Provoked with Darryl Cooper and Scott Horton

Episode 10: War Through the Lens of Grief

Date: August 30, 2025

Overview

In this emotionally charged episode, Darryl Cooper and Scott Horton use personal experiences with grief as a gateway to discuss war, violence, and the systemic detachment societies develop toward the suffering of others. The episode focuses on how the costs of war—whether psychological, emotional, or physical—are lived daily by soldiers and civilians alike, and how the numbing abstraction of distant violence helps perpetuate cycles of conflict. The hosts urge listeners to remember the personal tragedies behind every casualty statistic and grapple openly with the soul-twisting realities faced by both combatants and noncombatants.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Personal Grief and Its Analogy to War (00:32–05:50)

• Darryl Cooper opens with a personal story about suddenly losing his father-in-law, highlighting the intense sadness and ripple effects on family. This loss reminds him of the universal nature of grief experienced in warzones.
  • Quote:
    “It’s very easy to just sort of like lose sight of the fact that like... those people who are weeping and crying and screaming when they’re carrying their bloody, mangled four-year-old out of the rubble, they’re feeling the same thing you would feel… when that happens.” — Darryl Cooper [04:32]
• Insight:
  The media and internet culture can trivialize war, making suffering just another piece of "content." But for its victims, loss and pain are intensely real and relatable.

2. Bearing Witness to Atrocity via Media (05:50–10:11)

• Scott Horton describes how a brief visit to Twitter exposes him to graphic images and reports of violence—journalists being bombed, parents dragging dead children from rubble—which serve as a brutal wake-up call.
  • Quote:
    “Just think for just a minute ... imagine somebody did this to a little kid that you care about. For God’s sake, man. It’s worth being angry about.” — Scott Horton [07:08]
• Insight:
  To maintain empathy, one must make an intentional effort to imagine such suffering as happening to people close to oneself.

3. The Role of the US in Global Grief (10:11–14:32)

• Cooper recounts his disillusionment during his military contracting days, especially related to Yemen and the suffering caused by US-supported blockades.
  • Quote:
    “We would stop them and board their boat and put them all in handcuffs... If we found any contraband, which included freaking children’s Tylenol, into the ocean it went... There’s a child on the other end of that trip... waiting for that children’s Tylenol that might have saved their lives.” — Darryl Cooper [12:20]
• Horton highlights the psychological toll on individuals involved in enforcing such policies, no matter how distant from direct violence.

4. The Psychological Wounds of Combat (15:37–19:48)

• Cooper tells a story about his tough, stoic uncle, traumatized for years after accidentally injuring a child in a minor accident, to illustrate the far greater moral and emotional contortions required to take violent action in war.
  • Quote:
    “When you have to do something like that, you’re really twisting your own soul out of shape in really important, powerful ways.” — Darryl Cooper [16:44]
• Discussion of soldiers (like truck drivers in Iraq) forced into situations where harming children is inevitable—leading to high rates of PTSD.
  • Quote:
    “You better have such a good reason if you’re gonna put your people in a position to do those kind of things to other people.” — Darryl Cooper [19:24]

5. War Porn, Media, and the Ego of Grief (19:48–23:51)

• Horton critiques American culture’s tendency to center its own suffering—and especially its veterans’ suffering—in war narratives, turning others (Iraqis, Vietnamese, etc.) into mere "extras."
  • Quote:
    “Try being the dad of a kid that got ran over and you weren’t there...” — Scott Horton [19:59]
• However, he also defends the value in voicing those wounds if it warns future recruits about the reality of war, challenging recruitment propaganda.

6. Responsibility, Obedience, and the Paradox of Care (23:51–29:15)

• Discussion of the tension between necessary military obedience and the utter dependence soldiers must place in leaders' judgment, with Cooper lamenting how casually airstrikes and invasions are often authorized.
  • Cooper:
    “You’ve got to be able to trust the decisions that the people up there are making. And when it’s just become clear... that... decisions are made casually.” [24:24]
• Horton describes the "precision paradox" from Amos Fox—how increasing targeting precision paradoxically enables mass destruction.
  • Quote:
    “Very carefully, one corner of a building at a time, destroyed every building in the city... by rationalizing that they’re taking that much care... there’s no limit on how much they can do...” — Scott Horton [27:41]

7. Is Human Violence Inevitable? (29:15–34:36)

• The hosts debate fatalistic arguments about human nature, war, and violence, rejecting the justification that violence is destiny because it’s always been so.
  • Quote:
    “What else is like natural is like massacring the neighboring village and raping all the women... so what? It’s just an excuse to behave like animals.” — Darryl Cooper [30:12]
• Horton compares the reality of sustained peace between US states to show that progress is possible and inevitable violence is a myth.

8. Veterans, Guilt, and the Loss of Moral Narrative (34:36–end)

• Cooper observes the sadness among veterans who no longer feel they can tell their children that their actions were righteous, as they can’t defend the purpose behind their sacrifices.
  • Quote:
    “Looking back and realizing... they can’t tell their kids about this stuff... They’re afraid of how their children would look at them and for good reason because it’s how they’re starting to look at themselves...” — Darryl Cooper [35:06]
• They reflect on how US cultural and strategic shifts have eroded the country’s reputation from a beacon of hope to an agent of global violence.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Darryl Cooper on grief and empathy:
  “The sadness of it has really been like kind of front of mind for me... sometimes I feel like when I do just rest with the sadness of it all and the tragedy of it all, it sort of recharges my batteries for the fight...” [05:26]

• Scott Horton on the dehumanizing effect of distant violence:
  “We're supposed to think, what, like, I don't know, they're too far away and they're too black to care about or whatever. But it's just as easy to imagine their suffering, you know what I mean?” [09:32]

• Darryl Cooper on orders and responsibility:
  “You have to have an army that works like that.... But in order for that to happen, you got to be able to trust the decisions that the people up there are making. And when it’s just become clear... that... decisions are made casually.” [24:24]

• Scott Horton on the so-called “precision paradox”:
  “...very carefully, one corner of a building at a time, destroyed every building in the city. They leveled the place. They just did it very, very carefully. And then by rationalizing that they’re taking that much care to do it, then there’s no limit on how much they can do as long as they’re being careful.” [27:41]

• Darryl Cooper on the moral legacy of military service:
  “...they're afraid of how their children would look at them and for good reason because it's how they're starting to look at themselves...” [35:22]

Key Timestamps

• 00:32 — Cooper discusses his father-in-law’s passing and relates personal grief to war casualties.
• 05:50 — Horton describes graphic war images on social media and the emotional reality for victims' families.
• 10:11 — Cooper recounts complicity in Yemen blockade and moral disillusionment.
• 15:37 — Cooper’s family story illustrates how trauma lingers even in minor accidents; parallels to war casualties.
• 19:48 — Horton critiques “war porn” and the centering of American suffering in war narratives.
• 23:51 — Debating whether realistic war stories can ever be anything but anti-war.
• 27:21 — Horton introduces the “precision paradox” and the problems of rationalized destruction.
• 29:15 — Questioning the inevitability of war and violence.
• 34:36 — Cooper explores veterans’ guilt and loss of a justifying narrative.
• 41:16 — Episode wraps up with final remarks on grief, moral injury, and the challenge of self-forgiveness.

Tone & Language

The conversation is stark, personal, and reflective, openly confronting the pain, guilt, and ethical confusion that war brings—both for those who experience it directly and those who authorize or enable it. Both hosts are critical, but empathetic, aiming not to judge individuals but to indict systems and attitudes that allow violence to perpetuate.

Final Thoughts

This episode challenges listeners to move beyond abstraction and consider the full human cost of war, not only for “us” but for everyone caught in the crossfire, asking: If we can’t even tell our own children what we did, then what was it all for?