Spacey as Underwood, Trump at campaign rally in Las Vegas – Photo: Gage Skidmore
It just so happened I finished up this season of House of Cards — D.C.’s not-even-guilty bingeing pleasure of choice — at the same time results came in for the Super Tuesday primaries. Watching two funhouse mirror versions of American democracy unfold simultaneously — television character Frank Underwood and television character Donald Trump — just reinforced my distaste for both.
To start with the fictional, I realize I’m supposed to hate the Underwoods, while also thrilling to their villainy. And that was a lot of fun for a while. Then the show rushed Frank Underwood into the Oval Office, leaving behind the batshit byzantine plots of the Washington elite for dealings with a second-rate Putin and something involving China that even the shows writers can’t explain.
So when this season kicked off with a fallen reporter providing narration for his cell mate’s jackoff session, I was already halfway to the door. I would have made it out had it not been for friends telling me, Oh, just wait, it gets so much better! No, actually, it doesn’t. Somewhere around the time the show began telegraphing an assassination attempt and minor character death with a lack of subtlety surprising even for House of Cards, I moved directly into the hate-watch camp.
It’s not the show’s lack of connection to reality that bothers me, although “ludicrous” doesn’t even begin to describe its depiction of the American political system, the writers’ understanding of which seems to have come from skimming a few months worth of Politico articles. It’s not even watching the cringe-inducing cameos by prominent journalists, although it does reinforce why cable news should be about the last place one would go to be a well-informed citizen these days. (Why, Gwen Ifill, why? You’re supposed to be the best of us!)
What it comes down to is a show that is fundamentally stupid — filled with fabulous actors and wicked one liners, but still stupid — working so hard to appear smart. This pretentious nonsense is why you end up with the two evil geniuses putting together a complicated plot that involves allowing an Iraqi terror leader to speak with potentially murderous kidnappers yet neglect to have even one Arabic speaker in the room. Or the baldly nihilistic ending that exploits American victims of terror as nakedly as 24 ever did but with even less nuance.
Which brings us to Trump: a campaign that is fundamentally stupid — filled with compelling characters and wicked one liners, but still stupid — working so hard to appear smart. Part of the fascination of watching the Trump roadshow is how closely it tracks with what we would traditionally consider political satire: dismissing the egghead elites and proposing ludicrously simplistic solutions to every problem (building a wall, registering all Muslims, solving every international problem by making deals faster than Monty Hall). Trump gives his audience scapegoats — blacks, Mexicans, Muslims — because Trump is about looking outward for excuses, never inward for understanding.
But what Trump and House of Cards really have in common is hate and anger about our political system. For Trump voters, that anger is directed toward anyone but themselves: at the politicians who’ve abandoned them, the minorities who’ve taken their jobs, the gays who’ve stripped away their values. It’s a hate directed at others, constantly looking to blame.
For House of Cards fans, particularly the feverish ones populating Washington, it’s simply self hatred — thrilling to a show that treats its audience as complicit in a failed, corrupt system. It’s why journalists clamor for cameos on a show that presents journalists as corrupt or inept or captives of the system. It’s why politicians and staffers live for a show that claims there are no principles, only power. It’s a collective probing of an open wound. Yes, you can read too much into a simple show about political corruption, but given the self-seriousness of both the narrative and its creators, I’m inclined to take the show at its word.
Trump or Underwood, fantasy or fiction, right or left — it’s hard to see how any of this ends other than badly.
The U.S. Supreme Court has cleared the way for the Trump administration to enforce a policy mandating that U.S. passports list a traveler’s sex as assigned at birth, based on biological characteristics.
On his first day in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order declaring that the U.S. government would recognize only two sexes, effectively erasing transgender identity. The order, which pledged to uphold "the biological reality of sex," directed the State Department to revise its passport policies to "accurately reflect the holder's sex."
Dutch authorities say Veronica Clifford-Carlos failed to prove she faces a "legitimate risk of persecution" or threat of physical harm in the United States.
A Dutch court has upheld a ruling rejecting a U.S. transgender woman's bid for asylum, finding she does not face a substantial enough threat of persecution in her home country.
Veronica Clifford-Carlos, a 28-year-old visual artist from California, said she once believed she’d build a life in the United States, but felt compelled to flee after receiving death threats over her gender identity.
Clifford-Carlos left the United States -- leaving behind friends and her dog -- and flew to the Netherlands with her father. Upon arrival, she applied for asylum, telling authorities about the abuse she endured in the United States, particularly after President Donald Trump’s re-election last fall.
Justine Lindsay, the NFL's first out transgender cheerleader, recently revealed that she was fired this year, a decision she alleges was motivated by transphobia and Donald Trump's election as president.
"I was cut because I'm trans," Lindsay said in an Instagram Live with Gaye Magazine. "I don't wanna hear nobody saying, 'She didn't wanna come back.' Why the hell would I not wanna come back to an organization that I've been a part of for three years? That makes no sense to me. So I was cut. I was devastated. It stung. I was hurt."
Lindsay, who made history as the NFL's first transgender cheerleader when she tried out and made the Carolina Panthers's TopCats squad in 2022, told the magazine that her teammates "know the truth" about the decision to cut her from the squad.
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