“When a man knows he is to be hanged...it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” So mused Samuel Johnson, the 18th-century British writer. This is a sentiment that the Democrats ought to consider.

There is, according to the political prognosticators, a strong chance that in a mere 10 months the Donald Trump cult, formerly known as the Republican Party, will gain control of the House of Representatives and perhaps the Senate as well. Imagine what that could mean for the republic, if the downplayers and deniers of January 6 and the proponents of the Big Lie—the scoundrels who attempted to abet Trump’s would-be coup—were in control of the body. These are people who have refused to hold the figurative, if not literal, leader of that violent insurrectionist attack on Congress accountable; they did not even accept the notion that the seditious assault warranted an independent, bipartisan investigation.

Peer into the future and envision the Republicans in charge. Kevin McCarthy as speaker. Or perhaps Jim Jordan will mutiny against him and seize power. Worse, Trump wielding the speaker’s gavel, a possibility floated by the former guy’s most sycophantic congressional allies. (The House speaker need not be an elected member of the House. The position can be held by any schmo chosen by a majority of representatives.) Think of the investigations they will mount. Probes of the 2020 election and the Trump–Russia investigations. Hunter Biden, Hunter Biden, Hunter Biden. Dr. Anthony Fauci might need an army of attorneys and more bodyguards. Hillary and Bill Clinton could be called in...for something. Election officials in states across the country harassed and intimidated. Picture Ted Cruz and Rand Paul running committees, Marjorie Taylor Greene as a subcommittee chair, and Adam Schiff and Jamie Raskin booted off committees for no good reason. QAnonish conspiracy theories being amplified. A Congress driven by revenge. And racism. No chance of addressing climate change, college debt, economic inequality, inadequate health care, the plight of the Dreamers. Retribution 24/7. In the name of Trump. Maybe even at the hand of Trump. Gallows on the Capitol grounds? No. But political firing squads nonstop. And what might a GOP Congress do to overturn election results in 2024?

This is the prospect that Democrats—and all of us—face. It should focus the mind and spur a simple question for President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats: Within the realm of the possible and acknowledging obstacles that cannot be removed, what can be done, beginning yesterday, to prevent such an outcome? Starting from this position, the answer seems obvious. The Biden White House and the Democrats must demonstrate competent governance and improve the lives of voters in critical congressional districts in a manner that voters will recognize. The problem is no longer Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. They have successfully torpedoed the Build Back Better shebang and legislation to protect voting rights. The battle now for Democrats is against the Trumpists, not the obdurate renegades within their own party. And the issue for the Democrats is how to enact any big-ticket item that can win 50 votes in the Senate. That is, a big-ticket item that Manchin and Sinema will accept.

If Manchin is saying he will abide one or two large measures—pre-K, extended child tax credits, or whatever—the Democrats should go for it and take whatever deal they can get at this point. Ditto regarding Sinema. Pass something to add to the $1 trillion infrastructure bill already done. Impress voters. Giving them something is better than delivering nothing. Half a loaf, a quarter of a loaf. Move legislation that is likely to resonate in the key swing districts that must be won to retain control of the House. Afterward, force votes on the other individual and popular components of Build Back Better—family and medical leave, lower drug prices, climate change action—and create a story: We want to provide America with these benefits and reforms; the Republicans do not. At the end of the day—or by November 8—the Democrats (read: Joe Biden) must show that they can manage a world stricken by inflation and (still) Covid and that they can collectively establish initiatives to improve the lives of voters. Whatever it takes.

Wait, you might say. Does this mean the opposers win? You would let Manchin and Sinema hold the Democratic majority hostage? We’re not supposed to negotiate with hostage takers, right? Actually, we cut deals with hostage takers all the time. Ransom is paid to kidnappers. Prisoners are swapped to obtain the return of hostages. When it serves the public good. The Biden administration and the Democrats writ large do not hold much sway over Manchin and Sinema. Threaten to take away Manchin’s plum committee assignments? Then he could declare himself an independent—as he has considered—and caucus with the Republicans in return for a fine committee chair. The Senate rules afford these two—and every senator—too much power, particularly obstructionist power.

It stinks like a skunk, but at this moment in human history, the Democrats are at the mercy of this pair. Progressive Democrats in the summer and fall presented a good case for the full enchilada of the $3 trillion Build Back Better program. They were the steel in Biden’s spine. But the math is simple: They do not have the votes. And their contention that only bold progressive action can bolster the party for the midterms sounds good. It’s where my heart is. But without the votes, this is just a theory. (Remember, Bernie Sanders’ bold progressive agenda did not gain him the Democratic nomination in 2020.) Time has run out for debating the merits of this article of faith for the progressives. They and other Democrats must come together to safeguard American democracy from the Trump threat. Kumbaya.

The nation needs comprehensive climate change action. It needs to provide more support to working families. It needs expanded and affordable health care and education systems. It needs to address racial and social injustices. It needs to protect and enhance democratic rule at home and abroad. But for any of that to happen to any degree, the Trump cult must be kept out of power. There is no higher goal at this time. The Ds must act like D-Day is at hand. Enact what can be enacted. And beat back the GOP into corners on the popular measures that cannot be passed because of its opposition—and draw a stark and easy-to-sell contrast between the parties.

A hanging does loom on the horizon. To the extent possible, place bickering, grandstanding, and ideological agendas aside. Concentrate.

Got anything to say about this item—or anything else? Email me at thisland@motherjones.com.

The Watch, Read, and Listen List

The French Dispatch. Gushing reviews tend to be boring. Consequently, it is a challenge to write about Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch, a masterpiece and perhaps his best film. I’m tempted to say, just watch it, and leave it at that. But if you need more convincing, I’ll go on. This movie is an innovative and highly stylized amusement. The premise is playful. What some might call a real hoot. Arthur Howitzer Jr., the son of a newspaper publisher in Liberty, Kansas, persuades his father to send him to France on temporary assignment as a foreign correspondent. He lands in the town of Ennui-sur-Blasé. Contrary to its name, the town is chock-full of stories for him to cover, and he never leaves. Instead, he recruits other writers to cover the local goings-on and turns the Kansas paper’s Sunday supplement, conventionally named Picnic, into a magazine titled The French Dispatch that bears more than an uncanny resemblance to the New Yorker. Anderson is not coy; the movie is an over-the-top homage to the classic era of that periodical. Howitzer Jr., played exquisitely by Bill Murray, is the gruff, writer-adoring editor, lovingly modeled on New Yorker founder Harold Ross. Howitzer’s top rule is “No crying,” and his guiding advice to his corps of eccentric writers: “Try to make it sound like you wrote it that way on purpose.”

The film, unsurprisingly, is structured like a magazine, with four episodes (or articles): a cycling tour through Ennui, a report on a student uprising, a profile of an insane murderer in the local prison who becomes a world-renowned painter, and a harrowing account of the kidnapping of the police commissioner’s son, which occurs while The French Dispatch’s correspondent happens to be dining with the top cop for a culinary-section feature on the police department’s master chef. In that last chapter, Jeffrey Wright portrays Roebuck Wright, a gay food journalist—a mix of James Baldwin and A.J. Liebling—who Howitzer Jr. bailed out of jail after he was rounded up in a police raid on an establishment at the edge of town for what Roebuck calls “the wrong kind of love.” With his dazzling performance, Wright steals the movie from its other stellar cast members: Benicio del Toro, Adrien Brody, Tilda Swinton, Léa Seydoux, Frances McDormand, Owen Wilson, Timothée Chalamet, to name just some.

Each story contains quirks within quirks, and each is cast in Anderson’s ingenious visual manner. The colors, the sets, the lovely musical score—everything is contrived, but delightfully and artfully so. It is as satisfying as an issue of the New Yorker that compels you to read all its articles and, of course, the cartoons. Alas, The French Dispatch Anderson has conjured is coming to an end. Howitzer Jr. expires due to a heart attack, and his will calls for the magazine to be shut down with his exit from the world. Its final article will be his obituary written jointly by his prized contributors. What he created—a universe of literary sensibility and whimsy—will not continue. Is Anderson turning nostalgia into tragedy, telling us the spirit of a wonderful age from decades ago is forever lost? This correspondent doesn’t know. Just watch it.

After Ayotzinapa. True crime stories dominate the world of podcasts. A quick glance at this week’s list of top podcasts yields these titles: Families Who Kill, My Favorite Murder, Morbid: A True Crime Podcast, Crime Junkie, Murdaugh Murders, and others. I’ll admit: I’ve listened to a few. But I’ve grown tired of true-crime tales that don’t mean much beyond what they meant to the unfortunate victims, their loved ones, the detectives, and others directly involved. There is much theorizing as to why people love true crime. Scott Bonn, a criminology professor at Drew University and author of Why We Love Serial Killers, notes that true crime “triggers the most basic and powerful emotion in all of us—fear.” Listening to a true-crime podcast is a form of therapy: a way to develop the skill of confronting fear without confronting real fear. Maybe. But still there remains something tawdry and voyeuristic about obsessing over these tragic and usually horrific events. Which is why I am heartened to be able to recommend a crime podcast with historical, political, and international significance.

In 2014, students at a rural teachers college in the Mexican town of Ayotzinapa decided to hijack a few buses so they could travel to a protest. In Mexico, the hijacking of buses by students is a common practice. The bus drivers routinely go along with it, and the vehicles are eventually returned. This time that did not happen. The buses were attacked by police, who killed three students and three bystanders in a one-sided firefight and then kidnapped 43 students. The young men were never seen again. Their fate is a mystery, as is why the police reacted as they did to the harmless commandeering of several buses. Shortly after the kidnapping, a mass grave was found nearby, but, it turned out, the bodies were not those of the students. With this discovery, the disappearance of the students triggered mass protests to call attention to the fact that tens of thousands of people had gone missing in Mexico during an epidemic of human rights abuses tied to drug trafficking and political corruption. This one crime sparked a movement.

After Ayotzinapa, a three-episode series presented by the Reveal podcast, explores this awful crime and its implications for an entire nation. Reveal’s Anayansi Diaz-Cortes and Kate Doyle from the National Security Archive, a nongovernmental nonprofit outfit, chronicle the attack, the immense coverup mounted by the Mexican government, and the efforts of courageous investigators to find the truth. Along the way, they are assisted by Omar Gómez Trejo, who was selected by the Mexican president to prosecute the crime. Diaz-Cortes and Doyle dig deep. The show features interviews with eyewitnesses and relatives of the vanished students. This is gripping investigative journalism. There’s even cellphone video of the attack.

After Ayotzinapa is an important story. I don’t know how it ends because only the first episode has been released. But it is a true-crime tale that does more than meet our voyeuristic needs, and for that it deserves our attention.

Read Recent Issues of This Land

January 15, 2022: We’re all tired of Trump’s crazy, but it’s dangerous to ignore; Dumbass Comment of the Week (US Senate edition); the Mailbag; (a harrowing) MoxieCam™; and more.

January 11, 2022: My interview with Jamie Raskin about his son’s suicide, January 6, and the second Trump impeachment; Aaron Sorkin’s one big mistake in Being the Ricardos; Slow Burn’s look back at the LA riots; and more.

January 8, 2022: It’s time for Merrick Garland to reveal if the Justice Department is investigating Donald Trump; Dumbass Comment of the Week; the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

January 4, 2022: The lesson of January 6: Tragedy does not yield national unity; Ayman Mohyeldin’s impressive American Radical podcast; and more.

December 23, 2021: Farewell to a stupid year; Dumbass Comment of the Year; Mailbag, MoxieCam™; and more.

December 21, 2021: How the GOP is establishing political apartheid; Donald Trump’s most outrageous email, spending time with The Shrink Next Door; Susanna Hoffs’ delightful new album; and more.

December 18, 2021: Mark Meadows, the chief’s chief coup plotter; Dumbass Comment of the Week; the Mailbag, MoxieCam™; and more.

December 14, 2021: Denounce Julian Assange, don’t extradite him; why WandaVision is marvelous; hanging out with Neil Young and Crazy Horse in an old barn; and more.

December 11, 2021: Trump’s newest—and biggest—potential conflict of interest; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Tucker Carlson Edition); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.