Television of the early 2000\u2019s was the end of the \u201cGolden Age of Broadcast TV\u201d.\u00a0 Cable was around, but was still kind of a novelty, a place to watch movies on HBO or see \u201cniche\u201d shows on the cooking channels.\u00a0\u00a0For regular programming, most Americans still turned to on-air broadcast stations, most affiliated with NBC, ABC, CBS or Fox.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And for the first years of the new century, there were two television shows that demonstrated opposite views of America. \u00a0The first was\u00a0The West Wing,\u00a0<\/em>an NBC series about the Democratic Presidency of Josiah Bartlet.\u00a0\u00a0It spanned the end of the Clinton Presidency to near the end of George W Bush\u2019s administration.\u00a0\u00a0It dealt with all sorts of issues, as the staff of the White House worked to \u201csolve America\u2019s problems\u201d, and get re-elected.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n West Wing\u00a0<\/em>was a surprisingly hopeful view of American politics.\u00a0\u00a0It was written by folks with direct knowledge, including former Senate staffer Lawrence O\u2019Donnell, and former White House advisors like Dee Dee Myers (Clinton), Pat Caddell (Clinton), Marlin Fitzwater (Reagan) and Peggy Noonan (Reagan).\u00a0 While the Bartlet Administration often failed to achieve their goal, they did leave America “better than they found it”. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Running on Fox was a different view of America.\u00a0\u00a024\u00a0<\/em>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.\u00a0\u00a0Bauer was unrestrained by Constitutional rights or humanity.\u00a0\u00a0Saving the United States was worth any price:\u00a0\u00a0the end absolutely justified the means.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u00a0It put forth the \u201ctheory\u201d that there had to be some folks who were unbounded by legal or cultural \u201cniceties\u201d, and we depend on them to maintain our Nation.\u00a0\u00a0Bauer knew that he might be held accountable for his crimes.\u00a0\u00a0But he was willing to sacrifice himself for \u201cthe good\u201d of the country. He was a hero without legal limits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If\u00a0The West Wing\u00a0<\/em>mirrored the view of the Obama White House,\u00a024\u00a0<\/em>reflected the view of Vice President Cheney in the Bush years.\u00a0\u00a0After 9-11, the US government engaged in torture, often at \u201cBlack sites\u201d specifically outside of US Court jurisdiction, to try to gain information on terrorist actions.\u00a0\u00a0It was \u201call\u201d Jack Bauer.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n By the way, during most of this time, a show called\u00a0The Apprentice\u00a0<\/em>was running on NBC.\u00a0\u00a0It starred Donald Trump as a self-proclaimed billionaire real estate mogul. He judged a \u201creality TV\u201d competition of budding businessmen and women who vied to \u201cwin\u201d an apprenticeship in the Trump business.\u00a0\u00a0Trump\u2019s signature phrase came from getting rid of the \u201closers\u201d:\u00a0\u00a0\u201cYou\u2019re Fired\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n When Donald Trump ran for President, his biggest advantage was the dozen years he was a weekly familiar face on television.\u00a0\u00a0Watch the show or not, everybody knew (or thought they knew) who Donald Trump was:\u00a0the shrewd, tough, cold, arbitrary billionaire mogul in the \u201cgolden\u201d office.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0He said exactly what he thought, regardless of whose feelings were hurt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There was no room for sentimentality on\u00a0The Apprentice:\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>Trump demanded success.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0That was his trademark on the show, and became the common thread in what we now call MAGA world.\u00a0\u00a0Combine that with Jack Bauer\u2019s character in\u00a024,\u00a0<\/em>and it starts to explain what\u2019s happening today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The cruelty is the point.\u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s one of the hardest concepts I struggle to \u201cwrap my head\u201d around.\u00a0 In MAGA-world: the ugly, fourth grade playground bully, I can be tougher than you rhetoric; is a reason in itself.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Current Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is a great example.\u00a0\u00a0It would seem common sense that a graphic description of shooting your own disobedient puppy in a gravel yard with a rifle, can\u2019t be good for your reputation.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0But\u00a0\u00a0Noem highlighted that action in her own autobiography.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n When it came out, media commentators marked the moment as the end of her political career.\u00a0\u00a0The late night shows went wild with jokes and memes.\u00a0\u00a0And, the revelation did stop her fledgling Presidential campaign.\u00a0\u00a0But Noem recognized her audience in Trump World.\u00a0\u00a0And she knew what the commentators didn\u2019t:\u00a0\u00a0the cruelty, the cold toughness, the awful lack of empathy was exactly what MAGA wanted to see.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Noem, now nominally in charge of immigration policy, continues her performance.\u00a0\u00a0She 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.\u00a0\u00a0That\u2019s the image she wanted, \u201cWe (ICE) will send you (migrants) here, forever\u201d:\u00a0\u00a0makeup please!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tom Homan, the current Immigration \u201cCzar\u201d for the White House, further emphasizes the cruelty.\u00a0\u00a0Random \u201cmigrants\u201d, some legal, some not, and even a few US citizens, are swept up from the streets or even from their homes, and imprisoned.\u00a0\u00a0ICE holds them nearly incommunicado in\u00a0remote facilities, and tries to send them to horrific prisons in far-away countries like El Salvador and South Sudan.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Homan offers undocumented migrants a choice.\u00a0\u00a0They can \u201cself-deport\u201d, and the United States will \u201cgraciously\u201d give them $1000 and buy their tickets out.\u00a0\u00a0Or, they can wait, and ICE might swoop down and send them for life to a maximum security prison in a foreign land.\u00a0\u00a0ICE might get you at work, or at your kids school, at the hospital or even at a required court hearing.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The Black Shirted ICE agents, (some not legal agents but private contractors) are the cudgel; reminiscent of historic \u201csecret police\u201d forces.\u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s cruel, it\u2019s inhumane, and it\u2019s the point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Last week we had two examples of American political leaders who used to be \u201cnormal\u201d, now subservient to MAGA-world.\u00a0\u00a0Marco Rubio was first a former Senator and Presidential candidate,\u00a0\u00a0and now is Secretary of State (and National Security Advisor and National Archivist and Head of USAID).\u00a0\u00a0He was asked in a Congressional hearing whether the USAID cuts resulted in deaths, what seemed like a \u201cno-brainer\u201d question.\u00a0\u00a0Rubio said \u201cNo\u201d, then when pressed with media accounts of actual deaths, called the authors, \u201cLiars\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n USAID spent billions of dollars feeding folks in starving countries, providing medical care in undeveloped areas, and for worldwide disaster relief.\u00a0\u00a0Like USAID or not, the result of the total decimation of the program had a very real and foreseeable effect:\u00a0\u00a0people who might have lived, didn\u2019t.\u00a0\u00a0But instead of a more nuanced answer recognizing these facts, Rubio instead turned to an attack on the media.\u00a0\u00a0His audience wasn\u2019t the Congressional chamber, and it wasn\u2019t even the Nation.\u00a0\u00a0Instead, it was to his MAGA-world backers, particularly the former television star in the White House.\u00a0\u00a0The cruelty, the bully toughness, is the point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And the second example came from Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa in a townhall meeting.\u00a0\u00a0When asked if the \u201cBig, Beautiful Bill\u2019s\u201d cuts to Medicaid will kill people (approximately eight million will lose insurance), an annoyed Ernst responded that \u201cWell, everyone\u2019s going to die\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0When the media uproar of her comment became national, Ernst went to a cemetery to record her \u201cpersonal\u201d response.\u00a0\u00a0It was sarcastic and caustic.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cI assumed everyone in the room knew we were all going to die\u201d, and \u201cI\u2019m glad I didn\u2019t bring up the tooth-fairy\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n She\u2019s worried about re-election in Iowa in 2026.\u00a0\u00a0She\u2019s worried that she isn\u2019t \u201cMAGA enough\u201d to bring out the vote she needs.\u00a0\u00a0Like Marco Rubio, she has a \u201cmoderate\u201d background to overcome.\u00a0\u00a0She needs to show she\u2019s a \u201ctrue believer\u201d to the MAGA-world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The cruelty is the point.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"24<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Mirrors<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Cruelty<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
ICE<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Rubio<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Ernst<\/h3>\n\n\n\n