"My Country Is A Company" - The Forgotten Genius of Jericho

Contemporary television is littered with half-remembered would-be masterpieces, some celebrated by ever-decreasing circles of knowing fan communities as secrets they share with each other in an ignorant world. Perhaps Firefly is the most well-known "lost" opus magnus, but currently showing on Netflix is the later offering from CBS Paramount Network, Jericho, a post-apocalyptic tale set in small town Mid-West America. I don't know if it has a fan community exiled in cyberspace, nor if it is held to be a cult by anyone, though it would be nice if both were true. Because on many levels this was close to perfect television - a combination of strong characters, everyday life, mysterious plots, plenty of action and a battle of ideas and ideals.

Set in the fictitious town of Jericho in northern Kansas after unknown terrorists have detonated nuclear bombs in 23 American cities, effectively destroying the federal government, Jericho takes the time afforded by TV as opposed to cinema films (which it was originally conceived as) to develop some complex, highly credible characters and plots. From  Skeet Ulrich as leading protagonist Jake Green and the mysterious Robert Hawkins, played by British actor Lennie James (currently appearing as Morgan Jones in The Walking Dead), to Easi Morales as a conflicted army Major and Pamela Reed as Jake's family matriarch, there are numerous powerful performances aided by scripts that flow naturally and with some humour alongside the nuclear night. Notably, the growing relationship between farmer Stanley Richmond, his sister Bonnie and girl friend Mimi Clark is one of the most empathetic subplots to have graced TV.

But underlying the series of disasters, threats and triumphs encountered by the people of the little town, the story is a powerful exploration of some major political themes that had already taken hold of the USA when it was originally broadcast a decade ago, and which are now coming to a possibly Faustian climax in the elections of this current year.

For, without giving the plot away, the terrorists who have nuked the USA are not the obvious post-9/11 suspects and the "Axis of Terror" involving Iran and North Korea is debunked early on. But looming large is the corporate takeover of democratic government and the corruption of politics by populist demagogues. In the 22 episode long first season, this is less apparent - it manifests itself mainly in the arrival in town of mercenaries from the Blackwater-style Ravenwood Security Company, which murders and loots in its wake. In the shorter, tighter and significantly more political second season, Ravenwood's parent company, the Jennings & Rall Corporation (see its fake website here!) emerges from the shadows as the moving force behind a breakaway Allied States of America.

Lennie James and Skeet Ulrich as Robert Hawkins and Jake Green

This entity, headed by President Tomaccio, a former J&R executive, has emerged west of the Mississippi and is vying for control of the former USA with the remains of the old Federal Government based in Ohio and a re-established Republic of Texas. J&R's doublespeak, preaching democracy and freedom while violently establishing corporate control over public services, the military and encroaching on, for example, Stanley's farm, is related back to contemporary American foreign policy. Jake's own backstory is as a corporate mercenary in Iraq and Afghanistan and his demons from his time there resurface as Fallujah comes to Kansas. Confronted by a soldier trying to impose the writ of his political masters, Jake retorts that the ASA is an illegitimate entity - "Can't you see my country is a company?"

But equally important is the small stuff - the way the townspeople pool their resources and support each other, and welcome refugees in spite of the shortage of food and power. And, conversely, when the chips are down, how an attempt by a young storekeeper to profit from scarcity is given short-shrift and money no longer matters. To be sure, in uncertain times, we do see a "well-regulated militia" understandably arm itself against the dangers of the unknown, but when the neighbouring town lapses into Tea Party vigilante-ism, the people of Jericho respond by downing their own weapons to stay true to civilised values. It is a survivalist tale, but it takes on the would-be survivalists and shows them to be nothing more than angry, hollow men, scared and empty of any true values.

The series was cancelled in the second season, but was given the chance to reach some endings and this becomes evident in the elevated pace of the final three or four episodes. However, this paradoxically heightens the urgency of the plot and doesn't particularly detract: the slower first season had built up both the story and characters well enough, and in many ways it ends at the right moment, although for true fans there was a brief continuation in the form of some graphic novels.

Jericho takes on both the corrupt realities of the contemporary neoliberal world and the fantasies of the libertarian alternatives - showing how completely each crumple into barbaric nightmares. Instead, the underpinning theme is that, deep down, most people want to do good by each other, and we do that best when we stand together - even, and perhaps most of all, in the worst of times.


Jericho is currently available on Netflix.

Limits to Growth = Limits to Wealth

(Right -The Desert of Capitalism: on the left in this satellite picture is Haiti, whose Government has permitted full-scale exploitation of the forests by big business. On the right, the Government of the Dominican republic has poured public funds into Eco-tourism and conservation - the results are plain to see.)

The mainstream of politics often combines its reluctant nod to the need for environmental protection with a hasty assurance that capitalism can yet deliver "green growth". Like latter day alchemists, they claim a synthesis of the free market with modern technology, and a healthy dose of genetic engineering for good measure, will somehow deliver a nirvana of never-ending increases in production and consumption and, of course, profit in a sustainable way.

This, of course, is the underlying folly of capitalism - that limitless demand can somehow be met ultimately with limitless supply. In any other realm of human activity, under any other title, the concept would be laughed out as fantasy at best, dangerous delusions at worst. But for our planet, its species mired in an unchallenged liberal economy now for over twenty years, if not much longer, capitalism is as essential as the air we breathe (or even more essential, given the damage capitalism is permitted to inflict on our air). Since Fukyama declared the end of history with the fall of the Berlin Wall, we have been left with a received wisdom and socio-political consensus that there is only one way forward: free markets, deregulated as far as possible. And through the 1990s and the start of this decade, enough crumbs fell to enough people from the Masters' tables to maintain the illusion that somehow everyone would benefit. The suffering of hundreds of millions of the poorest in all societies, their poverty - both relative and absolute - was effectively shut out of the media as effectively as the thousands of "gated communities" that have sprung up throughout the western world have physically shut out the offending sight of poor from the eyes of the rich.

Of course, we now see this Neverland unravelling before our eyes with the banking crisis and the recession. But how has it been dealt with? After all the wringing of hands, the denunciation of "greedy" bankers (as if somehow there were some who were not) and the declaration that such things could never be allowed to happen again, what do we find? A handful of bankers have departed their well-paid jobs, in nearly all cases with handsome pay offs and swollen pension pots. Even Fred Goodwin, who captained the Royal Bank to ruin, continues to pick up a pension of £342,500 plus pa, along with a seven figure lump sum, while 9,000 of his former employees have lost their jobs. At least he will be able to get the scratches on his car fixed. His worst penalty? "Blackballed" allegedly by the membership committee of Saint Andrews Golf Club - now that's capital regulating itself!

Now this past week, we are told the bankers are now returning to their old habits. Kept afloat with the hard earned money of taxpayers, after spending years themselves doing their utmost to avoid paying their personal income tax and their organisations' corporate taxes, they now feel ready to carry on as normal.

No surprise. The capitalist system has an inherent driver - it is to maximise your return for the minimum investment of effort: You want something I have. My intention becomes to find what is the absolute greatest level of value that you will surrender to me for it. There are no ethical considerations. No long term planning. No morality other than how do I extract the most wealth from you, for me. Now.

So it is little wonder that, with some signs the current downturn has flattened out, that capitalists seek to assert their normal behaviours. They have always done so in the past - why would they not now? It is, we are told, the "natural" way of doing things, so why would their nature suddenly change?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/banks-are-forgetting-lessons-of-crisis-already-warns-turner-1716001.html

The corollary of all this though is that the concept of a "return to normal" IS unrealistic - the imbalance in wealth, globally and in the UK, is at a historic high. The gap between rich and poor has never been wider. Tiny numbers of people hold vast quantities of wealth while resources grow tight and environmental degradation impoverishes hundreds of millions - both developments driven by the voracious need of capitalism to feed the pockets of shareholders rather than the bellies of hungry children.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2008/aug/04/workandcareers.executivesalaries

It is not sustainable, which is why a return to normal ways can only be a temporary phenomenon. Capitalism is driving the planet and our species to the edge. Any recovery may last a while - a year, two years, a decade even, but soon enough, the impact of passing not just peak oil but peak carbon fuel production will kick in with a thump that will bring whole economies crashing down, banks and governments with them, and social unrest, disorder, violence and war may well be the most obvious result.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/08/kingsnorthclimatecamp.climatechange
There is another future: a Green one, offering redistribution of wealth, fairer societies, banks and enterprises focussed on mutual protection and community need rather than shareholder dividends and private profit. A sustainable future that has plans for the next 50 and 100 years, not the next 3 to 5 years which fit the common corporate business plans of most capitalist companies. This way recognises that there are limits to growth, there is only so much that can be extracted without needing to replenish. And this in turn leads to the point that if there are limits to growth, there need also to be limits to wealth: that a sustainable society seeking the common good has, by virtue our human condition and our planet's limits, to set a maximum level of wealth that an individual can hold, in income and in wealth. Any other way can only lead to the chaos and collapse of the capitalist scenario.

We face a choice: green and growth cannot be intertwined indefinitely; we need to learn that there are limits - to what we can have, to what we can take. Instead, we have to find how we can do more with what we have - and all the evidence points to those people who already do so have happier and healthier lives than those who are tied in, emotionally, psychologically, financial and physically, to the capitalist treadmill. If this can be translated to the whole community, if it can become the zeitgeist, the underpinning ethic of society, a transformation can begin - but it will involve hard choices and political action.

It won't be an easy option or a soft choice: I am not arguing for a touchy-feely hippy revolution.

But I AM arguing for a revolution.