24 No More
I’ve enjoyed watching the Fox TV show 24 in the past–I started watching season 5 on television, and then rented seasons 1-4 from Netflix. I’ve found the show’s frantic pace engaging, even though many of the subplots and characters are corny. In past seasons, the writers (and actor Sutherland) have been very careful not to point the finger at the purveyors of terrorism in today’s real world: Muslim fanatics. Instead, they’ve typically woven the plot so that the real villains are some white male government insiders conspiring to grab power, using Muslim fanatics as pawns/excuses in their evil plots. This has always been a mild irritant.
However, this season’s script has been a complete assault on the free world, and is just too distasteful to watch. The plot seems driven by some liberal writers’ desire to remake reality to fit their fantasies about the real source of evil: the US government. The roles of real world villains and heroes have been reversed. Those who are actually intolerant fanatics seeking religious tyranny (Muslim fanatics) are made out to be victims of US oppression. The bad guys (judging by the villainous music) are those suggesting that the civil liberties of potential terrorists be “violated.”
Of course, the story doesn’t take you to any real-world society made in the image of “Allah” where “civil liberties” consist of the choice to pray to Allah or be executed. Also gone from this script are the real-world foreign sources of religious fanaticism: Iran, Syria, and much of western Pakistan—offering no real solution to the script’s dilemma of invading Muslim terrorists (i.e., eliminate the sources).
We’re all fully aware of what the boisterous leftists’ skewed worldview is (e.g., murderous dictators play nice if you’re kind to them first, the nations that honor individual rights are always more evil than all others, etc.).
Watching 24 feels more like a leftist sermon than entertainment. I’m officially tuning out.