Anatomy, politics and other complications

“When he was a boy he’d visited the museums and looked with patriotic pride at the paintings of famous cavalry charges, last stands and glorious victories. It had come as rather a shock, when he later began to participate in some of these, to find that the painters had unaccountably left out the intestines. Perhaps they just weren’t very good at them.” — Terry Pratchett, Night Watch.

Bloodless violence, tidy heroics, all the glory of the cavalry charge, none of the spilled intestines. Does this sound familiar? Does