Democracy / Shock and Awe

Democracy / Shock and Awe from the film Loved by Ghosts, an animated documentary exploring some of the key events of the last two decades.

Democracy: (1) Government by the people, exercised either directly or through elected representatives. (2) A political or social unit that has such a government. (3) The common people, considered as the primary source of political power.

Shock and Awe (technically known as rapid dominance) is a military doctrine based on the use of overwhelming power and spectacular displays of force to paralyze the enemy's perception of the battlefield and destroy its will to fight. This is a tactic tried and tested by the US military. There are many layers in the sound-scape of 'Loved by Ghosts', the Morse Code that runs through this story is actually the original definition of the tactic converted to code.

“The decision to rely heavily on high-altitude air power, target urban infrastructure and repeatedly attack heavily populated towns and villages has reflected a deliberate trade-off of the lives of American pilots and soldiers, not with those of their declared Taliban enemies, but with Afghan civilians... There will be no official two-minute silence for the Afghan dead, no newspaper obituaries or memorial services attended by the prime minister, as there were for the victims of the twin towers." - 'The innocent dead in a coward's war' by Seumas Milne, December 19, 2001

Dedicated to the millions of journeys we can never comprehend.