TV Takes Up Soviet Sleeper Cells in the United States: FX’s New Series The Americans
So despite creator Weisberg’s claim that “the enemies are the heroes,” the script that the writers produced hardly accomplishes that aim. The FBI agents are dedicated professionals who want to protect America’s security. They know the enemy they face and want it defeated; the KGB agents are malevolent and thuggish, willing to do whatever it takes to bring the United States down and for the Soviet Union to triumph. Thinking of the Soviet Union where nothing works, including the electricity, the husband tells Elizabeth in his most serious moment of doubt that “America’s not so bad”; they never lose electric power (evidently these D.C. residents don’t have the horrendous Pepco company we all have), “the food’s pretty great,” and more than that, the CIA would give them money to live well if they defect. Elizabeth doesn’t buy it, and hopes that rather than become real Americans, “they could be socialists.” Phillip responds, without irony, “this place doesn’t turn out socialists.” Set in 1981, obviously he doesn’t know that by the time his kids get to college, his wife’s dream may indeed turn out to be true!
It was wise for the show’s producers to set it in the Reagan years. Obviously, the idea came to them in 2010, when the FBI busted the sleeper cell of Soviet agents who had been in place for decades, posing as regular Americans who lived a well-off suburban life. Like the TV characters, the ten sleeper agents had been given false American names and identities, and even after the collapse of the Soviet Union, they remained true communist believers.
These agents believed in Castro, Peru’s Maoist Shining Path, and communism, and saw working for the FSB (the KGB’s successor agency) as a vehicle for keeping alive the communist legacy. And, like the Rosenbergs, they too were willing to sacrifice their own children for the cause they served. One of the caught agents, “Juan Lazaro,” told the prosecutors that “although he loved his son, he would not violate his loyalty to ‘the Service’ even for his son.” Like the TV characters playing the KGB agents in The Americans, loyalty to the KGB defines their lives and gives it meaning.
Just when I thought things couldn’t get worse, along you come to point out a new outrage. It’s your calling, and we’re grateful for it. Joe Weisberg’s comments about The Americans series tell one a lot about the zeitgeist. Who’s afraid of socialism? Neither Hollywood or the Progressives, of course: they hunger for it. The rest of us poor schlubs don’t seen to know enough about it to find out. Compared to reality as the Obama administration describes it to us, the Cold War was silly, WWII a folly committed by beings not-so-perfect as we are. If you recommend The Americans series, allow me to recommend Portlandia (IFC, whatever cable network that is), which parodies those places in the U.S. where nothing after 1975 really happened. Very entertaining, and you know its heart in close to some right place by the fact that Roseanne Barr becomes temporary mayor and is run out for suggesting that these Oregonians be normal urbanites. Another recommendation: “How to Be Danish” by Brit Patrick Kingsley, wherein the Danes (although for different reasons) are portrayed as crazy as the Portlanders. Reading it, I couldn’t help wishing that the Danes had had to suffer through Soviet occupation. The Balts, who did, have a much firmer grasp on history and reality than those purportedly happiest people in the world, the Danes. Ron, keep you eye out for the next step in television outrageousness: The Americans with the “c” a star and crescent.
I have only seen the trailers. will not watch show.
Question…who are the sponsors? I will not buy their products.
ta
So it looks as if the Soviets won the hearts and minds of many New Leftists. In the same way, the recent movie LINCOLN may win hearts and minds for a peaceful resolution of all our irreconcilable conflicts. I suggested here that the South and/or the conciliationists of the North triumphed in historical memory of the American Civil War. See http://clarespark.com/2013/02/09/lincoln-the-movie-as-propaganda/.
“Thank God it’s only television we’re talking about”
Yeah meanwhile your fellow wingers are signing petitions to secede. Talk about traitors!
It’s not that we were two competing systems. It’s that we still are.
Except this time it’s not in your face with subs and nuclear weapons. It’s stealthy and using the institutions in the West where the government essentially controls all the variables. And everyone must show up for an extended period of the most malleable time of their life.
http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/so-now-common-core-rejects-individual-thinking-to-embrace-soviet-psychology-ecology/ is what is coming at us K-12 and higher ed. Preschool is next using the Reggio Emilia template. I actually do know what so many of the educators apparently had been told from the mid-80s on on how to use a different front to fight over gaining the desired control over consciousness. I had to read it from multiple angles in many places while saying “Really?” to accept it was not quite as over as we were led to believe.
And now Ron writes that a TV series wants to help explore the competing systems.
Filtering mindsets. The perception of the day to day. Precisely what is being targeted. Not just Oliver Stone, now it is a TV series with likeable characters.
A comment fully worthy of RR’s post.
SHOULD READ
“the Soviets had lots of sleeper cells of KGB agents living in the United States ready to go when called.”