#i use first and third world intentionally here because that is the exact political structure in play

[backofthebookshelf]

I know I'm a week late but I do think people are misunderstanding the point of the Anthony Bourdain quote about Kissinger

The point was never "Anthony Bourdain has good politics and is an unproblematic fave," the point is that even someone with mainstream liberalish politics who goes to Cambodia for a food tour - a, let's be honest, very bougie type of trip to be part of your job - and has a basic understanding of history and a bare minimum of human decency can come away from that bougie food tour wanting to murder Henry Kissinger with their bare hands. The point is that Henry Kissinger fucked up this country so bad the only reason he wasn't lynched decades ago is because it's on the opposite side of the world and the people who were in proximity to him never really saw what it was. The point is that if we could see firsthand what our First World politics do to the Third World we would understand that monsters walk among us and it's a cultural failing that we let them die at home at 100 years old surrounded by their friends and family.

[arcticdementor]

In Chapter 5 of The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli describes three options for how a conquering power might best treat those it has defeated in war. The first is to ruin them; the second is to rule directly; the third is to create “therein a state of the few which might keep it friendly to you.”

The example Machiavelli gives of the last is the friendly government Sparta established in Athens upon defeating it after 27 years of war in 404 BCE. For the upper caste of an Athenian elite already contemptuous of democracy, the city’s defeat in the Peloponnesian War confirmed that Sparta’s system was preferable. It was a high-spirited military aristocracy ruling over a permanent servant class, the helots, who were periodically slaughtered to condition them to accept their subhuman status. Athenian democracy by contrast gave too much power to the low-born. The pro-Sparta oligarchy used their patrons’ victory to undo the rights of citizens, and settle scores with their domestic rivals, exiling and executing them and confiscating their wealth.

The Athenian government disloyal to Athens’ laws and contemptuous of its traditions was known as the Thirty Tyrants, and understanding its role and function helps explain what is happening in America today.

For my last column I spoke with The New York Times’ Thomas Friedman about an article he wrote more than a decade ago, during the first year of Barack Obama’s presidency. His important piece documents the exact moment when the American elite decided that democracy wasn’t working for them. Blaming the Republican Party for preventing them from running roughshod over the American public, they migrated to the Democratic Party in the hopes of strengthening the relationships that were making them rich.

A trade consultant told Friedman: “The need to compete in a globalized world has forced the meritocracy, the multinational corporate manager, the Eastern financier and the technology entrepreneur to reconsider what the Republican Party has to offer. In principle, they have left the party, leaving behind not a pragmatic coalition but a group of ideological naysayers.”

In the more than 10 years since Friedman’s column was published, the disenchanted elite that the Times columnist identified has further impoverished American workers while enriching themselves. The one-word motto they came to live by was globalism—that is, the freedom to structure commercial relationships and social enterprises without reference to the well-being of the particular society in which they happened to make their livings and raise their children.

Undergirding the globalist enterprise was China’s accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001. For decades, American policymakers and the corporate class said they saw China as a rival, but the elite that Friedman described saw enlightened Chinese autocracy as a friend and even as a model—which was not surprising, given that the Chinese Communist Party became their source of power, wealth, and prestige. Why did they trade with an authoritarian regime and send millions of American manufacturing jobs off to China thereby impoverish working Americans? Because it made them rich. They salved their consciences by telling themselves they had no choice but to deal with China: It was big, productive, and efficient and its rise was inevitable. And besides, the American workers hurt by the deal deserved to be punished—who could defend a class of reactionary and racist ideological naysayers standing in the way of what was best for progress?

…

A decade ago, no one would’ve put NBA superstar LeBron James and Apple CEO Tim Cook in the same family album, but here they are now, linked by their fantastic wealth owing to cheap Chinese manufacturing (Nike sneakers, iPhones, etc.) and a growing Chinese consumer market. The NBA’s $1.5 billion contract with digital service provider Tencent made the Chinese firm the league’s biggest partner outside America. In gratitude, these two-way ambassadors shared the wisdom of the Chinese Communist Party with their ignorant countrymen. After an an NBA executive tweeted in defense of Hong Kong dissidents, social justice activist King LeBron told Americans to watch their tongues. “Even though yes, we do have freedom of speech,” said James, “it can be a lot of negative that comes with it.”

Because of Trump’s pressure on the Americans who benefited extravagantly from the U.S.-China relationship, these strange bedfellows acquired what Marxists call class consciousness—and joined together to fight back, further cementing their relationships with their Chinese patrons. United now, these disparate American institutions lost any sense of circumspection or shame about cashing checks from the Chinese Communist Party, no matter what horrors the CCP visited on the prisoners of its slave labor camps and no matter what threat China’s spy services and the People’s Liberation Army might pose to national security. Think tanks and research institutions like the Atlantic Council, the Center for American Progress, the EastWest Institute, the Carter Center, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and others gorged themselves on Chinese money. The world-famous Brookings Institution had no scruples about publishing a report funded by Chinese telecom company Huawei that praised Huawei technology.

…

But if Donald Trump saw decoupling the United States from China as a way to dismantle the oligarchy that hated him and sent American jobs abroad, he couldn’t follow through on the vision. After correctly identifying the sources of corruption in our elite, the reasons for the impoverishment of the middle classes, and the threats foreign and domestic to our peace, he failed to staff and prepare to win the war he asked Americans to elect him to fight.

And because it was true that China was the source of the China Class’ power, the novel coronavirus coming out of Wuhan became the platform for its coup de grace. So Americans became prey to an anti-democratic elite that used the coronavirus to demoralize them; lay waste to small businesses; leave them vulnerable to rioters who are free to steal, burn, and kill; keep their children from school and the dying from the last embrace of their loved ones; and desecrate American history, culture, and society; and defame the country as systemically racist in order to furnish the predicate for why ordinary Americans in fact deserved the hell that the elite’s private and public sector proxies had already prepared for them.

For nearly a year, American officials have purposefully laid waste to our economy and society for the sole purpose of arrogating more power to themselves while the Chinese economy has gained on America’s. China’s lockdowns had nothing to do with the difference in outcomes. Lockdowns are not public health measures to reduce the spread of a virus. They are political instruments, which is why Democratic Party officials who put their constituents under repeated lengthy lockdowns, like New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, are signaling publicly that it is imperative they be allowed to reopen immediately now that Trump is safely gone.

That Democratic officials intentionally destroyed lives and ended thousands of them by sending the ill to infect the elderly in nursing homes is irrelevant to America’s version of the Thirty Tyrants. The job was to boost coronavirus casualties in order to defeat Trump and they succeeded. As with Athens’ anti-democratic faction, America’s best and brightest long ago lost its way. At the head of the Thirty Tyrants was Critias, one of Socrates’ best students, a poet and dramatist. He may have helped save Socrates from the regime’s wrath, and yet the philosopher appears to have regretted that his method, to question everything, fed Critias’ sweeping disdain for tradition. Once in power, Critias turned his nihilism on Athens and destroyed the city.

…

The chief publicist of the post-Cold War order was Francis Fukuyama, who in his 1992 book The End of History argued that with the fall of the Berlin Wall Western liberal democracy represented the final form of government. What Fukuyama got wrong after the fall of the Berlin Wall wasn’t his assessment of the strength of political forms; rather it was the depth of his philosophical model. He believed that with the end of the nearly half-century-long superpower standoff, the historical dialectic pitting conflicting political models against each other had been resolved. In fact, the dialectic just took another turn.

Just after defeating communism in the Soviet Union, America breathed new life into the communist party that survived. And instead of Western democratic principles transforming the CCP, the American establishment acquired a taste for Eastern techno-autocracy. Tech became the anchor of the U.S.-China relationship, with CCP funding driving Silicon Valley startups, thanks largely to the efforts of Dianne Feinstein, who, after Kissinger, became the second-most influential official driving the U.S.-CCP relationship for the next 20 years.

…

Nearly every major American industry has a stake in China. From Wall Street—Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley— to hospitality. A Marriott Hotel employee was fired when Chinese officials objected to his liking a tweet about Tibet. They all learned to play by CCP rules.

“It’s so pervasive, it’s better to ask who’s not tied into China,” says former Trump administration official Gen. (Ret.) Robert Spalding.

Unsurprisingly, the once-reliably Republican U.S. Chamber of Commerce was in the forefront of opposition to Trump’s China policies—against not only proposed tariffs but also his call for American companies to start moving critical supply chains elsewhere, even in the wake of a pandemic. The National Defense Industrial Association recently complained of a law forbidding defense contractors from using certain Chinese technologies. “Just about all contractors doing work with the federal government,” said a spokesman for the trade group, “would have to stop.”

…

Apple, Nike, and Coca Cola even lobbied against the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. On Trump’s penultimate day in office, his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the United States has “determined that the People’s Republic of China is committing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang, China, targeting Uyghur Muslims and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups.” That makes a number of major American brands that use forced Uyghur labor—including, according to a 2020 Australian study, Nike, Adidas, Gap, Tommy Hilfiger, Apple, Google, Microsoft, and General Motors—complicit in genocide.

The idea that countries that scorn basic human and democratic rights should not be directly funded by American industry and given privileged access to the fruits of U.S. government-funded research and technology that properly belongs to the American people is hardly a partisan idea—and has, or should have, little to do with Donald Trump. But the historical record will show that the melding of the American and Chinese elites reached its apogee during Trump’s administration, as the president made himself a focal point for the China Class, which had adopted the Democratic Party as its main political vehicle. That’s not to say establishment Republicans are cut out of the pro-China oligarchy—Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell’s shipbuilder billionaire father-in-law James Chao has benefited greatly from his relationship with the CCP, including college classmate Jiang Zemin. Gifts from the Chao family have catapulted McConnell to only a few slots below Feinstein in the list of wealthiest senators.

Riding the media tsunami of Trump hatred, the China Class cemented its power within state institutions and security bureaucracies that have long been Democratic preserves—and whose salary-class inhabitants were eager not to be labeled as “collaborators” with the president they ostensibly served. Accommodation with even the worst and most threatening aspects of the Chinese communist regime, ongoing since the late 1990s, was put on fast-forward. Talk about how Nike made its sneakers in Chinese slave labor camps was no longer fashionable. News that China was stealing American scientific and military secrets, running large spy rings in Silicon Valley and compromising congressmen like Eric Swalwell, paying large retainers to top Ivy League professors in a well-organized program of intellectual theft, or in any way posed a danger to its own people or to its neighbors, let alone to the American way of life, were muted and dismissed as pro-Trump propaganda.

…

There is a good reason why lockdowns—quarantining those who are not sick—had never been previously employed as a public health measure. The leading members of a city, state, or nation do not imprison its own unless they mean to signal that they are imposing collective punishment on the population at large. It had never been used before as a public health measure because it is a widely recognized instrument of political repression.

…

China had cultivated many friends in the American press, which is why the media relays Chinese government statistics with a straight face—for instance that China, four times the size of the United States, has suffered 1/100th the number of COVID-19 fatalities. But the key fact is this: In legitimizing CCP narratives, the media covers not primarily for China but for the American class that draws its power, wealth, and prestige from China. No, Beijing isn’t the bad guy here—it’s a responsible international stakeholder. In fact, we should follow China’s lead. And by March, with Trump’s initial acquiescence, American officials imposed the same repressive measures on Americans used by dictatorial powers throughout history to silence their own people.

Eventually, the pro-China oligarchy would come to see the full range of benefits the lockdowns afforded. Lockdowns made leading oligarchs richer—$85 billion richer in the case of Bezos alone—while impoverishing Trump’s small-business base. In imposing unconstitutional regulations by fiat, city and state authorities normalized autocracy. And not least, lockdowns gave the American establishment a plausible reason to give its chosen candidate the nomination after barely one-third of the delegates had chosen, and then keep him stashed away in his basement for the duration of the Presidential campaign. And yet in a sense, Joe Biden really did represent a return to normalcy in the decadeslong course of U.S.-China relations.

…

What seems clear is that Biden’s inauguration marks the hegemony of an American oligarchy that sees its relationship with China as a shield and sword against their own countrymen. Like Athens’ Thirty Tyrants, they are not simply contemptuous of a political system that recognizes the natural rights of all its citizens that are endowed by our creator; they despise in particular the notion that those they rule have the same rights they do. Witness their newfound respect for the idea that speech should only be free for the enlightened few who know how to use it properly. Like Critias and the pro-Sparta faction, the new American oligarchy believes that democracy’s failures are proof of their own exclusive right to power—and they are happy to rule in partnership with a foreign power that will help them destroy their own countrymen.

What does history teach us about this moment? The bad news is that the Thirty Tyrants exiled notable Athenian democrats and confiscated their property while murdering an estimated 5% of the Athenian population. The good news is that their rule lasted less than a year.

[lovehaswonangelnumbers]

New Post has been published on https://lovehaswonangelnumbers.org/new-divine-father-masculine-the-capricorn-saturn-pluto-conjunction/

NEW Divine Father Masculine & the Capricorn Saturn Pluto Conjunction

NEW Divine Father Masculine & the Capricorn Saturn Pluto Conjunction

By Denise Le Fay

Astrologers uses the terms applying and separating to indicate when a planet is approaching other planet — applying, or moving away from another planet — separating.Another term used is orb of influence. An astrological orbindicates when two or more planets are within a certain number of degrees from each other and start energetically interacting with each other and affecting humanity. Typically, the number of degrees most astrologers use for planet aspectsis between 5–7°. Being a sensitive I’ve always felt applying aspects before that so I’ve used a 10° orb. However, due to the Ascension Process and it being the end of very intense 2019, everyone is being deeply affected and influenced by the physical reality-changing evolutionary Capricorn Saturn Pluto conjunction. When the one and only exact conjunction hit of Saturn and Pluto happens on January 12, 2020, it will be Divine cosmic lightening physically striking humanity, our consciousness, being and physical reality. The Fish are dead, long live the NEW Waves. The global patriarchy is dead, long live the NEW Divine Human of Light.

January 1, 2019 transiting Saturn was 11° Capricorn and transiting Pluto was 20° Capricorn. That’s a 9° orb between them and Saturn is applying because it moves faster than Pluto. February 1, 2019 Saturn was 15° Capricorn and Pluto was 21° Capricorn. March 1, 2019 Saturn was 17° and Pluto 22°. Here’s what the Saturn and Pluto transit looks like on the 1st day of each month throughout 2019.

January 1, 2019 Saturn was 11° Capricorn and Pluto was 21° Capricorn

February 1, 2019 Saturn was 15° and Pluto was 22°

March 1, 2019 Saturn was 18° and Pluto 22°

April 1, 2019 Saturn 20° and Pluto 23°

May 1st Saturn is 21° retrograde and Pluto is 23° also retrograde

June 1st Saturn is 20° and Pluto is 23° both retrograde

July 1st Saturn is 18° and Pluto is 22° both retrograde

August 1st Saturn is 16° and Pluto is 21° retrograde

September 1st Saturn is 14° and Pluto is 21° retrograde

October 1st Saturn is 14° direct and Pluto is 21° retrograde

November 1st Saturn is 15° and Pluto is 21° both direct

December 1st 2019 Saturn is 18° and Pluto is 21°

Solstice December 21, 2019 Saturn is 20° and Pluto is 22° Capricorn

January 1, 2020, Saturn is 21° and Pluto is 22° Capricorn. They reach exact conjunction January 12, 2020 —1-12-2020—with Saturn and Pluto both at 22° Capricorn.

Often transits reach exact degree aspect two or three times due to one or both planets going retrograde. They apply and make the first exact “hit” then separate due to retrograde motion and make a second exact “hit”, then go direct motion and make another exact “hit” conjunction again and so on. This sort of multiple 1-2-3 exact “hits” business is to give humanity the needed time to (1) first experience the exact energies and aspect energies in direct motion then (2) experience them a second time in retrograde motion and then (3) experience them for the last time in direct motion. The first “hit” is the energetic arrival or punch, the second retrograde “hit” is humanity reevaluating and reworking things at this point within the transit, and the third “hit” is final integration of the energies and changes in humanity and reality.

Because humanity and all else is deep in the Ascension Process and Separation of Worlds, this Capricorn Saturn Pluto conjunction has onlyone exact degree “hit” on January 12, 2020 — 1-12-2020 — and then fairly quickly Saturn enters Aquarius. It does retrograde back into Capricorn but a second exact “hit” conjunction with Pluto does not happen. This is a one hit wondertransit and it has been, is, and will continue to rapidly and completely dismantle and remove the entire lowly global patriarchy, patriarchal rulers, governments, political systems, structures and matching consciousness of humanity that is evolving now. One and done baby, one… and… done.

 There are many who’ve written extensively about this rare physical reality-changing Capricorn Saturn Pluto conjunction. What I want to focus on about it, and the many other planets transiting Capricorn close to the epic Saturn Pluto conjunction, is how Divine Mother Feminine now wants and needs to completely remodel and redecorate, so, NEW Divine Father Masculine is at the ready to rebuild and redecorate Earth, humanity, reality and all structures internally and externally and imbue them with NEW Divine Father Masculine energies. None of this will resemble anythingfrom the past or any pasts. This is NEW Divine Father Masculine being returned and seeded into Earth and humanity at this NEW higher level.

The humans that are not ready, willing or able to evolve into this profound higher NEW complete re-structuring of physical reality, life, consciousness and individual integrated being on ascending NEW Earth are those who have been rapidly leaving their physical bodies the past few years. The other people that want to remain in their current physical bodies but don’t want to or are not ready to evolve, to “ascend” along with everything are the people now being quickly re-directed, migrated to a matching frequency Earth world to what they currently are themselves.

This is NEW Divine Daddy. This is NEW rebuilding and redecorating at a NEW ascended level with NEW tools of Light and LOVE and Individual integration or Unity or Triality at the next higher rung of the great Evolutionary Cycle. None of this has been experienced before here and it’s going to be intense, wonderful, did I mention intense? and at times most likely a little wild and chaotic. Who cares is my response, bring on the NEW everything Divine Mother Feminine and Divine Father Masculine, Source knows we want and very much need a total internal and external Divine Makeover.

For those who aren’t familiar with astrology and the energies Saturn, Pluto and Capricorn hold, specifically at this point within the Ascension Process, here’s a super simplified rundown. First off, Saturn is the naturally ruler of Capricorn so there’s a lot of ease and naturalness with Saturn in its own sign energies. Saturn, and I mean the NEW and freed of old Team Dark distortions Saturn, has to do with physical reality and holding it in place physically. In this Saturn Pluto Capricorn conjunction, there will be tremendous NEW Divine Father Masculine energies and force in this entire 2020 astrological Capricorn energy event. In Ascension terms, this means that ascended Saturn (everything is going through the Ascension Process) is helping to not only castoff the past cycle’s energy codes and blueprints but more importantly the negative distortions, and is helping to embody, imprint and encode ascending Earth and humanity with NEW higher frequency Saturn energies and codes. Pluto is doing the same of course.

In September 2019 I wrote Libra 2019, and discussed how at that time another, but this time a much larger portion of Divine Mother, Divine Feminine was returning, reentering human consciousness, our lives and reality. I intentionally did not mention then about how aspects of the Divine Father, Divine Masculine will be returning, reentering, Rewiring, seeding anew human consciousness, our lives and physical reality once these specific NEW energies are physically delivered through this January 12, 2020 Saturn Pluto Capricorn conjunction.

Divine Mother Feminine returns first because for thousands of years on Earth SHE/IT has been horrendously distorted and limited by the negative alien and human patriarchy. Because of this SHE/IT has been incrementally returning to humanity and human consciousness via this Ascension Process. It’s also why the majority of current Ascension teachers and writers are now incarnate in female bodies. It’s been yet another way to help Rewire and seed anew the NEW Light energies, Higher Awareness, and individual integration of energies in humanity via female World Teachers and Energy Workers instead of males as it’s been for thousands of years of patriarchal rule on Earth.

Divine Mother Feminine is remodeling and redecorating and NEW Divine Father Masculine is now present and about to carry out this NEW Work in the physical and beyond. The Capricorn Saturn Pluto conjunction and other involved planets in Capricorn at that time are a huge manifestation methods for a lot of this to be physically seeded anew on ascending Earth and in ascending humanity during the Separation of Worlds & Timelines.

Have the most HighHeart December 21, 2019 Solstice tomorrow everyone. It’s about to get even more interesting, exciting and so very different, wonderful ways. ❤

Denise

December 20, 2019

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[snarktheater]

Series review — Quantico (Season 2)

So this is…something that happened. Yup. It sure is something that happened.

Just to be clear: this review is probably going to go off the rails a little bit. Because let's be real, there isn't one show on television right now that is as interesting as an individual piece as the sharp, sudden turn that American television as a whole has taken in its winter/spring 2017 season. So I'm gonna talk about that.

Last year, I didn't give Quantico a lot of attention. It was among my favorites, but it was hard to really talk about without spoiling it, and so all I could say was that it didn't fail in the classic ways that tends to happen (you know, racism, sexism, that sort of things).

Luckily, this year, I do have a few things to say about Quantico's second season itself. While the show does mostly retain its strengths, it has definitely struggled with its plot. I wouldn't be surprised if this was actually a conscious decision, because as we reach the final third of the season, the main plot that had been the central focus of the season (an attack on a G20 summit) is abruptly wrapped up. The show's formula of following both a major crisis in the present and following the protagonists' training and how it ties into that crisis is chucked to the garbage, and instead we get a singular plot line. It deals with the consequences of the previous events, but still, the change is jarring.

And that's where the real-life stuff becomes relevant. I mean, we are in a post-Trump election world, whether we like it or not. And while all media is inherently political (by virtue of representing world views from the creator(s)), suddenly a lot of the media has become intentionally political. It's hard to know how much of it is pandering and how much is genuine.

For instance, Marvel's Agents of SHIELD repeatedly using buzz phrases like "fake news" in its third seasonal arc (which, incidentally, deals with an alternate reality where fascist Hydra took over the world post-WWII) teeters on that edge, and it's hard to tell which one it is. Mostly because while the story's concept is definitely an apt metaphor for the current political climate. And I want to thank whoever made this line happen:

But that said…the show doesn't really go anywhere with it. It's saying Nazis are bad, and fascism is bad, and bad guys must be defeated. It creates an implied link between Trump, nazis, and fascism. But it falls short of adding anything constructive to the conversation beyond that. It feels very "white person calling themselves woke", in that it's only the basic stuff. Aside from the metaphor, it stays too confined within its own supernatural narrative to add anything of value.

It's clearer in a show like Supergirl, ironically, where our fascist is an alien invasion that only starts in the penultimate episode of the season. I guess it's a case of "less is more", because it still gives us this speech, which in my opinion beats all of Agents of SHIELD's "Agents of Hydra" arc in one moment.

“Resist these invaders. They come with empty promises, and closed fists. They promise to make our world great again. They think they can con us.”

Like…it's actually almost laughable how on the nose it is. It doesn't even completely work within the context of the show, because the villain isn't really trying to con people, nor do they come with empty promises beyond "accept enslavement and you will live". But at the very least it's trying to be relevant to its audience, which is kind of the most important part when you do something like this. (Speaking of "on the nose", the season finale is titled "Nevertheless, she persisted", which is just amusing to me)

Of course, Supergirl had an advantage on SHIELD. It's a show that started its pilot discussing feminism, and has consistently come back to it, including discussions of intersectionality. That it gets political now isn't as sharp a turn, and the writers are clearly more comfortable with it. I mean, this is a show set in a world where the POTUS is a woman (and an alien, but who's counting).

But then we get back to Quantico. That show was also political from the start, which also questioned sexism and racism with its pilot. To boot, it doesn't have to deal with a supernatural plot to divert its attention from its message. You don't need to make a fascist metaphor when you can just have…plain old fascism as your villain.

And they went there. In its final third, Quantico's second season focuses on our protagonist setting up a task force to fight a shadowy conspiracy of people from the high spheres of society aiming to take down the current government, instate one of them as the POTUS, and…well, profit from it. While the "conspiracy" part is (arguably) fictional, and it's based on forcing the current president to resign because the previous season just had a presidential election in its epilogue, it's otherwise a pretty clear parallel to Trump's rise to the presidency and the people who chose as members of his staff.

And yet, the show's writers have proven to be way too optimistic. The conspirators are actually competent at their work (also, for some reason, capable of holding their own against trained FBI and CIA agent in hand-to-hand combat, which is kind of weird to me), both in their business and as people who want to run a country. They also seem to genuinely believe to be doing what is best for the country, even if that happens to be having them be in charge of it. I don't think I'll face a lot of pushback when I say that that is clearly not something that can be said of the Trump administration. And if you are a person who wants to argue with that fact…how the hell did you find this little blog? (Also, don't bother)

And then there's the season finale. Spoiler, I guess, but this is where that ironic optimism becomes the most obvious. Because that episode's resolution relies on two things: 1) the protagonists, in an act that they are aware is treason, leak information to the Russian intelligence so they can pressure the Trump analogue in compromising himself; and 2) once said Trump analogue is shown to be compromised to the Russian intelligence and willing to bow down to their will, he immediately, unilaterally loses all support, leading to impeachment being drafted almost at once.

Ironic, considering what news broke out on the exact same day that the episode aired, and how little reaction there was from the Republican base since then.

But even with all of that, the show still does an impressive job with its portrayal of a Trump metaphor. In particular, it continues what it did in its first season with debunking the amalgamation of Islam with terrorism, and showing how that amalgamation serves very specific interests. And, perhaps most important of all, it finally takes a definitive stance on what was probably one of the show's biggest flaws: the fact that spy work, while it can be useful, will ultimately only serve the people in power, no matter who they are. Transparency is the only way to let people have agency in the democratic process.

So the show spent two seasons telling us that the characters have to "do what they must" and "work in the shadows". And while it did also point out that intelligence agencies needed oversight, it's in the finale that it gets its best moment. Warning for spoilers (and if the video gets taken down, let me know).

"This country will not fix itself in the shadows anymore. The light is all we have, and the truth is all we can trust. So resist. Fight back."

Note that, just like Supergirl, the show uses the #Resist hashtag that's gotten so popular. Still on the nose here, but it works much better in context. After all, the context is basically the same as ours.

So…yeah, the season ends up being structurally weak because it made such a wild departure before the end. It's still highly enjoyable, but honestly, at this point…I think it's way more important than it is good or bad.

Do I think it's a must-watch? Well…maybe, maybe not. I still recommend watching the show, but don't do it for the political message. You can just get that anywhere on social media too, or just by staying informed. But I think it's an excellent move to reach the people who do watch the show. So there is that.

Someday, someone much better versed than I am in analyzing pop culture will look back at how American television changed basically overnight and derive much deeper conclusion from it than I could. In the meantime, this is my little contribution to the pile.

And yeah, hashtag or not, you should resist. All of us should.