TIL: Little House On The Prairie.

So!! I said here...

That "rugged individualist" shit's been screaming howling bullshit since "Little House On The Prairie".

But I've got a whole separate post brewing about that. 😉😏

Well, here it is.

Let's go chronologically, and rewind to the 19th century.

The Engals family bounces around all over the place because the dad had a hard time finding and keeping work, because the economy was shit.

One of the towns they lived at was stolen native land claimed by the government, and guarded from native attack by government troops.

Put a pin in this for later.

The Engals daughter, Laura, grows up, marries Almonso Wilder, and they have a daughter, Rose.

Rose grows up, and becomes a fucking libertarian wackaloon.

Oh yeah; they don't put this in the fucking TV show.

Rose writes a bunch of hideous libertarian screed books, builds her reputation among those vile wretched horrible scumbags, and THEN "collaborates" with her mom, Laura, and co-writes the Little House books.

Fuck that, Rose writes them.

And they're shit-smeared with her libertarian crap.

But Laura didn't object, so fuck Laura too.

Notably, Rose leaves out the government land, and government troops bits.

You're never gonna see those troops in the show.

Woulda loved to have seen a spinoff of just those guys.

Like an "F-Troop" "Hogan's Heroes" kind of sitcom.

Wouldn't that be a hoot? Boy, I sure think so.

Anyway!

Rose whitewashes out anything that goes against the fairy tale of the Engals/Wilders surviving on gumption and pulling boot-straps.

Because libertarians have to lie for their dumb unworkable bullshit philosophy to pretend to function.

She doesn't however, whitewash seething anti-native racism.

The TV show would whitewash that out.

Fun fact: Rose was among the first to call Social Security a Ponzi scheme!

Isn't that fun?

Isn't that charming? Ain't that nice? Gosh, that's just so fuckin' adorable.

And, she wrote a biography of Herbert Hoover.

And she stayed pen-pals with Hoover his whole life.

And, Hoover cited the Little House books as an example of "rugged individualism".

Among the first times the term was shat forth upon the Earth.

Remember that government land they lived on?

Yeah.

Huh. So "rugged individualism" has been a fairy tale from the right from the word "go".

They've always been hypocritical government leeches.

So, y'know, that's fun.

Keep that in your back pocket for when a libertarian has their post-apocalypse Grizzly Adams wilderness fantasies.

Oh, y'know who else Rose rubbed elbows with?

Ayn Rand.

Ayn fucking Rand.

Yeah! That was my TIL.

So, Rose is the evil opposite Forrest Gump.

She also founded a school for libertarian wackos to learn how to be better libertarian wackos, and...long story short, she created the fucking Koch Brothers.

Mmmm hmm. Ain't that great? Ain't that neato?

Then, she made her parent's old house a tourist museum for the books.

The town pulled all their pennies together to make this happen.

Hmm, taking some more charity.

The libertarian.

Fuck these people.

Goddammit, do they suck.

So yeah! Laura Engals's kooch was the gateway to Hell.

It was basically the puzzle box from "Hellraiser".

Then!! Finally! The Little House books get adapted into the goddamned TV show.

And all the evil right-wing poison is sanitized out, and it's a cutesy-wutesy, sugary, melodramatic, manipulative, cringey, tear-jerker Hallmark Channel type ball of diabetes.

My mother loved it when I was a kid.

As an adult, I re-watched the whole damned thing end-to-end out of nostalgia memory refresh.

Like Alice.

The show on its surface level is harmless moosh.

Until you learn about Herbert Hoover, and Ayn Rand, and Koch Brothers, etc, etc.

And I think conservatives know this story, because it can't be coincidence the show reruns on every Christian-right "family" network that bubbles up from the septic tank.

I notice, there's a life-cycle to these channels.

First, you get the Christian-right channel using "country" and/or "family" in their title.

Then, that doesn't make enough money, so they sell out to someone else who turns it into...any format you can imagine.

Either! It'll go over to a cowboy, rodeo, western format that avoids the Christian shit, THEN becomes a nerd channel, or, it'll go directly to a nerd channel.

Depends on how anxious the Christians are to unload their albatross.

If it's not too desperate, then the cowboys slip in to the life-cycle for 5-7 years.

If it's super-desperate, then the nerds get it directly.

But then, the nerdy channel can never survive, and the nerdy/artsy shit dies, and it becomes yet another old Hollywood movie and old sitcom channel.

Then the cycle starts all over again.

And in that first Christian phase, you always get Little House.

I've lived almost a half-century now, and I've seen Little House race up and down the band, and leaving  a footprint pattern of broken dreams.

It's been like watching aliens make real crop circles.

It's fucking insane.

My only consolation, is the 19th century, as vulgar as it was, also had my precious anarchist intellectual forbearers, who in turn inspired Ursula Le Guin to write "The Dispossessed".

And "Mistah we could use a maaaan like Hoibert Hoovah agaaaiin!" in the "All In The Family" song is a nice little middle finger to that whole mess.

And AITF was on the same time as Little House, and they both stay in reruns fighting each other.

But yeah!

That's the story behind Little House.

The most insidious show to ever exist. 

It could hardly be worse if they made "That's Our Hitler!" and he gave everyone ice cream and hugs.

Oh, did I mention Netflix is rebooting this fucking thing?

Yeah.

Thanks, Netflix.

As us 80's kids used to say "smooth move, Ex-Lax!".