Good intentions

I rarely catch Bill Moyer's show or NOW on PBS. But I'm traveling and the shows are on late here on the West Coast (and NOW, especially, is good for making me sleepy). Last nights shows featured, respectively, an interview with the creator of The Wire and a travelogue on the imminent demise of some of the world's great glaciers.

Bill Moyer's interview with David Simon focused primarily on the notion that we have become ("become?" I'd ask) an oligarchy, with the system fixed on maintaining power for them that's got and depriving them that's not a voice (my Ray Charles' words, but you get the idea). He's particularly passionate about the Drug War's failure to do anything but keep a certain class of people working on the street and a certain class of drugs illegal, and how every dime of interdiction costs should be turned to rebuilding communities and providing treatment.

At the end of the two hours I realized the utter futility of these types of programs. Will anyone whose mind could be changed about the self-destructiveness of the Drug War or the disaster of climate change even bother to care to watch these shows? Of course not. Only those predisposed to agree with the arguments and with the science will care. And that's just not yet good enough.