Gyroscopic Investing

Having been weaned on TV, as probably most of us were, I grew completely bored a good many years ago and quit watching anything but the news and football.

A couple of years ago I heard people at work talking about the Fox series "24" and thought I would give it a chance so I rented it at Blockbuster and got hooked, watching all of the episodes one after the other until there were no more.

The same thing just happened with "Prison Break", all 4 seasons now available on Amazon Prime Time and presumably Netflix. Watching commercials for this show when it first aired it never interested me but after watching the first episode out of curiosity I have to admit I was hooked. Michael Scofield is the star of the show, a genius who engineers the prison breaks and I would describe him as a non-violent Jack Bauer character. I think if you are willing to accept television for what it is, something to add some escapist spice to your otherwise boring life, shows like this are pretty good television.

To maintain my television eschewing, intellectual credentials however, I would like to make an observation about the nature of shows like Prison Break and 24 in general.

And the observation is the universal acceptance of the U.S. government as an evil institution. Having watched television since the time we only had three black and white stations to choose from I can tell you this truly represents a profound change that others might not appreciate. This was virtually unheard of when I was growing up, from shows like "The Highway Patrol" to "Mission Impossible" the government guys were always, universally the good guys. Today it is almost universally the opposite, at least when it comes to the federal government.

I have no explanation for this phenomenon but my gut instinct is that it's a good thing.

Perhaps some insight into why it is true:

Jerry Pournelle*'s Iron Law of Bureaucracy

...in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself. Examples in education would be teachers who work and sacrifice to teach children, vs. union representatives who work to protect any teacher including the most incompetent. The Iron Law states that in all cases, the second type of person will always gain control of the organization, and will always write the rules under which the organization functions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Pournelle

*JP is best selling SF writer and long time computer columnist.

I've been rewatching The X-Files through Netflix streaming and noticed the same thing. A major overarching theme is that the Federal government is evil. In hindsight I'm surprised it was tolerated on mainstream network TV, on Fox no less.

If I had to hazard a guess, it'd be that the success of the Internet, which is a space where governments and nationalities are practically irrelevant, is slowly eroding support for statism.

(places tinfoil hat on head) Maybe they're priming us for the New World Order, ie one-world government.    Get us to distrust our own government, so that a new one-world can step in.  It's already starting in Europe. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-18557059

Or, it is just popular to dislike/distrust the government, so they are simply playing to the audience/mob.

Also, I have been hooked on Heroes lately.  It has a Joseph Campbell vibe to it, which adds a little extra to the storyline.

Gosso wrote: (places tinfoil hat on head) Maybe they're priming us for the New World Order, ie one-world government.  ???  Get us to distrust our own government, so that a new one-world can step in.  It's already starting in Europe. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-18557059

Or, it is just popular to dislike/distrust the government, so they are simply playing to the audience/mob.

Also, I have been hooked on Heroes lately.  It has a Joseph Campbell vibe to it, which adds a little extra to the storyline.

Personally I don't believe in "they" and I don't believe in a New World Order or a one-world government because I don't believe that even Michael Scofield and Jack Bauer working together, even if they decided to join the evil forces of the dark side, could pull off such a thing. That's only entertaining fiction to me, when all is said and done.

But I have no doubt that evil men exist and that they can do very evil things and convince others to follow them. I think history teaches us this whether we want to accept it or not. I give you Mao Tse Tung, Joseph Stalin, Adolph Hitler, Richard Nixon, and Lyndon Johnson for examples. Current leaders are exempted of course. They have attained a more exalted state of enlightenment being educated in our finest public schools and could never stoop to the depraved state of mind where they think that killing innocent human beings is the right thing to do as long as it pragmatically furthers their righteous political agenada. Obviously, this could never happen in the real world of America as we know of today.

jackh wrote: Personally I don't believe in "they" and I don't believe in a New World Order or a one-world government because I don't believe that even Michael Scofield and Jack Bauer working together, even if they decided to join the evil forces of the dark side, could pull off such a thing. That's only entertaining fiction to me, when all is said and done.

But I have no doubt that evil men exist and that they can do very evil things and convince others to follow them. I think history teaches us this whether we want to accept it or not. I give you Mao Tse Tung, Joseph Stalin, Adolph Hitler, Richard Nixon, and Lyndon Johnson for examples. Current leaders are exempted of course. They have attained a more exalted state of enlightenment being educated in our finest public schools and could never stoop to the depraved state of mind where they think that killing innocent human beings is the right thing to do as long as it pragmatically furthers their righteous political agenada. Obviously, this could never happen in the real world of America as we know of today.

Just to clarify, "they" in my first paragraph referred to the Bilderberg Group (or whatever one wants to call the people controlling the world behind closed doors).  I don't really believe in this stuff either, but it's fun to speculate.  "They" in my second paragraph refers to the producers of the shows.

I just watched "Artois the Goat", a charming indie film about a young man's quest to make the perfect goat cheese, and was pleasantly shocked to discover an extreme anti-government slant, including referring to the FDA as the "Fascist Drug Administration" and an actual raid by scary-looking FDA killer suits who confiscated the protagonist's unpasteurized cheese and charged his friend with "conspiracy to import an unpasteurized dairy product". The next scene involved a kindly British lady comparing them to feudal marauders. Simply marvelous.

I really enjoyed the first couple seasons of 24, then as the Iraq war dragged on it seemed to be making more and more overt political statements about how it was alright to torture terrorists for information, etc.  I really started to think the producers were trying to justify torture to the public, so I stopped watching.  I never got the impression they were trying to portray the government as evil; quite the opposite:  I thought they were trying to make an inherently evil practice look justified: "Quick!  There is one man who knows where the bomb is and only 30 minutes until thousands of people die!  Beat the shit out of him until he talks!"  There were lots of contrived totally unrealistic scenarios.

Thanks for the tip on Prison Break.  I might enjoy that show.

jackh wrote: And the observation is the universal acceptance of the U.S. government as an evil institution. Having watched television since the time we only had three black and white stations to choose from I can tell you this truly represents a profound change that others might not appreciate. This was virtually unheard of when I was growing up, from shows like "The Highway Patrol" to "Mission Impossible" the government guys were always, universally the good guys. Today it is almost universally the opposite, at least when it comes to the federal government.

Prison Break was unexpectedly great and unexpectedly got picked up for season after season, but it just had to jump the shark for the 3rd season.   I guess its tough to keep things intellectually interesting for years at time.

What about evil big business/corporations?  Has that always been present?

I find it compelling that The X-Files may have heralded the anti-government meme as suggested by another poster.  The X-Files started in 1994 which is not all that long after Clinton got elected and such conservative, family friendly fare such as The Cosby Show and Family Ties had ended, Star Trek: TNG was just ending and groundbreaking, adult-themed fantasy shows such as Hercules: The Legendary Journeys or Xena: Princess Warrior were just starting.  But if I had to declare a moment in time that things seemed to change TV's deathgrip on conservatism, it was with Seinfeld.  It was truly groundbreaking for its time that I am still amazed it was even greenlighted.  It was completely obscure for the first two or three years (I think it started in 1989/1990), then it suddenly picked up critical mass.  Senfield might seem like old hat to us nowadays with vapid reality shows, gratuious sex and violence, etc. but it has to be watched and appreciated with that socially conservative era in mind.

Eventually, I plan to check out stuff like L.A. Law and Hill Street Blues and see if they were really as good as they were claimed to be at the time.  I'm definitely not a fan of the endless and perpetual fantastical crime-procedural-law-shows (somehow I managed to catch the very first original CSI episode, go figure!), but if something really breaks the mold, I'll give it a chance.

As far as SciFi goes, I consider Andromeda to be the true modern pinnacle of that genre and of old-school style network syndication (i.e. when they actually ran a first-run, full seasons and not just sporadic episodes for late night filler).  You just got to suffer through the cheesey first couple of episodes and then the brilliant arc writing for the next three seasons begins.  The intellectual themes and drama are very, very relevant to the "government" concept.  No spoilers.

I think that a deep and durable skepticism toward anything that the government is doing, telling you to do, telling you to think or telling you to believe is a really really really good thing.

The government is capable of doing good as well as bad, but over time its efforts seem to tilt toward borderline delusional efforts focused on either building really big and pointless things (usually through the confiscation of private property by force or the threat of force), or changing human nature (usually by force or the threat of force).

The government narrative that is most chilling to me is when you have the politicians and bureaucrats really thinking they are doing something good (Woodrow Wilson and George W. Bush might fall into this category), as opposed to the Dr. Evil-type of villain who knows he is doing bad and doesn't care.

Season 3 of PB was awful... 4 was pretty awesome though.

PB overall was pretty sweet for its time.

I share much of the same healthy skepticism & cynicism here, but I have to say it:
it's a wonderful thing that in countries like the UK, US, Canada, etc, we can actually have shows in which we criticize the govt so scathingly, and in which we can portray them as the enemy.

dualstow wrote: I share much of the same healthy skepticism & cynicism here, but I have to say it:
it's a wonderful thing that in countries like the UK, US, Canada, etc, we can actually have shows in which we criticize the govt so scathingly, and in which we can portray them as the enemy.

Amen!  I love that this is so.

As another example, take all of the "9/11 was an inside job!" conspiracy nonsense that swirled for years after September 11th.  As foolish as all of this was, it's crucial that this and every other kind of political speech is protected.

When you have the right of free speech, sometimes you're going to get bad or seemingly subversive speech.  In a free society, though, you counter such bad speech with more speech, not censorship.

Lone Wolf wrote:

dualstow wrote: I share much of the same healthy skepticism & cynicism here, but I have to say it:
it's a wonderful thing that in countries like the UK, US, Canada, etc, we can actually have shows in which we criticize the govt so scathingly, and in which we can portray them as the enemy.

Amen!  I love that this is so.

As another example, take all of the "9/11 was an inside job!" conspiracy nonsense that swirled for years after September 11th.  As foolish as all of this was, it's crucial that this and every other kind of political speech is protected.

When you have the right of free speech, sometimes you're going to get bad or seemingly subversive speech.  In a free society, though, you counter such bad speech with more speech, not censorship.

Exactly. I think this holds true for all forms of freedom, in fact. Freedom often leads to some people abusing it; the "solution" (if you could even call it that) is more people behaving normally it rather than trying to lobby government to oppress the people doing things you don't like.

Pointedstick wrote:

Lone Wolf wrote:

dualstow wrote: I share much of the same healthy skepticism & cynicism here, but I have to say it:
it's a wonderful thing that in countries like the UK, US, Canada, etc, we can actually have shows in which we criticize the govt so scathingly, and in which we can portray them as the enemy.

Amen!  I love that this is so.

As another example, take all of the "9/11 was an inside job!" conspiracy nonsense that swirled for years after September 11th.  As foolish as all of this was, it's crucial that this and every other kind of political speech is protected.

When you have the right of free speech, sometimes you're going to get bad or seemingly subversive speech.  In a free society, though, you counter such bad speech with more speech, not censorship.

Exactly. I think this holds true for all forms of freedom, in fact. Freedom often leads to some people abusing it; the "solution" (if you could even call it that) is more people behaving normally it rather than trying to lobby government to oppress the people doing things you don't like.

Absolutely.

I think that individual human beings acting on their own individual understanding of reality is the basis for much of our progress as a species over time.

If an ant were to have a desire for free speech and free thought, the rest of the nest might justifiably try to suppress this desire, but for whatever reason human beings seem to be at their best when the individual members of the tribe, nation, etc. are given enough flexibility in the way that they arrange their affairs for innovation to be facilitated that is ultimately beneficial to the entire species (so far anyway).

With all that said about the benefits of freedom of thought, however, there is also the alarming tendency in many people to crave an authority figure to tell them what to think, feel, do, etc.  Unfortunately, there are many people in the world with bad motives who exploit this desire.

I am deeply appreciative that I live in a society where we can criticize our politicial leaders without too much fear of retribution or retaliation.

MediumTex, I think one of the paradoxes of human existence is that we simultaneously want individuality and community. We are a social species, but a social species full of individuals with private goals and motivations and desires. How we balance these dual needs is a personal question we must each answer for ourselves. I think one of the worst things someone can do to someone else is try to force their own preferred balance onto them, and this is the basis for my distrust of government. It basically exists as a giant forced community and exhibits an inherent bias toward the worst aspects of our social nature in its quest to crush individual choices that contradict what's been decided by the group or its leaders. Even if you're a very socially-oriented person yourself, if an undesirable community is forced upon you, you can still chafe under it.

As the instigator of this thread and happy to see the level of intellectual discourse about government that it led to I must report that as of last night I have been mourning the very unexpected death of one Michael Scofield.

I was expecting something more along the lines of 24 where Jack Bauer walks off into the sunset leaving some ambiguity about the future of the character but apparently the writers chose to take another course.

RIP, Michael Scofield, and congratuations to the writers for entertaining my boring life with interesting characters and an interesting, though sometimes preposterous story for a few weeks.