Television and the Government: What I Experienced After Bingeing on Battlestar Galactica

            Tonight I want to talk about my biggest surprise I’ve gotten from Battlestar Galactica. I would never have thought that this show would make me question everything I thought I felt strongly about in terms of government, especially the role government plays during times of war and disaster. I had always felt very strongly that governments needed to be perfectly honest with their citizens, and that when members of government or the military broke laws or ignored certain human rights there should be some sort of punishment. But now that I’ve been so immersed in the text of BSG, I wonder how practical all that honesty and transparency can be, especially in times of severe crisis.

        It is important to point out that the humans in the text are lucky that Roslin and Adama are incredibly talented leaders, and truly do want what is best for the human race. This simplifies things when they have to make decisions that ignore the rights of the people. At times Roslin and Adama make the wrong choices, which at one point led to a military coup de'état, but for the most part their choices benefit the few surviving humans in the fleet. Without these split-second decisions the fleet would be destroyed by Cylons and the show would end in an incredibly anti-climactic and disappointing mass of explosion.

        This thought process has made me question if perhaps real life government has to act quickly and make questionable choices like Roslin and Adama in order to function and accomplish things. Roosevelt helped save the economy, but he made quite a few unconstitutional decisions in order to better the country. So maybe, sometimes, leaders have to make decisions and keep information from the people in order to protect the people. This is still a very strange way for me to think of government, and I’m not even sure I’ve fully processed how I think and feel about a government having so much unchecked power. But right now I’m really wondering if maybe there are times in severe crisis when the people need to be kept in the dark in order to avoid violent riots, and reach a positive solution. I'm not sure this is a claim I am fully comfortable making yet, but just maybe at times in real life we need leaders like Adama and Roslin to make questionable choices to protect the people at large.

Note: To be clear, when I write about avoiding riots I mean unnecessary looting and violence that are not in the interest of social progress, but rather out of control self interest in times of crisis.