Well put!noddy wrote:nerds are cool and machos are marginalized jocks - in that context the weedy guy that uses the power of their minds and creativity to beat the nasty macho's is really no change at all, just a movement of power symbols.
plus the fact that the much of the modern west has largely moved its legacy macho needs to computer games and drones is just the same thing but with more realistic bad guy behaviours... the ai on the enemies is better.
the west wont get its beneficial insights into drones until they are flying down suburban streets and taking out the undesirables based on facial recognition and phone identities - which wont be long now, they are doing the polish and refinement to mainstream acceptable levels of failure in the middle east... which is what nonc said above i believe.
just what exactly is the acceptable ratio of swat teams shooting up the wrong house versus gangster drug dens again ?
twitch.
The interesting thing about the nerds-are-cool, war-as-video-game paradigm is the implicit hierarchy of cultures/nationalities. Not based on race or religion, it is simply based on technological capability (and thus wealth). Its ok to bomb poor people with drones because they are poor and don't have drones and are thus only provisionally people in the first place. Any true human being in 2012 has a laptop/smartphone/blog. "You think you're tough because you spent a decade fighting communists in the Yemeni mountains with an AK and a bellyfull of goat meat? TASTE MY MOUSE CLICKS!"