At 9:20 AM -0700 7/9/01, Ray Dillinger wrote:
>I turned on a television set last night, for the first time in many
>months. I was watching videotapes, but I caught fragments of shows
>while tapes were rewinding, etc.
>
>American TV has taken a definite turn for the vicious since I last
>watched. It's still pablum-and-opiates, but someone has spiked it.
>
"Let's kick it up a notch!"
>We're seeing an increasing focus on elitism, "survival of the fittest",
>etc -- shows that present the "elimination" of the weak as a virtue,
>and where game-show hosts masquerading as intellectuals intentionally
>humiliate contestants.
Yes, quite a refreshing trend.
>We are seing a separation of moral responsibility
>from action and being conditioned to accept viciousness in authority
>figures.
That British woman who says "You ARE the weakest link. Good-bye!" is
not an authority figure by any sense of being a state functionary.
People compete in the show, as in all of the other shows you are
presumably catching snippets of, on a voluntary basis.
(Note: I have never seen an episode of "Survivor," "Boot Camp," or
"Weakest Link." I did watch the first episode of "Big Brother" last
summer, figuring it might be germane to my interests in privacy and
surveillance, but it was too boring to watch for a second hour.)
>The tone is very similar to "entertainment" or "public education"
>films that were produced by the propaganda arm of the german National
>Socialist party in 1936-1938, which I remember from school but
>which folk in Germany, or those who attend current-day American
>schools, will not recognize due to censorship. We forget history,
>believing that this will prevent us from repeating it rather than
>the other way round....
Calling these shows comparable to what the Nazis did is ludicrous.
>
>The progression was reasonably simple, as I recall.
>
>First, the people are conditioned to accept "harsh reality", survival
> of the fittest, etc.
Teaching people this fact might do wonders for getting ten million
leeches off the welfare rolls and state subsidy scams, so I applaud
it.
>Third, some class of people are identified as being "inferior" and
> pseudoscience upholding the claim is advanced.
The dull are just that, dull. Not pseudoscience, but fact.
>
>I am scared.
>
You ARE the weakest link. Good-bye!
--Tim May
--
Timothy C. May [EMAIL PROTECTED] Corralitos, California
Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon
Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go
Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
