Story is not reality. And fiction often takes liberties with reality.
While I find the injection of leftist politics or climate change “facts” into every possible TV series, it’s not enough to make me want to put a shoe through the TV.
And my husband knows that if he insists on watching TV while I’m in the room, he will have to put up with my occasional commentary, when I look up from typing and hear something particularly egregious. My commentary is rarely profane. It usually is more like “Pshaw.” And “In your dreams that’s proven.” Or “What world are you living in?”
I find politics in entertainment products annoying, but I also know the left can’t help themselves.
No, it’s the other stuff that really gets to me, and often makes me shout, “Hon, you can’t watch this while I’m here. Not if you like that TV.”
Of course, we’ve been married a long time. When I say that he was usually about ten seconds from turning it off himself.
The other stuff? Yeah. the “of course this is the world and how it works.” That stuff, because it’s just part of the setup slides under the radar for most people. I don’t even know if I catch it because I have a writer’s brain or because I have a small Cold War Injury that only hurts when I laugh, and I ain’t laughing.
Stuff that gets to me: No one is clean. No, listen to me: NO ONE IS CLEAN. Not even the so called hero, who is often the most despicable of them all, but hey he kills bad guys, so he’s wonnerful.
However not only is everyone cheating, stealing and killing as a matter of course, but they’re also engaging in all forms of sexual depravity real and imaginary.
This is why btw in the left’s mind the worst crime is “hypocrisy” because everyone is the worst of the worst all the time, and pretending to be good is only done to make others feel bad. Because why else would you do it.
I often wonder if that’s why every lefty politician (or businessman) once you scratch the surface is a horror show. And which came first. Is it because they all are like this, or because they grew up thinking everyone is like this?
And the entire worldbuilding is bizarre and exhausting, when you bake that in. Look, I’m not the nicest person int he world, but where would I find time to have underage sex slaves? And where would I keep them? And who has the energy? EVEN SUPPOSING I HAD ANY INTEREST. Ditto with a drug habit. (Well, coffee, but–) Or the multiple affairs on the side. Or attending Satanist masses or whatever the heck I’m supposed to be doing according to the left’s perception of the world.
It’s like “Dude, I’m late on a short story and three novels. I’m going to have to pass up on the sex cult this month again. Sorry.”
Then there is the society. No, seriously.
First, the power brokers in the society are always white and what I’d call “Southern preachers” even when they aren’t. Heck, they’re Southern Preachers circa 1980, with the hair and the suits. And these will be corporate officers or whatever.
Have your female character get a job in a corporation and she’d either going to be asked if she’s a Christian, or treated like an oddity and like she’s overreaching herself.
I’ll be honest: I’ve been in the US for almost 40 years.
Unless a corporation is specifically I don’t know “United Baptist Books” (meh. I’m out of coffee. It’s best I can come up with.) You’re not going to get asked about your religion. And even there you’re unlikely to.
And all the characters somehow got brought up in this oppressive ultra-Christian, ultra-conformist society that might once have existed somewhere, in a small town in the South circa 1950 but I doubt it, because I grew up in an oppressively mono-religious little village, and even then there were dissenters and scoffers, and if they weren’t actually frontally attacking the majority they were ignored and tolerated.
AND despite getting brought up in that kind of background and acting shocked at the stupidest things, if a scene calls for them to talk about sex, they reveal knowledge of perversions I never heard about before, and note I learned about sex from Roman mythology first.
Then there are the …. Look, climate alarmism is a thing that in the provincial backwaters of academia and associated fields gets taken for revealed truth. Even though none act as if it were really true. I mean, look, if you really think we’ve passed the point of no return, and are all going to be dead in ten years why are you saving for retirement? I figure the back of their brains is much smarter than they are. But never mind.
But why is it that even the characters who don’t believe in it never laugh and say “that’s nonsense?” No, the characters always say things like “I don’t care if the world burns.” Like there is no room at all to question the nonsense. Anyone who doesn’t believe in the church of holy Gaia is obviously stupid. This is probably virtue signaling, or maybe the writers really being that dumb, but the result is that if you have a modicum of science training, you find yourself looking at the screen and going “They’re all mentally deficient” which adds another layer of horror to the setting.
And then there is the other “of course.” OF COURSE a white character is racist, no matter how they hide it, or even if they work tirelessly for racial harmony. OF COURSE a Muslim character has been bullied and treated badly (note, there is almost no incidence of this. At all. There are more hate crimes against Jews than Muslims. Also my laugh out loud moment was the Muslim guy who grew up in Denver talking about all the Christians putting him down. I was going “Dude, just DUDE. There are more open Muslims than open Christians in Denver, because big city and …. What?”)
The compound world of all these “of courses” is a horrible, nasty place, where every human is feral, women are more discriminated against than in the Middle East and oh, yeah, there is no way to get ahead except by thieving, murdering and defrauding others.
And all of this gets put in the back of people’s heads by not being part of the main plot, just “how things are.” Which means they will confuse it with lived experience.
When you wonder where the left comes from? They come from TVlandia, and it’s a terrible place.
They’re so convinced the world is like that that they can’t even perceive the real world. And that’s before you get to all the alarmism nonsense about climate or whatever is the thing today.
I wish there was a miracle to remove the blinders and let them see they don’t have to be miserable. But if it exists, I haven’t found it.
And I don’t know how to combat this dropping of sludge into the soul except by creating better worlds and keeping pushing them out there.
Under over and around. Because there’s no other way.
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