Does it feel like most Americans are ignoring the insane rise of fascism?

[moniss]

37. Amen to that

and I'll add "reality" TV shows. I was stunned a few years ago when my well educated mother called me about a great new TV series she was watching called "Pawn Stars". She went on and on about how people just come into the shop at any time with all kinds of things and how wonderfully knowledgeable these people all were about so many different things. I tried to explain to her that no TV show is going to just set up a camera in a pawn shop and let it roll for hours on end and hope something interesting happens. She began to get agitated at my explanation but I continued. I explained that the "scenes" are put together by the TV production people who know ahead of time what is coming in and the details about the item are researched before the shop personnel or their "experts" even see the person at the counter. Mom was mad as hell at me for apparently bursting the bubble about how scripted these shows are. At least she never called me to tell me about the gold miners who just "happen" upon a bunch of nuggets in Australia, finding valuable big dollar items etc. in an abandoned storage locker time after time and multiple lockers at that and week after week, classic car restorations that almost don't get done on time and the list of concocted shows serving as opiate goes on.

I should have expected she might fall for this crap though since a few years before that she told me about how great the show "Judge Judy" was because people would come in and try to lie but she was too smart for them and they would lose their case. Maybe it's passed down through the ages also because my Great Grandmother used to watch the afternoon soaps and particularly loved "The Edge of Night". I remember when I was a kid and she told me how awful these people behaved and that it was a good thing the TV people were there to catch them doing their crimes. I tried to tell Grandma that these were just actors like in a play and the stories were made up. I got yelled at then too. Got asked to leave and my normal summer afternoon session with her of Windmill cookies and milk came to an end for a very long time. It was then that I began to learn about the benefits of being seen and not heard.