Earlier this week when flipping back and forth between the UFC and WEC with my roommate, I caught an ad for a new show called "DEA". Spike TV, on which it airs, notes that it was given "exclusive" access to accompany Detroit-based DEA agents "as they risk their lives daily in the ongoing battle against illegal drugs." My roommates reaction: They're risking their lives for problems they created and exacerbated.
I couldn't agree more.
In the show's trailer below, a DEA agent notes, "You could definitely get shot just for being a cop." Well, so could a robber stealing your property, or a group of thugs attempting to kidnap you or your kin, but do we feel sorry for them?
The DEA, which exists to enforce arbitrary legislation against consenting adults engaged in voluntary activity, is an affront to our liberties and should be abolished. For you constitutionalists out there, recall that the previous prohibition waged by the State took an amendment, whereas our current prohibition arose from administrative rules written by faceless bureaucrats.
Besides the existence of the DEA being a gross violation of our rights, a review in the Boston Herald wasn't too flattering because the "police work goes pretty much by the book, which is good for the officers but bad for viewers who have been teased needlessly". So, don't tune in because the show sucks and because if you did, the high ratings may very well encourage the State agents (who have State-granted immunity for almost any action) to be even more aggressive.
Friday, April 4, 2008
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4 comments:
Excellent write-up. I, unfortunately, missed the UFC fights this weekend, but a friend of mine said how he thought this show was going to be "awesome". I informed him that having your civil liberties violated when you've harmed no one is anything but "awesome".
Rather than glamorizing the work these agencies are doing, the public should be protesting it.
Well, we can always hope the public will revolt at the sight of these thugs in action, and if the show leads to such revelations then it will be awesome... but then again I doubt too many will be tuning in...
Isn't it possible that failing to watch the shows with the relatively tame police work will create an incentive to "up the ante" and make these things more violent, and thus "better" television?
It doesn't really matter, I guess, since the decision to keep it on or take it off the air won't turn on whether I watch or not, so I probably will, until I get bored (which, I'm guessing, will be about two shows in). I'd much rather watch "The First 48".
Few recent cultural trends have been more disturbing than the romanticization of Americans who ravage the liberty of other Americans.
Television programs like this play on the basest instincts of human beings: the thrill of seeing The Other attacked and brought down. In this case, The Other is a bunch of people in the innards of grimy Detroit. Viewers are not watching this in the broader political context of freedom or authoritarianism -- they're watching for the primal thrill of unfamiliar creatures being taken down.
For them it's no different than watching a wildlife special as a big sleek cat stalks, tackles and rips into a hapless wildebeest. They relate to the pain, they cringe at the anguish, but mostly they relish the display of raw muscle and power.
In that sense, SWAT teams and DEA agents are being literally lionized by these TV shows. It has been sickening the past several years to watch it unfold.
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