The morning started out with ennui. I slept well enough, but rose still tired. The temperatures have declined from the sultry first-sweat day of the season. The coffee was good enough, when I remembered to punch the button on the side. I don’t know- there is plenty to be outraged about but somehow I could not rouse myself to any serious polemics about the shocking state of the VA health care system.

Or anything else, really. I read the mail in a desultory manner. We have known the VA has been in deep trouble or twenty years or more, so this is no surprise. I really wanted to be surprised, and yawned when I saw that everything was recycled, banal, or so self-evident as to go almost without comment.

Problems at the VA? Hell, we have known about that for about twenty years. If you were looking for a dysfunctional example of the United States Government in action, you really don’t have to go much further to find one.

And no, I am not going to veer off on that topic, except to note in passing that this is the way the much larger health thing is going to go for all of us- this is just a sideshow about how the system is going to wind up managing resources. They used to call them Death Panels- they are not that, really, but the process by which a finite amount of treatment is parceled out to a growing number of consumers amounts to the same thing.

Sound harsh? Check how the National Health Service allocates care in the UK. It is as inevitable as it is inexorable.

I know the feeling of inevitability. I stayed home from Willow last night to re-watch the second episode of the re-cycled “24” shoot-em-up with Kiefer Sutherland as the indestructible Jack Bauer.

Staying up to view it at the time it is actually broadcast is such a throwback. I try to watch when it is broadcast, though that means I miss the second half to somnolence. I am not completely sure what it is about, though I like William Devane more as President than as that irritating guy on Fox who keeps trying to sell me precious metals to hide in my safe since the economy is about to melt down and only sensible people will be able to go to the farmer’s market and barter for corn with silver ingots.

Mary Lynn Rajskub (as Chloe Obrien) is my favorite. She is channeling The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo in this edition, and I have to say she keeps my attention more than Kiefer’s single-minded intensity. Chloe has a loopy punk haircut and tons of eye-shadow. She grew up in Trenton, MI, and we share a lot of classic Detroit heritage: she is Irish-Czech-Polish, so I guess when she has a couple drinks she wants to invade Germany.

I know I do.

It is very strange watching the show again after it’s four year hiatus. I remember when it first appeared, the November after we realized we had been at war for a long time. It was the first big series that reflected the national free fall into the Global War on Whatever.

The tension between Sutherland’s no-nonsense, whatever-it-takes attitude and normal social etiquette did not get me particularly agitated, though it was controversial at the time. We were, after all, fighting murderous fanatics. The show verged on depicting something close to reality a couple times, but then veered off to find more correct villains. Mostly Russian, as I recall, which is why I always thought the show was sort of prescient.

I watched it religiously as the bizarre construct of the show rolled through 24 episodes per season, each supposedly covering a single hour of one day of intense, non-stop terror-busting action.

They are not even going to try that this time- twelve installments are planned. I will watch them as many times as necessary to follow the plot. You may recall that season two featured African American President David Palmer, as portrayed masterfully by actor Dennis Haysbert. He was voted the number one favorite fake president in a 2012 survey by TV.com. He even beat The West Wing’s Martin Sheen as Jed Bartlett, a liberal President in Aaron Sorkin’s hallucination about progressive government.

The former seemed impossible to imagine at the time, and the latter inconceivable. And look where we are now. Twenty four.

Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303