I have a long list of posts I want to do. But this is stuck in my head, so I'll write about it. This is my personal take on the terrifying mess we are in.
Given the vast stretches of wasteland and mindless to insulting garbage that dominates American cable TV, various drama series from Europe have a lot of appeal. They are usually very well produced, written, cast and acted. Most of the series about life and events from ~1900 to the end of WW2, have central themes of (i) war, (ii) various forms of bigotry, (iii) the corruption, brutality and evil that humans do, and (iv) the endless fight against all the myriad forms of human badness and evil. The Europeans seem to have been and probably still are significantly preoccupied with such matters.
One can see why. That's where two huge, bloody wars were fought.
Although these series are all fiction, it is obvious that the badness portrayed is inherent in the human condition. In my opinion, these series are fiction but they portray quite plausible human reality. There aren't excursions into the supernatural. Just events that one can easily envision as coming from a core of truth.
La Otra Mirada (A Different View) was made in Spain in Spanish with English subtitles. It is a series about a girl's school in 1920s Spain in Seville. It brilliantly portrays the struggle of women to slowly, painfully break free from all the heavy constraints on their freedoms and power to control themselves and live as they wish. The brutality and intolerance of men, and some sympathetic, complicit women, in opposing that slow progress is made crystal clear. The series is heartbreaking in how it shows the wreckage and vast waste of a society dominated by men and by religious (arrogant, heavy-handed Catholicism), political ideology (insane, arrogant fascism), and deeply ingrained misogynistic social norms, all of which oppressed and denigrated women and their role in society.
The British series Foyle's War dives into the social and political chaos that started with WW2 in Britain. All the badness that humans, mostly men, can inflict on others is laid out in great detail. Sometimes the attackers force the attacked to into untenable situations that force a sacrifice core moral principles of the defenders of what is good and decent. They are dragged down to the level of behavior of the attacking human monsters. Only good and moral intentions differentiate the defenders from the monsters. Although Foyle and and the other characters fictional, Anthony Horowitz the show's creator, said that many of the storylines are grounded in real life.
Hotel Portofino is a British series about a fictional British family who run a hotel on the Italian Riviera during the 1920s after WW1. Poison and badness of the bigotry and misogyny and the arrogant political extremism, i.e. fascist Blackshirt thugs, are clear. Some regular people are swept up in Facsist horrors as aggressors, while others are victims. Some willingly participate or are silently complicit aggressors. Many innocent oppose as best they can. As is routine in these series, some of the rich (elite) men are scoundrels who cheat on their wives and/or are thieving moral scumbags. Wealthy businessmen are commonly portrayed as cruel, greedy pigs, often thieves, and usually misogynists too. Those thugs could not care less about politics, other than trying to avoid it entirely, unless it can make them more wealthy and powerful. Not surprisingly, the fascist ideologues cannot be reasoned with. They mindlessly ruin lives and murder with no moral qualms. They see as their behaviors as a sacred, infallible service to a cause far higher than mere individual well-being.
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What is the point of that?
This is the point: In drama series like those three, all the poison, lies, brutality, bigotry, misogyny, hate, greed and mindless cruelty come across loud and clear. Political and religious extremism are common carriers, i.e., moral justifiers, of what an old roommate of mine liked to call awfility (awfulness). Those series show things like criminals stealing food from hungry civilians, murders, corrupt military leaders and businessmen, and ghastly betrayals of innocent wives, other people and nations, often with lethal results for some of the innocents. Heck there is even desecration of corpses and water torture scenes. What is morally and practically good or defensible is simply not a concern to the bad people. They are at war, either their own personal war (criminals and the insanely greedy) or war "for the greater good" (fascists and Nazis). Weakness in the rule of law for elites, including judges and powerful business people, but not average people, also comes across loud and clear.
A sane person just can't miss all that stuff. Just can't.
So, what is on my mind is probably obvious to readers who have made it this far.
When I look at the traits and behaviors that arrogant, aggressive ideologues, extremists, liars and grifters, especially the elites in those series, I get a feeling of empathy for what the fictional victims experienced and lost. More to the point, I also feel sadness and fear about what most Americans will experience and lose if the American 2024 elections come out the wrong way. Those series convey the same kinds of emotional poisons and bad behaviors that America's radical right authoritarian MAGA movement and its morally rotted leader DJT now attack us innocents with. Just like in the fictional series, (1) American elites know exactly what they are doing and why, (2) there is confusion and splits in rank and file society, much of which is deceived and betrayed by the knowing elites.
Recent polling indicates that DJT has a slightly better than even chance of winning the electoral college -- he is +2% as of July 19.
A modern American version of what those fiction drama series show can happen here. We can lose our freedoms to some form of bigoted, kleptocratic authoritarian government with a brutal, wealthy White male Christian Taliban to enforce God's infallible moral requirements on us (but not themselves of course -- morality is purely optional and pick and choose for the elites). Maybe MAGA thugs won't march in the streets and seek out opponents to murder or beat senseless, but there will be brutality and corruption on a vast scale, dwarfing the shocking level of corruption that plagues our society, government and commerce today.
That we are being attacked like this and on the verge of losing our country to unspeakable, corrupt radical right authoritarian darkness makes me sad and fearful. I very much hope that my sadness and fear are misplaced. With some luck, they are.
