Which On-Screen Violence Is More Senseless?

Game Of Thrones author George R.R. Martin compares the violence in the series to that of drone warfare:

Taking human life should always be a very serious thing. There’s something very close up about the Middle Ages. You’re taking a sharp piece of steel and hacking at someone’s head, and you’re getting spattered with his blood, and you’re hearing his screams. In some ways maybe it’s more brutal that we’ve insulated ourselves from that. We’re setting up mechanisms where we can kill human beings with drones and missiles where you’re sitting at a console and pressing the button. We never have to hear their whimpering, or hear them begging for their mother, or dying in horrible realities around us. I don’t know if that’s necessarily such a good thing.

Zack Beauchamp thinks this is mistaken:

Martin is certainly not alone in questioning the implications of drones, and exploring the human impact of war is a major part of his work. As he’s said repeatedly, his work is designed to be a criticism of war as a human institution, the base cruelty of characters like Joffrey Baratheon and Ramsay Snow exposing what happens during episodes of organized violence. Still, Martin’s own books allow for a lot more nuance around the morality of medieval warfare than he seems to see in its more modern incarnation. The idea that killing in war is somehow better when done with a sword rather than a missile seems to cut against his critique of war itself.

What’s really troubling about both the drone program and slaughter on Game of Thrones isn’t the technology people are using to kill each other. It’s the reasons that they decide to deploy it. On the show, it’s mostly a pointless struggle over which royal family gets to wield power. In real life, it’s the willingness to kill civilians to achieve arguably dubious gains against al-Qaeda. The problem in both cases is the policy of people in power, not the weapons they use to pursue it.