People who talked about how 24 and Jack Bauer showed that torture was good actually included a goddamned supreme court justice and I think the SecDef? The Bush Jr admin was openly fans of the show.
Oh, and the cast were invited to have a panel at a conference for the fucking Heritage Foundation!
There should be a whole PhD dissertation in how 24 took over American culture and was used to justify heinous acts with some trite “the ends justify the means” hero porn on prime time.
Yes, it was sickening to watch a lot of people - even self-proclaimed libertarians – flip on torture during that period. There was a stark reversal from the 90s where the War Crimes Act was unanimously passed because back then anti-torture laws were thought of as affecting enemies like the Viet Cong, which lasted less than a decade.
