By Ponderer February 18, 2025 8:48 am Category: Politics
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I watched Mr. Smith Goes to Washington last night, for about the bazillionth time. I love the political stuff that TCM has been airing the last few weeks. They know what they're doing.
To me, it's one of the saddest movies about American politics ever made. But... it has such a happy, "Hollywood" ending! How could I think of it as sad?
Because Hollywood endings are pure fantasy. As Alvy Singer said in Annie Hall, "You always try to make things come out perfect in art, because it's so hard in real life." That's what Hollywood endings seek to do.
The Hollywood ending of this film totally relies on this character, Senator Payne, having a catharsis of guilt about the corruption of the system and the immoral depths to which he has sunk in his cooperation with it. Guilt to the point that he leaves the Senate floor for an interrupted attempt to blow his brains out. Failing that, he rushes back onto the floor to confess all and completely exonerate Senator Smith of any wrongdoing. YAY! HOORAY! A Hollywood ending at its best.
What makes me cry every time I watch this movie is the pure, unadulterated fantasy of such a person existing in real life.
Were this a story about real life, especially in current modern politics, a person with such a conscience wouldn't exist. A real Senator Payne, especially were he a Republican, would have sat there and let the son of the man he most respected in the world get railroaded out the door and onto his exhausted ass in the gutter. Jefferson Smith, a man whose honor and integrity place him morally far above the entire lot on that floor, would be chewed up and spit out. Just as all those robber barons wanted him to be. Just like how real life works.
The last thing you will ever find in our current controlling party's government is a conscience. It was abandoned along with caring and basic human empathy. The Third Reich didn't have a conscience. And Trump's Forth Reich doesn't have or need one either. A conscience is quite unbecoming on a dictator or his slavish lackeys. There is nothing quite so useless to a fascist as a conscience.
I suppose that it would be more accurate to say that politicians with a conscience like Senator Payne's are simply extremely rare, rather than nonexistent. I guess the actions of Liz Cheney showed a great deal of conscience. But again, look how rare such sacrifice is anymore. Such a person might be willing to throw themselves on the hand grenade of some corruption in our politics...
But how many times can they do that? And with no one willing to throw themselves on the next one, it's just a solitary brave act in a hopeless "lost cause". The sort of cause that Senator Jefferson Smith and his assassinated father believed were the only kind worth fighting for.
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