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The Energy Department Focuses on the Important Things. Like Netflix Shows.
When you shovel your annual tax payments into the greedy maw of the IRS, you might wonder where your hard-earned money winds up. Is it funding cool weapons systems to help make our troops more effective? Helping fund junior’s education at State U? Maybe providing grandma with a little extra cash to buy a new tea kettle?
Not surprisingly, much of what government spends your money on is really, really stupid. Destroying “excess” cherries to insure you pay more for them at the grocery store. Mounting PR campaigns to cast bureaucrats in a positive light. Reminding forgetful citizens to drink water.
On Friday, an Energy Department employee spent some of his taxpayer-funded salary fact-checking a fictional show. The popular new Netflix offering “Stranger Things” involves a missing child, his frantic mom, and a police chief whose investigation leads him to the supernatural and a sinister, secret program run by the Energy Department. Free citizens criticizing their government in fiction? This cannot stand!
DOE employee Paul Lester was so offended, he dedicated untold workhours to writing a 750-word takedown of the portrayal:
[W]hile I really enjoyed “Stranger Things” as a mashup of Goonies and X-Files with some amazing 80s music mixed in, the show’s portrayal of the Energy Department was a little less than accurate. Here’s why (spoilers ahead!):
HAWKINS NATIONAL LABORATORY DOESN’T EXIST.
In the show, Hawkins National Laboratory is a tightly secured Energy Department facility in the middle of a deep, dark forest. The truth is Hawkins National Laboratory — just like the fictional town of Hawkins — doesn’t exist…THE ENERGY DEPARTMENT DOESN’T EXPLORE PARALLEL UNIVERSES.
There are several scenes in the show where Hawkins Laboratory researchers don full body suits and protective gear to walk through a peculiar portal, which transports them to an alternate dimension known as “The Upside Down.” While the Energy Department doesn’t chart parallel universes, it does help power the exploration of new worlds…THE ENERGY DEPARTMENT DOESN’T MESS WITH MONSTERS.
“Stranger Things” depicts the Energy Department as a federal agency confronting terrifying monsters lurking in different dimensions. We don’t mess with monsters…NATIONAL LABORATORY SCIENTISTS AREN’T EVIL — THEY’RE ACTUALLY REALLY NICE (AND SMART)!
In “Stranger Things,” actor Matthew Modine plays Hawkins National Laboratory’s Dr. Martin Brenner, a sinister scientist whose motives are questionable. However, actual National Laboratory scientists are among the brightest people in the world….LIGHTS AREN’T POWERED BY MONSTERS OR OTHER LIFEFORMS.
Okay, I think you get the point. Lester finds time to educate readers on how Christmas lights work, insists that not all scientists are evil white males, and links to a “cool infographic” about space exploration.
During the government shutdown, bureaucrats assured us that there wasn’t a dime of non-essential funding left to cut and that not raising the insanely high debt limit bordered on treason. If we want to make headway on the $19.4 trillion we owe, maybe we should start with abolishing the Department of Energy.
Published in General
I dunno. In the grand scheme of government spending, one tongue-in-cheek blog post isn’t really enough to get me to the barricades.
At least he didn’t include any climate change propaganda in the post. I’m actually really surprised that it was omitted.
I’d rather they spent their days attending to this kind of stuff than regulating the hell out of industries and driving up prices.
Agreed. In terms of spending.
The fact that DOE felt they needed to rebut a TV show, however, …
Of course not, some scientists are women and minorities, and they’re not evil at all. It’s just the white males who are the evil ones. Duh.
It got them the free PR they were looking for, didn’t it?
Actually, your tax money isn’t paying for anything. The IRS digitally destroys the “money” you send in at tax time, wiping it off the books. The gubmint gets digitally created money at the beginning of the fiscal year, spends it, then the tax money you “send” in is simply subtracted from the total (always at a deficit, of course) and wiped out of existence with the stroke of a keyboard.
Taxes to States and Cities work differently… you really are paying their bills. But the Fed? It’s all an elaborate game. They create money out of thin air, and then destroy it the same way it was made.
Sort of the definition of fiat currency, isn’t it?
The have money for this, and no money to give hard-working taxpayers like myself the M163A2 Vulcan Air Defense Systems we so richly deserve.
There outta be a law!
Well somebody finally explained how Obama got 400 million to send to Iran as ransom. He (not really him because POTUS doesn’t have enough IT chops to do it himself) just creates the money out of electrons. I have been wondering about that for a long time. Where does the President get money to fund executive orders? This will end, and it won’t be good.
Nice article Jon.
Ha, I just finished the first episode of “Stranger Things” 10 minutes ago. I would throw in a little “Stand By Me” arc, as a descriptor, along with the “X-Files” and “Goonies”.
From the Dungeons and Dragons game, to the bikes, to the walkie talkies, to the metal GE fan, to “The Thing” poster, to the forest fort, to the awkward sexual relationships which seem so naive compared to what today’s children deal with; this was my childhood in the ’80s.
What is most disturbing for me, at least, is how this show represents an America that now seems like a period piece; an era long ago. Although I am delighted to discover that my love for Winona Ryder is confirmed as eternal.
My wife and I just wrapped up season one and we liked it–we are both kids of the 80s so it was full of throwbacks and references. We did find it hilarious that the DoE was the bad guy government agency.
The DoE denies the events of Stanger Things, but that’s just what anyone would say in a massive government cover-up.
Also I’m shamelessly plugging my review of this awesome show everyone should watch to satisfy my love of the decade I sorta grew up in.
Mounting PR campaigns to cast bureaucrats in a positive light. Reminding forgetful citizens to drink water.
And the stupid stupid TV networks reminding us to “spend time with our children” (“The more you know!” — “CBS Cares!”) Nothing like being lectured to on monitoring my child’s internet use by a celebrity who’s been arrested for cocaine at six different airports. Get them and the government departments off my back.
You’ve made me nostalgic for another 80s show: The Golden Fleece Awards. Imagine a political world where your progressive opponents cared about balanced budgets and wasteful spending.
Now that”s science fiction.
From Bill Proxmire to Tammy Baldwin. Damn shame.
The place is a cispool!
Wait a minute! If the DoE is misrepresented in a TV show …. Does that mean the EPA might have been misrepresented in Ghostbusters?! What other misinformation might be floating around in our entertainment media?
Like the Dept of Education, which spends hundreds of billions and teaches….no one.
Kev,
It looks like a terrific status ride. If you pull up to a stoplight in it, you will get noticed. However, I was just curious whether there wasn’t more than just impressing the girls to this story. Anything you’d like to relate to us about the Vulcan, it’s mission, and the current funding attitude to it?
Regards,
Jim
Stranger Things is reasonable summer brain waste to watch, but if you want truthful depiction of Washington D.C. and how it works, then you should watch the summer “reality” series Brain Dead. I knew there had to be an explanation why politicians ignore their base!
Of course, the Dept. of Energy would say those things. Keep the sheeple in the dark about the lights and where the real source of power is. Also, chemtrails!
(As an aside, my tinfoil hat really makes my head sweat like the dickens in the summer months. Anybody know any neat life hacks to counteract this?)
Hmmm, could I commute in that? And does the barrel depress sufficiently for it to function as an anti-beemer defense system?
No – sweat is a small price to pay to protect your thoughts from the NSA. I’ve seen knit beanies offered to address that issue, but I’ve been told those are wired direct to the CIA. Either that or the Illuminati, I forget.
As someone who works for the Enegery Department, I can confirm that this statement is true.
We actually use parallel universes to contain the monsters the really smart scientists at Hawkins National Lab catch by using light bulbs that soak up their energy.
It’s like Ghostbusters, only less funny . . .
I never got the impression from the show that the DoE was the actual bad guy. I got the impression that the “DoE facility” was a front for the CIA/NSA, kinda like how in the 1990s conspiracy theorists liked to point at FEMA as a front for the New World Order.
(Note that in Stephen King’s fictional universe, which is a clear inspiration for Stranger Things, the super-secret government agency is called the U.S. Department of Scientific Intelligence. It’s almost too bad they didn’t use the same name for the tv show.)
I hope they can produce something as good as the Soviet TV series, Seventeen Moments of Spring. It was more or less commissioned by Yuri Andropov in order to cast the KGB in a good light, so they could continue to recruit the best people into that agency, and so the public wouldn’t have so many negative thoughts about it.
The result was an artistic success. It was the most watched series in the history of Soviet television. The country came to a standstill each night it was on (in the early 70s). Crime went down, home electricity consumption went up, etc. It was a spy thriller set in the final days of WWII, about a Russian agent who manages to keep Germany from negotiating a separate deal with the U.S. The Germans were portrayed as real people, not caricatures, and the descendants of one of the generals wrote to thank the actor who portrayed him for the way he did it. It is said that Leonid Brezhnev got so caught up in it that he wanted to find and honor the Soviet agent. (It was all fictional, though. And the filmmaker sneaked in a bit of anti-Soviet message, too.)
When Mrs. Reticulator and I watched it several years ago, we also were spellbound.
Putin is trying to get more stuff like that produced, but it’s all [CoC] in comparison.
I’m surprised he could write all that since most federal government employees spend their time looking at internet porn.
Maybe he types with one hand .. never mind.
Circa 1978, my Dad (inventor of GPS) proposed a wind train to the DOE. It would have had sails and would have been about five miles in circumference. Dad thought the DOE engineers were intimidated by DOD engineers and wanted nothing to do with it. I agree that the DOE should be abolished.
I have never of that series (I live the the “suburb of St. Petersburg”). I will definitely seek it out.
Well, 17 Moments of Spring it’s all up on Youtube with English subtitles. BRB.