‘House of Cards’ an escapist utopia from likes of Trump, Clinton…
HOUSE of Cards is back. And just in time to offer an escape from the hilarious dystopia of our actual politics into the utopian vision of a politics where, if things go wrong, it’s because an evil someone behind the scenes knows what he or she is doing.
If only. The one true rule of politics is Hanlon’s Razor, which states that you should never attribute to malice what can be attributed to stupidity. This pretty much rules out House o fCards.
Its dysfunctional politics are dysfunctional because people are interested in making deals. Making deals! Can you imagine?
In fact, if it weren’t for all the murder, House of Cards would be aspirational. One of the main characters, between bouts of dastardly scheming, routinely goes on long jogs. (This should warn us. Any TV show that believes people actually jog when no one is looking would think that the reason politics is dysfunctional is that Washington is full of competent politicians who only sabotage things on purpose.) Then people sit down in lovely rooms and make secret deals there.
The basic impulse behind Houseof Cards is the same thing that drives UFO fanatics. I have been to multiple gatherings of people who believe in UFOs – a faux-congressional hearing for people who wanted to present evidence of a massive UFO conspiracy and an event for people who wanted to talk about their own experiences of abduction. Both times it came down to: well, it may be that a sinister committee of Reptilians or Greys or Arcturians are running the whole world, nay, the whole universe, but, dang it, at least someone knows what’s going on. It’s the reassuring conspiracy theorist view of the world, where things that go wrong are only proceeding according to someone else’s dastardly plan. And make no mistake, there is a plan.
But if politics these days have any lessons to offer, other than that middle school is never truly over, it is: there is no plan. Things will not just work themselves out. All those political theorists who said, Don’t Worry, The Party Will Pick, The Trump Train Would Stop – were, how to put this politely, not grounded in fact. Not only is no one driving the train, but there might not be a train.
But try telling people that. Last weekend I was at a Marco Rubio rally and a woman in attendance, who asked to be identified only by her middle name, Ariella, told me that (the media) is “ramming Trump down our throats because they’re afraid of losing their jobs. Trump is probably best friends with George Soros and Rupert Murdoch”. Media “are forced to glorify him. They have no choice if they want to keep their jobs… They’re all buddies, probably eat lunch (together) once a week. Phyllis Schlafly predicted this in her articles. The liberal media will pick your candidates for you”.
This is a lovely and orderly vision of the world, but it’s not the case. The reason everyone is writing about Donald Trump literally 100 percent of the time (sorry, by the way) is not that we are being forced to do so by our Sinister, All-Knowing Masters. It’s simply that people click on articles about Donald Trump and we live and die by the click. The same goes across the board. When you think you see a Cunning And Devious Plan, it’s almost always the result of a dozen or a hundred individual instances of accumulated incompetence. It’s almost never a Cunning And Devious Plan.
When things go spectacularly wrong, it’s not because everyone bought into some Hideous Scheme, but because each individual person was doing something that made sense to him or her on a small scale, and when he or she looked up, it was too late.
Still, it can be nice to feel that someone, somewhere knows what he or she is doing (never mind that nothing you have ever experienced leads you to believe this.) That’s why we watch House of Cards. But make no mistake: it’s fiction.