My primary take away is that the innocence of the late 80's/early 90's really shows in those episodes. The good guys win, the bad guys lose, and we Americans are encouraged to trust and have faith in the system.
Mr. Burns fools everyone for awhile, but in the end he's exposed for what he is. The people reject him, thus vindicating his opponent's high-minded resolution to rely on their intelligence and good judgment. Sideshow Bob is brought down by the simple hard work and virtue of two ordinary citizens.
Then there's the episode where Lisa writes an essay about America's greatness, only to fall into cynicism and bitterness when she witnesses a politician taking a bribe. But at the end of the episode, it is the very system itself that fixes things, the politician is arrested and served justice by dedicated civil servants who nobly defend what he is trying to corrupt. Lisa's cynicism is proven wrong, and her original idealism is proven correct.
The message in each episode is the same: sure, there may be parasites and leeches trying to feed on the system, but there are far more good people than bad people. The rotten apples are eventually dealt with, because the self-correcting, self-cleaning mechanisms inside the system still work. The system itself is imperfect, but it's also miraculous and wonderful, worthy of our love and respect and loyalty.
2024: Does anyone believe the self-correcting and self-cleaning mechanisms in the government still work? Anyone?
You couldn't make these episodes anymore. The portrayal of the system's fundamental goodness is too heartfelt, too genuine. No one would take them seriously in our current age.
You're absolutely right. The Boomers on the writing staff who'd watched Nixon resign in disgrace and were witnessing the apparent collapse of the world's only systematic alternative to liberal democracy much more naturally believed that dishonesty and corruption were curable bugs instead of a chronic condition of the American political system.
I feel like I haven't revisited "Mr. Lisa Goes to Washington" because the passage of time has brought its bizarre mixed messaging into even sharper relief. Even in 1991, it delivered its resolution fully tongue-in-cheek. The phone call ("a little girl is losing her faith in democracy!") that sets off the chain of events leading to the corrupt rep's censure is clearly meant to be read as "prepare for deus ex machina." We know the narrative is aware that what happens after Lisa delivers her speech is beyond credibility because of the lampshade it hangs on it, but as you say, beneath it all is an admonition to have faith in the system because eventually and in some way its metabolic processes will result in the eventual exposure and condemnation of the guilty. And faith IS what it asks of us: the way the good ending is realized is scarcely believable, but we're still to trust in the eventuality of the result.
It also just occurred to me: notice that at the end of the episode, Burns hasn't actually lost the election yet. The polls aren't till the next day. There's no question that after the reporters race to their phones to file headlines about Burns spitting out that chunk of mutant fish, the opinion of the news-consuming public is going to change the way the reporters are telling it to change. Once again, the conventional wisdom of 1990 no longer holds quite so well in the 2020s.
"""Enough. The debate has already been discussed ad nauseum, and I’m not qualified to make any political predictions. It just drives me crazy that the coarse electioneering logic The Simpsons satirized in 1990, and which by all appearances was going to determine the rules of the game indefinitely, should have been turned on its head by someone so completely unfit for public office."""
Look, you don't live outside of history, and nothing stupid and absurd ever fails gracefully.
Burns wasn't going to fall to Mr Smith, or Cincinnatus, or Sorkin's wonks or anything so dignified as all that. He was going to fall to absurdity of the highest degree, and it's telling that the part that was still apt in real life, on Thursday night, is that he was unable to make a convincing show of swallowing the toxic fish.
Trump didn't succeed (then and now) *just* because he's a human youtube sidebar with an innate sense of the arresting and cartoonish stuff that holds human interest. He succeeded because the inauthentic managers got too old and tired to hold their own charade.
Sucks. Maybe now we go back to kings and queens, and in a few hundred years whenever someone suggests democracy, *they're* laughed at, "you mean that thing with the pathological liars and drooling old folks falling asleep?".
And if that happens, things will be more okay than people think. We'll feel the sting of losing political power, for a generation, but they'll look back on us and say we never really had it in the first place. We lost, we *are losing*, the somewhat pornographic fiction of having real political power to shape the human world around us. We haven't had that power for at least seventy or eighty years, maybe more.
I just spent fifteen minutes digging through The New Leviathans for a quote I'm pretty sure I could attribute to John Gray, but I couldn't find the damn thing. (Maybe it was from an interview or talk he gave?) At any rate, the gist of it was that the United States (and the West in general) has convinced itself that there's nothing less to be desired than undemocratic government—and we're all going to be disabused of that notion pretty damned soon.
When given the choice between the right to vote for a representative government on one hand, and a dictator's promise of security, stability, healthcare, etc. on the other, most people will choose whichever option seems more likely to give them the safety and the material means to lead a decent life. And the longer the Western liberal order goes spiraling out of control, the less sentimental people are going to feel about democracy, and the less they'll trust it to deliver.
It's true. Representative democracy is the lived experience of a relative minority of all the people in history, and lots of people have fared well enough under other systems that it's not a slam dunk.
In his Revolutions series, history podcast guy Mike Duncan likes to make the distinction between all the people who were angling for a political revolution (generally more representation and more formal rights for more people) versus a social revolution (generally better and fairer living conditions) to point out that they were often not the same people, even inside specific revolutions, and they were sometimes at odds, especially in terms of which thing to prioritize.
I think we are living in an era when the political revolution is finished, victorious, and long empowered, but the social revolutions are largely unfulfilled, and receding fast. Vote all you want; the average material condition will not change for the better.
I have complex (mixed to mildly negative) feelings about true socialism and communism, which are of course at least a little bit stained by history, but I think social revolution is increasingly people's real priority, and the political revolutions c 1790-1920 may be left in the dust.
"""the less sentimental people are going to feel about democracy"""
To this point in particular, I say, yeah. I have had no sentimental feeling for democracy for twenty years. Maybe I'm a crank, but also maybe I'm the spear tip.
You can't imagine my feeling of disbelief when, at the end of this, you hadn't once referenced the 1957 movie "A Face in the Crowd". Have you never seen it or just didn't want to write the length of article that would involve that movie? Because to me, these shows (and many others) reference parts of that movie a number of times. Also, it's a damn great movie. Ever since I saw it I have this sort of imaginary 4th wall breaking meta connection between it and "The Andy Griffith Show" where Lonesome Rhodes, after the events of the movie, abandoned metropolitan life and, taking on the pseudonym Andy Griffith, found a podunk town unaware of his true identity and pulled his political grift there to become the sheriff.
Then you should really watch it. Its the movie that all of these, and others, reference and its damn fine. Hell, the chance to unironically say the phrase "Andy Griffith, powerhouse actor" is alone worth the price of admission.
My primary take away is that the innocence of the late 80's/early 90's really shows in those episodes. The good guys win, the bad guys lose, and we Americans are encouraged to trust and have faith in the system.
Mr. Burns fools everyone for awhile, but in the end he's exposed for what he is. The people reject him, thus vindicating his opponent's high-minded resolution to rely on their intelligence and good judgment. Sideshow Bob is brought down by the simple hard work and virtue of two ordinary citizens.
Then there's the episode where Lisa writes an essay about America's greatness, only to fall into cynicism and bitterness when she witnesses a politician taking a bribe. But at the end of the episode, it is the very system itself that fixes things, the politician is arrested and served justice by dedicated civil servants who nobly defend what he is trying to corrupt. Lisa's cynicism is proven wrong, and her original idealism is proven correct.
The message in each episode is the same: sure, there may be parasites and leeches trying to feed on the system, but there are far more good people than bad people. The rotten apples are eventually dealt with, because the self-correcting, self-cleaning mechanisms inside the system still work. The system itself is imperfect, but it's also miraculous and wonderful, worthy of our love and respect and loyalty.
2024: Does anyone believe the self-correcting and self-cleaning mechanisms in the government still work? Anyone?
You couldn't make these episodes anymore. The portrayal of the system's fundamental goodness is too heartfelt, too genuine. No one would take them seriously in our current age.
You're absolutely right. The Boomers on the writing staff who'd watched Nixon resign in disgrace and were witnessing the apparent collapse of the world's only systematic alternative to liberal democracy much more naturally believed that dishonesty and corruption were curable bugs instead of a chronic condition of the American political system.
I feel like I haven't revisited "Mr. Lisa Goes to Washington" because the passage of time has brought its bizarre mixed messaging into even sharper relief. Even in 1991, it delivered its resolution fully tongue-in-cheek. The phone call ("a little girl is losing her faith in democracy!") that sets off the chain of events leading to the corrupt rep's censure is clearly meant to be read as "prepare for deus ex machina." We know the narrative is aware that what happens after Lisa delivers her speech is beyond credibility because of the lampshade it hangs on it, but as you say, beneath it all is an admonition to have faith in the system because eventually and in some way its metabolic processes will result in the eventual exposure and condemnation of the guilty. And faith IS what it asks of us: the way the good ending is realized is scarcely believable, but we're still to trust in the eventuality of the result.
It also just occurred to me: notice that at the end of the episode, Burns hasn't actually lost the election yet. The polls aren't till the next day. There's no question that after the reporters race to their phones to file headlines about Burns spitting out that chunk of mutant fish, the opinion of the news-consuming public is going to change the way the reporters are telling it to change. Once again, the conventional wisdom of 1990 no longer holds quite so well in the 2020s.
"""Enough. The debate has already been discussed ad nauseum, and I’m not qualified to make any political predictions. It just drives me crazy that the coarse electioneering logic The Simpsons satirized in 1990, and which by all appearances was going to determine the rules of the game indefinitely, should have been turned on its head by someone so completely unfit for public office."""
Look, you don't live outside of history, and nothing stupid and absurd ever fails gracefully.
Burns wasn't going to fall to Mr Smith, or Cincinnatus, or Sorkin's wonks or anything so dignified as all that. He was going to fall to absurdity of the highest degree, and it's telling that the part that was still apt in real life, on Thursday night, is that he was unable to make a convincing show of swallowing the toxic fish.
Trump didn't succeed (then and now) *just* because he's a human youtube sidebar with an innate sense of the arresting and cartoonish stuff that holds human interest. He succeeded because the inauthentic managers got too old and tired to hold their own charade.
Sucks. Maybe now we go back to kings and queens, and in a few hundred years whenever someone suggests democracy, *they're* laughed at, "you mean that thing with the pathological liars and drooling old folks falling asleep?".
And if that happens, things will be more okay than people think. We'll feel the sting of losing political power, for a generation, but they'll look back on us and say we never really had it in the first place. We lost, we *are losing*, the somewhat pornographic fiction of having real political power to shape the human world around us. We haven't had that power for at least seventy or eighty years, maybe more.
I just spent fifteen minutes digging through The New Leviathans for a quote I'm pretty sure I could attribute to John Gray, but I couldn't find the damn thing. (Maybe it was from an interview or talk he gave?) At any rate, the gist of it was that the United States (and the West in general) has convinced itself that there's nothing less to be desired than undemocratic government—and we're all going to be disabused of that notion pretty damned soon.
When given the choice between the right to vote for a representative government on one hand, and a dictator's promise of security, stability, healthcare, etc. on the other, most people will choose whichever option seems more likely to give them the safety and the material means to lead a decent life. And the longer the Western liberal order goes spiraling out of control, the less sentimental people are going to feel about democracy, and the less they'll trust it to deliver.
I'm gonna go looking for that quote too.
It's true. Representative democracy is the lived experience of a relative minority of all the people in history, and lots of people have fared well enough under other systems that it's not a slam dunk.
In his Revolutions series, history podcast guy Mike Duncan likes to make the distinction between all the people who were angling for a political revolution (generally more representation and more formal rights for more people) versus a social revolution (generally better and fairer living conditions) to point out that they were often not the same people, even inside specific revolutions, and they were sometimes at odds, especially in terms of which thing to prioritize.
I think we are living in an era when the political revolution is finished, victorious, and long empowered, but the social revolutions are largely unfulfilled, and receding fast. Vote all you want; the average material condition will not change for the better.
I have complex (mixed to mildly negative) feelings about true socialism and communism, which are of course at least a little bit stained by history, but I think social revolution is increasingly people's real priority, and the political revolutions c 1790-1920 may be left in the dust.
"""the less sentimental people are going to feel about democracy"""
To this point in particular, I say, yeah. I have had no sentimental feeling for democracy for twenty years. Maybe I'm a crank, but also maybe I'm the spear tip.
You can't imagine my feeling of disbelief when, at the end of this, you hadn't once referenced the 1957 movie "A Face in the Crowd". Have you never seen it or just didn't want to write the length of article that would involve that movie? Because to me, these shows (and many others) reference parts of that movie a number of times. Also, it's a damn great movie. Ever since I saw it I have this sort of imaginary 4th wall breaking meta connection between it and "The Andy Griffith Show" where Lonesome Rhodes, after the events of the movie, abandoned metropolitan life and, taking on the pseudonym Andy Griffith, found a podunk town unaware of his true identity and pulled his political grift there to become the sheriff.
You've made me ashamed to confess I've never seen A Face in the Crowd.
Then you should really watch it. Its the movie that all of these, and others, reference and its damn fine. Hell, the chance to unironically say the phrase "Andy Griffith, powerhouse actor" is alone worth the price of admission.