We Are Living In A Dangerous Time

The Good Fight centres around the life of one of the lawyers who was a partner in the firm in The Good Wife played by Christine Baranski, who has moved into a partnership position at a predominantly black law firm, from her former position at a predominantly white firm in Chicago.

Legal series tend, probably more than anything on TV, to reflect the times we live in. The creators of this series (Michelle & Robert King and Phil Alden Robinson) are obviously big L Liberals and very tuned into what’s going on.

The reason I am writing about this series is that because this week’s episode was about the Democratic National Committee’s search for the best way to frame and make stick an impeachment proceeding against the sitting president and not some fictional creation, but Donald J.Trump, or as he is more commonly known in this computer, el Drumpho.

I have been watching and writing about television since the latter part of the last century, and this is really the first time that I have ever seen a series attempt anything like this.

I sincerely believe that the show runners must have struggled with this quite a bit before deciding to go so hard core into this situation. But I also believe that these same people, who I consider to be some of the best people working in television today, were being guided by their genuine belief that Trump is, and proves it every day, a rabid dog.

I’m not sure that this episode of this series will create any sort of firestorm in the world of US politics. Let’s face it, it’s not news, so it probably won’t be seen by Trump himself.

All that notwithstanding, The Good Fight’s main characters are all women, strong women, smart women, driven by their convictions, and, if we are to take the words of Christine Baranski’s character, at their face value, as opposed to their allegorical worth, we see that she could very well be speaking for a great many people in the US.

These Are Strange Times

I admit to having been caught up in this strangeness myself. I guess it’s because it really pushed the only prejudice button I possess, which is my prejudice against people who have been lulled into a coma of idiocy by a culture that is designed to do just that to them.

These people form political opinions, not based on their own sense of morality or justice or fair play or equality….but on who shouts at them the loudest and for the longest time.

The US culture, which is driven by technology and instant but superficial information created in these people a sense of being well informed, when really they are only skimming the surface of the issues they are facing and forming opinions that fit conveniently into their preferred social media.

Historiography. Yeah, It’s a Thing

Part of my formal education (Glendon College), included a course in something called historiography, which was developing the ability to look at an event from a number of different perspectives before forming your opinion. I have found this a valuable evaluation tool, despite the fact that I sometimes don’t employ it.

But there are a lot of people out there, and social media actually facilitates this, who are either too lazy or otherwise disinclined to doing that. Instead, they simply seek out reinforcement for whatever was the first bit of shouted propaganda that stuck in their heads. They don’t bother to even wonder if there is another side to the coin.

And this reluctance, and in many cases, inability to objectively enquire and learn both sides of any argument have created a huge glut of what can only be called ignoramuses.

And the energy they expend standing on either side of the gap shouting at each other is the thing that causes the gap to widen.

I am what you would call a small ‘l’ liberal. I would prefer a society that was governed by people who believe that our society is one whole thing and that it is best served when the needs of everyone are taken care of.

But I am not, hopefully, an ignoramus, because I do spend as much time as I need to taking in the conservative point of view. And my political conclusions are based on at least some understanding of both.

When I look at the US, what I see is a country so divided that I believe it will take generations to restore any sense of normalcy. What I see is in Trump is a man who is basically a slave to his mental defect, which is narcissism. This is expressed in his putting America first strategy, but in point of fact, it is actualized only in terms of putting himself first.

I don’t blame him for this. It’s his nature and the nature of his affliction.

But what I do see is a Republican party who is forced, pretty much on pain of implosion, to support him and whatever madness he creates.

And on the other side of the coin, you have people with powerful messaging tools like successful TV series and movies and novels and celebrity who are working harder than ever to make sure the American people understand just how off balance this presidency has made the country.

I suspect that as Trump continues to play out his own narcissistic agenda, we will see more push from the other side. And the American people would be very wise to pay attention to both sides, and see where it is their true interest lies.

All of this, that has come to TV shows writing about impeachment, started way back in the presidential primaries when Trump started yelling loud and clear about just how badly the Obama administration had fucked up the country.

This, of course, was the first lie and the biggest lie. But very few Republicans bothered to check that out. If they had they would see that Obama was, in the face of powerful opposition, able to pull off an economic miracle, bringing the US back from a major meltdown to something close to business as usual.

America Will Survive

I know it’s easy to criticize the US for a lot of the decisions they have made over the years. But that’s not what this is about. That country has pretty much since its inception been suffering from growing pains of one kind or another.

The current situation is a dangerous one. But one of the key things I have learned about America is that no matter how high the jump, they always more or less land on their feet.

It’s impossible to imagine a country like America run by someone like Trump for very long. It’s not in their nature to have weak leadership.

And at the end of the day, the true nature of the country always wins out.

So while these may be dangerous times for all of us, the world, perhaps apart from America, at the moment, is coming together. Sooner or later America will catch on to that fact, and they will be back.

Because to paraphrase the poet John Donne, No country is an island. Every country is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.

jim out

Jim lives in St Catharines Ontario and is a partner at Bullet Proof Consulting. www.bulletproofconsulting.ca

You can follow Jim

On beBee: https://www.bebee.com/bee/jim-murray

On LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jim-murray-b8a3a4/

On Twitter: https://twitter.com/Jimbobmur

On Facebook: https://tinyurl.com/y97gxro4