Monday, September 22, 2014

"Madam Secretary": Hints of Anarchism and Conspiracy Theory

Madam Secretary, a new CBS television drama, premiered Sunday night,

I can't give the show two thumbs up. I thought the acting was a bit stiff in spots, the script was not compelling in the sense that the House of Cards is, and some of the pro-government messages in the show were very difficult for me to swallow.

That said, the show has the potential to develop into something special. There's clearly someone on the drama's writing team that is anti-government and some of the best lines in the drama were the anti-government lines.

Specifically what stood out for me in the drama  was:

1. The Secretary of State's son (aprox. 14 years old) in the show is an anarchist and a conspiracy theorist. At this point, I wouldn't classify him as an anarcho-capitalist, but more of an Alex Jones type anarchist. In other words, he is close, but I don't expect him to be quoting Rothbard.

2. In the first episode, there is already the murder of CIA agent, who dies after his car slams into a light pole. Those following the suspicious death of Michael Hastings (SEE: Murder Mystery(?) Michael Hastings and a CyberSecurity Firm Called Endgame) will recognize the similarities in the death, but what is really great is that the show makes clear that the car crash was most certainly a murder.

3. The first episode also has a Syrian kidnap thread, with two American kids kidnapped. What's significant about this part of the show is that the kids are portrayed as, and called, "stupid kids." This falls in line with my view that Americans getting captured in the Middle East by terrorists, are just adrenalin junkies (SEE:While Obama and Rand Flip Out Over ISIS...)  and that there is little justification for the U.S. to go to war to protect such thrill seekers.

The show isn't all good, though. Once the kids are rescued, there is a scene right out of Ronald Reagan's "rescue" of American students from the island of Grenada. As did a student coming off a plane that landed in the U.S. after being rescued  from Grenada, the show has the two kidnapped kids kissing the ground when they arrive back in the U.S. (For more on my view that Reagan's invasion of Grenada was the act that got American juices flowing for war see; The Shocking Direction That the US Military Is Headed In).

Below is the trailer from the first episode. Whoever created the trailer is good, it cuts out most of the stiff acting that is more obvious in parts of the full show.




-RW

2 comments:

  1. Hell on Wheels has got some really strong anti-gov't messages in it lately...lol...a Federally appointed marshall just released a bunch of hardened criminals from jail and deputized them for the purpose of hassling the railroad town population and bringing down the Union Pacific head driving railroad construction in the frontier town.

    Lot's of government nastiness in it right now with great & subversive messages....hell..the anti-hero(Bohannon) is a former plantation owner(that lost his land, wife & kid in the civil war) that is working alongside recently freed black slaves. How great is that!

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  2. Good points about the show. And it does seem promising.

    I was never a big fan of Tea Leoni. But without having seen any full episodes as of yet, I couldn't help notice an eery resemblance of Leoni's Ms. Shepherd to Samantha Power, the UN diplomat.

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