Lessons from television

Current television, while entertaining, seems to pretty closely follow the trends of liberal and progressive politics. Take, for instance, the idea of "Green Week' that runs on most networks, where for an entire week networks make-believe that they're actually making a difference by not using a certain amount of electricity in an effort to "save the planet." Never mind that this idea was first instituted by the NBC network, who are owned by GE (General Electric, which creates much of the new "green" products and services now currently available, conveniently providing them a huge profit!), but that's an entire story by itself.

While I don't know if it was created by conservatives or liberals, I was watching an old favorite mini-series of mine from 20 years back called V being played on SciFi (or SyFy as it's known currently). I hate to miss a chance to catch the Beastmaster (Marc Singer) in a flick, and V certainly fits the bill. As I enjoyed the shows with my wife, I began to realize how oddly familiar the scenario seemed to be, as if something of the same nature was happening in the world, i.e. a benevolent helper flying in unexpectedly to save a hurting world, slowly taking control of various aspects of the government under the guise of "helping" us out. The Visitors are able to quash the resistance's efforts to show legitimate footage of their true plans since they were already given control of all forms of audio and video media. The Visitors downplayed all ideas the resistance put forth, making fun of them and explaining away their proof as lies, misconceptions, and Hollywood special effects. Does this sound familiar?

The Visitors even led the world governments to question respected leaders in science and slowly remove them from the public as they secretly sucked all of our resources into their giant ships to leave us destitute and dying. Everyone who questioned the Visitors was plucked out of society as conspirators, stashing them away as food or reprogramming them to become willing participants. I'm sure there was much to learn from the show, but my brain was stuck on this idea. In no way do I believe that our current government is killing off their detractors, or even stashing them away for food, but beyond that, I'm not so sure.

My fear is that there won't be enough people to realize the problems before it's too late. In V the resistance was able to raise enough awareness before they became a completely fascist world government (there are even a few scenes of a concentration camp survivor comparing the circumstances to his experiences in the camps), and the V was changed from Visitors to Victory. The enemy who desired complete control over the populace was defeated through concerted effort and exposing the truth, though, unfortunately for us, it's easier to expose the evil truth when the enemy looks like lizards under their fake human skin.