Confederate Currency
Everything that makes it onto TV is part of the scenario. There is only one scenario–wealth and poverty, war and peace, cowboys and Indians, Blacks, Latinos and Asians, Episcopalians and Druids, G.I. Joe and Godzilla are all sub-plots. What is never spoken of because there is no name for it is the swift brutal current of voracious decay that underlies everything.
The whole world is tossing expired values out the window like Confederate currency.