I’m talking primarily to other American males here. There may indeed be certain classes of people who need it, but frankly you’re probably not one of them. Before we go into the advantages of getting rid of your Cable Service, let’s address objections.

What About Sports TV?

You don’t need to watch football on TV. The fact is, your watching football on TV is probably filling up a hole in your heart that is meant to be filled by your own physical exercise and comradeship on a sports team. Wouldn’t it be awesome if the time you spent watching football you spent actually playing football, or soccer, or playing catch with your son, tennis with your wife, biking with a friend. You might take up hunting or archery.

But what about the socialization you enjoy centered around sports? While watching sports provides a chance for you to kibitz with your boss and coworkers, let’s be straight: The reason you need football to break the ice is because you actually don’t care enough about the other person to attempt a substantive conversation about something real. If you can’t think of anything to talk about other than how The Cowboys did against The Redskins over the weekend, you are not trying hard enough. Just as watching Sports is cheating your body, talking about Sports is cheating your mind. I don’t mean Sports proper. Talking about improving your golf swing with a friend or co-worker is great. I mean the evil, increasingly-PC oligopoly that is televised sports. Think about the private lives of the players that you watch on that screen. Do you really want to support that with your viewership? Do you want your kids to idolize that?

You may be left out of a conversation on your favorite team around the water-cooler. Maybe it’s time for you to start a conversation about something meaningful. Think about it. If you and your boss talk about how your Sports team did, that might put you in good stead. But if you talk about your shared interest in hunting, or your boys’ scouting troops, or how to grill the best steaks, your weight-lifting or running routines, just about anything active is going to create a stronger bond. Maybe your boss is a Sports-a-holic who has no other interests and you won’t do as well at work unless you are a fellow sports-a-holic. I submit to you that the goodness done to you and your family (maybe your future family if you don’t have one yet) by getting rid of cable TV will outweigh the loss (and you can always skim a quick summary online of the weekend’s games to let your boss know you care because he cares). And if it means that much to you, maybe you should buy a ticket and go to a live game instead. Not as good as actually playing, of course, but better than sitting in your living room gazing into your crystal ball—excuse me, rectangle, at other people having the time of their lives while your fat cells quietly expand around your waste.

What about the Discovery Channel?

Haha. Seriously? Rent DVDs, my friend. I’m saying get rid of cable TV, not your television set. And, for most people, that’s just an excuse, anyway. They don’t really want the Discovery Channel. They want their largely semi-pornographic (and let’s be honest, from what I read, you don’t even need the “semi-“ qualifier, these days) shows.

Additionally, TV is by its very nature aimed at the lowest common denominator. You’re not going to learn all that much from The Discovery Channel, sad to say. And The History Channel tells you a white-washed version of the history of Western Civ, often unfairly critical of the Church and her works. The Dark Ages? They didn’t exist. They were made up by “Enlightenment” philosophes who found it inconvenient that they owed most of their material and scientific progress to devout Christian ancient, medieval and Renaissance scientists, while the rest of it originating from the rare Greek thinkers like Plato and Aristotle, carefully selected for preservation by Christian monks and academics in the East and West because of their consistency and in large part, their support of the Christian Worldview. Yeah, let me know when The History Channel tells you that story. Meanwhile I will wait for Donald Trump to apologize for anything. (You’re welcome, I.C.)

Those are the two most frequent objections I’ve heard about reasons giving up cable would be a bad move (sports and educational programming) aside from, “But what about my shows?” Now let’s talk about why you don’t want your shows.

You Don’t Want to Watch Your Shows

Chances are, “your shows” are brought to you by TV execs whose sole purpose is to enslave you to the TV, so you will watch advertisements for their overpriced brand-name products, and buy them. Now what kind of person is most easily manipulated into buying overpriced goods?

The Hedonism of Cable TV

Part of the reason for the advent of the modern-day Western Manchild written about by my fellow Macabbeans is a culture of hedonism facilitated by people sitting in front of their TVs without any activity, economic, interpersonal or physical. Consider all that wasted time. Consider also the passive nature of the typical television experience. Can I object to what George Stephanopoulis says to me from his crystal screen? Can I let him know what a fool he is for defending monsters like the Clintons from their sordid past crimes? No, the television is designed to make you feel morally superior (so long as you’re an agnostic liberal, of course!), while telling you that you can enjoy every KentuckyDeep-fried, Exclusive, Cruise-ship, Viagra, All-expenses-paid pleasure out there without worrying about the consequences.

No Firm Religion

The television programming today is designed to destroy any sense of religion in you: If you give 10% of your money to the Church, you’ll have less to buy their advertisers’ products, so of course they want to make you irreligious as well as stupid. Additionally, the corporations of the World fear the Catholic Church and Christianity in general, because it is the only force on Earth (aside perhaps from Islam) that is more powerful than they and has historically withstood their reach. Nations, especially the United States and the EU, are no longer immune to the corporations’ will, but the Catholic Church, to a surprising degree for a materialist observer, stands against and condemns the materialistic avarice of the mega-corporations of the World, that exist not to advance the human race, but to maximize profit margins of their shareholders.

You take away these monster super-human leviathans’ psychological power over you and your family when you unplug from the cable TV and grab the rosary beads instead. The false sense that the whole country is irreligious, the pink fog of hedonism that pervades the News networks and sitcoms, can be banished just that easily from your home and your life.

Pornography

While services like CovenantEyes will monitor and guard your computer and internet access against porn, the sad truth is that porn is increasingly found in the sitcoms and Dramas. Your wife and your daughters will slowly come to expect that all women dress like that, talk like that, You and your sons believe that all man act like that, and any desire for a higher standard is prudishness.

Not so. You are going to live forever, and it’s going to be in Heaven, so let’s do something RIGHT NOW that God will say “Well Done!” to us for when we reach Heaven. If I’ve convinced you, no need to finish the article, CALL the cable company NOW and CANCEL, before you lose your nerve. If I haven’t convinced you yet and you’re still one of the unfortunate ones with that excrement pouring into your home, read on.

Anti-American?

Isn’t it part of being an American to have and watch cable TV? Won’t that make me like an Amish person? Perhaps those questions are going through your mind. I’ve got news for you. America is dying. And it is dying in large part because of the immorality, apathy, arrogance and stupidity spread around by Cable Television. If America is going to survive, it’s going to do so through a new breed of Americans who recognize the Truth:

Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things [are] honest, whatsoever things [are] just, whatsoever things [are] pure, whatsoever things [are] lovely, whatsoever things [are] of good report; if [there be] any virtue, and if [there be] any praise, think on these things. –Phil 4:8

That’s not today’s TV. And if you are going to succeed in being the man God wants you to be, the kind America needs in whatever form she might survive, the kind your wife needs, you need to get rid of every hindrance, and run with confidence in the way God has set out for us.

As Close to Damned as You Can Be this Side of the Hereafter

Escape from the television. To be a slave to it, to be passive when you know you should be active and enjoying God’s green Earth, is to be damned. Unsubscribe right now. Pay the early-termination-of-contract fee. Do it now before you change your mind! That’s the way many difficult things are after all: you should act immediately while the conviction is clear in your mind when it comes to things you don’t want to do, before your passions and the latest episode of The Big Bang Theory or Game of Thrones cloud your intellect again. I’m not saying you’ll never regret it. I’m saying, you’ll be better for it, your life more holy, less slavish, and your hours more healthy and productive. You will be doing your part to destroy the tyranny of mass media over our formerly Christian society. If you’re married, talk it through with your wife, but GET RID OF THAT PARASITE ON YOUR WALLET, SOUL, AND TIME.

DUMP THE CABLE.

 

Do you think I am an overzealous Puritan? Enlighten me in the comments. My blog is Defense for the Hope, linked below in my Bio. Stop by.