Paul Levinson's Infinite Regress

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George Santayana had irrational faith in reason - I have irrational faith in TV.

Monday, March 12, 2018

Homeland 7.5: "The Russian Angle"

Homeland 7.5 - about as current as current can be - features Saul investigating "the Russian angle," that is, whether the fake news that unleashed last week's Waco-style attack by the FBI was part of a Russian operation to destabilize the United States by fanning our already close-to-the-boil hatreds.

It's acknowledged as fact - even by the former Russian operative Saul visits out in Wyoming - that the Russians did this, used fake news stories, to meddle in our election. That would be the election that resulted in Trump as President in our reality and Keane as President in Homeland's. But the two Presidents, real and fictional, have little in common.

Keane is no paragon of virtue, but she does evince more decency in her "Charlottesville" than Trump did in ours. Keane is not above manipulating events and people to get her way. But she is portrayed as having no interest in playing footsie with the Russians, or in any way allowing herself to benefit from their dissemination of fake news - if, indeed, they are the source of the fake news stories that helped her win the election, or the fake news story that erupted last week on Homeland.

The retired Russian operative makes a pretty persuasive case that they're not - that is, not behind the bogus report that the white supremacist's boy was being left to die - but, again, he does this by saying it would be too soon after the Russian use of fake news to influence the election in Keane's favor, and that makes no sense.

Maybe the Russians tried to tip the Homeland election in favor of Keane's opponent? If so, we need more information to make sense of that. The upshot is that, in our reality, fake news is a very complex issue. Homeland therefore needs to treat this a little more carefully, and with a little more logic, than it has been doing so far. Throwing out concerns about the Russians as the source of the pivotal fake news event on the show may be current doesn't cut it.

More about fake news here ...

See also Homeland 7.1: The Worse Threat ... Homeland 7.2: Carrie vs. 4chan ... Homeland 7.3: Separating Truth from Hyperthinking ... Homeland 7.4: Fake News!