The Plot Against America - Blunt Messages and Essential Viewing

'Cleopatra's nose, had it been shorter, the whole face of the world would have been changed.' Blaise Pascal   

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David Simon and Ed Burns' blistering adaptation of Philip Roth's The Plot Against America certainly lingers. Which, in these dangerous and edgy times, is important. It is a terrifying and gripping piece of work, setting out a counterfactual history where an anti-Semitic Charles Lindbergh rises to the position of American president. Roosevelt, the incumbent, is jettisoned from the White House; Lindbergh signs a peace treaty with Hitler, and the USA is kept out of World War II.

Amongst all the noise of its doom-laden major chords, there are softer, yet no less chilling minor notes, sounding out themes that have parallels with our own politics. We get to hear Lindbergh's simple stump speech a few times before he ascends to the presidency. The famed aviator drops from the clouds in his single-seat mono-plane and addresses a New Jersey crowd.   

 

"My intention in running for the presidency is to serve American democracy by preventing America from taking part in another world war. Your choice is simple. It's not between Charles A. Lindbergh and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, it's between Lindbergh and war." 

 

And then off he takes, back into the sky, leaving the crowd, and the viewers elsewhere listening in through radios, or gazing at the newsreels in cinema aisles, to chew over his message. The choice they are given, like Pascal's imagined nose-job, is short and to the point. Bess Levin, mother to two Jewish boys, one impressionable, one terrified, listens on furious and afraid: "He says the same thing wherever he lands the plane, from California to Florida to Maine, but they keep putting it on the radio no matter how many times he says it!"  

Morgan Spector and Zoe Kazan as Herman and Bess Levin

But repetition and simplicity are what is so effective here: binary choices and memorable soundbites. Perfect, of course, for the Twitter demagogue Trump. Repeat something over and over again, and more and more people bite and believe it. 'Law and Order' has appeared almost daily since the beginning of the Black Lives Matter protests. And what of those simple, yet sticky epithets that he grafts on to political enemies: 'Sleepy Joe Biden', 'Crooked Hilary', 'Low Energy Jeb Bush'? Trump may not recognise this as Homeric, but he certainly senses the rationale behind it: pithy verbal building-blocks, mentally digestible sound-bites, the perfect modern use for the pre-ancient oral tradition. 'Swift-footed Achilles' it isn't; Homeric nuance is not at play here. But it has still proved - certainly until Covid-19 came along and, as it were, changed the epic narrative - incredibly effective.  

 

In a recent piece for The London Review of Books, William Davies exploring the Athens-old problem of democracy, delves further into the thinking behind the 'keep it simple and repeat' methodology:  

 

It is easy to lose sight of how peculiar and infantilising this state of affairs is. A one-year-old child has nothing to say about the food they are offered, but simply opens their mouth or shakes their head. No descriptions, criticisms or observations are necessary, just pure decision ... But a polity that privileges decision first and understanding second will have some terrible mess to sort out along the way. Look at what ensued after 46 million people were asked: ‘Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?’ 

 

What Davies, perhaps, doesn't explore here, is the idea that a simple 'yes' or 'no' question also provides, at least initially, the necessary cover for more specific hatreds. After all, this fictional version of Lindbergh doesn't overtly describe the Jews as the enemy, but nor does he deny this when placed on the spot. There is no doubt, though, that the dog whistle is fixed firmly between Lindy's lips.

The real Charles Lindbergh in Germany in 1937

 

Returning to epithets for a moment, I am tempted to reach for another one in describing The Plot Against America: 'essential viewing'. Yet that is a dangerous phrase. It's easy to assume that all who watch share in your own fears and turn off the television, forewarned and vigilant. You forget that for a small minority, a racist and anti-Semitic leader is a deep-rooted desire. 

And then there are - a more sizeable minority - those casual and craven anti-Semites, the ones who are simply not interested in watching. Their minds are already made up, and, if the situation escalates, there will be very few scruples about getting onboard. I'm reminded here of Princess Margaret marching out of a screening of Schindler's List, proclaiming that 'I don't want to hear another word about Jews or the Holocaust.' I deliberately reach for this anecdote has it reminds me of another moment in Simon and Burns' dramatisation. 

A synagogue has been burned to the ground, Walter Winchell a Jewish radio-celebrity and presidential candidate has been assassinated, and Jews are being openly attacked and lynched. Lindbergh flies out to Kentucky to make an address. Surely, his words will be an attempt to nip the hatred and persecution of Jews in the bud? He makes another of his short, perfunctory speeches in praise of peace and prosperity, and fails to mention the anti-Jewish violence (a boast instead of a balm that reminds you of you know who). The Jewish pogroms continue. Princess Margaret's moment of self-dramatisation was all about signalling anti-Semitism to her small and ever-shrinking universe. Lindbergh's silence and diversion in a place of atrocity, was all about sanctioning further violence, a subtle manoeuvre that gradually moves his insidious agenda along. What the hell were both of these people doing their in the first place? They knew exactly what they were doing.      

Ben Cole as President Lindbergh and John Turturro as Rabbi Bengelsdorf

Yeats wasn't quite right. The worst aren't always filled with 'passionate intensity'. And the best are easy to convince through television like this. Those who see this as 'essential viewing' are the ones who are already onboard and convinced of how insidiously the world can creep towards Fascism. Indeed, as David Simon has made clear in an interview with Vulture where he discusses The Plot Against America: 'The whole purpose is to discuss this process of how we deliver a working republic to a totalitarian state - how it happens gradually, how it happens without anyone having a definitive moment.'

And what of the next few months? Joe Biden isn't the long-term solution. But it will certainly be a drawing back from a perilous and unpredictable President, one who is both shocking in his ignorance and terrifying in the way that he wields that ignorance. So, come that Wednesday morning in autumn, I'm hoping for a 'rosy-fingered dawn' that, if it isn't quite Homeric in its scope, will at least return a level of seriousness to American high-office and bring a close to the reign of the Walmart Zeus and his undoubtedly racist agenda.