“Are you not entertained!?”
— Gladiator
This is a response to the recent article in the Atlantic, “The Paranoid Style In American Entertainment”, as part of their Conspiracy Theory series.
Look for a political, military, government, “spy” show that holds your attention that is accurate or not ridiculously dramatized. More specifically, most military shows dramatize chest beating, kitted up door kickers that exemplify ‘Merica. Most spy shows dramatize some nefarious deep state intelligence officers deeply rooted at our highest levels aiming to destroy & corrupt things. Why — because it sells. If we drive down the road and have a choice between looking at the car crash or the old woman being helped across the street, we’re all looking at the car crash.
More importantly perhaps are the reality TV shows this article discusses. Trump’s — The Apprentice — was looked at as entertainment and no harm there, but it was free advertising…free political advertising that did more than anything else to dramatize a “business leader” dictating to minions around him. Take a look at “The Tiger King” now…most people look at it as entertainment, but this is also a guy who ran for office already. Why -beyond eyeballs / $$- are we giving voice to people who do not move society forward?
The net: we are giving free advertising to and putting individuals up who “entertain us” instead of lead us; we are feeding a drip campaign of dramatized bullshit that American’s lap up, because reality is most often long hours of boredom and plain hard work. And when we go into a voting booth, we are ticking the check box of the entertainer / dramatizer that mirrors the dramatized world in which we get our entertainment.
I hope that we’re all tired of being entertained…
