We are habitually conditioned to treat of time as consisting of a long, singular "line", leading to such absurd questions as where must this line "begin" or "end" (how thick is it? is it really composed of infinitesimal points or 'slices'?). But these are only properties of lines, not of time. What does a line have to do with time?
If time is really any "thing" at all, the one "thing" it most definitely is NOT is a line.
None of what we are witnessing in this country and around the world would be possible without a sizeable portion of the population having already accepted and internalized the basic tenets of authoritariansm either implicitly or explicitly. We were there ten years ago, if not much longer ago than that. The French, who very wisely made the decision to disallow this style of politics in their government, would have long since burned their country to the ground after refusing to work all year if things had gotten to this stage. What is it then, exactly, that has so long stayed the hand of the citizenry of the United States and kept them from overthrowing an obviously tyrannical government, right here in the "land of the free" and, allegedly, the "home of the brave?" Are we so useless that we can do nothing but stand back and allow the least worthy of us to lead the charge straight off the cliff?
People routinely invoke history in order to claim membership in a group and to sound important, not because they wish to call attention to the intricacies of the historical record or indeed the impermanence, ephemerality or triviality of the present in light of the vast range of actual realities or potential scenarios, the majority lying forever hidden from our view. Yet from this many will forcefully claim that the ancients knew better than the moderns regarding some practice or set of beliefs, or that our contemporaries must finally have arrived at the truth after so many untold centuries of error. What is held to be true changes; this much at least must be admitted But what happens when the notion of truth itself is called into question? What happens when, publicly or privately, the only truth becomes 'nothing is true; everything is permitted'? The old skeptical argument that disagreement between peoples across world regions and historical eras implies that no universal truths can be established succeeds by default where people are incapable of making truths for themselves.
...or, "Cancelling the Future."
I too watched this on VHS as a child, thanks to a PBS affiliate station which syndicated the series from the then-new cable networks; it was one of the first TV programs to have been written for the format that soon went on to dominate the world with its prepackaged, carefully manicured "universe in a box" concept from which we have more or less been struggling to escape, vainly, ever since. What struck me most poignantly, seeing this as an adult, is twofold: One, the presence of Matthew Broderick (appearing here as the unwitting poster child for the John Hughes makeover of Hollywood under Reagan) and two, the titular heroine opposite played by an almost breathlessly energetic Jennifer Beals, who grew up on the South Side of Chicago. It's quite unlikely that many children, myself included, could have understood what this choice of characterization might have suggested to audiences at the time.
But it is now obvious, with the full benefit of hindsight, that somebody must have been paying attention. There is no doubt considerable irony in the realization that the systematic defunding of Public Broadcasting in the United States by right-wing extremists may have been due, in no small measure, to the unease felt by certain self-appointed defenders of what are alleged to be "traditional values", that (among other programs) a harmless and indisputably traditional fairy tale might actually succeed in inculcating in children the authentic sense of fairness or justice those values are meant to embody. Or... maybe it was the way the wicked stepsisters' only responsibilities - namely the curation of their grotesquely and unredeemably porcine profiles - too closely resembled the chief preoccupation of the first, but certainly not the last, public administration to play itself on television?
Whatever their primary motive, it's clear that for all their talk about freedom, the new authoritarians have little tolerance for anything other than endless reruns of their own navel-gazing Christmas special where even poor old Charlie Brown might be a closet commie. Some conservatives, it should be noted, have even managed to maintain these or similar levels of paranoia for decades, often without the aid of any drugs whatsoever (other than alcohol, presumably): A truly impressive feat, to be sure.
Either way, it's bleedingly obvious by this point that there is no princess, and none of us are invited to the demolition derby hosted by the world's richest and most powerful. Rather, it seems we might just have to host one of our own!
The well-worn path of holier-than-thou-ism on the left leads nowhere and will get us all killed. Few (if any) in this world can claim genuine moral superiority. "Authenticity", as it is now understood, is only a code word for the suppression of originality. The "good person" / "bad person" signifier matching game, like most of what passes for culture, is almost totally devoid of meaning in a soulless copycat / shakedown society in which money trumps everything and brute force is the only currency in circulation. Our postindustrial meltdown is the inevitable result of a raging intellectual bonfire in light of which the primary goal of enterprise has become not the generation of works possessing any intrinsic or enduring value, but merely the placement of other practioners of whatever art at a competitive disadvantage.
Where honest living has been made impossible, thieves and thugs set up shop and take root. Our major cities are full of well-intentioned (and doubtless very useful) idiots who are, if anything, even more convinced than their avowedly neofascist foils that progress can mean only one thing: eliminate the competition, or, in the case of certain insurance companies, the customer as well.
