The Pornography of Conservatism

now that's fucked up dot com, is about as well named a url as you'll ever find. It started out as a site for amateur "wife" porn, and evolved into one for quite a different sort of porn, war porn. Images of Iraqi's murdered by US troops, images of the aftermath of suicide bombers and lord knows what else, I could only stomach a couple clicks.

Billmon's pretty damn disgusted too, but his post leaves me wondering just what the difference is between a photo posted in a bulliten board thread titled "What every Iraqi should look like" (and don't visit that link after lunch please, you will lose it) and a similar photo plastered on the front page of the New York Times. I mean I can barely glance at those images, but maybe they belong on the front of every newspaper in town.

When a photojournalist snaps a shot its a horror story, when a soldier brags about the digital photo of the humans he's shot... I'm not really sure what's more sickening, photos, the people taking pleasure in viewing them or the newspapers to scared to run them. Conservatives would never function without war and sex, more bodies to fuel more hatred, but perversely they find it essential to hide the realities of both as completely as possible. Their broad talks of marriage, just wars hides a far less wholesome interior they obviously crave. And in an age where the media has given up on portraying the horrors of war, could it be that our only path towards realizing the reality of America's violence is through the internet back alleys of the war pornographers?