I actually think that television is an unidicted co-conspirator in what you say.. The immense popularity of 24 in the 2000s - and to an extent Homeland in the following decade - gave legitimacy to torture in America that I honestly think nothing Bush-Cheney could have ever done in their discussion (I don't think its a coincidence so many Republicans would name check both the show and Jack Bauer during that period). I speak as someone who was a fan of the show at the time and still due find it brilliant from a writing and acting standpoint. But it did a lot to emphasize not only that torture was effective in the public consciousness and even more to place the Muslims as villains in the world. (Indeed several years ago Howard Gordon, who was one the showrunners behind both series publicly apologized for his role in putting his fingers on the scale in that debate.)

I don't object to it as much in action films but that's honestly because I don't watch enough of them to matter. But everything you described in this column was something that Jack Bauer or Carrie Matheson did multiple times a season (and in the former case, at least once an episode) and I do think it did spill over in to so many of the police procedurals of that period. (Chris Meloni on SVU and characters in Chicago PD did more to make it part it mainstream in police procedurals and that's had its own ramifications.)

I've been a fan of all these shows both then and several of them to day. But it's hard to argue in hindsight just how much their mass acceptance made it easier for America to tolerate and applaud what was being done in our name. We used code words such as ;our way of life' but we know what they really meant. We just didn't want to look in the mirror