The Dyfunctional American

If the American Empire is really to fail, like all empires before it and after it, it will at least be well documented. There it is all, paranoia, autodestruction, total failure: the collapse of society on all levels as shown on The Wire, the collapse of the individual due to a lack of health insurrance which drives the chemistry teacher into drug-trafficking aka Breaking Bad, the cult of security that is undermining everything, especially the security of the Homeland. And now, right in time for the Fools on the Hill, the budget kamikaze, the fiscal cliffhangers, the rednecks from Washington where they (meaning: the Republicans) try to undo the very foundation of what made this country strong, a sense of politics that goes beyond – well, what? Ask Frank Underwood. He will turn to you, look you into the face and tell you with the calmest Kevin-Spacey-voice that you are out of your mind if you ever believed such a thing as the common good would weigh in one of the decisions being taken in Congress or the Senate: This is House of Cards, the latest addition to the story of how America fell, the dismanteling of any sense of purpose, the politician as undertaker.

Power, this is nothing new, is corrupting. What is new about House of Cards is the smile of Robin Wright that is worn and false and catching. What is new is the crisp way of Kevin Spacey in his scheming, selling, seducing. What is new is Wright and Spacey. The Underwoods. What a couple. They are like venom, and the longer you watch (five episodes so far), the more you ask yourself how it can be possible that they don’t poison each other just by being in a room together. They eat people. Robin Wright spits them out after she is done with them, the thin silhouette of her body would not allow any other way. But Kevin Spacey, he chews on them for ever, he rips their flesh from their bones, he smiles as his teath clench the last piece of meat, he loves spare ribs, but even more than that he loves to tear apart humans. He is like a reverse Richard III., his lust for power is a revenge of sorts, he is destructive in a democratic context, he is no dictator, but a master of spin, a deceiver who is more and more caught in the net that was meant to hold him in his position, a bit like Don Draper only that there is more at stake than the survival of an ad agency. Empires don’t fall by force. They crumble from within. One man’s soul might be a battleground. But a couple out there to kill is Armageddon.