Paramount Network is supposed to be a streaming service. The entity in DC purports to be a government whose task is to secure the rights of the governed. In reality, neither is what it claims to be. It is common knowledge that neither represents anywhere near the pinnacle of its realm. In fact, those paying attention know both organizations exist for their own aggrandizement at the expense of the very people each purports to serve. This screed has been precipitated by my inadvertently having just (with great pain) watched Jack Reacher on Paramount, thanks to Hulu (which I also despise, but for other reasons - though greed and self-aggrandizement are coded in the DNA of each - like most every bureaucratized organization in the US today).
Every streaming service (I have quit them all except Hulu and Prime, because my wife requires some diversion), it seems, has found ways to remove any pleasure from the viewing experience, beginning with the ineffably lousy browsing function. It takes as long to find something (maybe) worth watching as youâre likely to spend in actually viewing it - especially net of commercials.
If youâre, letâs say disappointed with your governance, Paramount exemplifies many of its execrable qualities even as it lies at the opposite pole - the nadir - of its market-tested appellation, suggesting it is somehow at the pinnacle. This latter, of course, canât hold a candle to the generations of compounded, wildly-successful propaganda of the state. Slogans like âthe consent of the governedâ, âof the people, by the people, and for the peopleâ or âthe rule of lawâ replayed in public school generation upon generation have marinated the public in Marxist fentanyl/propaganda - so effective that many can no longer even define what a male or female is. They love âour democracyâ˘â as surely as Winston Smith loved big brother.
Letâs look at my experience of the past few hours of viewing âpleasureâ. The movie Jack Reacher was punctuated by no fewer than 12 commercial breaks, each consisting of 4 - 10 individual ads each. As is the new custom, a countdown timer appears in the top right hand corner of the screen. While it is accurate on other services, on Paramount, it actually LIES. On numerous occasions, it begins counting at 4 minutes. It then counts down to 2â 30" and the commercials continue to run for several more minutes after reaching zero! This is beyond aggravating.
As if thatâs not enough, the volume on some of the commercials jumps to about three times the volume of the others - which are already much louder than the movie itself. For whatever reason, the incessantly-repeated Viagra commercial was by far the loudest. If only it cured traumatic deafness! If only it made flaccid viewers stand up and unmount Paramount! The point is, one cannot simply ignore the commercials; you must grab the remote to stifle the decibels at unpredictable intervals.
Then, the coup de grace. As is often the case on streaming services, with many movies the story continues during or even after the end credits. Do the services respect their viewers and allow them to view the entire movie to the end of the credits? Nope. They cut off the credits willy-nilly and, frequently, they cut off the actual end of the movie - which may well contain a surprise ending! It is apparent that Paramount, especially, exists merely to extract as much lucre from its subscribers as possible, even while garnering every possible cent from purveyors of the drivel, called commercials. They barely even bother to play their content in a manner which most anyone could possibly call âenjoyableâ or âentertainingâ. It is actually infuriating. Were it just me - if I did not need to consider my wife - I would quit them all. Their disdain for subscribes disgusts and enrages me. They obviously believe they (like the state they emulate) have a captive audience.
Which brings me to the âservicesâ âofferedâ by the US government. I will not here recount the awfulness of it; you are all painfully aware of how stringently analogous the US government is to the Paramount experience just described. All I can say in Paramountâs favor is that they, at least, do not ultimately rely on bayonets for collections. Sadly, more and more of the goods and services available here in the US are similar. It seems to me to be the terminal phase of our new-and-improved, lemon-freshened, green cholorphyll-infused, fascism: neither the corporations nor the state to which they are wedded can sustain products, services or appearances much longer. Corporate failure, though, can only bring us economic collapse. The stateâs mischief, on the other hand, brings higher stakes. Its misperception that it can successfully bully Russia (and China and the rest of the world) as it does its own citizens - is clearly leading it toward precipitating of WWIII. If only our state were as diligent in protecting US borders as it is in protecting those of Ukraine. You could say itâs the paramount of state arrogance.
