With the especially poignant propaganda coming out nowadays I'm thinking of watching The West Wing. Is the show actually good or just pure cringe?
Oh I thought I needed to watch the show to listen to the podcast. I'll probably just do both :stress:
One of their ongoing jokes is that most of their audience, myself included, have never actually watched The West Wing. Half of the episode is usually just Dave Anthony going further left than he does on The Dollop and then eventually they get to the show. They dissect the episodes enough that I have a good understanding of the content without having to endure the rhetoric, like Knowledge Fight does with Infowars.
I tried when WWT first came out. I couldn't finish the first season of the TV show. The funny thing about the pod is the amount of time they actually talk about the show keeps shrinking. It's barely an afterthought right now.
You don’t need to. I thought I’d have to put just listened to the show anyway, and they say pretty frequently that the majority of the audience doesn’t watch the show. They play a lot of sound clips so you get a good idea of what’s going on. Maybe watch an episode or two to get a feel for the characters but that’s all you need.
To understand older libs, West Wing is good.
Shows like Parks & Rec, Brooklyn 99 and Veep are more millenial libs' speed
I don't know how anyone would watch Veep and not realize that all liberal government is a farce. It's not even like Parks and Rec where she's shown to be a "good public servant", she's literally just a selfish power hungry psychopath who literally gets nothing done in 8 years.
I never hear liberals mention Veep the way they do Parks and B99 and the Office. Because it doesn't paint ANY politicians as good people.
You will understand the brainworms but it’s gonna hurt ya.
West Wing walked so literally everything about contemporary US liberalism could run
like it is not as bad as you would imagine but you will pay for this in time (you will one day be doing something else, maybe passing some time with some loved ones and think about some scene and take a lot of psychic damage)
Liberal "polite politics" porn.
Listen to "The West Wing Thing" instead. Saves you the trouble of having to watch it. Or just watch the episode and then listen to the appropriate WWT ep.
Man I just do not understand the idea of "this is something we dislike so we're going to shit on it every week." Like more power to them and their audience, but how do you spend so much time on something you hate? Even listening to an episode.
I don't know who serious Dave and Josh were when they first started the series but their story is that they wanted to talk about the West Wing as a media phenomenon that was taken to heart by young adults who went on to be a part of US politics and how this fictional media may have influenced those real world political creatures.
What they quickly realized is that the writing of Sorkin was kinda fucked. The stories were fucked, the dialog was fucked, etc. And then realizing that "holy shit, real world politicians were influence to go into politics because of this show" and seeing how real world people in positions of authority are doing "West Wing" logic on the stage of US politics.
As the series goes on, they spend less and less time talking about the actual show and just have a guest on to talk about a few points from the show and then talk about absolutely anything else.
It's good to analyze bad things, especially when they're very influential.
Isn’t all the ambient indoctrination enough? We gotta subject ourselves to cruel and unusual punishment too? Lol
its an entertaining and well written show even if a little dated. the politics are just pure liberal wet dream splooge but not bad so much as ignorant of the political realities of america
It gets downright bad in later seasons. Thinking of the Islamaphobia during season 5 - "I'd carpet bomb Mecca for my kids" :cringe:
So I personally enjoy Aaron Sorkin writing, it's not realistic and everyone is too clever and knows every single reference ever made. And conflicts are usually resolved with the Bad Person saying Something Stupid that can easily be turned against them, and losing a debate forces you to concede to other side.
I couldn't rewatch it after I became more leftist and listened to the CTH episode on it. "GOD I INCREASED THE GDP, WHAT MORE COULD YOU WANT FROM ME?" But that was mostly because of the politics, I still generally like the characters and writing. So it's probably not worth it.
you don't have to actively consume propaganda to understand its message. all you will accomplish is psychic damage to yourself or the successful implantation of its brainworms.
to understand its message all you have to do is exist anywhere around libs. they will parrot the message to you in bullet points whenever you stray from it. "paying attention to nazis is what gives them power", "american empire isn't real and even if it is, it's benign and good actually", "eventually the right will stop pulling us to the right if we just compromise with them in good faith", "america has a functioning democracy".
these are hegemonic discourses. the real struggle is to find media which does not actively reinforce these ideas so you can actually have space to form and hold thoughts of your own.
i know a guy who watches fox news "to understand what they're thinking." all he's accomplished in 10 years of doing this is being dumber than when he started, though more confident in "his" analysis. the delivery system is poisonous.
The first four seasons are pretty darn good TV. The politics is all very cringey, though, of course.
If you were tasked with understanding those particular brain worms, it would definitely be a way to do it.
