocent victims? But I'm not sure a sense of helplessness is the alternative experience of most Americans, either. Nor is it desensitization.
My guess, a kind of negligence? A negligence of the world, born of our received wisdom that we are an exceptionalist nation--one immune from the barbarity of hegemonic aggression, religious strife and ethnic slaughter? It is said that we lost this confidence of secure isolation after 9/11, but that was also said after Pearl Harbor. Once again, it didn't take us long to regain it. We have, since the horrifying adventurism of Bush-Cheney, returned, it seems, to Fortress America.
Yes we feel for Palestinian children, but let's face it: they're of a peculiar, dark-skinned species of a violent religion and even more violent emotions, against whom peace-loving Israelis must--tragic though it is--hurl mortar shells and tank ordnance and payloads from F-16s. That's the way war is, just as that's the way much of the world is--of which we're not really a part. It's wretched, it's heartbreaking, it's damned distressing--but now on to that video of a twerking niece. Because we can.