Walker, Texas Ranger. Jack Bauer. Dempsey & Makepeace. (That last one is for a certain cohort that really loved the eighties.) On TV, crime-fighting and counter-terror policing is easy: the hero always gets his man. You know the bad guy. You go after the bad guy. The evidence is always found. The bad guy either dies very violently or ends up in jail for a really long time. Al Qaeda, al Shabaab, Al Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula, Al Qaeda in the Levant, Boko Haram and Islamic State have all but shattered that cozy illusion but only because we refused to learn the same harsh lessons that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the Irish Republican Army, the Ulster Unionists, the Baader-Meinhoff Gang, the Red Brigade and the Black September Faction had handed down in the decades before.
You will be shocked by the number of adults in positions of authority who seem to think they are in some TV show, making decisions with little or no regard for the law or the rights of even their own operatives. It really is quite astounding.
Which brings me to my point. I want to be the Kenyan version of that cartoon character, Jack Bauer. That guy never dies, doesn't sleep or eat, I don't think he's ever taken a shower or a shit, he definitely has never peed on-screen. There's that season where he was abducted to some Chinese hellhole for two years and he didn't speak or break despite what is hinted at as seriously, Chinese torture. The one season where he was actually tortured by Balkan madmen, he actually died and pulled off a Lazarus and came back to life, and killed all the bad guys.
When he goes after proof, he seems to have a preternatural ability to crack locks and doors and his loyal sidekick, Chloe, seems to be a genius at cracking communications and computer systems. His bag never seems to run out of extra bullets unless the scene demand that he finds new bullets, preferably in the bad guys' bags. He never misses - unless he wants to. He is also an expert torturing people and, for some inexplicable reason, squinting with seriously deadly intent.
If I were Kenya's Jack Bauer, imagine the fun we would have. The President would call me with some cryptic message about al Shabbies or some similar shit and, without even a cent in my pocket, I'd find a helicopter, guns and computers and off I would go to do battle with the forces of evil. No women in this scenario, unless they are computer geniuses or bad guys' molls. Either way, Jack Bauer is not bothered by irrelevant things as human emotions - except anger and rage. And in the space of 24 hours, I'd find the bad guys, find out their nefarious designs, stop them, and possibly kill them all. It is really, quite a lot of fun for cartoon characters. It is, unfortunately, a fantasy and it is time that the securocracy realised fantasies are either for children or those in love.
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