This is as close as we get to a collective cultural experience these days. The "Game of Thrones" episodes of Season 6 were watched by 25 million people every week; the audience for this last season was 42 million per episode.

The television series Game of Thrones made for a major cultural event. Since HBO launched it in 2011, Game of Thrones became the most watched program on Earth by the time of its fourth season. John Podhoretz writes in the New York Post :

It's the shocking finale of the series that has many people talking. The angst that many viewers have, and especially feminist viewers, is the transformation of the expected heroine of the series, Daenerys Targaryen.

Throughout the series, Daenerys was presented as the liberator of the enslaved and downtrodden, punishing their oppressors with her fire-breathing dragons on her quest to rule the land from which her family was exiled. Here, Daenerys was showing that a woman knows how to use power.

In Endgame, Daenerys wins the final battle. But instead of drawing her forces back or showing mercy to the innocent citizens of the battleground city, she completes her "mad queen" arc by destroying the city in a genocidal manner. Riding above the doomed city on her dragon, Daenerys burns the city and its tens of thousands of residents to a crisp.

This did not sit well with many, especially feminists. It didn't take long for the likes of Senators Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) to blast the finale. Ocasio-Cortez commented in her typically articulate way that "I feel like we were getting so close to having this ending with just women running to world and then the last two episodes, it's like, oh, they're too emotional. The end. It's like, ugh, this was written by men." She added: "We need to get some feminists' analysis up in HBO."

Sen. Gillibrand said, "I'm so pissed off." What the senator disliked is how in the early part of the series, Daenerys was portrayed as a breaker of chains, as someone who made sure the lowest-income, the least empowered, could have their voices heard and respected. This all disappeared in an apparent fit of emotion as the dragon queen turned into a murderous mad queen.

Elizabeth Warren complained that the plot of Game of Thrones is male-centric and portrays women as too emotional. A sampling of the liberal media echoes this feminist lament. One example is Time magazine, which reads, "The Game of Thrones didn't have to end this way."

You might say, "So what? It's just a TV series." That's true, but to leftists, everything must have a purpose. Liberals have grown so accustomed to having Hollywood and entertainment serve their "cause" that this finale has given them agita. The liberals have invested so much in manipulating entertainment for the sake of their agenda that any deviation from their preferred narrative is perceived as a threat. In the case of Game of Thrones, liberals fear that, subconsciously, people might come to see their stable of leftist female politicians like Queen Daenerys — seemingly good on the outside, but power-hungry, overly emotional, and irrational on the inside. Here the image of someone like Hillary Clinton as president comes to mind. Hillary would not have a fire-breathing dragon at her disposal, but as president, she'd have her finger on the nuclear button. That's worse.

The Left understands the value of symbols, images, and language in the cultural war it is fostering in America. Unfortunately, many conservatives still do not. Game of Thrones turned out to be a bump in the road for leftists.

Image: YouTube screen shot.