War abroad, interpersonal violence at home
Linking news and research from social psychology and elsewhere, James Benajamin wonders about increased interpersonal violence:
What we’re probably already beginning to see in America is the spill-over from the Afghanistan and Iraq wars that are in their fifth year and approaching a fourth year, respectively. We should expect to see an increase in violence in the upcoming years given what we know now.
I don’t know if there’s evidence yet that returning US soldiers are indeed acting more aggressively back here at home, but it seems likely. The problem, as Benjamin notes, is more general, and inspires a variety of speculations. Do teenagers pick up more aggressive styles from a culture that makes war seem like a game, where even torturing prisoners is portrayed by the media as a sexually tinged good time? Does the increase in violence among girls reflect yet one more transformation of feminism’s early emphasis on changing cultural norms into the distorted determination to be just as nasty as the guys? Have we all become so desensitized to media violence that the latest Abu Ghraib photos no longer make us do more than just shake our heads and change the channel?