300 + 24 -- A Perfect Number For A Perfect World Part 2

When last we left our brave hero (me), he was tackling the puzzling issue of why some right wingers so thoroughly embrace fiction and even tout it as The Way We Should Live Our Lives. I think I showed the reasons this doesn’t work with 300 so now I’m going to tackle what, for them, is the weightier subject of 24. This is especially important since many right wing bloggers now have their panties in bunch over the announcement that next season’s 24 may actually have Jack Bauer thinking that torture and some of his other extremist tactics may be immoral and un-American. They all seem to feel that life isn't worth living if they can't watch Jack Bauer inject his own brother with torture juice.

Recently, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia tried to defend government sanctioned torture by talking about how it could be necessary if there was a nuke somewhere in Los Angeles. Why Los Angeles? He says it twice. Why not American cities that have actually been attacked like New York and Washington? He places the ticking time bomb scenario in LA because Los Angeles is where Jack Bauer lives. Think that’s a leap? I believe the reason he doesn’t actually say “24” or “Jack Bauer” is because this isn’t the first time that the Honorable Mr. Scalia has confused the real world for the fictional world of 24 and the last time he did it earned him loads, heaps and mounds of scorn. This attitude is commonplace among right wing bloggers and pundits. Even the Vice President has talked about using torture to find suitcase nukes.

At least 300 is based on something that actually happened. Sure, it’s an accurate depiction of history in the same way that Green Acres accurately depicts farm life, but 300 Spartans did stand and die against the invading Persian army. 24, on the other hand, is an entertaining piece of fiction that many prominent people now treat as some sort of how-to manual on counter-terrorism. It’s as if, back in the 60s, politicians and prominent thinkers believed that we were actually being protected by tuxedo clad Englishmen with licenses to kill who had lasers in their pens and were constantly getting betrayed in the sack by hot Russian babes.

In the last post, I talked about how actual Spartans differed from the characters in 300. I can’t do that with 24 since, and I feel I must stress this again to any conservative readers out there, JACK BAUER AND CREW DO NOT EXIST. However, what if they did? What have Jack Bauer and his fellow CTU agents actually accomplished with torture and treating the Constitution like it was toilet paper?

1. Two, count ‘em, TWO nuclear explosions on US soil, one of them in downtown Los Angeles.
2. The murder of a sitting President.
3. The murders of two former Presidents. A third President was injured by a bomb and we’re not sure if he’s alive or dead.
4. A biological attack that resulted in the deaths of hundreds, maybe thousands.
5. Infiltration at the highest levels of government by various anti-American operatives, one of whom was the First Lady, who have caused untold damage.
6. Constant kidnappings of CTU’s family members and loved ones.

So to sum up, conservatives want us all to be gay, baby killing slave owners who live in a disease-filled nuclear wasteland where the President is killed every few days or so, usually by one of his most trusted associates. Oh, and Laura Bush would have to be sent to Guantanomo for immediate waterboarding.

Reality's a wonderful thing. However, I do believe that we should be trying to develop a squadron of cute, super powered cheerleaders in case someone like Sylar ever shows up.