Where did all the Chancers go? Why the BBC etc is dumbing down modern society

By The Truth Reporter:

Before you dismiss this as just another gaze into the past with rose-coloured spectacles firmly in place, I’d like to assure you it is not. What I want to get across to the reader here is how the slow
suffocating embrace of TV output seems to have one overarching objective. To make the viewer comply.

You may or may not be old enough to remember TV characters like Simon Templar, Arthur Daley, Lovejoy and Del Trotter but for those who don’t know them, they were all rogues, people who made their living from their wits, they regarded the law as an obstacle to their trade to be avoided rather than rules to live by. Rather unrealistically they all had a strong moral code and would forego profit if it meant betraying their friends or family.

We must not ignore the fact that in the same period we saw a great deal of TV that emphasised the exceptionalism of modern society, especially from the US. We see public servants risking their
careers, credibility and often their lives to secure justice for the weak, right wrongs of all magnitudes and obey their civic duty even if it meant their own downfall. Despite the shallowness of some of these characterisations and the implausible nature of their implacable moral rectitude there was one common thread that ran through all of these shows –
aspiration.

Aspiration was behind the famous strap line of ‘Only Fools and Horses’ – ‘This time next year we’ll be millionaires’, it doesn’t matter what show you pick, all the central characters were aspirational, they had drive, they wanted better things, they rejected the status quo and the safety of mediocrity for the chance to create, beg, borrow or steal a brighter and more prosperous future.

Compare this to the output we are faced with now. We are propagandised with endless reality shows about the NHS and the selfless staff who toil day and night to heal the sick, constant police
reality shows teach us that we’d better have our cars insured and tread on our tyres or we’re in big trouble. We have ‘Can’t pay or we’ll take it away’ preaching that you’d better not get into debt –
and if you do then expect to be living in a shoebox on the M4. ‘Watchdog’ invites you into the cotton wool lined reality where Matt Allright will stand up for you when you buy a cheap hairdryer from China that burns your house down.

All these shows emphasise the power of the system and crucially that there is never, ever another solution except the one prescribed to you. Blind trust in the status quo will always be rewarded with safety and comfort, questioning or transgressing the boundaries will result in doom. If we recognise the irrefutable truth that television is and always has been recognised by governments as one of the most effective ways to shape and transform the thinking of the masses then we can only conclude that this new programming agenda alludes to the narratives the ‘system’ wants you to swallow. I omit the word ‘government’ in this assertion because I do not think recent or present governments have paused to even consider planning on this level of detail such is their
level of disarray.

Histories of the BBC show that the state had high levels of control on BBC output throughout it’s tenure and many would be surprised to learn that left wing ideas were actively suppressed until
relatively recently, the one thing the BBC speaks for is the establishment – now an overused term but in this instance highly appropriate.

So what can we conclude? It seems the establishment are no longer calling for aspirational or courageous go-getters, people who strive every day to make their world a little bit better. Instead
they want people who will settle for what they are given and accept their place in a world that is dangerous, confusing and fundamentally impossible to comprehend. In this anarchy you’d better
trust the state, obey the law and shut up.

Or is it perhaps that the establishment don’t want you to ever really equip yourself with the intellectual capability to see what is going on, to understand, on a microscopic level, the systems and
ideas that corral your existence, that decide how much you earn, what you can spend and what you can say?

My assertion is that the establishment want you, in the words of the late great George Carlin ‘Just about clever enough to run the machines but not clever enough to ask questions’. My quest is to bring people the knowledge and the courage to break this cognitive glass ceiling and compete with the power elites on an equal footing, empowered, informed and enlightened.