A few months ago, I found myself in an actual movie theater in the year 2024, watching a Will Smith action movie. Believe it or not, the decision to be there was my wife’s.
The movie was Bad Boys: Ride or Die. It follows a very familiar movie paradigm: Some “bad guys” (in this case, a Miami drug cartel) frame a “good guy” (in this case, the main characters’ beloved chief who was killed in the previous movie) for serious crimes. This provides cover for a lot of their evil schemes, in part because the main protagonists end up as wanted men for trying to clear his name. Drama ensues, and the movie ends as such movies do - with a climactic confrontation/shootout that ends with all of the bad guys killed or captured while clearing the chief’s name.
There’s no need to watch this movie; it’s forgettably formulaic. What’s worth thinking about, though, is what comes immediately after every one of these climactic shootouts:
Happily Ever After.
No, seriously, that’s the end. Our heroes are bleeding from the sorts of injuries that instantly subdue henchmen but merely elicit obscenities from named characters, and a bunch of other unresolved issues remain, but now it’s time to cut to a “six weeks later” scene where they’re enjoying a barbecue. We need them to crack a few jokes before the credits roll.
What I always wonder is, what happened during those six weeks?
The answer is “Something way more unrealistic than those fight scenes”.
In this particular movie, an extensive digital paper trail was created between the chief and the cartel, and then the corrupt financier through whom it was done was murdered. Once the protagonist cops started digging into it, they became wanted fugitives, then left a trail of bodies on their way to the final battle.
How does killing most villains and capturing the ringleader clean all of that up?
It doesn’t. Not remotely. A realistic next scene has the protagonists still arrested and their lives ruined. They probably get convicted of serious crimes. The chief’s name isn’t cleared, because there’s no evidence that he was framed. There was never any to find.
The biggest problem of all is that there was a city-wide media blitz about the corrupt cops and the manhunt for them. Will the entire population magically accept the dramatic change in narrative when one is presented to them?
Of course not.
Suspicion and conspiracy theories about the truth of the movie’s events will linger, in universe, for the rest of the characters’ lives. Significant people will never accept that the narrative that dominated most of the movie’s runtime wasn’t true. The drama that results is not the sort of movie that the creators set out to make, but it’s a huge part of any real-world version of events like this.
The protagonists will definitely not experience “Happily Ever After”.
Fiction frames audiences’ expectations for the real world.
Real-world issues are plagued by the expectation that climactic resolution is coming. Every election is a final battle. If we can just win, then all of our problems will go away, and our enemies… well, they all just vanish, right?
That’s not how it works.
Remember the Steele Dossier? Proven fabrication, right? Even CNN admitted (long after it didn’t matter anymore) that the allegations were fabrications. The DNC and Clinton campaign were fined for funding it and not reporting it as campaign spending. We can talk about how absurd it is that the campaign was only fined $8,000 and Clinton herself wasn’t prosecuted even as Donald Trump was convicted of 34 felonies for a less egregious version of the same “misclassification”, but the real issue is this:
Tons of Democrats still believe the collusion narrative.
Just as many people still believe every debunked COVID narrative. And countless others.
Has damage been undone? Have victims been compensated? Has anyone responsible been punished in any way?
No.
And this is when a lie’s defeat is clear.
Donald Trump was already president once.
Did he eradicate the Deep State?
No, he did not.
“Our Bureaucracy™” (see below) is older than any of its critics. It is immensely powerful. It does not drop dead, Phantom Menace Style, because its advocates lose an election. Its power doesn’t diminish at all, actually. What was built over generations will take years to whittle down.
Take it from a “Woman of Color”, Tulsi Gabbard, as explained on a recent podcast:
[Biden] has not been the guy making the decisions, nor has it been Kamala Harris, for that matter, nor will it be if she is elected President. It is this cabal of the Democrat elite, the woke warmongers made up of the likes of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and Tony Blinken and Jake Sullivan and people who are in the military-industrial complex, people who profit from us being in a constant state of war.
It is those in the administrative state, in the national security state, who derive more authorities and ability to take away our liberty when we are in a heightened state of crisis or war. It is their friends and billionaires and people in media who all derive their power from being able to have a figurehead that essentially they can control.
Or, if color isn’t your thing, try a woman of no colour at all:
The theme is clear. Winning the “fight” doesn’t solve the problem. Often, it doesn’t even move the needle.
Does that mean all is lost? No. We should always remember this famous quote below.
There is no such thing as a lost cause, because there is no such thing as a gained cause. - T.S. Elliot
What’s important is to understand that the work of restraining America’s bureaucracy run amok can either progress or regress, and a start in a positive direction is only a start. Moreover, damage already done cannot always be repaired; sometimes the best we can do is prevent more damage.
For those who see serious problems that need addressing, an election is the beginning, not the end. Like the climactic fight scenes of so many movies, the election stops the bad guys, but it doesn’t perform the vastly more difficult task of repairing the damage. If you’re serious about improving your world, rather than merely beating the other team, this is not a time for rejoicing.
It’s time to roll up your sleeves.
The 2024 election was about legitimacy, position and we may find- logistics.
Yes, those logistics.
Sorry, this sounds largely like pre-emptive excuse-making for Trump not delivering on his promises, just like he failed to deliver the first time around (see Ann Coulter's assessment of his first term). Furthermore, if all movies are resolved with a final climactic battle where evil is defeated, we wouldn't have movie sequels based on a remnant of the evil remaining. Movies are not all that different from real life. But, I do agree that the general public is too influenced by unrealistic portrayals of reality in the media. For example, how Trump was portrayed as a super-successful, smart businessman on The Apprentice. In reality, he is a carnival huckster, perhaps the greatest bullshitter who ever lived, https://www.thefp.com/p/trump-art-of-bullshit