I'm All Out of Whiskey

I have started watching Season 6 of the Netflix series, House of Cards.

President Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey) is dead, and his wife Claire (Robin Wright) is the new president. She takes charge with ferocious scheming using all of her wily skills, which are sometimes frightening, to make sure people know she will not be denied. Anything.

This series closely identifies our own emotionally and spiritually bankrupt political system, although in HOC things are, well, dramatically excessive.

The characters in the Claire Underwood (which she changes to her maiden name, Clair Hale) administration are about as corrupt as a gang of Capone criminals in the 1920s. Like those guys, they’re all in nice suits with clean looks, but underneath the urbane clothes beat hearts of stone.

The tortured and deranged Doug Stamper (Michael Kelly) returns from prison and ruin and God knows what else, to pick up his old expertise in doing relentless damage to those Claire Hale finds in the way.

Stamper was Frank’s guy, a man with a mutilated soul who is seemingly incapable of kindness or decency. He did all of Frank Underwood’s dirty work, which stacked up like pastic garbage bags on abandoned streets. Now, he works for Clair, though the two of them are fierce enemies.

Come to think of it, nearly everyone on the show is enemies. Again, a nice reference to our own nasty crowd of current politicians.

There is a scene in one of the episodes where Clair is having to allow herself to appear vulnerable and weak in order to ultimately crush those who want her to fail. She turns to the camera and says, “Playing incompetent is so exhausting.”

I do admire her intelligence and her determination, as a woman, to demonstrate a superior mind to all of the pathetic dolts around her, both men and women, who are convinced they have her where they want her. Man, are they wrong.

Watching all of this takes a certain amount of stamina. There is little in this series that offers bright moments of people being good and gracious. Most of them, like the millionaire brother and sister, Bill and Annette Shepherd (Greg Kinnear and Diane Lane) are such blatant snobs, people entirely depleted of conscience and heart, obsessed with greed and entitlement, that you want to simply cheer for their collapse.

It seems obvious to me that House of Cards is intended to fill us with outrage and perhaps even grief, regarding our American political system. The excesses of so much aberrant behavior make you long for someone to appear on the scene with their humanity intact and the ability to offer the hope of transformation.

Today, we face enormous problems in our society, often fueled and promoted by a completely failed political system.

House of Cards is a television series intended to be a mirror, showing us just how useless, but more so, how dangerous, some political leaders can be to the survival of our republic and the values that have always defined us.

There is a line in an old John Wayne movie where he’s trying to clean up the town. He turns to a passive town leader and says, “I’m here to kick ass and drink whiskey. And pilgrim, I’m all out of whiskey.”

I don't think kicking ass is necessarily useful but it is past time that we who truly love this country do what we can to keep the values, the ethics, and the ideals we have always held dear, as guiding principles for us in government and in society.

These are critically serious times. They demand action.

Party affiliation no longer matters. We’re at a place where we have to stand up for character, take personal responsibility for treating people with decency and respect including all minorities and immigrants and refugees, resist the constant demand to take sides, and refuse to play the game of demeaning the vulnerable as obstacles in our way to personal success.

We are not unhinged characters in a House of Cards. We are Americans. For God’s sake, let’s act like it.

Please vote if you haven’t already done so.

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