There’s a new Netflix series, Gratitude, set in the 1950s.
All the men still wear hats. There’s a family – say, the Homburgs -- much like the Cleavers. Father supports the family and knows best. Mom sweetly manages everything. The kids are mischievous, but not bad.
Each episode, the Homburgs watch a futuristic and slightly frightening TV series set in 2020, when people all have little private scooter-planes that fly them quickly and safely to their destinations. (Let’s call the series “2020,” meaning both the year and seeing stuff clearly.) There are no aliens or spaceships, just regular people doing incredible harm without Bodysnatchers or Godzilla.
The Homburgs watch weekly, fascinated. It’s so funny and real, yet absolutely impossible, that they can’t wait to see what incredibly stupid thing the characters will do next. Every half-hour installment, they’re exhausted from laughing ‘til they cry, while also cringing.
In 2020, people are angry, and news is controlled by rich corporations. People sense that wealth rules them. They’re angry. So the rulers get the people to elect a rich man hoping to get richer, who loves admiration, but doesn’t know or care much about running a country. He’s angry, and the angry people all vote for him. (That’s dumb, like most sitcoms. The Homburgs know it’s just television.)
In one episode, the President loses an election, and actually tells election officials to “find me more votes” in a critical state, an obvious crime, and conspires with supporters to invade Capitol Hill to scare Congressfolk out of counting the vote. (The Homburgs laugh at their younger son, who believes this could actually happen!) When the FBI says the Soviet Union tried to rig the vote, the President tells Khrushchev that he believes Khrushchev’s denial. When he wins re-election four years later, he appoints people so unqualified that they’ll agree with whatever he says. Including as a defense secretary an actor who played one in the movies.
The Homburgs know President Eisenhower, in whose eight years the sole scandal was an aide, Sherman Adams, accepting rugs, jewellery, and a vicuña coat from a company under investigation. They can’t believe the fictional presidents’ aides get $1 million for advocating pardons for criminals. The President pardons a huge drug czar while blowing fisherman out of the water because they might be carrying drugs.
In the Homburgs’ world, the Salk vaccine has just eliminated polio. Kids still get measles and mumps. Mumps can be serious when adults catch it. By 2020, vaccines have eliminated both; but the goofy president appoints a health secretary who works to revive them.
Congress has named a national fine arts center after a tragically assassinated president. The fictional president unlawfully adds his name! Meanwhile, he insists that performances be limited to artists and shows he approves of, and threatens to arrest season-ticket-holders who fail to attend. Artists immediately cancel performances.
Of course, he sees his second term as a chance to avenge insults, ensure no appointees have a shred of independent conscience, and eliminate legal watchdogs, so as to dictate to the population more and more openly. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and he didn’t start with much conscience or compassion. The Homburgs look at each other in amazement as the season ends, with new elections – maybe – planned for the start of next season.
“Why is the new series called Gratitude?”
“Because the Homburgs are so grateful they don’t have to live through this.”
-- 30 --
[The above column appeared Sunday, 4 January 2026, in the Las Cruces Sun-News and on the newspaper's website and will presently appear on KRWG’s website (under Local Viewpoints). A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version of this Sunday column will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM / http://www.lccommunityradio.org/). ]
[Happy New Year, everyone! By the way, I liked this when I sent it in the other day; but it seems pretty silly in light of Mr. Trump’s wholly illegal war with Venezuela.]
[Obviously I made this “Netflix series” up. But it’d be a hell of a series, seeing this dangerous madness through 1950s eyes. If Rod Serling or someone could have imagined Trump back then, we would have laughed our asses off at how preposterous this would be. Obviously the damage and lost lives outweighs the comic aspects, even though it now appears more likely than it once did that the country will avoid a permanent dictatorship that starts with Trump and continues with younger, smarter folks invoking his name and “policies.” ]
If anything, the column understates how floored grownups in the 1950s would have been – although, as they’d witnesses Hitler’s Germany, and some had fought in a war against the Nazis, they might not have found it funny.
At the same time, while it’s fun to make fun of the Donald, two important points need saying:
1. We are locked in a transformation into a much deeper imbalance of power and money than we’ve ever known before, that is not good for even the rich folks doing it, and Donald Trump is a pimple on the ass of that transformation: helping it along, but he didn’t start it or think it up, and will be off the stage soon enough, given his corpulence, bad temper, and failing cognitive abilities. And the ambitious greed of those lurking in his wake, such as Mr. Vance. He’s not quite a distraction; but being overly delighted that we slapped this fly off our national nose, should we succeed in doing that, could distract us focusing on the deeper sorts of change we need.
2. Although the 1950s were in some ways superior [ we taxed the obscenely wealthy at a more extreme rate that came closer to justice and made for healthier national economy, for example; and folks in government made some effort to govern; and we weren’t so hyperpartisan]; but in other ways, no! Not only were we about to make serious efforts to improve the lot of ethnic minorities, women, and, not too much later, folks with unconventional genders or sexual tastes, but our foreign policy, at least as regarded Latin America, was made by and for United Fruit Company. And we destroyed democracies around the world in the name of freedom. This was not a paradise, and although we covered our actions with cleverer stories than Mr. Trump does, we were doing a lot of very bad things to a lot of others, only a small amount of which could reasonably be justified by the threat Russia (the Soviet Union) then posed to us.
So let’s be clear: Donald Trump is an obscene development damaging to our national security, our society, our democracy, and our environment, but HE IS NOT THE PROBLEM. We need to move on from him, in an appropriate lawful and peaceful manner, but then, rather than celebratory toasts, we need to help our compatriots focus on what is really happening here. Failing that, the folks making out like bandits will continue to pit us against each other, by telling the credible that its all the fault of Somali welfare cheats (not obscenely wealthy tax cheats, who cheat far more cleverly) or gays, that the interesting issue of who should be allowed on girls’ athletic teams is more urgent than taking back control of our country, improving our economy for all, and even managing a health care system that works, as other nations have. ]
