To folks arguing in notes whether this trend is “intentional” programming……. It literally doesn’t matter. It is a media trope for bad reasons and encourages a bad outlook in which a wildly dangerous and morally corropt character is sympathized with, which, in turn, results in people maybe more forgiving of matching behavior in real life. While you argue over whether it’s “really propaganda” it is objectively having the effect of propaganda… And it isn’t really far fetched anyway. The government has had movies greenlit many times that they hoped would affect their public image in a desirable way.
When I was called in for jury duty, one of the first things that was asked was something like “if we were holding the trial today, would you declare the defendant guilty?”. I don’t remember the EXACT phrasing, but that was the general gist of it.
And around fifty percent of the potential jury pool raised their hands. Like… we hadn’t even been told anything ABOUT the case besides the charges— evidence, testimony, etc—-but fully fifty percent of the people present were willing to just go, “yeah, the cops wouldn’t arrest this guy without some strong evidence, so he’s prolly guilty.”
We’re being programmed to abandon the whole ‘presume innocence’ stuff.
