It's amusing phrasing, but I don't find the name "bedrotting" accurate. Sometimes an hours-long TV session can be restorative and not a measure of decay. We sometimes forget that we are human beings, not always humans doing. Sometimes I just need to be on my recliner, especially after a long week of peopling.

My choice for this restoration was catching up on something my parents watched: "The West Wing." There is just something about the idea of a competent, educated person leading the country; what a dream.

Most of the day, I clutched my throw blanket under my chin. But twice, I whipped it off in frustration and went for more snacks. One episode had a potential Supreme Court justice nominee who was axed over a paper he wrote in his youth. Roughly, his paper argued that the right to privacy wasn't guaranteed. The president and his staff wanted to give him a pass, but when they pinned the nominee down, they realized that what he wrote in his youth wasn't something that got stripped away as he aged.

The deputy communications director, Sam, said, "The next two decades are gonna be privacy! I'm talking about the internet. I'm talking about cell phones; I'm talking about health records and who's gay and who's not. And moreover: in a country born on the will to be free, what could be more fundamental than this?"

The music swells, and the right choices were made. Oh, to dream of that ease.

Old shows are not prophetic. They remind us that people were already worrying about the same topics we are, and that they tried to explain what was at stake back then. And still, here we are.

That can feel less like a lesson and more like an accusation. We know the cost of leaving these problems alone, and knowing hasn't always been enough to change them. The future Sam is talking about has arrived, though I'm not sure we've settled on what we're willing to give up for convenience, safety, or a working app.

Then Josh talks about smallpox, a disease that had been eradicated and that people might have to confront again. Watching from here, after COVID-19, I hear the line with a dose of anger. Something we thought was too dystopian is suddenly part of the future we have to plan for.

A Talking Heads song keeps coming to mind: "Once in a Lifetime," with its refrain, "same as it ever was." Watching these shows, that line feels less like a joke about how prophetic a show was and more like a question about history. How many times can we encounter the same problems before we stop treating them as surprises and start curing them?

It's tempting to call every crisis unprecedented. Sometimes the circumstances really are new. Technology changes, names change, and history never repeats itself exactly. But the underlying questions can stay with us for decades.

"Same as it ever was" can sound like acceptance. Watching these shows, I felt something more unsettling: recognition. We have seen versions of our problems before. We know the questions to ask and the consequences of looking away. The refrain may be familiar, but what we do after hearing it is still up to us.

Cassie McClure is a writer, millennial, and unapologetic fan of the Oxford comma. She can be contacted at [email protected]. To learn more about Cassie McClure and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Photo credit: Oscar Nord at Unsplash