X-Files - Howard Gordon And Vince Gilligan: Mulder and Scully and Jimmy and Kim

 

 

Everyone knows that Breaking Bad couldn't have existed without The X-Files for a very simple reason: Vince Gilligan remembered Bryan Cranston from his brilliant work in 'Drive' back in Season 6 of the series and decided to cast him as Walter White when AMC was more interested in having someone like Matthew Broderick or John Cusack play the role. There are to be clear more indirect and direct ways that Breaking Bad came together over the years but I'd like to look at a different perspective with my retrospective on Gilligan.

One of the more fascinating questions behind both Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul was how does a seemingly ordinary and good person become a monster. One of the reasons that Better Call Saul was one of the greatest shows of all time – to the point that some will even consider it might have been better than Breaking Bad -  is that we are watching the saga of how Jimmy McGill, who is a criminal and a lawyer when we meet him but not the 'criminal lawyer' he is by the time we meet him in Breaking Bad, ends up becoming Saul Goodman. By the time we reach the end of Breaking Bad its clear that Walter White was always a monster; it just took the cancer for it be fully realized. Better Call Saul tells a better and in many ways sadder story: it agues that Jimmy McGill could have been a good man but what other people thought of him pushed him into who he was.

Gilligan didn't spend as much time connected to Better Call Saul as he did Breaking Bad: he was only writing and directing the show through Season 2 and after that he more or less left in the hands of a superb writing staff. But it's difficult for me not to think that Saul doesn't have more direct connections to Gilligan's work on The X-Files then Breaking Bad does, at least thematically.  There are two big parallels between the two shows and I think its worth looking at each individually.

Let's start with a link that until fairly recently I didn't realize. Arguably the most important relationship on Better Call Saul is the one between Jimmy and Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn) To be sure it's clearly a romantic relationship from their first meeting sharing a cigarette outside HHM. But Gilligan, perhaps in a tongue and cheek way reference to his days on The X-Files more or less implies the relationship without showing any real sex or even many kisses during the course of it. Even their marriage takes place at a courthouse and makes green card weddings seems more romantic.

But just as with Mulder and Scully its clear the longer Saul goes on that Jimmy and Kim are soul mates. The biggest difference – and the one that makes Saul so gutting by the time they reach the final episodes – is that Mulder and Scully made each other better when they were working together. By contrast the longer Jimmy and Kim are in each other's orbit the more toxic they become to the point that Kim famously says when she leaves him: "I love you. But so what? We're no good for each other!"

As with The X-Files Kim is the grown-up in the relationship particularly in the first half of the series. Much of the time she's the one who saves Jimmy from his worst impulses, which he is always giving into. Both of them are in the same profession, like Mulder and Scully, but both got into it for different reasons. At her core Kim Wexler wants to do good and spends much of the second half trying to do pro bono work and be a person for the people. Jimmy is very much a bad seed whose already been arrested for petty larceny and saved by his brother Chuck. Jimmy ends up becoming an attorney by going to mail order school, something he shouldn’t be able to accomplish by any standard, but he gets into it far more to impress his brother and Kim because he loves the law the way they do. Considering how much Mulder is willing to bend the limits of the Bureau to achieve his goals to the point he's basically an outcast by the time of the Pilot, it's hard not to see the parallels between not only him and Jimmy but also Saul Goodman.

Jimmy is an outsider by the standards of the high-ranking people within New Mexico's legal community. It's clear from the start of Season 1 and pretty much the entire series that Jimm McGill is always going to be considered a joke no matter what he achieves in life. The big difference is that, unlike Mulder throughout the X-Files, Jimmy actually spends the first three seasons trying to work within the boundaries of his profession and actually doing things we would never think Saul Goodman capable of when we first meet him in Breaking Bad. This is most clear in RICO. In Alan Sepinwall's critical companion to the series Saul Goodman v. Jimmy McGill:

In both the past and present of RICO Jimmy accomplishes something in the legal field that should be impossible for a man of his background and means. In flashback, we see he managed to get a law degree and pass the bar, without letting Chuck or any of the HHM bosses know about it ahead of time. And in 2002, he uncovers evidence of a widespread scheme of overcharging by the Sandpiper Crossing company against the elderly residents of its retirement communities. This is impressive work in both timelines…when the Sandpiper employees begin shredding documents…he has to scribble a demand lawyer on the only thing he has handy – rolls of toilet paper – and then go hunting through Sandpiper's garbage to find the evidence.

This is incredible when it happens. However:

And in both cases, the substance of what Jimmy has done doesn't matter to members of the legal establishment. All that counts is who he is and the unconventional way he goes about things…No matter how hard Jimmy works, no matter how resourceful he proves to be, it seems the legal establishment will keeping looking down on him like he's someone who belongs in the trash.

It's hard not to think of Mulder in his basement, trying to figure out the next method the Syndicate will use to colonize Earth when one thinks of Jimmy in the dumpster during this episode. And just like Scully is the only person who believes in him there Kim is the only person who supports him then.

Like Mulder Jimmy McGill's life is tied to his relationship to his family though in Jimmy's case its his brother Chuck who is still alive at the start of the series but suffering from what he believes is an allergy to electricity. (As X-philes know Michael McKean has a critical role in the world of The X-Files playing Morris Fletcher, an oily Man in Black in multiple episodes of the series and on the spinoff The Lone Gunmen. All of his episode were written by Gilligan.) Much of Jimmy's actions in the first season and indeed the first half of the series are based on his relationship with Chuck, who he truly cares for, is more then willing to help him and wants the best for him.

But Chuck thinks Jimmy is more of a threat to the world  then the conspiracy thinks Mulder is to it. (The fact that Breaking Bad will prove that Chuck is absolutely right does nothing to make the viewer like Chuck anymore.) Indeed by the end of the first season Jimmy's relationship with Chuck has been forever poisoned when Jimmy learns that Chuck has betrayed him with HHM. When Chuck shouts out the world can't deal with 'Slipping Jimmy with a law degree!" – its one of the most painful moments in Saul  because 'his own brother…has no interest in the good version of Jimmy McGill."  This is an inverse of Mulder's search for Samantha being one of the only things that makes him relatable during the series: he can be such a horrible person most of the time, its only the belief he'll find Samantha at the end of this that makes him likable. And its worth noting the death of Chuck has the reverse effect on Jimmy that Samantha's death has on Fox. That's mainly because of their last meeting in the Season 3 finale:

"In the end, you're going to hurt everyone around you. You can't help it. So stop apologizing and accept it, embrace it…I don't want to hurt your feelings, but the truth is, you've never mattered that much to me."

After this Chuck, who seemed to be making progress with his mental condition, destroys his house and then commits suicide. And it is this action that becomes the tipping point into Jimmy embracing Saul Goodman, though it takes a lot longer to get there. He's free, but this freedom leads him to become the man who will end up officially turning Walter White into Heisenberg.

Its clear in the first three seasons what is tethering Jimmy McGill to the world of being good person is three separate things: the one that is most critical is his love and craving for Kim's approval. Kim is very much a stickler for the rules when we meet her and like Scully Saul shows as she begins to bend them more and more in part to coming around to Jimmy's way of doing things. The difference is Mulder and Scully brought out the best in each other with the need for each other's approval and were working for good. By the time we reach the penultimate season of Better Call Saul it is Kim who suggests to Jimmy the idea of wrecking Howard's career to speed up the Sandpiper settlement. In theory she's doing it for the right reason – to set up a pro bono defense practice – but when she suggests it Jimmy is so stunned that he actually tries to talk her out of it.

It's worth noting by this point Jimmy is far closer to being the man Saul Goodman will be. He's already become a lawyer for Lalo Salamanca (Tony Dalton) a man who clearly terrifies him every time he sees him, has just arranged for him to receive bail on a murder charge, has gone into the desert to get it – and was nearly killed by the cartel. (The last part takes place in Bagman, which Gilligan directed.) Jimmy nearly died there and the episode before Lalo showed up at their house and he's clearly terrified. Kim, by contrast, matches to talk Lalo down from killing them both (a very Scully like thing) and the two of them have just relocated to a hotel room far away. But the fact that Kim has put Lalo in the rearview mirror so quickly frightens us nearly as much as it does Jimmy.

And its worth noting this scene has a parallel from the (first) series finale of The X-Files where Mulder and Scully are on a bed in a motel (in Roswell, New Mexico) talking about everything the conspiracy has taken from them. Scully gives an inspirational speech to Mulder. In this case, it would be as after all of this Scully turned to Mulder and said: "You know, we've played by the rules long enough. Let's form our own Syndicate  and destroy the FBI."

Like in that scene by this point Kim and Jimmy are married. Kim is wearing her Kansas City Royals nightshirt, her hair is down, she's utterly relaxed "as far removed from the controlled, coifed professional attorney the rest of the world series" (One of the most famous moves Rhea Seehorn had was a power ponytail.)

And it's worth looking at Jimmy's reaction. He keeps trying to talk her out of it, and this is the man who introduced her to the con. Kim greets this with a terrifying smirk. Then he tries warning her about what it would mean for Howard, and in turn how that would make Kim feel, suggesting she couldn't possibly be okay with it in the light of day. And Kim replies: "Wouldn't I?"

The irony is that Jimmy is absolutely right, though not for the reason he believes at first. They do pull off the con and Howard's reputation is utterly ruined by the episode Plan & Execution. And anyone who watches this episode remembers just how it ended:

Howard shows up completely drunk his career in tatters and he tells them: "You're perfect for each other. You each have pieces missing." This hurts for the record, mainly because by this point the viewer is so invested in the state of the souls of Jimmy and Kim in a way the viewer never once worried about Mulder and Scully's. But even as bad as it is, we know Jimmy and Kim could have lived with it.

The tragedy is at that moment the other part of Jimmy and Kim's life has come back to bite them. Because Lalo has found his way to the McGill apartment and he has business with Kim and Jimmy. The moment the two of them see him they are terrified but Howard, who knows nothing of the cartel, doesn't. Howard is confused but he thinks his position in 'the real world' protects him. Lalo kills him without a thought – and then goes right back to his conversation with Kim and Jimmy.

Anyone who has watched The X-Files knows how easily it is to be erased when you get in the way of the Syndicate or a conspiracy and anyone whose watched Breaking Bad knows how much collateral damage can comes simply by getting in a way of the wrong people even if you are completely innocent. (The clearest parallel is Drew Sharp, a twelve year old who is killed in 'Dead Freight' when he shows up in the aftermath of a train robbery and Todd shoots him before anyone even orders him.) Mulder and Scully have no doubt caused some of these deaths throughout the run of the series the more they work to uncover the truth. But in the case of Howard Hamlin his death is the direct result of their actions. Jimmy thinks he can live with it. Kim can't. After his memorial (which is blamed on him being a drug addict) she first gives up her legal license and then divorces Jimmy.

Mulder and Scully would lose multiple family members as the result of their quest: Mulder's father was murder by the Syndicate and Scully's sister was killed by accident. But as the viewer knows those deaths made them double down on their desire to find the truth. In the case of Kim and Jimmy the death of Howard is so shattering that Kim can't live with him or herself any longer. And as a result Jimmy McGill is officially dead and only Saul Goodman remains.

Now since Gilligan basically left the series after Season Three, I can't say how much of the Mulder-Scully parallel could have been his. What I know is that many of the creative staff with Better Call Saul had been part of Breaking Bad and many of them also worked with Gilligan on The X-Files. Thomas Schnauz, who'd been writing with Gilligan on The Lone Gunmen and the final season of the series, was one of the key writers for the show and Michelle McLaren who was one the critical directors for the series was also part of The X-Files roster in the last few seasons. (She directed John Doe an episode set in a Mexico town in an episode written by Gilligan. Cue Mark Snow.) And I don't think it’s a coincidence that Rhea Seehorn quickly became the MVP of Saul very much the same way Gillian Anderson became the iconic character she was on The X-Files.

The way that so much of the Kim-Jimmy relationship is a mirror image of Mulder & Scully would seem to be a parallel but could be (as Scully would say) just a coincidence. What makes me think there's a larger influence on Better Call Saul comes from many of the individual episodes he wrote and the theme linking them. That will be the subject of the second article about The X-Files and Better Call Saul.

 

Criticizing Criticism: How The Legacy Of The X-Files Has Everything I Loathe About Academic Readings Of Art

 

In one of my first pieces in the Criticizing Criticism Series I wrote the following:

Early in Stephen King’s magnum opus It, future best-selling novelist Bill Denborough is in the middle of his college writing course. All of his fellow classmates and teachers are pretentious, who are exactly the kinds of people that critics of higher learning have been arguing against for decades. Finally after another long endless lecture on symbolism that everybody has agreed about for over an hour, but the class keeps droning, Denborough gets to his feet and says the following:

“Why does a story have to be socio-anything? Politics…culture…history…aren’t those natural ingredients in any story if it’s told well? I mean…can’t you guys just let a story be a story?

After a long silence, the instructor says softly ‘as if to a child having an inexplicable tantrum, ‘Do you believe William Faulkner was just telling stories?” Do you believe Shakespeare was just interested in trying to make a buck?”

When Bill ‘honestly considers the question and replied, “I think that’s pretty close to the truth, in their eyes he reads a kind of damnation.”

 

As I said: "In less than a few pages (King) has successfully explained what has been the eternal dissonance between critics and scholars for centuries and certainly in the last several decades in particular."

Now in the years that have passed since then I've basically hewed to this path when it comes to my writing and I tend to admire those critics I've met at this site and others who more or less tend to focus on letting a story be a story.  I've also read quite a few prominent critics in the field of TV who are more than willing to stick to the line of appreciation. And it's because of this I've now realized the difference between a critical reading of a TV show or movie as opposed to an academic one. There's a fair amount of overlap between the two but at this point I can tell the difference.

When a good critic, whether they are Alan Sepinwall or Emily St. James (my readers will know that I've referred to them multiple times in by own writing) looks at a TV show such as Breaking Bad or Lost, they are more interested in telling you why the show worked for them from the standpoint of plot, character or direction. Every so often they'll look at certain racial or gender standpoints but they only do so to use to explain this as a work of pop culture and its flaws as such, not to grind an axe. Basically they're interested in what made it a good story.

But an academic by and large doesn't care about what made a TV show work as part of entertainment or pop culture.  Their metric is to look at historic, socio-political and cultural factors and figure out what this work of art reflected in it. They're not so much interested in whether you want to see this show again by their writing but turning certain aspects of it into a term paper, with multiple footnotes sourced to academic journals rarely if ever using anyone connected to the show as source material. They want to turn something that you loved watching into a homework assignment.  The critics I mentioned wanted to tell you want to see the show afterwards; the scholars look at the show and decide to write an essay that they expect to be graded on by Monday

Now I'm not entirely opposed to those who take an academic view of TV shows: I've actually been reading quite a few scholarly journals that do so as well as certain essay collections of shows I've enjoyed over the years.  But the ones that work the best never forget that this about the TV show first and the socio-anything second at the very most.  In the best of them you get the sense the writers enjoyed revisited these TV series and want you to come away wanting to do the same. I didn't get that feeling from a book I recently checked out from the library The Legacy of The X-Files. I had hoped it from the first group and not only is it from the second group, it represents the worst aspects of academic and biased writing.

It would come as a shock to me if any of the scholars who wrote essays for this book are over the age of 30 or watched the TV series when they were growing up if they were older.  It is purely an academic writing: all of the essay writers are either professors or PhD students or candidates, only two of them are writing about TV or film and perhaps most telling the majority of them are not from America. Considering that The X-Files is a quintessentially American program even those who live in Britain would have a certain detachment from it. So one can tell from the start this isn't about spending good times with a familiar show: it's about looking at it from every scholarly perspective rather then one of TV.  (Though you should know upfront the essays I'm going to turn my glare on are not only written by Americans ) The introduction makes it clear it has no intention of recounting the production history of The X-Files:

"Rather it is to indicate the early context of the program's origins and initial broadcast and reception to begin to understand its legacy thirty years later. The seeds of the program's legacy were planted from the very beginning and led to it being part of, and even contributing to, a television revolution: the globalization of television and the expansion of new conglomerates  into television ownership and production; the intersection and collision of the program's creation with the rise of the internet and the new fan forums and the fusion of wider public cynicism in politics…"

I'll be honest, if I'd read the introduction of this book instead of skimming through it, I would have left on the shelves because this is the kind of analysis I loathe. It's basically talking about television without actually talking about television. Even the book makes it clear it is a 'vital work for researchers and students alike' which means its not for the millions of us who watched the show and loved it. I suppose some of us could take comfort if we knew in some schools The X-Files was part of an academic curriculum but having been in my share of college courses about TV and film (albeit twenty-five years ago) they always miss the forest for the trees.  I'd prefer them to have spent their time explaining why the mythology was, in fact, completely coherent from beginning to end, which any fan knows would have been futile but nevertheless a better use of their time and energy.

This would be bad enough on its own but I would be willing to let that go and leave this book for those who need to reduce everything in life to an academic subject. What bothers me the most – and is really the subject of this piece – is the final section: "Intersectional Legacy: Identity & Representation'.

And those of you who are already burning with rage just by hearing those words, let me assure it is everything you think it is and somehow worse. The introductory paragraph pretty much tells you what you know is coming:

"Similarly, questions of race and racial identity are core to the series mythology, not least through the repeated discussion of alien hybrids and alien colonization, immediately invoking discourse on imperialism and the Western legacy of slavery and colonialism."

Yep, that's exactly what all of us thought when we saw the Alien Bounty Hunter for the first time.

And of course: "The X-Files centers whiteness and white superiority with people of color marginalized and even demonized." Last I checked the Syndicate was planning to turn all of Earth into a slave race, not just Africa and South America.

Does it get worse? Naturally. The first essay 'A Reparative Reading of mad/disabled black veterans in 'Sleepless'. To be clear only five pages of this 'scholarly reading' dealing with the episode Sleepless. There are six pages that deal with black people as soldiers that are the meat of the essay.  The most generous interpretation is that these two 'writers' wanted to do a racial studies piece on the military, saw 'Sleepless' the night before and then decided to merge the two. And just to check off the other box there's the fact that he's disabled, which is another issue. Just to be clear the series did a few other episodes on Vietnam and Howard Gordon wrote another one about a White POW who basically did a variation of the exact same thing and suffered the same fate as Augustus Cole.  (See my piece on Howard Gordon from last month.) But why let the actual TV show get the way of the usual white supremacy bit?

Next is the inevitable story about the use of the 'rape by deception trope which in the minds of this authors is 'rarely talked about'. She clearly hasn't read Monsters of the Week, which discusses all of this in detail as well as the often problematic aspects and indeed that's not in the source material, though somehow Monica Lewinsky is quoted.  The series acknowledges that Dana Scully was a groundbreaking character for her time and revolutionary in her own way but argues she was positioned as 'a side kick not a co-lead.' Again this would come as a shock to those of us who realize that Anderson nailed Scully early and that she was the stronger character.  It brings up the usual times that Scully was threatened with violence while of course ignoring the number of times Mulder was in similar predicaments and how Scully had to save his ass far more often.  Naturally she ends the final image of the series as a 'reminder of inevitable destruction and death'. And as the final nail it argues that so many of the episodes that have sympathy for the 'other' feel patronizing while those that involve revenge  are muddled by the 'monster' status of the characters."  I suppose we should be grateful that vampires and werewolves aren't real or she'd be arguing that the shows take a negative portrayal of the rights of the undead.

Then there's one by a Czech writer who makes the argument of 'Mulder's queerness' because and you have to see it to believe it : "Even though he is able-bodied, white, middle class and heterosexual, he resists the patriarchal system which is represented by the FBI, law and government'. So the fact that he's an FBI agent is somehow irrelevant to this reading. But wait "I argue that Mulder's voluntary outsider status, opposition to authority and feminization, can be read as queer."

It gets worse from there arguing that Mulder's decision to seek out women as resources is read as 'deeply feminine' and the fact that Mulder and Scully never hooked up for seven years.  The author's biggest argument is the queer fandom that have it canon. Clearly this author has never spent any time at fanfic.com where your sexuality can depend on who's writing you.  God knows what she would have thought had she come across a fanfic where the Syndicate had gay orgies. (Pretty sure they're out there somewhere.)

The piece de resistance comes with the piece 'Disability and The X-Files which argues and I quote "Ableism is a structure of power'.  This is the one that really makes me want to throw up. The sweet innocent and demonic cripple trope, the discussion of genetic mutants…oh and she thinks 'Home' the only episode that has been taken out of rotation probably should be banned because of its presentation of 'demonic hillbillies'.  It doesn't shock me that the writer of this episode is legally blind and therefore can't get the full picture of what makes The X-Files a great show.

Even the last piece, which talks about one of the great triumphs of The X-Files 'the Scully effect'  can't help but take shots at the series. It acknowledges that Scully is a great character and everything that both she and Gillian Anderson did. But even then it still can't help but taking shots at the show, not the least of which involves a critique by Richard Dawkins when it comes to the debate:

This is fictional and therefore defensible as entertainment. A fair defense, you might think…Each week The X-Files poses a mystery and offers two rival kinds of explanation, the rational theory and the paranormal theory. And, week after week, the rational theory loses. But it is only fiction, a bit of fun, why get so hot under the collar? Imagine a crime series in which, every week, there is a white suspect and a black suspect. And every week, lo and behold, the black one turns out to have done it. Unpardonable."

First of all this proves to me that Dawkins has never watched any television at all. If he had he would have known The X-Files is science fiction and would therefore have not watched it. (He probably hasn't watched any procedurals either.) The fact the writer seems to support this idea means that she doesn't seem to understand the template of the series. I will admit it would be more realistic if Scully had been right at least a little more often but then the show wouldn't have been as much fun.

Look you'll get no argument from me that there are problematic aspects of The X-Files that go beyond the fact that it came out over thirty years ago. I've written about some of them before and I actually intend to write more of them the closer we get to the revival.  But there is a vast difference between legitimate criticisms and invented ones. In fact every time I read these kinds of 'think pieces' what comes to mind immediately is the way the toxic masculine fanbase online will review bomb any show that they consider too 'woke'  The writings in these pieces may be more intellectual then those of the philistines who body shame Bella Ramsey or call the most recent version of Star Trek 'DEI Academy' but in either case it gets back to the same issue that King said at the start: they can't just let a story be a story. In either case they take a lot of pleasure out of things we love and I abhor it, not merely from my professional opinion as a critic but as a fan.

None of this will make me love The X-Files any less, of course; that is its real legacy. Unlike what the authors of this book think the only real legacy a work of art needs to have is that it can draw in new fans years after it came out, that people still celebrate it long after it is gone and that we still rewatch every time we get a chance. We don't want to write research papers on it; we want to write fan fiction and tributes online even decades after the fact. That's all fans ever want of a show, really. If these scholars don't get this, well, to quote a different iconic institution satirizing a different fandom: 'Get a life, you people. It's just a TV show."

 

 

 

 

 

Across The Country The Tide Is Turning… Just Not At Any No Kings Protest

 

Well its springtime and that means that the first No Kings Protest of the year has occurred. Yes after months indoors forced to show their vitriol against all things MAGA all the forces that the left can muster put a fresh coat of paint on the anti-Trump signs, readied their buttons and bracelets on their wrists, walked into the bright sunshine across the country and said that they wouldn't take what the President was doing lying down any more. No they'd take it milling around.

All joking aside I have to give them credit. Because the third time was the charm. And I'm pleased to announced that Donald Trump has abdicated the throne.

No, I'm sorry, I got that wrong. But he resigned.

No he didn't do that either. But the Senate impeached him.

No they didn't? But the House introduced articles of impeachment.

They didn't? But the Supreme Court renounced presidential immunity.

They didn't?  Ted Cruz shaved his beard? Steve Bannon got a haircut?

I could go on this line for quite a bit longer and really drive this point into the ground but I'm well aware that the people in these protests, like the forces that inspired them, don't understand satire or sarcasm unless is directed against the right.  (That's basically limited to late night hosts reading Trump's tweets in a funny voice or yelling obscenities at cable newscasters which isn't Noel Coward, but that's neither here nor there.) So let me try being slightly more serious.

I don't like Trump or ninety percent of the things he's said or done before he became President the first time, what he did during that first Presidency, what he said and did after it and what he's doing now. But unlike the people who've been marching in rallies like this the past year and a half and who basically have been doing so for the past decade I've never been convinced that marching and making a loud, discordant noise unto social media for a few hours on a weekend or any other day of the week is the most productive way to do anything about it. I understand their frustration as to how the world is these days, believe me, and there have been signs in the last year in particular that the masses are getting tired of all things Donald Trump. I'm actually going to talk about them later on this article. But my fundamental opinion about the protestors is unchanged from what it was last year, two years ago, a decade ago or really for my lifetime before Trump even entered the political arena.

There are incredible problems in the world today. I won't deny that for a minute, I'm not delusional. I won't deny that things are going to get worse before they get better (though again I do see signs of improvement). What I do deny is that any protest movement – which is the main thing the anti-Trump forces have done pretty much he was elected the first time non-stop – will ever be able to do anything to bring about an ideal world, do anything to stop what Trump is doing, and most of all will continue to contribute to how he originally got his power and how he continues to have a hold on a swathe of the electorate to this day. 

That last part is  the most important because it represents the biggest flaw in the model the left has in what the post-Trump will be. I've mentioned in many previous articles the long term strategy the conservatives have had to gain their foothold in every branch of political power. I don't need to repeat because people at this blog and other have written it countless times over the years. The problem is that even after knowing all of this they have done nothing to change their strategy which pre-dates the rise of Trump and has no track record of success anywhere that counts. The fact that there was a third No-King Protest on Saturday demonstrates their tendency to double down on a failed strategy.

Now I have no doubt that they will argue that this protest was the biggest one yet in history. Which is impressive… but so what? From an organizational standpoint I'll grant it is impressive to organize protests in every state of the union and manage to get millions of people to show up at the same time to express their rage against everything that's going on the country.

The problem is that none of them are going to be the ones that can do anything about what Trump is doing. And the reason I know that for a fact is because this was the same weekend as CPAC.

Yes as I write all of the people that are everything that the people at these protests consider the worst aspect of everything that is wrong with the country, the world, the universe and recorded history are having their annual meeting. And there will be far fewer of them then at a protest that was in California or New York yesterday. But there are quite a few things that make it more important.

First most of the people of there have something none of the people at any of the No Kings protest have. Power and influence with the President of the United States, the conservative movement and the Republican Party.  I may not like any of these people, indeed I openly loathe many, but they're the ones who can make differences in policy involving immigration or what's happening in the Middle East, something no one at the No Kings Protest can claim.

Second these people understand at a basic level that all of their power comes from politics. I suspect they understand the workings of Congress and the Judiciary far more than the left does, if for no other reason then they've had a huge amount in putting many of those people in power in the first place. You'll get no quarrel from me about the damage that Fox News or the Heritage Foundation or the Federalist Society have done to this country but the fact remains these people have power or can talk to people with power. And one of the benefits of having power is you can ignore the people who you find disagreeable to your vision. To be sure those at the protests are doing the exact same thing except they have no power of their own to counter it.

Third I have no doubt people at these protests will talk about the size of the movement as if it matters. Except all of those people gathered, expressed their outrage at MAGA for a few hours – and then went home thinking they'd accomplished something because social media and the news covered them. As I made clear satirically above they did not: Trump is still President, for the next several months at least he controls both houses of Congress and while the Supreme Court has been showing signs of occasionally breaking with him in recent months, there is still a conservative supermajority. That was true the day before the protest and it was true the day after.

By contrast the CPAC gathering – which will absolutely use what happened this weekend to make points about the 'radical left' and why we have to use this to protect America -  has one mission in mind. It's the same one they always have: we have to keep Republicans in power no matter what.  They understand that crowd size only matters if you come away with a mission statement at the end of it and all of their meetings are based on that simple statement.  Vote Republican so we can keep America safe from 'them'.

Both the right and the left know who they mean by them. The difference, aside from the left considering that label a badge of honor, is that the right knows what needs to be done to complete their mission and the left will do anything but that to complete theirs.

I've seen this play out over and over in the 21^st century: protests against the WTO, the War on Iraq and then the War on Terror; the marches about economic inequality reaching their 'heights' at Occupy Wall Street; endless marches about police involved shootings and police brutality, whether it is Defund the Police or Black Lives Matter, the marches about Gaza across campuses during 2024 and some time beyond it, anti-ICE marches, basically every major march involving the rights of a minority or an identity group that is being abused, disenfranchised or obliterated. The people at these protests are angry and discontented and will show it. For a day, or a week. Then they go home and nothing changes.

 Oh, that's right: Fox News and hard right politicians will show the noise and anger in the street, argue it is signs of the 'radical left' and tell their viewers to vote Republican to make sure America is safe. Their viewers do that. Things get worse. More protests happen, lather, rinse, repeat.  You on the left will always argue about how morally bankrupt the right is for showing these things 'out of context' to 'brainwash the people in Middle America' and yet you never draw the obvious conclusion which is not to protest.

There's also another alternative: you could form your own think tanks, your own PACS, try to take over a political party the way the people at CPAC have managed to do. Oh wait, you did try that. You formed the Justice Democrats in the aftermath of the 2016 election and it was by any rational standard a complete failure.  You've got the Squad and Mamdani after a decade. The entire group of people sworn to your beliefs in the political arena could meet in a small tent outside Berkeley and get your agenda done over lunch.

But, you say over and over, look the crowds at our protests! That's the people. Here's the thing. I'm pretty sure most of the people protesting at No Kings are the same people who've been at every protest movement in my lifetime: some of them  older and grayer, but not much smarter. And the ones you have are mostly college age and upper class. To use terminology I know people at these protests are very familiar with it's not the proletariat showing up at the No Kings Protests, it's the bourgeoisie. Always has been.  For all you're saying: "We're the 99 percent!", honestly at best it's the 10 percent who've been showing up.

When the right organizes to get power, they strategize for months and engage in long-term planning, something you're aware of. The most long-term planning I've seen the left do is staging these protests and that's for one day, three times in the last year and a half.  And what was the point? To remind us that you still hate Trump and MAGA. I'm pretty sure we all knew that without you having to remind us in person. It's not like you haven't spent the six months between the last one silent about everything they're doing to destroy the country. Something, for the record, people like me are perfectly, painfully capable of finding out for ourselves without you having to remind us in long articles in liberal publications or online. At the very least I'd have expected you to come up with something we could do to stop what is happening but you really haven't figured that part out in the decade since Trump arrived, in the 21^st century, the period before that or really since at least the Vietnam War.

What makes this all the more annoying is the fact that there are very promising signs that people are sick of Trump and have been happening ever since he took office. There called election and Democrats have been overperforming in them since last March ever since two Democrats outperformed in two Florida Congressional vacancies just six months after Trump was sworn in. They didn't win, any more than the vacancy in Tennessee last December but Aftyn Behn did overperform compared to last year.

And we've seen this play out in state and local elections across the country. To date Democrats have flipped 28 Republican statehouse seat in the last year while Republicans have yet to flip one. The one you might have heard the most about what the Florida statehouse seat in the district where Mar A Lago is located. There was another flip that same night not far away. Miami and Boca Raton have elected their first Democratic Mayors in nearly thirty years. I'm not saying Florida will be turning blue or even purple any time soon but it gives one hope.

Nor is Florida the only red state where we've seen these miracles. Two Iowa statehouse seats went Democratic for the first time in nearly thirty years in 2025, a Texas statehouse seat that was plus 19 Republican went Democratic in January and we even flipped one in Louisiana this February. None of these have gotten the same publicity as Mamdani's win or even Abigail Spangenberger or Mikey Sherill's last November but they are for more hopeful for Democratic hopes this November.

Congressional Republicans know this and are retiring in droves. As of today 38 House Republicans have announced their retirement, the most since 2018 when the last blue wave came. Democrats are sure to take the House back in November, the only question is how big the margin will be. The Senate is another story but the map is mathematically favorable to the Democrats as the Republicans are defending 23 seats while Democrats are defending only 13.  To be sure in many of them are beyond safe for the Republicans but an increasing number are not at the end of March. By the time the primaries are over even more may be in play for the Democrats.

None of this will appease the impatient nature of the left whose approach to elections at best has always been: "November? But I'm angry now!"  And considering that even after 2016 and well into the second term there are still quite a few people out there who will still say there is no difference between the two parties (many of them are no doubt the loudest voices at No Kings I have no doubt) I suspect this won’t make them any happier even if the Democrats end up sweeping in a huge margin in 2026.

But that's to be expected because these same people were just as pissed when Biden won in 2020 and didn't the day before he was sworn in enact every single aspect of the Justice Democrat platform, expel every single Republican in both Houses of Congress, appoint ten liberal judges to the Supreme Court and execute every single member of the Trump family on the steps of the capitol at dawn. That's the real irony of these particular protests. Many of them would be absolutely fine if the President had the powers of a king as long as he punished the people they think of as 'worthy' and smote those they thought of as 'evil'.  They've always thought the President – regardless of political party -  can merely push a button and make the government work as he sees fit and the only reason he doesn't is because he wants to 'own the left'.

That's the greatest irony of the 'No Kings protests'. The majority of the people there were never fond of democracy when it was working perfectly and made it clear for decades before 2016. They wouldn't mind if Trump destroyed democracy if he was doing it so that their agenda was realized. It's because he's doing it for the people at CPAC that they're upset about the Imperial Presidency.

The thing is democracy still exists, battered and bruised but still functioning. In November the voter is going to get a chance to send a message to those in power that is far more effective than anything that these protests will ever accomplish. I still agree with Churchill that democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others. And in the last year and a half its been proving to me it still works.  That's where I'll be showing up in the next weeks and months to prove there are No Kings.

All Our Technological Devices Are Conveniences. So Why Does Our Society View Them As Necessities?

 

I'm writing this article the same way I write everything I've ever written: on a computer on my desktop. This hasn't changed how I've written every single thing I've ever written since I was in high school: the screen is different, there are no longer saving things to disks of any kind, there are new variations of word programs. But essentially that hasn't changed.

This is true even of the columns I write for this site. Everything is a hard copy before I put it on to the virtual ether that is the internet.

This is also true in every aspect of my technological life to an extent. I game but it is on a combination Nintendo/Super NES and a PS2. I continue to stream shows but I watch them on my TV and I still own both a DVD player, am connected to cable and I own, dare I say it, a VCR. I don't listen to music or podcasts so I don't need anything on that level. I only got an iPhone in 2022 and that is because the flip phone I had was finally so old that Verizon was no longer going to cover it. I occasionally use the iPhone for zoom calls (I'll get to why in a minute) but by and large I only use it for text messages and phone calls. In other words I use my phone like a phone.

For a long time I had an iPad one that goes back to something like 2017. I mostly used it for the kinds of apps that were available at the time and still do, though many of them are increasingly becoming out of service. This wouldn't be a huge problem because with the sole exception of Facebook I have zero presence on social media. And all of my email is still in my very first email account at America Online.

Much of this is no doubt because I'm somewhere between Gen X and Millennials and didn't even really have a email account until I was in college. But I suspect much of it is due to my nature as an indiduvial. I've always know that so much of electronics, including email, video games, iPhone and social media is a convenience rather than a necessity. This isn't something that Gen Z or any future generation would believe in but that's because they don't remember a time without it and for them, it is a necessity. Though if you think about it, it isn't.

Consider this: really consider it. Do you need to post every single one of your thoughts on any social media site, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok?  Will the world end if you don't make it clear what you think about K-pop demon hunters, the manosphere, the situation in Pakistan, compound interest rates? Yes, you have the right to express your opinion but do you need to express it every thirty seconds? Before the youngest among you answer, keep in mind how much you mock the stream of consciousness rants that POTUS sends every night when he can't sleep. (I don't believe that will make a difference but just assume.)

Similarly do you need to watch the most recent TV show whenever it aired on your phone or your wristwatch or anything Apple has provided for you? I'm not talking about whether you like the programs or not: I personally love Slow Horses and Shrinking and Nobody Wants This and Only murders in the Building and so on. But remember you're talking to someone who streams them to his TV and who has just as often gotten hard copies such as DVDs of Stranger Things or Marvelous Mrs. Maisel just so that he actually has them. I've never watched a TV show on anything other than a TV except for a period in the 2010s when I watched some shows on my computer.  I'll grant you it is convenient to be able to do so but that is not the same thing as a necessity. You could, hypothetically, watch all of these shows on a TV. And if you didn't own one, you could buy one. You choose to watch these shows on your electronic devices just like you choose to get the streaming services in the first place. That makes them conveniences not necessities.

The same's basically true with so much of the modern technological lifestyle: you don't need to get the news on your phone, or random trivia on your phone, or really anything else except to  communicate on your phone. You may think you can't live without it but that's not the same thing as food or shelter or oxygen. Your lives would be difficult without your phones but not impossible.

I know because I've been in a situation like this last week when for various reasons I did things that causes me to lose access to my VCR, DVD player and gaming systems for the better part of a week. For people like you that would be the equivalent of going without your cell phone for, let's be generous and say an hour. It wasn't fun to be sure, but I pulled my Gameboy out of storage (yes I still own one of those) watched some shows on streaming and survived. It wasn't a picnic – and truth be told I don't know if I could have made it much longer if my repairman hadn't shown up last Thursday – but I did survive. It wasn't the same thing as not having electricity or being locked out of my apartment both of which I have had to survive and were far more agonizing to me.

The truth of the matter is – and this may be the most explosive thing I've said at this site – our society doesn't need most of the technological advances we've gotten in the 21^st century. They're not revolutionary in the sense that things like the radio and the automobile and the TV or even the computer itself was. They make our lives easier but we don't truly need them. And in many cases I think many of us would argue there's not even  improvements. Even before the arrival of Trump and Musk was there anything on Twitter that was so groundbreaking and vital that our society was better because of it? I'll grant many of the apps we've gotten have made several individual parts of our lives easier and in some cases they are necessities but the vast majority of them are so trivial its hard to argue they're really even convenient. And considering that so many of them are just more advanced versions of the technology we already have – and in many of those case the difference are so inconsequential we can't even spot them -  then I truly don't know what we've gained from them.

I'm writing this in part out of selfish reasons. My iPad, which I have owned for nearly eight years, still basically does everything I need it do. The problem is that the majority of the apps I used for it no longer work on this version. That's because they have undergone so many upgrades that my iPad's software can no longer support it. This is known as 'planned obsolescence'. It's also the big scam of Silicon Valley.

At a purely basic level we don't need a new phone or a new iPad or really a new anything that these devices are once we get it. But as with all technology there's no profit in that. Which is why I suspect there is an unwritten rule with the programmers to upgrade every single one of your individual apps or levels every few months or so. Now be honest: most of us really can't tell the difference between Word 10 and Word 11 if you stuck a taser to our ribs. But because there's some part of us that can't bare to be inconvenienced for even a few minutes because of this we go on to buy new versions of the iPhone every year or so. And because the phone is a necessity for most of us – particularly now that the land line has gone the way of the carrier pigeon – we don't even bother to think about it when we do.

At this juncture every single thing I've gotten used to using my iPad for during the last few years – whether it is zoom or email or even Discord – will no longer work on it. The most recent version I should tell you was because of a security upgrade which they didn't tell me about until I couldn't get on any more. Then I found out – by typing it in a google search on my computer – that they'd added a security upgrade this month that would no longer make it work on my iPad. Did they bother to tell me? Of course not. Either they assumed everyone naturally changes their iPad with the spring fashions or they don't feel a necessity to tell those fossils who wouldn't know what was going on. They've done this to me before so many times it's not even funny.

I'm going through the same thing with my iPhone. At this point the battery on it has gotten to the point that as a necessity I need to charge it every day or it will go completely dead. This actually happened on Sunday when I left my phone unattended for four hours and it had zero charge on it any more. Again logic dictates I need to get a new phone but I don't really need one. It would just be more convenient.

Now the natural response – the one that I'll get from anybody under 21 – is that I'm a fossil who won’t change with the times. There's some truth to that I suppose. But that's where I get back to convenience and necessity. It would be inconvenient for me to get a new iPad because it would take several hours and probably even longer to reinstall many of those services. And I don't use it often enough for it to be a necessity. The phone is a different story I suppose but considering all of us go some place with a charger I'm not even sure that's a larger story.

Considering that so much of the problems society is facing today among younger generations is based on how much time they spend looking at screens I can't help but think this is should be part of the conversation. Considering that in the name of convenience a generation has gotten to the point that they have no longer even learned the real necessity of education and critical thinking – to the point that the term 'brain rot' is now becoming part of the vernacular – there has to be a conversation of what has been lost. I'm not saying we need to go back to the era of DVD players and going to the library for research (though I'm not saying that might not help) but at the very least we should be talking about the difference between a convenience and a necessity.

There was a phase a few years back when we were told to get rid of things that don't 'spark joy'. That referred to physical clutter not technological ones. (We did see on Netflix so why would Marie Kondo give away that game.) I'm beginning to thing terms of technological clutter. Put another way I don't have a lot of apps on my phone or iPad and there's overlap between them. But when I do end up replacing them, however reluctantly, I'm going to figure out to have as little as possible and keep to that minimum. Only a handful are necessities and even fewer are convenient.

Now if you'll excuse me I have to go watch Season 3 of Ted Lasso. Finally got a copy on DVD.

John Fetterman Is Listening to What Voters In His State Made Clear in 2024. If Democrats Don't Learn This Going Forward Republicans Can – And Have – Take Advantage

 

From the moment Republican party was founded in the 1850s the state of Pennsylvania was one of its biggest converts. This was always true in Presidential elections. From John Fremont in 1856 to Herbert Hoover in 1932 Pennsylvania always went Republican. Even in 1912 when the schism between Taft and Theodore Roosevelt let to an electoral landslide for Woodrow Wilson Pennsylvania chose to cast its votes for the Bull Moose rather than the Democrat.

Only in FDR's 46 state landslide over Alf Landon in 1936 did Pennsylvania go Democrat for the first time since the GOP was founded.  And in the next 13 elections it went Republican far more often then it did Democrat. After going Republican in FDR's third and fourth terms it went back to the Republicans with Dewey in 1948 and stayed their through both of Eisenhower's landslides. It went back to the Democrats in every election in the 1960s and tin the next five elections only went Democrat when Carter won the White House in 1976. Only in 1992 did it move into the Democratic column and stay there for the next five election cycles – perhaps long enough for the younger members of the party to become complacent that it was going to stay that way.

This was not the case at a state level and the party knew it. As recently as the 2006 election both Senators representing the Keystone State were Republican. Only because of Howard Dean's 50 state strategy in 2006 did the Democrats manage to triumph over a Republican who had been one of their biggest adversaries during the 1990s and 2000s when Bob Casey defeated Rick Santorum by nearly seventeen points. In that elections Republicans did spectacular in a series of deep red states, including Missouri, Montana and Ohio.

In the aftermath of the 2008 election  Republican Arlen Specter who had been one of the most bipartisan Senators in Congress chose to switch parties because he didn't think he could survive a challenge in a Republican primary. He didn't expect that he would be challenged in a Democratic primary.  Nevertheless progressive Joe Sestak chose to run against Specter in the Democratic primary. His major argument: not sufficiently progressive.

 Sestak was opposed by almost the entire Democratic establishment and chose to run against him. Sestak managed to destroy Specter's reputation when he argued that the move was made of 'self-interest'. The fact that Specter had managed to defeat the likely Republican candidate  in a primary Pat Toomey in 2004 and would likely do so in the general was irrelevant as was Specter's long history in Congress. Sestak defeated Specter and then narrowly lost to Toomey in the general.

Toomey would run for reelection in 2016 when of course everyone expected Hilary Clinton to trounce Donald Trump that fall. That didn't happen in large part because for the first time since George H.W. Bush in 1988 Donald Trump became the first Republican to win Pennsylvania, albeit by less than 45,000 votes out of nearly six million cast in that state. Toomey barely beat Democratic candidate Katie McGinnity winning by barely 1.5 percent in what was the second closest election race of the 2016 cycle. Trump actually did better in some parts of Pennsylvania than Toomey did, so there's an argument McGinnity made it on Trump's coattails.

However in October of 2020 Toomey announced he wouldn't seek reelection. This led to an opening that the Democrats managed to find and in 2022 John Fetterman managed to narrowly beat Dr. Oz to help the Democrats in their best midterms in sixty years.

But by that time the party had begun to shift considerably to the left, something that had already cost the Democrats seats in the House even during Biden's reelection and were a factor in them losing it in 2022.  Under the Obama administration  the party had essentially abandoned the 50 state strategy and almost every Democrat who had been elected during Dean's tenure had lost their seat. Almost every Senator in a red state had been defeated by the 2018 election with only four members of that group – Joe Manchin, Jon Tester, Sherrod Brown and Casey still in the Senate.

Manchin announced he would not seek reelection in West Virginia in late 2023 after becoming an increasing punching back by the left during Biden's term. This made what was almost certainly going to be a difficult map for Senate Democrats even harder regardless of whether Biden was the nominee or when Harris ascended in 2024.

This proved to be the case as Brown and Tester lost their reelection bids. Bob Casey's race was one of the closest and wouldn't officially be called until two weeks after election day. Casey ended up losing to Dave McCormick by less than 15,000 votes out of nearly 6.8 million cast. Trump won again won Pennsylvania, this time by a much larger margin then he had against Clinton in 20216 carrying it by over 120,000 votes over Harris. Once again, the argument could be made that he managed to carry the Republican Senate candidate to victory.

And during this election two seats that had been Democratic in Pennsylvania were flipped to Republican with Ryan McKenzie defeating Susan Wild in the seventh district and Rob Bresnahan defeating Matt Cartwright in the eighth. There were now ten Republicans representing Pennsylvania as opposed to seven Democrats.

But it has to have been Casey's defeat that would have sent a message to Fetterman, He'd managed to win by nearly a quarter of a million votes in 2022 and two years his Democratic colleague from that state had been beaten. The voters of Pennsylvania had sent a very clear message to the electorate and to Fetterman: we support all things Trump and the Republican Party.

So when Fetterman made clear in the aftermath of Trump's return to power that he was willing to work with the President he was simply doing what a good, elected official does. The people had spoken and regardless of whether he agreed with them, he had to respect their voices.

The same can't be said for the progressive wing of Fetterman's party who in the aftermath of Trump's return to power has facilitated between denial and anger, even when they contradiction each other. They deny that Trump is President and essentially insist that any 'real' American refuse to acknowledge his existence even if that means visiting the White House on a ceremonial visit. At the same time every time he ties his shoelaces it is considered a crime against humanity so horrible that they consider it the job of every 'real' American to stand up and point out that what he is doing is wrong and call him the worst sort of names.  This would seem to be a circle that can only be squared by the activist and it is one that the politician must resist.

But during the Biden administration the Democratic Party increasingly began to indulge its most childish members in the caucus (all in the House with almost none in the Senate) in a desperate effort to try and win this base for future generations. Considering that during that both the attitude and policies of so many of those official were increasingly destroying the parties reputation among working class voters and rural America – both of which they needed to win in order to maintain power  - one would think when Harris was defeated, mostly because she achieved the lowest figures in either category of any Democrat Presidential candidate in the history of polling, one would think the party would reject and move towards the center.

Instead they spent the majority of 2025 indulging the worst aspect of their bases behavior, abandoning the maturity that many people (the author included) had found to be one of their biggest draws before 2016 and if anything even more so afterwards. Their behavior increasingly resembled that of the worst aspects of Gingrich's Republicans and the Tea Party, along with McConnell's decision to say that his objective was to make "Obama a one-term President'.  The long-term damage to the party is unclear at this point and may not be clear for years if not decades. What it has done is increasingly isolate the moderates particularly Fetterman.

To be clear Fetterman has been voting the Democratic Party line at least ninety percent of the time. He didn't vote to confirm any of Trump's initial cabinet appointees, didn't vote for the Big Beautiful bill and has made it clear he is opposed to many of the major policies of the administration. What he hasn't been willing to do is the kind of petulant behavior involving the shutting down of the government over much of 2025 and today.

He refused both in March and September to join with Senate Democrats to filibuster the budget over Obamacare subsidies, leading to the longest shutdown in history. He was one of the seven Democrats in the Senate to cross party lines and vote to reopen the government after the 2025 elections. He has refused to vote for the partial shutdown of the government to not fund Homeland Security these past two months and earlier this week voted in favor of a bill to refund it.

All of this has caused him to be reviled by his fellow Democrats as well as many of the people in his home state who feel he has betrayed his voters. The fact that he's doing exactly what Pennsylvania voters said they wanted in 2024 doesn't enter into the equation. He's explained this multiple times and one can sense his frustration. Many wonder if he will even stand for reelection in 2028 and even if he does, there is much talk of a primary. The fact that this exact scenario played out in 2010 – and ended in disaster for the Democrats – would be clear to rational observers but progressives today are no more rational than Joe Sestak was in 2010.

The Democrats increasing tilt towards far left ideals has done more damage to them in the Senate then it has in the House to this point. It has already taken all of the red state Senators out of the equation and its now starting to come for the swing state ones. This year it may not be a factor: the only Democrat running for reelection in a state Trump won two years ago is Jon Osoff in Georgia and the GOP is having great difficulty coming up with someone to run against him. The map is more favorable to the Democrats this year and while it is improbable that they will have a majority by the end of November with each passing week it seems to this observer more likely.

If that happens it will be because the Democrats are doing what they did when Bob Casey came to the Senate in the first place: challenging the Republicans on their own turf, particularly in red states. I've already written about Mary Peltola doing so in Alaska and in the weeks to come I will write about their efforts not only in Texas and North Carolina, but also in Iowa and Ohio.  Not all of them may succeed but the ones that do will because the Democrats are attempting to win the moderates and centrists in a way they really haven't in at least a decade, possibly longer.

If that happens perhaps Fetterman will be less isolated in the Senate as by necessity many of these Democrats will have to be moderates in order to win in the first place in states like these. It's not a coincidence that by far the greatest heat coming on Fetterman in the Senate is from the deep progressive wing, not just Bernie Sanders (who was in the class of 2006 and has been ungrateful ever since) but Elizabeth Warren, Chris Murphy and Chris Van Hollen. All of them are also in the bluest states in the country as well as some of the smallest.

And it is worth remembering that the Justice Democrats gave up trying to make a dent in the Senate after the 2020 election. The last one to earn even a nomination from the party was Paula Jean Swearingin and she was flattened by Shelly Moore Capiton in the biggest Republican margin during that cycle. Betsy Sweet would attempt to win the primary in Maine that same year. She couldn't get 23 percent of the vote against Sara Gideon.

The lessons of Pennsylvania, not just of Fetterman but indeed of the Senate during the 21^st century, need to be ones the Democratic Party learns from because the left has proven again and again they won't. The biggest one is one that was a given in their party not that long ago. Elections are when the voters send a message to their elected representatives which way they want the country to go. When either party refuses to accept this – either out of a decision to hold power or as an attempt to mobilize their base – it is a dereliction of duty and it should be condemned no matter which party is guilty of it.  Fetterman clearly got that message after the 2024 election. The left of America have not and trying to convince them otherwise is a futile act.

Second the decision to primary incumbent Democrats can be just as damaging to the party as primarying incumbent Republicans has been. Joe Sestak found that out very clear in 2010 and there's no reason to assume that if Fetterman is primaried it will play out any differently. Considering that so much of the Democrats hope of gaining a seat in Texas depends on who ends up winning that state's primary you'd think it’s a lesson they'd take to heart. (Then again Republicans have almost never learned that lesson in some states, so maybe we shouldn't be that surprised it hasn't stuck yet.)

Third is the idea of bipartisanship. Considering that it was once applauded by Democrats when the McCains and Specter's crossed party lines to help the Democrats one would have assumed that the same applied when Democrats do the same for Republicans. It must be made clear that there is far more room on the right across the country then there is on the left and that for so many Representatives and Senators they have to do what the voters in their states want in order to keep their seats.  The left refused to tolerate this with Joe Manchin and as a result we may never see a Democrat elected in West Virginia in our lifetimes.  The left may refer to them as DINO's but someone who's a Democrat ninety percent of the time has to be considered better than someone who's a Republican a hundred percent of the time.  I can assure you the Republicans don't care how they get a Republican in Congress as long as they have one. Democrats, as opposed to left-wing activists, can't afford to be so picky.

Last is that is important to remember that general elections – particularly Senate ones – must be won in the middle as opposed to primaries that can be one on the extremes. This is especially true in states that are increasingly purple as Pennsylvania is clearly becoming. And if you push the center away by going to the left – as we've seen time and again, the Republican party will gladly welcome them with open arms.  The far left has said that is the voter's problem but seeing as well live in the same country I'd say it's everyone's. 

John Fetterman is doing what the people of Pennsylvania elected him do in 2022 and what he took away from them in 2024. In a few months' time the voters will be sending the country another message and while Fetterman is not on the ballot, he will be paying attention to it like every other elected official can and should. Don't blame him for doing what the voters of his state told him to. Send a message to make it clear what he should do now. He's listened before. He will again.

 

 

Homicide Rewatch: Betrayal

 

Written by Gay Walsh ; story by Tom Fontana & Julie Martin

Directed by Clark Johnson

 

One of the things that made Homicide one of the greatest shows of all time is the exact same thing that stopped it from being a huge hit.  Network dramas to this point (and to an extent, today) is based very much on the idea of a formula. Some shows were picking at changes to it during this period but never as much as you'd think: there might be different doctors working at Cook County from season to season or different police and prosecutors working in Law & Order but the formula was pretty much the same episode to episode with variations rare and only happening once or twice a season at most.

Homicide was many things but the one thing it wasn't was complacent. This was true even with the basic idea of the partnership.  Some of that was necessitated by the actors who left each season but even within that structure we've already seen it keep shifting it throughout. The only real constant since the pilot has been the partnership of Bayliss and Pembleton.

When Frank had his stroke at the end of last season the very thing that thrilled Braugher about the arc was the same thing that isolated so many long-time viewers. While Braugher has done some of the best acting in his career during the first half of Season 5 the viewers have been nearly as impatient as Pembleton was for him to get back on the street. And by the end of 1996 enough pressure had come from on high (and more importantly the ratings had begun to stagnate) that reluctantly Fontana would agree to leave this storyline behind. For the rest of Season 5 Pembleton will struggle less and less with speech and the issues he's had all year: Homicide won't forget Pembleton had a stroke but by the time we reach the end of the year it'll be hard to notice the difference.

However it's almost as if Fontana has anticipated Braugher's frustration with this and has decided to put Pembleton off-kilter in a different way. We've seen it ever since Pembleton went back to the street in Control. Bayliss and Pembleton are still bickering about everything but now it has an edge. Bayliss has been questioning Frank's methods more and more in the first two cases they've worked together and while he's always pushed back against his partner, there's a meanness to this that we haven't seen in four and a half seasons.  Indeed we've been sensing more of an edge to Bayliss as Season 5 has progressed. At first the viewer might think its his trying to prove himself but he's been getting angrier in multiple cases, particularly against McPhee Broadman in his last case before Frank returned to the street.  We've known Bayliss to take cases more personally then any other detective since the series began but with every case this season he's been going into darker territory and in this episode he explodes. Not just at Pembleton but everyone he encounters.

The viewer knows right from the teaser that this case will be a trigger for him: Bayliss and Pembleton are called to the scene of another clearly abused African-American adolescent who has been killed and mutilated.  The 'Previously On' sequence makes it clear what we're going to get when it flashes back to Requiem for Adena where we saw the murder of Janelle Parsons in exactly the same way.  So when Tanya Thomson is found on the street the viewer thinks they know what they're going to get. Certainly I did when the teaser aired. I couldn't have been more wrong.

We can tell when Bayliss says: "Murdered little girl? Call Bayliss and Pembleton! We've got lots of experience!" Pembleton actually asks Bayliss if he'll be okay. "People do not change. Especially not you." Frank's both right and wrong today.

By any standard this case is one of the worst for any the show has dealt with when it comes to a dead child. Tanya Thomson died of blunt force trauma but as Cox grimly reports she's essentially been using for a punching bag for months, if not years by the time she ended up being dumped on the highway like she was a piece of trash. Even by this point Homicide has dealt with nearly every permutation of the horror of a child being killed (and so many of those times, they have met that death at the hands of another child) but this one is worse than usual. But when Bayliss basically tells Al that no one's going to report her missing he does so with a snideness to his lieutenant that is becoming frequent with him. Al actually gets up and is gentler than usual but then actually tells Frank and Howard that maybe they should take the case with him given his history. Frank says he knows his partner. He thinks its about Adena Watson. Again he's right and wrong.

This becomes clear when he starts going after Lynette Thomson the moment they see her. He's sure that she knows who beat her daughter to death, and while he's right he's actually going further. He starts pushing Frank and making it clear that he will not be satisfied until Lynette Thomson goes to jail as an accessory. When Frank says its their job to get the boyfriend and that the punishment for Lynette is "she'll have to live with her daughter being beaten to death," Bayliss says: "That's not good enough."

Giardello is right that Tim is too angry about this case and he starts venting on everybody who might help him, including the child services coordinator who he basically wants to lock up as an accessory and scares her off before she could help them. And in his first interrogation he basically accuses Lynette of being the one who beat her to death, eventually shouting: "You were the one who was supposed to help her!" by the time she's in the corner of the box.

At one point Bayliss has yelled at everybody and is planning to get a confession from Lynette Thomson if he has to reach down her throat. Frank responds sensibly and Bayliss's reaction is to talk to her boyfriend alone saying: "You and I aren't working well together." After a brilliant scene in which Al circles Frank in his most predatory fashion and gets him to acknowledge how badly the case is going Frank basically chooses to take his own approach. For the first time in the box he takes the approach of the loving parent. He shows a picture of Olivia which gets Lynette smiling and tells a story about him being upset with his daughter and shaking her to quiet her down and talks about the difference between men and woman with children.

The monologue Lynette delivers is one of the most unsettling of Season 5 as she begins to relate exactly how things involving Nelson unfolded. Its so matter of fact how things play out, the way she starts talking about how he wants things a certain way and how she starts defending her boyfriend instead of her daughter. Her justification for what she did is horrifying: "I had to keep my family together. Tanya was dead and wasn't nothing I could do about that." It's never clear if Lynette has been abused herself (though watching her its impossible not to think of so many battered women over the years) but the way she's so willing to defend what she did is frightening – and all the more so with the denouement when she announces she's pregnant at the end. "They'll be no problems with this one. This one's his." She assures him with.

 

 

It's telling how Homicide works that the other major storyline that has been going on practically since the season began – Kellerman being called before a grand jury – unfolds almost as an anticlimax. Kellerman's  far from thrilled that no matter what he's asked his attorney has advised him to take the Fifth. Kellerman is upset because he wants it on the record he's innocent. The fact that his attorney has told him that he didn't cop a plea means he's innocent isn't good enough for him.

Kellerman watches the process unfold with increasing rage. Mitch Roland, a man who has been responsible for burning down countless buildings, has been given a deal that is so sweetheart even the judge who has to do it all but degrades the attorneys who gave it. The fact that Roland practically gloats at having got away with so many horrible thinks with barely a year and a half in a jail couldn't be a bigger sign as to how little interest Gail Ingram has in justice.  She got her headlines when the grand jury indicted and now she's fine sending all of those involved to prison with what are, let's be honest, slaps on the wrist. Goodman, Connally and Perez sold out their badges and she's taking them away and putting them in jail for two or three years at the most. If the viewer wasn't so invested in Kellerman's fate, we'd be inflamed – or perhaps amused  - by how the federal justice system pretty much works as the criminal justice system does.  Ingram is no more interested in taking her case to court than Danvers or any other prosecutors are when it comes to murderers; all she wants to do is get indictments that will get her picture in the paper and then plea out the criminals to time that barely counts as punishment compared to the betrayals to the public that both Roland and Goodman, Connelly and Perez are guilty of.  There's an argument she cares about the public good or justice even less than any of the detectives we've met: all she wants is her name in the papers.

This is true even in her final interaction with Kellerman to an extent. After months of pushing him of squeezing him demanding he bend the knee and make her life easier, she stops short of asking him a question.  Supposedly it's because she's impressed by his integrity but the truth is she doesn't need him anymore. It has been framed as a convenient out but there's just as much a chance she would have done the same thing no matter what Kellerman did.  Three arson detectives, four arson detectives, what's the difference really? (And as we'll see in the next episode, that generosity only goes so far.) Perhaps Ingram's afraid that if he tells the truth – and reveals that one of her key witnesses perjured himself – it will undo every bit of work she's done building up this case. There's an implication she's moved by his monologue of being willing to give everything he believes in so that he can be a good cop but we also know the last thing an attorney wants is a surprise in court that might lead to her long-term plans being derailed and delayed.  Even if that's not the case maybe she has a full docket and she doesn't want to spend any more time on this. Her statement could be considered moving but it could just be smoke and mirrors. Given what we see of her in later episodes, I'm inclined to think it’s the latter.

The problem comes when the writers try to measure what Ingram is doing with Kellerman's scenario. He's convinced the other detectives will invoke the blue wall. As he puts it:

So I tell the grand jury that I knew detectives in my unit were dirty. What happens to me then? I'm gonna be brought up on charges for failing to report the graft. If I manage to keep my badge after that, what then? I gotta walk back in that building. Everybody's gonna look at me and know I gave up other cops."

It's that part – particularly after so many years of police involved shootings – that has aged the poorest. The show really wants to equate knowing that cops violated the badge and keeping silent about it is a virtue.  This strikes against the entire argument of Kellerman proclaiming his innocence this whole time. Failure to report graft is a crime the same way taking a bribe is.  Kellerman wants thinks that because he isn't guilty of the crime he's accused of is the same of being completely innocent.  He's a cop. He knows the difference between the two but in his case he sees no difference.

And it is worth noting his doing so is only at the last minute.  It's a noble gesture and it would be good but the thing is this storyline has been going on for three months and it has to have an ending. There was never going to be one that didn't end with Kellerman back on the street – the show's called Homicide after all – and there really wasn't a good way out.

To be clear Mike's self-righteous attitude at the Waterfront is the definition of hypocrisy. It's not enough that he hasn't been indicted and that they're not curious about how he got out from under it. His attitude of saying: "I might as well have taken his money" is self-righteous. He was guilty of a crime this whole period – he admitted as much to Cox this very episode. And Lewis and Giardello have spent an enormous amount of time and energy supporting him and trying to help him. What more does Mike want?  The best case scenario for Kellerman's behavior is that he's pissed about having been pushed through the entire system. But even that falls apart when you consider the next major storyline that's going to befall him this season. With the benefit of thirty years of hindsight it really seems Mike Kellerman was never a good cop at any point in his career.

It's harder to blame Bayliss for his attitude. A man has beaten a child to death and a woman has been an accessory to it and the murderer gets three years and the woman a suspended sentence and probation.  We've seen just how little justice there is in the world but this really seems like the worst miscarriage since Annabella Wilgus killed eight women and went to an asylum by pretending to have DID.

However it’s the final scene of the episode that brings Betrayal into classic status. Pembleton goes to find Bayliss who is drowning his sorrows and again he thinks he knows why. Bayliss looks at him. "Every murdered child, every abused child, I understand. Because all those children are me."

"See my father's brother – I was five years old – and he would follow me into the bathroom and he would lock the door and he would take my hand in his. When he was finished he would smile and say, 'what a good boy was', and Oh yeah ---Shhh! And this went on for years. And my parents couldn't understand why I'd cry every holiday, every time there's a family gathering."

"So when I was eight years old, I'd tell my father what had been going on. And it was a struggle to get those words out. And he just stared at me. And he asked me why I was lying. And he was my father and he was my father and he was supposed to protect me but he didn't Frank! I mean for him, whatever was happening it was an inconvenience! I wasn't real, Frank. I wasn't a real person! And he never saw me! He never looked at me ever!"

This episode has been a standout for Secor, but the final monologue makes it arguably his finest hour and it stuns me as to why he didn't even get nominated for an Emmy for this episode. This basically ties in almost everything we know about Bayliss together so brilliantly its even more astonishing to learn that Secor himself came up with the storyline this season rather than Fontana or any of his writers.

Pembleton who always knows the right thing to say is struck dumb. In another show this would be the moment that makes the partners closer, particularly these two have always feuded. But when Frank moves to Tim to try and hug him Bayliss pushes him away: "That's not why I told you." Why did he? Was it to prove that for once Frank wasn't as smart as he said he was?

The final line is the most stunning because its so casual. "By the way Frank. I don't want to be partners anymore." And a drunken Tim gets in a car and drives off, having gotten the last word for once.

So what is the betrayal that the title refers to? Connelly's betrayal of Kellerman at the grand jury? The way Lynette Thomson betrayed her daughter? The way Tim thinks Frank has betrayed him? All we know is that Frank may have recovered from his stroke but he's just had another set of legs cut out from under him. And things are going to get even worse.

 

 

 

NOTES FROM THE BOARD

 

Detective Munch': When Mrs. Thomson says she's looking for missing persons, Munch with his usually sensitivity says: "They're usually the hardest to find." Not aware of the hornet's nest he's stepping he walks in and asks Brodie who came up with the term 'missing persons'. "If you're a person, you know exactly where you are. You're only missing from someone else's point of view." I think we can all be grateful Munch has been working in Homicide all this time; if he actually was in Missing Persons he would be the worst person to help people.

Brodie Has Found A Home! The storyline of Brodie being moving ends this episode with him moving in with a blond woman who calls him "J.H." When Lewis sees her, he says the only reasonable thing: "You're kidding?"

Hey, Isn't That… Latanya Richardson (now Latanya Richardson Jackson) had already appeared in such films as Fried Green Tomatoes, Malcolm X, Sleepless in Seattle and Lone Star by the time she appeared as Lynette Thompson in Homicide. She's become one of the more prominent character actresses in TV and film ever since. She played Atallah Sims in the A & E courtrooms series 100 Centre Street and has since starred in such films as Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, The Fighting Temptations and Mother and Child. Her most notable role in TV was as Norma O'Neal on the acclaimed HBO series Show Me A Hero written by David Simon. Her husband, Samuel L. Jackson, is somewhat prominent in films and TV himself.