I've been spending more time watching the boob tube this week, just trying to get through this long hot summer. Taking advantage of my Amazon Prime membership, I've been catching up on TV shows that I've missed during the last six or seven years. Surprisingly, I've been especially drawn to those apocalyptic shows where the world has essentially ended and the survivors are pretty much on their own, no longer having big government for their succor. I'm finding these shows far less scary than real life today as our nanny government intervenes more oppressively into our personal lives.
The first series I dialed up was Under The Dome. Having read the book, I found the series to be totally alien to Stephen King's original novel. Never the less, I'm enjoying watching people learn to cope without the aid and abetting of big government. As in real life, we see the good people battling the bad guys, and doing so on a level playing field...there are no government quotas and no Barack Obama showing up on the fringes of the dome to make still another speech, to demonize free market forces or to promise what he obviously can't deliver.
Having exhausted the available Under the Dome episodes, I continued to boycott "scary real life" by avoiding the news programs and moved on to watching Falling Skies. This series involves the invasion of earth by some fairly scary looking aliens who, as their first order of business, wipe out 90 percent of the world's population. Falling Skies is intriguing because the survivors liken themselves to our own revolutionary world founding fathers who are desperately trying to survive and mount some manner of credible defense against a large, unfeeling force of aliens who wish to dominate every phase of those lives who fall under their control. (Sound familiar, America?) These "survivors" who are trying mightily to restore America to her previous glory would no doubt have alot in common with the Tea Party folks of today.
Having devoured Season 1 and 2 of Falling Skies, I have now cruised through the first ten episodes of Jericho. This series focuses on the town of Jericho, Kansas, whose residents seemed to have survived a massive nuclear holocaust. It was interesting to see Jericho's residents go first through the "withdrawal" of the government tit...just waiting for someone to come and rescue them. First there is great fear as this little pocket of America is flailing about, lips pooched, and seeking out the government tit which, for the price of half of their annual income, always promised to "take care of them". Now these lost souls must learn to take care of themselves. It is heartening to see the residents of Jericho begin, once again, to stand up like men, fore go trying to lean on a government behemoth for their succor, and plow ahead with plans to feed, educate, medicate and defend themselves....it hearkens back to a time when for two hundred years Americans dared to do just that. In Jericho, we witness human courage, we rejoice at the whiners being shouted down and shamed, and we honor those who are bravely standing up for the public good. How refreshing!
And so, I've been watching as those dome folks deal with mysterious forces, and witnessed gory and bloody battles under Falling Skies and the poor folks in Jericho trying to survive nuclear annihilation....and am comforted by all of it...simply because our oppressive "big government" is at last destroyed,. leaving man to battle less threatening forces like evil and slimy aliens. Having foregone the national news programs for less "scary" matters, my blood pressure has gone down and my resting pulse rates have returned to normal.
I hear Obama plans to make his 577th speech from the Rose Garden....I won't be tuning in. Instead, I'll probably catch a couple of more episodes of Jericho. I find the nightmares of Falling Skies and Jericho far more comforting than today's headlines.
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