In retrospect, 2017 may stand out as the year many conservatives join those on the political right to stop watching national news on television.
Those in the center, of course, continue to welcome look-alike anti-Trump news as a valuable time-saving medium for not having to digest opinions that experts have already endorsed. “More free time” to pursue various entertainments is worth a lot, isn’t it? Life is simply too short to do otherwise.
So just when the right have successfully taken up the centuries-old habit of reading once more, along comes a National Geographic series available on $10-a-month Netflix. Life Below Zero (National Geographic) is now in its ninth season as it pursues episode-after-episode of survivalist ordeals chronicling life in Alaska’s frozen Far North. To National Geographic’s credit, lifestyles examined are positive and sympathetic, not dark and negative. Diversity at its best, though not politically correct.
This form of survivalism is exactly what’s missing in our dependent, “safety-net” culture these days. Characters in Life Below Zero (Wikipedia) exemplify no more (or less) than life as our ancestors would have experienced, not unlike the appeal of going camping or “roughing it” to put things into humanistic perspective again.
