West Wing

[jack]

I am a third of the way through season 4 of the west wing. I'm really enjoying it, I'm glad I was finally able to watch it.

The last few episodes have just dealt with a crisis developing in the fictional African country of Equatorial Kundu. Now what I notice is that the situation is contrived such that American intervention is clearly the only ethical option and the main question is if the president can do that politically. And as someone observed, West Wing is very effective propaganda because it primes people to be familiar with the situations it describes, whether it's intended to be or not. And certainly "we should intervene, can we have the political will to do so" is a reasonable message. But I'm also scared, because of how often in real life I've thought intervention was a good idea, and been really wrong, that "lets save lives by military intervention" is a bad message to send :(

Other things I noticed, how shocking it is that someone is a member of the american communist party. I know that's the case in american politics, but it's so different to what I'm used to.

How much the show manages to give us an idea of the characters, when it actually spends quite little time on each. Some characters have disappeared for two seasons, and then show up with extra history never mentioned.

Comments

[yvi]

Hmm, even in Germany, I'd certainly blink a lot if I met someone from the Communist Party. Socialist, sure, but Communism is rare and strange even here..

[rysmiel]

Communist Party of Canada, on the other hand, I am used to seeing posters for come election time. Not many, but they are there.

That they have the same initials as the Conservative Party of Canada will never cease to be amusing.

[yvi]

Oh, there are posters up for the "Marxistisch-Leninistische Partei Deutschlands" at most elections. It's just that I would probably also count as "shocked" if I met a member.

[rysmiel]

I really must get around to watching Season 7, I've had daharyn's DVDs for an embarrassingly long time. I generally enjoy it a lot, with a handful of exceptions, though I am one of the people who found the change in approach after Aaron Sorkin left significantly negative.

[seekingferret]

Yeah... well, I think the show does repeatedly engage with some of the questions you're asking about the other costs of interventionism (the Toby plotline from Dead Irish Writers, the Josh plotline from The State Dinner, the Bartlett plotline from A Proportional Response, etc... all wrestle with the way American arrogance and short-term thinking on foreign policy ultimately bear costs down the line), and a major plotline of the 7th season is debating the impacts of a far more significant military intervention. But you're not wrong that the debate on Kundu focuses much more on the domestic politics than on the question of whether the intervention really will help the Kundunese.

chaila's vid Handlebars (Hail to the Chief) is one of my favorite vids because it tries to hold Bartlett accountable on these axes for the consequences of his decisions, for the way he wields the immense power in his hands.

[jack]

Oh, that's really interesting, thank you.

I agree, the show does consider those things at different points (though I don't know anything about the later seasons yet). I think what I was trying to say was that the situation _as presented_ intervention was clearly the only ethical thing to do, but senate was likely to object. But the choice of having a situation where it was clearly ethical to intervene, is one that is subconscious propaganda, in that it increases people's expectations that that's a thing that's likely to happen.

And I don't necessarily mean the show was wrong to do that, fictional simplifications are always necessary, just that it was quite an effective example even if it wasn't consciously intended to be, and it stood out to me because I'd been thinking about that a lot recently, but if I hadn't, I probably wouldn't even have noticed.