“Civil War” has played it extremely close to the ideological vest in its trailers and promotion, but CBS Sunday Morning may have let the cat out of the bag. If true, a promising film may in fact yet be another exercise in Hollywood leftist projection.
Watch as CBS Sunday Morning contributor Ben Mankiewicz gives away a major plot point: that the authoritarian president has, in this instance, abolished the Federal Bureau of Investigation (as aired on Sunday, April 7th, 2024):
BEN MANKIEWICZ: The audience will certainly be talking about the film's president, who we learn is serving a third term and has abolished the FBI.
PRESIDENT: Some are already calling it the greatest victory in the history of military campaigns.
MANKIEWICZ: He is played by Nick Offerman, who says the character was not inspired by any Commander-in-Chief, past or present. Offerman does say the film offers a warning that given today's political climate, Americans need to heed.
NICK OFFERMAN: Our ego and our history wants to allow us to believe that we are above such things, that, you know, lesser countries around the world may engage in, but we're Americans, you know. We drink the finest cola beverages. We are immune to such things.
ALEX GARLAND: There’s an underlying truth with anything difficult, which is: nobody’s immune.
The lack of Hollywood condemnation as trailers were released was, in hindsight, an early tell. We heard nary a peep in this instance. And now we know why.
Writer/director Alex Garland intentionally attempted to dissuade people from trying to glean ideology from the early trailers. He admits as much by writing the rebel forces as being from both Texas and California. But abolition of the FBI these days is a hard ideological lean in one direction.
Whatever post-9/11 reservations the left may have had about the FBI are long gone now, given its embrace of the deployment of those anti-terrorism tools against United States citizens in the political opposition. Federal law enforcement seems to be at the locus of every action taken against American internal dissidents, whether it be pro-life protesters such as Mark Houck, the broad campaign to suppress political speech online, or federal agents showing up at people’s homes over social media posts, among many other intrusions.
Nowadays, only one side of the political spectrum regards the FBI as the instrument of a weaponized federal government, and it isn’t the left.
Reasonable people can thus be skeptical of a major motion picture, released ahead of a presidential election, that depicts a runaway authoritarian president who abolished the FBI and brought the country to civil war. The Trumpian braggadocio about military victory is just the cherry on top.
I really hope to be wrong about this, and hope that this is really an independent, thought-provoking nonpartisan film about the perils of political polarization. That is, as opposed to the "Democracy is on the ballot" equivalent of what "The Day After Tomorrow" did for the climate cult.
But Hollywood’s track record on these things indicates otherwise. For the time being? I’m not buying it.
