But Trump is a figure for whom subtlety and nuance have always seemed irrelevant.
The Lindbergh-Trump parallels feel more blatant than some of the political points Simon and Burns have made in their careers (like how The Wire’s third season was an Iraq War allegory). “It’s like dry leaves waiting on a spark.” Meanwhile, Lindbergh’s ascendance gives tacit approval to everyone who shares his ugly views to take violent action.
(A disgusted Alvin suggests Bengelsdorf is “koshering Lindbergh” for the non-Jews, so they’ll feel comfortable voting for a man they know is a bigot.) Soon, Bengelsdorf is parroting talking points about who is and isn’t a “real American,” and how the Jews can be better “absorbed” into the allegedly more authentic rural vision of the country. With the help of Evelyn’s rabbi boyfriend Lionel Bengelsdorf (John Turturro) - a Southern-raised Jew who speaks fondly of the Confederacy and serves as a religious adviser - Lindy is able to win election. But it’s yet another example of how Simon and his collaborators manage to craft riveting entertainment out of incisive commentary on the way we live now. Like Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale (albeit more compact), the show is chilling in the ways that life has begun to imitate its source material’s art.
With HBO’s six-part miniseries adaptation from The Wire creators Ed Burns and David Simon, what was once fanciful now feels agonizingly prescient. With the country at war in Iraq and Afghanistan, this wasn’t a happy time for the U.S., but Roth’s story read more like a path thankfully avoided (the real Lindbergh was an isolationist and anti-Semite, but never ran for office) than as an ominous prophecy.
Bush was nearing re-election and NBC was debuting the second season of The Apprentice, a game show judged by the cartoonish New York real estate mogul Donald Trump. When Philip Roth published The Plot Against America in 2004 - an alternate history where pilot Charles Lindbergh is elected president in 1940 on an antiwar and barely veiled anti-Semitic platform - George W.
0 kommentar(er)
