On TV
Television of the early 2000’s was the end of the “Golden Age of Broadcast TV”. Cable was around, but was still kind of a novelty, a place to watch movies on HBO or see “niche” shows on the cooking channels. For regular programming, most Americans still turned to on-air broadcast stations, most affiliated with NBC, ABC, CBS or Fox.
And for the first years of the new century, there were two television shows that demonstrated opposite views of America. The first was The West Wing, an NBC series about the Democratic Presidency of Josiah Bartlet. It spanned the end of the Clinton Presidency to near the end of George W Bush’s administration. It dealt with all sorts of issues, as the staff of the White House worked to “solve America’s problems”, and get re-elected.
West Wing was a surprisingly hopeful view of American politics. It was written by folks with direct knowledge, including former Senate staffer Lawrence O’Donnell, and former White House advisors like Dee Dee Myers (Clinton), Pat Caddell (Clinton), Marlin Fitzwater (Reagan) and Peggy Noonan (Reagan). While the Bartlet Administration often failed to achieve their goal, they did leave America “better than they found it”.
24
Running on Fox was a different view of America. 24 was a series about Jack Bauer, a special agent of the US Government. He had twenty-four hours to save the Nation from some overwhelming calamity. Bauer was unrestrained by Constitutional rights or humanity. Saving the United States was worth any price: the end absolutely justified the means.
It put forth the “theory” that there had to be some folks who were unbounded by legal or cultural “niceties”, and we depend on them to maintain our Nation. Bauer knew that he might be held accountable for his crimes. But he was willing to sacrifice himself for “the good” of the country. He was a hero without legal limits.
Mirrors
If The West Wing mirrored the view of the Obama White House, 24 reflected the view of Vice President Cheney in the Bush years. After 9-11, the US government engaged in torture, often at “Black sites” specifically outside of US Court jurisdiction, to try to gain information on terrorist actions. It was “all” Jack Bauer.
By the way, during most of this time, a show called The Apprentice was running on NBC. It starred Donald Trump as a self-proclaimed billionaire real estate mogul. He judged a “reality TV” competition of budding businessmen and women who vied to “win” an apprenticeship in the Trump business. Trump’s signature phrase came from getting rid of the “losers”: “You’re Fired”.
When Donald Trump ran for President, his biggest advantage was the dozen years he was a weekly familiar face on television. Watch the show or not, everybody knew (or thought they knew) who Donald Trump was: the shrewd, tough, cold, arbitrary billionaire mogul in the “golden” office. He said exactly what he thought, regardless of whose feelings were hurt.
There was no room for sentimentality on The Apprentice: Trump demanded success. That was his trademark on the show, and became the common thread in what we now call MAGA world. Combine that with Jack Bauer’s character in 24, and it starts to explain what’s happening today.
Cruelty
The cruelty is the point. It’s one of the hardest concepts I struggle to “wrap my head” around. In MAGA-world: the ugly, fourth grade playground bully, I can be tougher than you rhetoric; is a reason in itself. Current Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is a great example. It would seem common sense that a graphic description of shooting your own disobedient puppy in a gravel yard with a rifle, can’t be good for your reputation. But Noem highlighted that action in her own autobiography.
When it came out, media commentators marked the moment as the end of her political career. The late night shows went wild with jokes and memes. And, the revelation did stop her fledgling Presidential campaign. But Noem recognized her audience in Trump World. And she knew what the commentators didn’t: the cruelty, the cold toughness, the awful lack of empathy was exactly what MAGA wanted to see.
Noem, now nominally in charge of immigration policy, continues her performance. She stood in front of a prison in El Salvador, dressed like a college sophomore on a spring-break tour, with bare-chested, tattooed supposed Salvadoran gangsters behind bars in the background. That’s the image she wanted, “We (ICE) will send you (migrants) here, forever”: makeup please!
ICE
Tom Homan, the current Immigration “Czar” for the White House, further emphasizes the cruelty. Random “migrants”, some legal, some not, and even a few US citizens, are swept up from the streets or even from their homes, and imprisoned. ICE holds them nearly incommunicado in remote facilities, and tries to send them to horrific prisons in far-away countries like El Salvador and South Sudan.
Homan offers undocumented migrants a choice. They can “self-deport”, and the United States will “graciously” give them $1000 and buy their tickets out. Or, they can wait, and ICE might swoop down and send them for life to a maximum security prison in a foreign land. ICE might get you at work, or at your kids school, at the hospital or even at a required court hearing. The Black Shirted ICE agents, (some not legal agents but private contractors) are the cudgel; reminiscent of historic “secret police” forces. It’s cruel, it’s inhumane, and it’s the point.
Rubio
Last week we had two examples of American political leaders who used to be “normal”, now subservient to MAGA-world. Marco Rubio was first a former Senator and Presidential candidate, and now is Secretary of State (and National Security Advisor and National Archivist and Head of USAID). He was asked in a Congressional hearing whether the USAID cuts resulted in deaths, what seemed like a “no-brainer” question. Rubio said “No”, then when pressed with media accounts of actual deaths, called the authors, “Liars”.
USAID spent billions of dollars feeding folks in starving countries, providing medical care in undeveloped areas, and for worldwide disaster relief. Like USAID or not, the result of the total decimation of the program had a very real and foreseeable effect: people who might have lived, didn’t. But instead of a more nuanced answer recognizing these facts, Rubio instead turned to an attack on the media. His audience wasn’t the Congressional chamber, and it wasn’t even the Nation. Instead, it was to his MAGA-world backers, particularly the former television star in the White House. The cruelty, the bully toughness, is the point.
Ernst
And the second example came from Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa in a townhall meeting. When asked if the “Big, Beautiful Bill’s” cuts to Medicaid will kill people (approximately eight million will lose insurance), an annoyed Ernst responded that “Well, everyone’s going to die”. When the media uproar of her comment became national, Ernst went to a cemetery to record her “personal” response. It was sarcastic and caustic. “I assumed everyone in the room knew we were all going to die”, and “I’m glad I didn’t bring up the tooth-fairy”.
She’s worried about re-election in Iowa in 2026. She’s worried that she isn’t “MAGA enough” to bring out the vote she needs. Like Marco Rubio, she has a “moderate” background to overcome. She needs to show she’s a “true believer” to the MAGA-world.
The cruelty is the point.
