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Solzhenitsyn returns
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Apr. 24th, 2008 | 09:26 pm
The only way you can tell hard truths is by turning them into fantasy.
You can slip by the corporate censors only if you disguise the truth as a fictional lie.
In the short-lived TV drama Jericho, we have a dangerous, ugly, out-of-control company with a mercenary army that bears a remarkable resemblance, purely coincidental of course, to Halliburton. Try putting that into a “realistic” TV drama.
In the TV comedy Boston Legal, we have a brash lawyer standing before the Supreme Court and telling the justices what a mockery they’re making of American justice, including making new law to decide a presidential race. Try having that happen in a “realistic” courtroom drama. Nobody takes Boston Legal seriously, so they can tell us serious truth that otherwise we don’t want to hear.
Americans have always believed that they have the best country, the best government, the freest society on earth. That was always a illusion, of course, but one with enough truth in it that we could live with it.
But after Reagan, Nixon, Bush Sr., Clinton, the junior Bush, a sycophantic corporate media, and a craven corporate-owned Congress, the illusion has become a full-blown delusion.
Now we can only get the truth in the same way that people living under other dictatorships have gotten it: from our writers telling us ‘fantastical’ stories.
You can slip by the corporate censors only if you disguise the truth as a fictional lie.
In the short-lived TV drama Jericho, we have a dangerous, ugly, out-of-control company with a mercenary army that bears a remarkable resemblance, purely coincidental of course, to Halliburton. Try putting that into a “realistic” TV drama.
In the TV comedy Boston Legal, we have a brash lawyer standing before the Supreme Court and telling the justices what a mockery they’re making of American justice, including making new law to decide a presidential race. Try having that happen in a “realistic” courtroom drama. Nobody takes Boston Legal seriously, so they can tell us serious truth that otherwise we don’t want to hear.
Americans have always believed that they have the best country, the best government, the freest society on earth. That was always a illusion, of course, but one with enough truth in it that we could live with it.
But after Reagan, Nixon, Bush Sr., Clinton, the junior Bush, a sycophantic corporate media, and a craven corporate-owned Congress, the illusion has become a full-blown delusion.
Now we can only get the truth in the same way that people living under other dictatorships have gotten it: from our writers telling us ‘fantastical’ stories.