V and the failure of imagination

I am watching "V" on TV. It is emblematic of the lack of imagination in contemporary science fiction. The writers seem to take such small, unimaginative steps from reality. Instead of using the genre of science fiction to take great leaps of imagination they seem to make small changes from contemporary politics and social controversies. So the V show has come to be about the travails of parenting teens in suburbia rather than a life and death struggle over the survival of humanity.

The son of the main character is on the side of the alien invaders. He caught on a video vandalizing the office of someone that has criticized the aliens. The mother--the main character--sees the video and is distraught that her son has committed vandalism--not that he is on the side of lizards from outer space bent on the destruction of the human race. And the solution to this is for the main character and her estranged husband to get the family back together so that the 18 year old boy can have a secure environment. Instead of the premise giving the writers a chance to explore possibilities completely outside of normal experience they use the possibilities to dress up the most mundane and trivial soap-opera plots.

Another premise of the show is the concern with "collateral damage" that separates the heros from the bad humans. The chance to kill the leader of the aliens and possibly end the war would cost 300 lives. This the hero refuses to continence. Now in WWII our leaders sent thousands to their death to win the battle against Nazis and would not have blinked at the chance to kill Hitler at the cost of 300 innocent allied civilians, let alone 300 that had declared themselves on the other side. It seems that total war for survival is already out of the bounds of the imagination of our contemporary science fiction writers. What is the point of science fiction if you use it to stay bound to the sidewalk?

The story that "we" gave small pox infected blankets to the Indians was repeated on the show as if it were a settled fact. There is are two letters from British officers contemplating doing so during the Pontiac rebellion in 1773. The stories of the US army doing so are solely form Ward Churchill and are fabricated. It is miserable that our own intellectual elites are so happy to slander our own society. But they don't think of it as their society. Our contemporary intellectuals are among us but not of us. Their superiority over and contempt for the society that they are nominally a part of is the source of their self-esteem and denigrating that society stirs in their breast not pain but pride.