{"id":5364,"date":"2015-02-07T08:34:04","date_gmt":"2015-02-07T13:34:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=5364"},"modified":"2015-02-07T08:34:04","modified_gmt":"2015-02-07T13:34:04","slug":"how-reality-tv-is-teaching-us-to-accept-the-american-police-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=5364","title":{"rendered":"How Reality TV Is Teaching Us to Accept the American Police State"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote>\n<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonsblog.com\/2015\/02\/reality-tv-teaching-us-accept-american-police-state.html\" target=\"_blank\">How Reality TV Is Teaching Us to Accept the American Police State<\/a><\/h3>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPlays, farces, spectacles, gladiators, strange beasts, medals, pictures, and other such opiates, these were for ancient peoples the bait toward slavery, the price of their liberty, the instruments of tyranny. By these practices and enticements the ancient dictators so successfully lulled their subjects under the yoke, that the stupefied peoples, fascinated by the pastimes and vain pleasures flashed before their eyes, learned subservience as naively, but not so creditably, as little children learn to read by looking at bright picture books.\u201d\u2014Etienne de La Bo\u00e9tie, \u201c<a title=\"The Discourse on Voluntary Servitude: How Do Tyrants Secure Cooperation?\" href=\"http:\/\/www.libertarianism.org\/publications\/essays\/discourse-voluntary-servitude-how-do-tyrants-secure-cooperation\" target=\"_blank\">The Discourse on Voluntary Servitude: How Do Tyrants Secure Cooperation?<\/a>\u201d (1548)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Americans love their reality TV shows\u2014the drama, the insults, the bullying, the callousness, the damaged relationships delivered through the lens of a surveillance camera\u2014and there\u2019s no shortage of such dehumanizing spectacles to be found on\u00a0<em>or<\/em>\u00a0off screen, whether it\u2019s\u00a0<em>Cops, Real Housewives<\/em>\u00a0or the heavy-handed tactics of police officers who break down doors first and ask questions later.<\/p>\n<p>Where things get tricky is when we start to lose our grasp on what is real vs. unreal and what is an entertainment spectacle that distracts us vs. a real-life drama that impacts us.<\/p>\n<p>For example, do we tune into\u00a0<a title=\"Bruce Jenner\u2019s gender transformation\" href=\"http:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/tvshowbiz\/article-2937907\/I-never-proud-Bruce-Jenner-s-mother-confirms-reality-TV-star-transitioning-woman.html\" target=\"_blank\">Bruce Jenner\u2019s gender transformation<\/a>\u00a0as it unfolds on reality TV, follow the sniping over Navy sharpshooter\u00a0<a title=\"Chris Kyle\u2019s approach to war and killing\" href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/2015\/02\/03\/us-awards-oscars-americansniper-idUSKBN0L700X20150203\" target=\"_blank\">Chris Kyle\u2019s approach to war and killing<\/a>, or chart the progress of the\u00a0<a title=\"Keystone oil pipeline\" href=\"http:\/\/www.usnews.com\/news\/articles\/2015\/01\/29\/senate-approves-keystone-xl-pipeline-sends-bill-to-house\" target=\"_blank\">Keystone oil pipeline<\/a>\u00a0as it makes it work through Congress? Do we debate the merits of Katy Perry\u2019s Superbowl XLIX\u00a0<a title=\"halftime performance\" href=\"http:\/\/abcnews.go.com\/Entertainment\/katy-perry-celebrates-super-bowl-halftime-performance-tattoo\/story?id=28656810\" target=\"_blank\">halftime performance<\/a>, or speculate on which politicians will face off in the<a title=\"2016 presidential election\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2015\/us\/politics\/2016-presidential-candidates.html\" target=\"_blank\">2016 presidential election<\/a>?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How Reality TV Is Teaching Us to Accept the American Police State &nbsp; \u201cPlays, farces, spectacles, gladiators, strange beasts, medals, pictures, and other such opiates, these were for ancient peoples the bait toward slavery, the price of their liberty, the instruments of tyranny. By these practices and enticements the ancient dictators so successfully lulled their [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[3276,483,635,3275,3277,1213,1492],"class_list":["post-5364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-cops","tag-liberty-2","tag-police-state","tag-reality-tv","tag-subservience","tag-totalitarianism","tag-tyranny"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5364"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5364\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5365,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5364\/revisions\/5365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}