Pepa the Pig for Adult Liberals. Or maybe, "Mickey Mouse Takes Office." I can't decide.
Perhaps I'm hyper sensitive, having been what equates to an American liberal for most of my life (I'm Danish, and here being liberal puts you on the right, but I've been a lefty for more than forty years), but trying to watch this show instantly fatigues me. Not because of the acting, which is above average, the dialog, which is well-written if overly verbose, not even the stories, which seem implausible but entertaining, and this IS fiction, so you need to allow for unrealistic and entertaining things happening 24/7. Otherwise it'd get boring.
No, what drains my energy is the way it treats me as a mental toddler. It's the way the resentment for people with opposing views (conservatives, religious people, etc.) is matched only by the self-righteousness and the conviction of having the moral high ground and superior intelligence. The ease with which people are divided into moral and immoral boxes based on their religious views, political affiliation, or even demography. And isn't it nice, because we all agree that religious zealots are terrible, right? That conservatives are immoral, right? That Texans are stupid, right? Lucky we have our club, where we're educated, virtuous and bearers of The Right Morals™.
Episode one present a religiously based conflict that is so overly constructed that it borders on pathetic (hence my Pepa the Pig reference). The conflict is resolved not through discussion or discourse, but by president Mickey Mouse turning up and revealing how the religious group is in cahoots with people sending his twelve-year-old daughter a death threat in the form of basically a voodoo doll. How convenient. Such lazy writing. I wonder how a diplomatic person with some deep rhetorical skills might have solved that conflict in lieu of one side basically declaring moral bankruptcy. I don't know, maybe some kind of political figure, like a head of state or something. Guess that's for another show. This show has trumpets blaring instead, while the camera pans across our great imaginary president Highground.
Just for the record, even though my father was a priest and I was raised Christian, today I think religion is garbage and I've been an atheist for about 25 years. But that's my opinion and it says nothing about my moral values, and what anyone else believes doesn't either. I just don't appreciate this lazy and presumptuous "religious conservative therefore bad, amirite?" fallacy.
I quit at the beginning of episode two, when President Mouse basically says they didn't lose Texas in the primaries because of a joke about cowboy hats, but because Texans are stupid, or "when the president learned Latin," as it puts it. One has to wonder if the writers just don't care about alienating an entire state of potential viewers, or if they think Texans are so stupid they didn't catch that insult. Either way, the club that you're supposed to be in to be able to watch something like this and think it's okay to disrespect your opponent's intelligence and points of view in this manner is not one I want to be a member of. Not anymore.
I'm done with this restrictive and divisive club of supposedly morally superior intelligencia, with the undercurrent of resentment and obnoxious entitlement. I'm sick and tired of having echo chamber "discussions" where you constantly fear stepping out of line lest you be called a bigot, or a racist, or a misogynist, or a Nazi, or whatever is the most efficient card you can use to shut down even the slightest sign of dissent from the implicit party line.
And yes, as I said, I'm probably hyper sensitive because this to me is such a large problem right now, but that's why I can't watch this. I'm surprised a show from 1999 is this blatantly and unapologetically biased, but maybe that's because I've been liberal myself all that time and it just seemed okay. I mean, the religious and conservatives ARE wrong, and mostly idiots, right? To my religious and conservative friends who watch this and get rightfully offended, from a former liberal who thought this was okay, even truth, and behalf of my other liberal friends who still think like this but aren't bad people, I apologize.
And think of it like this: With shows like these being made, and much worse media content being released currently, some people, like me, get increasingly turned off by the divisiveness and implicit brainwashing, to the point where they simply stop being liberals. I don't know what I'm gonna vote next time, but it won't be left. If I were American, I wouldn't vote Democrat. But then, there'd have to be a candidate other than Trump, because I don't think that guy has America's interests at heart, only his own.
