Comment by bob7834 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bob7834 | Hacker News Reader

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I’ve maintained for a long time that the only reason we have a “war on terror” is that the ability of the “war on drugs” to strip us of our civil liberties had mostly run its course by 2001. These are the political issues I care most about. I really hoped Obama would curtail the surveillance state. For 8 years I thought “soon, he will try to rollback the patriot act.” That never happened.

Instead, we got assisinated citizens.

It was just more of the same power mongering bullshit. By the time his presidency ended, I had lumped all politicians, nay, public officials into the same cauldron of corrupt blight. In my eyes, Trump, Obama and Bush are the same. When will a statesman/women/person have the metaphorical balls to put an end to this madness?

Law enforcement (and Hollywood [1]) can go fuck itself. I would rather fear a criminal/terrorist/crack pipe than my own putative government. I’m white. I can’t even imagine how minorities feel about these incessant overreaches.

[1] For some “bizarre” reason, Hollywood leans strongly toward lionizing rogue cops/gestapo agents who trample civil rights.

Reguarding Hollywood and the show business generally speaking, there are two exceptions (that I know of) that reinforce the rule: the TV series “Person of Interest” [1] which started airing in 2011 and of which I’m reminded every time when I read articles like these (they stopped it in 2016, probably what had started out as an almost SF show had gotten too close to real life) and the excellent “Enemy of the State” [2], by Tony Scott, filmed in 1998, just about as the dot-com craze was beginning to take shape and when the Western governments didn’t know exactly what to do about this Internet world.

But ignoring these exceptions you’re totally right, of course.

[1] https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1839578/

[2] https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0120660/

There was JFK..

> Hollywood leans strongly toward lionizing rogue cops/gestapo agents who trample civil rights.

Hollywood, like Legislatures, are giving the majority of the public what they want.

Given that Hollywood profits are at a two decade low[1], it’s not clear that’s true.

[1]https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/01/why-hollywood-as-we-...

They’re low because of television.

Hollywood is a cred game. The actual money since the 1950s has been on television. In fact Hollywood has never been as profitable, inflation adjusted, as it was before the commodification of television sets.

Source: I study history of film. To think of Hollywood in the 20s, 30s and 40s - think of Silicon Valley. Entire cities were made in huge lots behind LA studios. Nobody does that anymore. Gone with the wind, inflation adjusted, is still one of the most expensive and profitable movies ever made.

And yes, trust me - as far as they know (and a lot of things have been tried) Hollywood makes what it makes because it sells. It’s an industry like any other. Instead of cars they sell movies.

I've ha-ha-only-seriously described Hollywood as a complicated, interrelated set of financial instruments which as a by-product also produces movies for a while now.

I’d say you’re pretty bang on. I think it a changed in the 60s and 70s when bankers bought the place (again right after television gutted them).

Curiously in David Mamet’s new play, Bitter Wheat, a Weinstein type figure is described as money launderer.

Boy do I have news for you.

"How the CIA Hoodwinked Hollywood

Since its inception, the agency has wooed filmmakers, producers, and actors in order to present a rosy portrait of its operations to the American public."

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/07/op...

And the press. The press is important.

Legislatures don’t give what the majority want. They give what the rich and powerful want.

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