Your dad (or mother) would not have been laying the groundwork.for their departure and their sudden absence would have destroyed their the family as a unit. Paige’s parents are still there, living with her.
(As an aside, I am sorry about that, it sucks)
She is young and impressionable and she does not have that great an opinion of the USG as it is. Plus, I doubt they are going to begin by taking her to one of their OPs, she is not trained and her use to the center is her basic Americaness.
The real life illegals children seemed to have had no problem adjusting and the older was (per FBI) already turned.
I dispute this. The Soviet Union lasted for three-quarters of a century, it did most of the heavy work defeating Nazi Germany, launched the first unmanned and then manned spacecraft, and transformed a backward nation of peasants into an industrialized and highly educated one. This more educated population ultimately was then dissatisfied with their lot and wanted to live more like the most affluent segment of Western society, not realizing by that time that the trajectory they were on under the tsars would not have gotten them anywhere near that ballpark.
Indeed they are. But sampling members of the population for non-electoral purposes is a whole different beast. The 41 percent that voted for Mondale were still a large percentage of the population in absolute terms, even if they were impotent in electoral terms. Think about being offered to bet your life savings on a 59-41 bet. If the 59 comes through for you, you double that savings. If the 41 comes up, you are bankrupt. You feel comfortable with that?
And getting back from that statistical analogy into the real world of the '80s: I will say again that I think people make a great error when they treat that three-fifths of the population as though it represented 90 percent or more. Of the other two-fifths that didn’t support Reagan in '84, a large proportion (half or more, so probably one-fourth of the country) really hated him, absolutely detested the guy.
To that group (which almost surely includes Paige’s entire church, and definitely includes me), he was not only hopelessly uncool to a comical degree, he truly was the embodiment of real world evil, from his support of right wing death squads that killed nuns in Latin America, to his refusal to acknowledge AIDS, to his “othering”, Sarah Palin style, of anyone who didn’t fit with his peachy-keen, Norman Rockwell 1950s vision of a white bread America with no uppity blacks, no dirty hippies, and lots of pink-faced young people sipping on their malts through long straws down at the soda shoppe.
So for anyone who was a progressive or artistic type then, Reagan was the guy whose snarling visage you’d contort on a mask or grotesque sculpture, a visage that would engender visceral revulsion, anger, and contempt.
Slate, to their eternal credit, published this remembrance of Reagan by the inimitable Christopher Hitchens, two days after Reagan died. The balls that took! My hat is still off, eleven years later:
First, I think we can agree on one thing, and that is that you hate Ronald Reagan. You certainly seem to have gone out of your way to make that clear. Although I will say, the opinions of the late Mr. Hitchens–and for that matter Reagan’s children–have little import here.
As for the rest, two points:
I get the impression that you don’t think I am acknowledging liberal opposition to Reagan policies. That is not the case. I remember the No Nukes movement, I remember the “Land of Confusion” video…I remember all of that. My point is that, while the anti-Reagan views were well publicized, and held by millions of people, those views did not come close to the point where they were persuasive enough to convince the American public to hand power to presidential candidates espousing those views/policies.
In three straight elections (80, 84, and 88) Americans, through their votes at the ballot box, chose to go in another direction. That’s a fact, and it’s the environment in which the Jennings family–and in particular Paige–must operate moving forward.
Your argument about the wager is a specious one due to the extreme nature of the proposition. No, I wouldn’t bet everything on one winner take all wager. However, if a casino dealer approached me with a wager that would win 59 per cent of the time, and lose 41, I would probably stay at that table for awhile, because in the long run, I would make a profit…likely a hefty one.
Wouldn’t you think going all that time undercover to expose white supremacists kind of confirmed where Stan stood on that stuff - I mean he didn’t see his family for years in order to get evidence against racists?
If you review the context of his comment, I think Stan was explaining to P why the new guy might be so keen - perceieved to be nosey. Stan’s implying a black guy might feel the need to go the extra distance to impress, esp. in the early 80s.
Fwiw, I wrote a non-commerical blog for the first time on this episode but I don’t know if there are rules about that here - it doesn’t involve money just a wordpress personal blog?
But Paige doesn’t have to get a majority of the American electorate to endorse her joining the KGB. She gets 100 percent of the votes on that question. My raising the points I did was in response to the idea that the U.S. of this era was just so foursquare behind Reagan, anyone raised in this era would find it anathema to treat him and his government as an enemy.
And I was further trying to illustrate that the Reagan era wasn’t like, say, the Eisenhower era (the last president before the Gipper to serve two full terms in office), when even most of the people who voted for Adlai Stevenson both times didn’t *hate *Ike. That Reagan piled up two comfortable electoral victories does not change the fact that he was a *very *polarizing figure.
And it was not the McCarthyite Fifties then either. Many of the activists who opposed Reagan were involved in efforts to directly support groups like the Sandinistas, who were closely linked with the Soviet Union. (Again, think of the current mayor of New York City, Bill DeBlasio, who went to Nicaragua to learn from the Sandinistas.) It’s not really that far of a leap to go from being pro-Sandinista to being pro-USSR.
But Paige doesn’t have to get a majority of the American electorate to endorse her joining the KGB. She gets 100 percent of the votes on that question.
Not necessarily correct…so far Phillip hasn’t exactly been wild about the idea.
As far as the issue of 1980’s American thinking goes…if you asked American citizens at the time the straightforward question: “Would you consider being a spy for the KGB…yes or no?”. I doubt a very high percentage of Americans would say “yes”.
Protesting existing political policy is one thing, committing treason is quite another, and you don’t have to be a Reagan supporter to not want to do the latter.
Regarding what I said earlier about the “sustainability” of the Soviet system, yes seventy-five years is a long run, for a human being. Nation-states should be judged by a longer metric. Yes they did launch the first satellite and man into orbit, but only because they had bigger rockets, which they needed because their bombs were bigger.
Yes, it was an improvement over feudalism, but that’s hardly high praise.
Holy Crap! Martha by confronting Clark is clearly making a play for love over treason. I am surprised she went to him first, she must know by doing so she makes a calculated risk. Clark has got to be morally confused at this point, he’s lying to her, but is he? Would he actually try to protect her? He’s definitely finding it more and more difficult to live his life , who would be when executions turn into setting a man on fire. Man that was brutal!
Martha was looking for that .001% chance that Clark had a reasonable explanation. He worked his way out of it but she is useless to him now. She is nothing but a huge risk with no upside. She has to go.
I was surprised Clark didn’t kill her on the spot. Surely his people must have prepped him for certain contingencies - one of them being that Martha is discovered and she confronts Clark. Surely they must have been prepared to handle this eventuality.
There is, I think, a certain symmetry between Stan’s recruitment of Nina and Phillip’s recruitment of Martha. Also after losing that other source to the Pakistani guy, Phillip may be going soft with Martha (so to speak).
Basically, all he can find out from her now is FBI techniques for internal investigation. Maybe, just as Stan did, he’ll find a way to deflect suspicion onto another party, like maybe the “new” guy. But still, she is a “loose end” and that gun is still out there. But, just maybe, the writers will play against audience expectations.
Boy, how about that scene between Nina and her old boss? Seems to me, that now that the higher-ups are aware that she framed the guy, he ought to be “rehabilitated” and shouldn’t be running a backwater research facility.
There was truth in what Philip said to Martha about being an honest and good woman, and wanting to protect her. I still don’t see how she can possibly come out of this alive though. He basically admitted that he’s not who he pretends to be.
Man, there have been some highly disturbing scenes this season. The South African guy being burned alive was horrific.
But by killing her - they almost guarantee an FBI investigation. I didn’t pay 100% attention to the whole episode! but does she actually know he is a soviet spy? I didn’t think so, but not sure. I suspect they can come up with some reason she was used. I really don’t (want to) think he will kill her. If they do it will have to be the perfect accident - otherwise there will be a huge investigation (and maybe he has tried his best to avoid ANY connection), but even so they will know who was targeted and likely by which agency.
I can’t think of any scene that disturbing (and please don’t mention any others - I’d rather not know). I really wish I had fast forwarded that part. Part of me thought “this is so awful - I will never forget it”. When I woke up this morning it was less than two minutes before I thought of it. It was haunting and even the guys reaction to it was pretty awful.
Yes. He is supposed to kill her. He does care for her, she is a good woman, and he is lying awake at night conflicted. Martha is lying awake waiting for him to kill her.
This is his rehabilitation. Same with Nina. Also punishment for both of them to have to work with each other. She immediately started working him, asking for forgiveness.
And this isn’t a backwater facility, it is important enough that they kidnapped the world’s leading scientist in the field to head the project. He knows why she is there, and she knows he knows. But Nina has proven partially effective in such situations before.
I thought this was one of the best episodes yet. They let the young kid live, but he knows all their faces, and Gabriel got his face seen. Was it intentional? Surely another South African gov’t operator will question our failed bomber.
No, she does not know he’s a Soviet spy yet. At this point Philip has to trust that she loves him enough to keep him a secret, but based on her face at the end of the episode this can’t last much longer.
You are right that even an “accidental” death will trigger an FBI investigation. But the only other people who know about Clark are her parents, and they would not be able to identify Philip.
Sahara brings up a good point. Phillip may wind up trying to protect Martha, which could very well cause more conflict between Phillip and E and/or The Center, both of which are likely to come down on the side of eliminating the loose end that Martha has become.
So we may have Phillip at odds with his compatriots over not only Paige, but also Kimmie and possibly Martha. Given all of that one wonders how long Phillip can continue to live the life he is living. He’s been conflicted ,after all, since the series’ first episode, when he suggested defecting.
