That’s a ridiculous title for this post. I apologize. I just wanted to get your attention, although I do believe the issue is more than peripherally related to Bernie.
If you plan to cast a ballot EVER – or feel like your vote DOESN’T EVEN MATTER – you owe it to yourself, everyone you ever cared about, ME, and your country to watch this series. Then you need to take a stern look in the mirror and ask yourself honestly, summoning your most incisive powers of reasoning as well as your deepest fundamental common sense:
“Do I really believe this only happened in one little backwoods community where the stakes are pathetically inconsequential compared to the federal level?”
“Could I have held out on either of those juries?”
“Do I have a duty to other Americans?”
This masterpiece of investigative journalism has gone instantly viral. Y’know, like Star Wars, except THIS FUCKING MATTERS. This post is just my own pathetically inconsequential attempt to try and make it last past a news cycle or two – speaking of, do you still think my obsession with the deregulation and corporate consolidation of the media is over the top after watching Making a Murderer? We don’t see nearly enough reporters from the other side of the camera. Because they get paid by the story, the one they’re told to tell and how to tell it, instead of fighting for every dollar so they can afford to tell one that might be heard.
Wave your little Bernie flag and dream your big dreams. We need hope more than just about anything right now. But if you still believe he’s even remotely capable of fixing the tragically broken system we live under all by himself – with his Christlike magical powers – you need to get back to that mirror.
I’m very angry, so I hope you don’t take it personally when I tell you explicitly that; if you aren’t angry too, if you trust ANY leader without critically examining them, if you believe every one of us isn’t accountable for this fucking mess and instead blame the scapegoat of the month; you are a parody of an American.
I lied. I do in fact want you to take it personally if that makes you angry enough to get your head out of your ass and learn the difference between rhetoric, statistics, evidence, reason, and how to think for yourself.
I’ll get you started: This post is about 95% rhetoric. Making a Murderer is about 95% evidence.
[Update 12.27.2015]
If you want to see the much slicker job on the federal level TO THEIR OWN EMPLOYEES, check out Silenced, also on Netflix. Spoiler: 7 of the 10 individuals in American history to be sent to prison for espionage were put there under the watch of one single leader. You can put down the Barack flag now.