There's a thing where people worry about children not being able to tell reality from fantasy. "What if junior thinks flying superheroes are real and jumps off the roof?" and so on.

The problem, though, isn't kids being unable to tell TV from reality. It's grown-ups.

If you grow up on American TV and movies, odds are good that you think random criminal violence is much much MUCH more common than it is. Even if we know, intellectually, that it isn't true, we've still seen hundreds or thousands of scenes of random (usually fictional) violence,

and for most of us, that effects our worldview.

Most media about police and/or is effectively propaganda for police. (This includes lots of TV shows and movies I love). Not only because it teaches us that police are heroes, but also because it teaches us to view the world as

an incredibly dangerous place, where police are all that stands between us and chaos.

And it's fiction. Even when it's true, it's fiction. In most markets, watching the local news gives a wildly unrealistic sense that murders and carjackings and stranger assault are common.

Because while (most) of those are real stories, they're also a wildly unrepresentative sample of life. News chooses stories that will attract more eyeballs, not stories that will give viewers and readers a realistic understanding of anything.

I'm not sure we'll ever be able to have a sensible, humane justice system as long as people are fed propaganda from a young age telling us that random crime is everywhere and we need heroes to protect us physically or we are surely doomed.

Unfortunately, I also have no idea how propaganda like this can be stopped.

Because, both in news and in fiction, stories that suggest we need to live in constant fear of random violent crime are popular, and that makes them profitable.

I don't think we'll ever be able to fully abolish prisons or police, because I think too many people are fucking terrified of crime as they've seen on TV.

(And I'm no better. I feel the fear myself, if I'm walking down a dark and lonely street.)

But I think it's still good to try and move in that direction, even though we'll never get there.

End of rant.