I will start with an admission: I have never played a video game. But millions, maybe billions, of people have and do, and some apparently have made it a centerpiece of their waking lives. Most play it, I assume, for entertainment, or maybe out of boredom, but others play video games as a part of their jobs, either as training exercises, or in their day to day work.

Job training through the use of video games can apparently have a lot of benefit. Games can teach concentration, strategic thinking, quick decision making, and so on. It can also teach skills that are specific to certain occupations. Take, for example, piloting an airplane, or sending a rocket into space. Job skills can be refined using these tools and, equally as important, they can allow one to meet a real life situation with the reaction: “I can do this. I have been here before.” That can be invaluable in the technological world in which we live.

In an era of drone warfare, or rocket warfare, or even some fighter plane warfare, video game training (also known, of course, as simulation training) can be invaluable. In the wars we now experience, such as the Russo-Ukraine war, military personnel sit in comfortable (or not so comfortable) locations and, looking at screens far from the actual battlefields, call in drone strikes or air strikes and see, in real time, the effects of their efforts. Many of these people, highly trained as they do their jobs, are using the same skills they used growing up, playing their video games.

There is a mirror-like effect in play here. The ability to successfully accomplish their goals has been greatly increased by their video gaming in the past. And their real life work, to them, is comfortable because, after all, it is simply an extension of playing these games.

This brings me to the Caribbean and our shooting boats out of the water with drones, one of the best examples of video games coming to life. Clearly, video game-like training was essential to creating the ability of our military to be able to attack these small boats moving through a vast body of water. I think all of this is obvious.

But now, let’s look not at the military personnel directing the individual strikes. Let’s look at the members of Congress or the administration, or members of the American public, looking at videos of the strikes, or even simply imagining what videos of the strikes would look like. They look like video games. And because they look like video games, the strikes seem normal, not extraordinary events. In video games, people get blown out of the water all the time on screens; that’s the purpose of the games. In the real attacks on boats on the Caribbean, it’s the same. Nothing unusual.

Not surprisingly, there is partisan difference in the way these attacks are discussed. Right wingers generally love them; people in the center and the left generally abhor them. To me, that brings up two things (at least). First, it raises the question: do people who are to the right politically play more video games than those who are more to the left? I haven’t seen (or looked for) much on this topic – but I did recently see a study that said that 48% of conservatives (I don’t know the age or gender of the people surveyed) and 38% of liberals played video games. This may be indicative of what I believe might be true.

And the second question is: who is more pro-life, liberals or conservatives? If you take away the question of abortion (which involves the definition of life, which is a separate question), and look at who is more pro-life with regard to humans who have been born, I would bet that people whose politics tend to the left are much more pro-life than those on the right. Again, a guess, but it seems to me one with experiential bases. Think death penalty, social services, etc.

If I am (more or less) right on all the above, it is no surprise that conservatives don’t care that we are killing people whom we really know nothing about (or may actually really like it), and liberals find our actions unconscionable.

You could expand this conversation, I think, also to questions of purpose. What are we really trying to do in the Caribbean and close-by Pacific? What is our goal regarding the Maduro regime in Venezuela? Are we keeping drugs from America (remember, none of these boats are heading directly here)? Are we setting the stage for a ground operation to accomplish regime change in Caracas? Are we just showing power? Are we just having a little sport? Are we just playing a video game (which by chance happens to go beyond simulation)?

If our problem is fentanyl, our actions in the Caribbean are irrelevant. If we are going after cocaine smugglers, how do you explain the pardon of former Honduras president Hernandez? Nothing makes any real sense here with regard to purpose.

But, and apparently this is important, many of us are enjoying the game. Not because we think we are engaged in anything that will lead us to a stated goal. But just because the game itself is fun.

And that’s the thing about President Trump and his merry players, isn’t it? It is all fun and games. If you look at his administration any other way, you will just go crazy.