"DSK" wrote in message
...
Why? Because he thinks it's fun to shoot real-life bad guys, or because he
talked about it publicly? He's a Marine, for gosh sake! Although as a
general he probably doesn't get to do much shooting in person.

I used to hunt deer with a retired gunny sargent. Didn't talk much but
every once in while he'd say something to the effect that deer just aren't
smart enough, or well enough armed, to be good sport.

DSK

So, maybe psycho was an incorrect term.

"Browning puts considerable emphasis also on desensitization and
routinization of killing in explaining how men slowly escalated their
participation in killing. This is the psychology of commitment, much studied
in research on dissonance theory. In its modern version, dissonance is a
theory of rationalization in which individuals sucked into stupid or sleazy
behavior will change their opinions to justify and make sense of their
behavior. Probably the paradigm case of this psychology is another classic
study, Milgrams's research on obedience.

Milgram showed that the majority of normal individuals will give a supposed
"learner" increasing levels of shock, up to a maximum 450-volt shock labeled
"XXX DANGER STRONG SHOCK." Part of the power of this paradigm is the slow,
graded nature of the shocks, which begin at only 15 volts and increase 15
volts with every mistake the "learner" makes. So close is the grading of
shock levels that, at each level, to recognize something wrong with giving
the next level must imply something wrong with the level already
administered. Slow escalation of hurting others is a slippery slope in which
each act of aggression becomes a reason for more aggression.

Taken together, group dynamics and the psychology of escalating commitment
go a long way toward explaining how normal people can do awful things. Throw
in the reward and punishment power of the state, a power that needs move
only a small number of people to do the dirty work against a target class or
race, and even genocide begins to be comprehensible."

Can't find the attribution now, from a long article on the subject.

John Cairns