The most chilling part of The Loudest Voice 1.3 tonight on Showtime is Roger Ailes, in his speech in Warren, Ohio after Barack Obama's victory, saying we need to "make America great again". That, combined with the talk about immigrants ruining America, on the day that our ICE gestapo began rounding up immigrants for deportation, is an eerily prescient voicing of the worst instincts in America in 2008 and shortly after - when Obama won and became President.
Before that, we see Ailes struggling to stop that from happening. But he's hampered by his boss Rupert Murdock, who genuinely wants Fox News to live up to its "fair and balanced" moniker. And he's hampered by the sheer dumbness of Sarah Palin. And by David Axelrod, who stands up to Ailes and his political abuses.
On being dumb, we also get an eerie glance at our present day when Ailes says Biden, the VP candidate, is "dumb as an ash tray". Again, our modern day fascist in the White House has said much the same about Biden today. Trump has not originated much. He's good at borrowing insults from Ailes and the cunning intelligentsia of the new right in America.
We also see more of the ways that Ailes preys on women. All of this is leading up to what happened with Gretchen Carlson, which we saw the beginnings of in this episode. We've yet to see what Ailes did to get Trump in office - in addition to giving him phrases - and get the disaffected in the midwest to leave the Democratic Party. The Loudest Voice continues to be one of the best accountings of how fascism has managed to get such a grip in America. In laying that bare, it may also show some pathways for rooting it out.
See also: The Loudest Voice 1.1: Fox Launch ... The Loudest Voice 1.2: September 11 and After
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