Mr. Robot

I’ve watched the first four episodes of a USA network series by this title, and have been discouraged.  The pilot had a great talk on how the world runs on debt, and how it could and should be freed from this form of slavery.  I wondered how they could keep that content on the air, and it turns out they couldn’t.  They transitioned to generic attacks on corporations, and the main one is even named “Evil Corp”.

Then major drug episodes, emotionally unhealthy sex, general weirdness and provocation.  This is a generic left wing script, attacking traditional values, and large corporate giants.

And here is a point I have made many times, but perhaps not explicitly: if I were a member of the power elite, I would fund attacks on the power elite. I would pay people–perhaps indirectly, as it works even better if people are sincere–to go out and publicly denounce the man, publicly denounce corporations and corporate profits and the “1%”.  I might in fact have created that meme. It’s very useful.

Because here is the thing: most people are too fucking stupid to separate rhetoric from reality.  You could be killing babies with one hand and kissing them with the other, and if you only talk about the one, nobody will notice the other. You can literally make vast profits denouncing vast profits.  You can get your people elected on promises of transparency and responsibility to the people.  You can start wars in the name of preventing wars.

But by creating an apparent opposition, people assume there actually IS an actual opposition.  I would have funded Occupy Wall Street.  Does that sound evil, devious and wrong?  Of course: but these people think in terms of efficacy, not morality.

Do you think Obama has not done every damn thing Wall Street asked him to?  Of course he has.  If I had been a Wall Street banker I would have paid people to denounce the Wall Street Reform Act, because that would have made it look like a bad deal for them.  It was in fact a great deal–and why not?  They wrote it.

Thinking is not something one person in 100 does effectively, not even among people paid to think, paid to understand for a living.

The great transformation TV has enabled is that reality has become what the TV says it is.  Image is everything.  I think when people read, or even listened to their news, there was still a thinking brain engaged.  Now, the TV–or digital equivalent–does everything for you.  One of my advantages is that I literally go years without watching a newscast of any sort.