Assassination Generation

by Kristine Paulsen and Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman

[Kevin Costain]

I generally don’t end books before finishing, but this one is a little much. The book is essentially a hit-piece against the media and video game industry, blaming it for all the violence-centred ills of Americana. Really difficult to take seriously.

Some thoughts:
- Calling violence a worldwide phenomenon - it really isn’t pp19
- Various points of praise doled out for the prison-military-industrial complex.. like this is somehow helping. “Let’s shove more people in prison to reduce the crime rate.”
- Cherry picking stats that are horrible but with no mention that violence is actually dropping overall pp28 then mentioning “crime is down” on pp30
- A strange reference to older medical tech that would increase the murder rate if doctors weren’t so skilled. pp29
- calls guns “just a tool” having little effect on mass murders, but yet a video game, which is perhaps a tool to entertain (or offend) is causing juvenile
murders.

This is pretty much a call to censor “bad” violence on screens or tv as stupid and idiotically as it’s always been. I have no doubt there were Roman’s calling for the end to Colosseum pugilist games because it was making people homicidal.

With respect to the authors, this one is pretty absurd.