The Plot Against America

Freedom is Never Completely Won. But It Can Be Lost.

This 2020 limited series is based on Philip Roth's 2004 novel of the same name. Although it had been written a little earlier and was set a lot earlier, this production by David Simon and Ed Burns was perfectly timed.

This historic fiction, a genre that always has us curious -- what parts of this are real and what parts are not? Some details are clearly meant to be thought-provoking and clearly never happened. But this is speculative fiction that is rooted in which much of what is speculated is closer to the truth than we might have understood.

The story imagines an alternate history, in which Charles Lindbergh defeated Franklin Roosevelt in the 1940 race for he U.S. presidency, on an anti-war platform. Lindbergh was not, in fact, a candidate in that race, which Roosevelt won by a large margin. Both Roosevelt and his real-world opponent Wendell Willkie declared opposition to U.S. involvement in what was to become World War II. Wilkie did maintain that Roosevelt was not serious and that he had secret war plans.

The famous pilot Lindbergh did not run for the president, but real-life Lindbergh did express many of the antisemitic views that are central to the campaign of the Lindbergh in this story. The series follows the unfolding of these fictional events from the campaign of 1940 through the first two years of the Lindbergh presidency -- almost to the point of U.S. involvement on the parallel, real time line in which Roosevelt was president.

This period is told on two important levels. The global events and national politics are conveyed through newsreels shown at cinema in Newark, New Jersey. These are seen through the lens of Newark's Jewish community, one extended family in particular. 

And this is where Our Noni comes in. She plays Evelyn Finkel, a character who gradually becomes the link between the local and global, the personal and political in this complex tale. Over the course of six episodes, a schism emerges between Evie and the rest of her family as their local rabbi aligns himself with Lindbergh, and she with the rabbi. They have their reasons, which they come to regret far too late. 

This dystopian story is as important as it is timely. It is not possible to watch this post-2020 without recognizing the ways in which racism and xenophobia were employed in political rhetoric, how the violence of independent mobs and individuals was fomented by that same rhetoric, and how the instigators of that violence managed to insulate themselves from culpability. 

Final Verdict: Five Croquet Balls