Living in coronavirusworld 30: The Plot Against America

4/21

The Plot Against America

I find that after a day with a lot of hours spent on ZOOM, I need t retreat. To unconnected, And be here with myself.  I also find myself cooking food from my  childhood. I found my grandmother's cookbook and realized that many of my mother's go to recipes are there. So in this time of crisis, I return to the kitchen to recreate what sustained me through my childhood. 

Today’s long walk takes me through Harlem and the Upper West Side to check on my prescriptions.  I wanted to pass through one of my favorite places, the community garden on 89th. But it is closed.

the garden is closed

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I note that Barney Greengrass is now shuttered, not reopening after his annual Passover week vacation. The Kirsch bakery has given up as well.  Only the top shelf butcher shop remains open. I take the 7 bus home. 

The quiet day, understanding the new contextual understanding of that term, gives me the chance to finish HBO’s limited six episode series of Philip Roth’s the Plot Against America.  Roth’s novel, from 2004, is an alt history speculative fiction in which Charles Lindbergh runs for President in 1940 and defeats Franklin Roosevelt on platform of keeping America out of war. Lindbergh signs an agreement with Hitler and slowly unleashes the hidden hatreds and fears of America into an increasingly fascist reality. Roth is essentially taking his own fears and anxieties of growing up in Newark, New Jersey as a Jewish kid in the 1940’s amplified by a plausible historic shift.

The HBO version faithfully portrays Roth’s basic story. As such it joins a growing list of dystopian prophetic calls for awareness from Handmaid’s Tale to The Man in the High Castle to Watchmen, each with their own unique take on where we are and where we could be headed. Each deserve their  own analysis. The growth of this genre can only speak to the growing  cultural anxiety of where we are now as a nation. 

In Plot…, we see each believable step leading to the dismantling of democracy. Like in Germany, Jews who thought they were fully part of this country, learning how vulnerable they all were all along.  Perhaps the most tragic character is Rabbi Bengelsdorf.  Wonderfully portrayed by John Torturro, we can see the rabbi not as someone simply out for personal gain, but truly believing he was keeping Americans out of war and doing the best to integrate his people into American mainstream by actively supporting and working for Lindbergh. In the end, all he did was provide a distracting  cover for the true fascist agenda of Lindbergh. When Lindbergh’s plane disappears, Blame is placed on the Jews and even Rabbi Bengelsdorf, “  a Jewish Rasputin” in the words of Secretary of the Interior Henry Ford, is taken into custody,

In Roth’s novel, the words of Anne Lindbergh and the overreaching of the administration lead to the removal of acting President Burton Wheeler  and the calling of a special election which is won by Roosevelt and the all things return to realty as we have known it. The brilliance of HBO (and David Simon’s) revision of Roth’s ending is breathtaking. (Spoiler alert.) The HBO version ends with the election. There are scenes of voter intimidation and suppression and the burning of ballots. It is unclear if there will still be enough votes to elect Roosevelt. The end. The message for us is unmistakeable. We are at a critical crossroads in this country. It can go one way or the other. When one says the message is, it can happen here, one rational response is it already has. What happens next is vitally important. One can only hope for enough wisdom and courage to keep ay real sense of democracy alive. Our fate is in our hands.