Latest / LAST BEST HOPE: A Babylon 5 Podcast for Our Uncertain Age / #9 – Rules of Engagement (NO SURRENDER, NO RETREAT)

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#9 – Rules of Engagement (NO SURRENDER, NO RETREAT) · LAST BEST HOPE: A Babylon 5 Podcast for Our Uncertain Age

• 0:01
  JOSH: Back in the halcyon 1990s, a syndicated sci fi TV series warned us that it indeed can happen Here.
• 0:08
  JOHN: In this podcast we use Babylon 5, talk through our current political moment, and attempt to process, understand, and perhaps find hope.
• 0:22
  JOSH: Welcome to Last Best Hope, an explicitly political Babylon 5 podcasts. I'm Josh and I'm here in the observation dome with John. Today we're going to be covering the season four episode no Surrender, no Retreat. And I know it's been a while since we've done one of these, but.
• 0:40
  JOHN: Yeah, it feels like it has at least.
• 0:42
  JOSH: Well, yeah, no, it certainly has. We just released our most recent episode a few days ago about By Any Means Necessary. And believe it or not, John, we recorded that in July. Wow. Wow. So it speaks to two things. Number one, time definitely is speeding up, but also we live very busy lives and with podcasting or content creation of any kind, the number one rule is consistency, consistency, consistency. And sure, I'm also of the school of if it's a question of do the show whenever we can or don't do it at all, I would rather do it when we can. Especially because like, I really get a lot out of these conversations that we have periodically. So, you know, if we're going to do them, might as well record them.
• 1:31
  JOHN: Yeah, yeah. And there's something like for the first couple of episodes it was almost tracking real world events and that that is certainly not going to be the case that there's be a one for one correlation. I mean, I would hope, I mean if JMS wrote out our future, I'd be very impressed. But I don't think this is some prophetic vision of the future. It's more of a philosophical and a bit of an intellectual exercise, but also a. This is sort of a coping mechanism too.
• 2:00
  JOSH: Yeah, I get a lot out of these conversations. I mean, yes, obviously they're fun. Lovely to talk to you. Always Love watching Babylon 5. Always love talking to you about Babylon 5. But yes, it is a coping strategy, coping mechanism for all the insanity that's going on in the world and actually you the last few weeks, so much has happened. We eventually settled on no Surrender, no Retreat this episode because the most recent thing that has been really weighing on my mind, and I know yours as well, is this insane speech that Trump and Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense gave. They called it an in person gathering of the top military leadership, about 800 or so people from all around the world just to give this unhinged, full on fascist speech. And the only things about it that prevent me at least from having a full freakout is that I don't know if you heard any of it, but Trump seemed very low energy. Like there have been some rumors swirling around that I frankly haven't paid any attention to that. He has some sort of health problems right now, but he sounded uncharacteristically like very, very tired. He sounded frankly weak. There's that. And then the other thing is, from what I've heard anecdotally, the people in the audience for that speech, the military personnel for the most part, weren't super into what was being said.
• 3:32
  JOHN: Yeah, there's gonna be no way to know completely because that's quite literally the rules. And also their own self imposed behavior is not like a crowd at a comedy show heckling back and making very clear what their reactions are. But I think that the between the orders that they had, which is fairly common, you know, they're not supposed to both be politicized nor react in any extreme way or actually in a real perceptible way. What they did. The. What's been interesting is the feedback to this, which is why this episode is so relevant, is what you get from the free to speak retired military personnel who can tell you both not only their own thoughts on this, but what the behavioral expectations are, what the culture of the military is on a sort of broad based level, and what the culture is of the flag officers. These are every, you know, everybody that was there was, you know, they basically brought in everybody who was a one star general or admiral and above. And that is, that's a lot of officers, and it's a lot of officers to bring from the field, from the different posts, you know, into one single location. Going into this, I had assumed there was going to be even more than what there was. And this is just my quick observation before we dive into what inspired this choice of episode in particular, is that even as you were talking about it, a phrase or concept comes to mind is that I think that while we've been worried about overusing the word fascism, it's actually really applicable here. Not for the reasons we necessarily think. Fascism is incredibly childish. And if you look back on the speeches of the historical fascist leaders, if you take them out of the idea of the History Channel, you know, view that, you know, people did end up with large military under their command, they're incredibly childish. And I'll put this out there as if, if you listen to the speeches of Hitler, if you listen to the speeches of the smaller, lesser known fascists, of the era. It sounds like a ranting teenager more than anything else. And that's my biggest takeaway from both the speakers in this is that they sounded like angry teenagers with teenage like ideas, expectations and solutions to their own envisioned problems. Detached from reality, detached to maturity and just pure emotion. Without any regulation and without any discipline. Which is the grand irony of his speech because that is the ostensible idea behind what Hegseth was saying is, is this imposing of discipline when in reality his is a warrior ethos, is a teenager's idea of what the military should be. Despite obviously having having service himself, having retired from the army, the National Guard with the rank of major, he still comes off as having this very detached or I should say, like, you know, very childlike fantasy view of the military. And it's no coincidence that this meeting coincided with a decision by the Pentagon directly by Hegses himself, for example, not to withdraw the medals of the soldiers who fought at the battle of Wounded Knee. That had been something that had been working its way through the. The DOD for a while as to, you know, what is widely considered by. By anyone apolitically to have been an utterly unjustified massacre. And that because of the sort of jingoism of the era of the late 19th century, the soldiers in that battle were given medals for. For what were in any of the context war crimes was being re examined. And how flippantly he simply said we're absolutely not going to take those medals away. It came off as this idea of this like that this viewpoint of what the warrior ethos is, is that we fight, kill, we do what we want. And it's as long as we are being this like fantasy version of a warrior. He was obsessed with appearance and everything else. So it just really speaks to the vision that senators themselves are very concerned about on both sides of the aisle. If you remember, this secretary was only confirmed by an incredibly narrow vote, one vote. And in the last round of voting last, you know, as I got to it, it was Senator Thom Tillis who had indicated he was not going to vote for confirmation, who voted to confirm and flipped at the last minute. And this is not. Is again it's irrelevant to the episode that confirmation vote and the published in mainstream reported sources from anonymous sources. And this was in, I believe it was the Times maybe one of the other major newspapers that there were anonymous sources within the office of Thom Tillis indicating that substantial threats had been made to ensure that this confirmation go through. I don't take that with absolute. But when there are Reliable newspapers of record quoting anonymous sources. It's smoke, you know, it's smoke indicating there might be fire. And to have passed confirmation vote for the most, arguably the most important cabinet position by one vote when that vote was incredibly skeptical, only did it last minute and is now announced they are not going to run for reelection due to the pressures from the administration, from the party to simply fall in lockstep no matter what. You can see that there have been grave concerns about this cabinet member for quite a while. But it plays into what's required to change a military over from a system that is based on institutional rules and norms and expectations. And as it was a great NPR interview with a retired major general recently, that the US Is actually one of the few countries in the world where the military has never played a role in determining the outcome of governance. That is a phenomenal, phenomenal accomplishment, if you will. And that's what this episode really has to deal with. When they're going into the characters and what their opinion is about the military not making policy, that is an institutional and cultural norm that is incredibly strong. And it is drilled into our military that the military is not there to make policy. So, you know, first out of the gate as we go into what happened in this episode is that you have. You have the president of the United States saying outright that the military should be using the violent cities of the United States of which, let's be clear, there are. There's nothing at that level should be used as training grounds for the military. That was said. This is not a question. I think the debate when it gets political is the. Is the propaganda over that these cities are somehow Mad Max war zones? And we discussed that in a previous episode like creation of LA as this. You know that it must be this lawless place due to the resistance to ice. It's interesting. And what's sort of difficult about going right into this episode is that we've obviously skipped over severed dreams, which I feel like is the. Is. Is going to be a pinnacle moment. If we have, we've been holding off on going there because it's like, well, what does that mean? But for listeners, just for context, you know, severed dreams, the impulse for Babylon 5 to declare independence is the President Clark having the military fire on civilian targets because they were opposing him. And that was this huge red line to be crossed. It leads to that. This episode starts on the heels of the end of its. Of the previous episode where the Earth alliance under the rule of President Clark had fired on civilian ships carrying upwards of 10,000 souls and killed them all because they were from colonies that had broken away from the Earth alliance in protest of Clark's regime. And Captain Sheridan has had enough. And that's. He literally starts at enough is enough and he loses. He loses his. That was like one of those times when, you know, you're seeing what this version of Captain Sheridan is coming back from the dead, having won the Shadow War. Like he's arguably saved the galaxy from the war of the Ancients of the Shadows in the Vorlon. And you know, they've been debating what do we do about, you know, Earth Alliance. But this moment is just the breaking point. You know, 10,000 civilians killed in a horrific act. An absolute war crime and there being no other force to really stand up against it. So he starts rallying his own troops and getting the White Star fleet ready. And there the episode begins. And this, this as a viewer was one of those moments. I actually saw that scene for the first time not on television and not in my. And not in my house. I saw it at the Icon convention.
• 12:40
  JOSH: Oh, wow, cool.
• 12:41
  JOHN: Where JMS was presenting. The soon to be aired episode has clips from the soon to be aired episodes of the fourth season. And I don't know, you know, it's such a different world we live in now where we tend to get these season drops and then have to wait one or two or three years the next season. But we didn't have the mid season hiatus as a numerous mid season hiatuses that we had with this. So this was after having to wait for. For numerous. At different points. Shadow War got interrupted by hiatus, then it got concluded, then another hiatus and now we were on hiatus again. And then to see this like, oh, we're coming back and they're going full speed. I remember the crowd was going wild like, Sheridan is doing it. He's doing it. He's finally doing it. We're gonna see what happens with Earth. It was a very, you know, the enthusiasm of the crowd was palpable. So this is a great episode to just talk about in general because that's how my expectations were and seeing, seeing. Well, actually it was the previous episode and then this wow. I mean, it was quite the thing to see for the first time that, you know, Sheridan had to break with his previous mentality and training, how hard it was for him to get to this point and for all the characters. But it was just, wow. I mean, that decision to stand up to Clark and take that directly to Clark. You can't underestimate what that means. For every character on the show, every member of Babylon 5's crew and how they all wrestled with it.
• 14:03
  JOSH: Absolutely. This, as you alluded to, this was an episode that I remembered in my mind as primarily an action oriented episode. And while there is a very impressive space battle sequence toward the end, watching it this time all these years later and in the unfortunate context in which, you know, we are. I felt differently about things that were being said. Like, one of the things that I thought was really interesting about this episode was the amount of discussion and talking through the implications and the reasoning behind why they were doing what they were about to do and how they were going about it. And I kept saying to you, when we were trying to figure out what episode we should watch for this moment in our history, there was a line that was said in this episode. So I'm glad, because I wasn't sure it was in this episode. A character said, it's not the role of the military to make policy. And that was their justification for why they weren't joining Sheridan. Right. And hearing that speech from last week or whenever it was, you know, we find ourselves in a situation where very soon the future of this country may depend upon the individual values and personalities and, you know, dispositions, positions of individuals in the leadership class of the military. And so I found it very interesting in this episode. It's not about the shoot em up situation of liberating Proxima 3. So much of it was about the internal wrangling, the internal struggle of military officers grappling with what they know to be morally correct and what their professional obligations are. Right. And it was also interesting. For the first time, I found myself sympathizing or at least understanding in a way that I never had before. The point of view of Garibaldi and William Edgar's where they're saying we oppose Clark, but not the way Sheridan is doing it. In other words, Sheridan's version of the fight is a full on military confrontation. Using the military might that he has in his control and fighting his way all the way to Earth to violently overthrow Clark and to like a 13, 14 year old in 1997. That seemed like the clear right thing to do. And you're sort of looking around at all of these other characters who are like, it's not the role of the military to do this. And you're like, yeah, but Clark is space Hitler, you know. And now we're unfortunately in a situation where this is imaginable for the real world. And the real world version of this would be someone Like, I don't know, like a Gavin Newsome or a JB Pritzker or something. Probably Newsom because he has like that Sheridan hair and that, you know, leading man up. But, like, breaking their state away and, you know, waging a military campaign to liberate other states until they got to Washington, D.C. i don't want to see that happen. I would be like, are you sure that's the right thing to do? Because a lot of people are going to die.
• 17:14
  JOHN: Yeah.
• 17:15
  JOSH: And yes, like, everything Sheridan says is correct. And we know that because we have that omniscient view of this entire world. So we know he's right. And even then, it's like, it's a tough decision. It's a tough decision to make. And it is interesting too, because, like, Sheridan is a soldier. He even says the job of a soldier is to destroy the enemy and to come home alive. That's what he says when he's rallying the troops. Right after he acknowledges how hard it's going to be to fight and possibly kill your own people. What he defaults to is just remember the job of a soldier is to destroy the enemy and to come home alive. So in other words, military your way through this. Okay. Because Sheridan, who is the head of this insurgency, is a military officer, a military commander. He sees the only viable solution as a military solution.
• 18:02
  JOHN: You bring up such a good point. And I love how you mentioned, like, watching this, you know, in the late 90s as a teenager, going back to the idea of, like, how do we think as a teenager? What is that sort of way of thinking versus when you're more of an adult, when you have the ability to think in a more nuanced and a broader way about implications of these types of things. I remember being very angry at Garibaldi for that. And he. It was the show's written to make you angry at Garibaldi. He is being manipulated. All of his paranoia, his distrust have all been telepathically enhanced or heightened. But that doesn't mean. You're right, that he doesn't have a point because that was. That was the point of the manipulation of Gariboli. It wasn't reprogramming him to be somebody else. It was. He was just honing in on those aspects. So he's seeing it maybe with a sharper view than everybody else is. But. And I think that there was sort of a bit of a wipe wave. Like, oh, well, yeah, other people. There are other ways of doing it. Even with the. Is it the William Edgar's way of doing it. It was like, yes, but what about all the people who are dying right now? There's always a debate and that's the debate between people of what we classically call revolutionaries and non revolutionaries alike. And why there's no easy answer and why I'm always. I'm always suspect of absolute. And people who have the view that what they're doing is absolutely correct and that's what Garibaldi is genuinely afraid of is that he sees Sheridan as this now almost messiah like figure. He has entered the Shadow War. You know, is he for lack of a better term beginning to buy into his own bullshit? And he's not wrong that Sheridan is beginning to get there. Now we know again you're right. From that bird's eye view of the viewer we get to see that he hasn't gone off the deep end. In fact, I think the, the interesting is you look at the timeline, it's you know, the first third of season three where he breaks away reluctantly. There's no attempt to influence or oppose or change Earth. It's to say these orders are fundamentally against the oath that was taken by Sheridan and crew as Earth alliance officers. They are declaring independence until such time as basically President Clark is held accountable for those orders against the constitution of the Earth Alliance. That's an interesting. This is why I love JMS's writing this. I've been watching a lot of their shows recently. I still come back to Babylon 5 as really I feel like it began the era of super well written tv. Nuanced characters that are believable not just in the sci fi universe that they're in but you could like take them and put them into the West Wing in terms of their like policy won't the understanding of greater things and then just being also really human at the same time. It's really hard to accomplish that in a show. So you, you have Sheridan who was even fought the Shadow War has no real desire to do anything with Earth because that's because he realizes what, what the danger is of that. As you were saying earlier. You know, it's a great point of pride when you can say your military is never determined your policy and who leads your government. That sort of is a sign that you're really in dire straits. It may get dramatically worse after that the countless stories of military agendas across countries in our history in this world. So we know that Sheridan is in the right as viewers but it can, it can go away. And that explains the reaction of the characters. I thought that the portrayal. And again, I really like the way you put up like, like, yes, the battle is in it. It's great special effects. Some great, you know, show of like what is essentially like a naval battle in space. Loved it. But so much of the time was on the officers and soldiers on both side and what this meant to them. And Sheridan's interaction with Edward MacDoughan, his, his, his mentor from the Academy and captain of the. Which was it? I'll get that in a second. The, the vest. Yeah, I didn't even when watching this episode, I thought there were five and there were actually six. You know, it's actually hard to keep track of all who was on what side, who was doing what. It was brilliant. That sort of little bit of chaos there. And when Sheridan interacts with him and is saying, you know, like, we are here to, you know, liberate this colony. Not only just to liberate it, the context in which Sheridan is there is to counteract the outright illegal orders that the military has been given. It's not a philosophical opposition of like, well, I like the policy of the President of the Earth Alliance. I don't like the policy. This was, you know, on the face of it, illegal orders. And Sheridan confronts MacDoughan and says, you know, like, this is why we're here. McDugan says, you got to withdraw. Like, just get out of here. Like, this is the military making policy. You can't do this. And Sheridan pushes back in an interesting way. He wasn't being self righteous, he wasn't arguing I'd be a better leader or something. He's saying, these are illegal orders. And what do you do when you receive an illegal order? And Mac just responds, simple, you don't follow it. And that's when Sheridan is sort of pushing this. I'm like, so what are you doing here? And that's what MacDoughan comes and says, well, we're here under orders, but we are not taking any action in support of illegal activity. And Sheridan again pushes back and is saying, like, you know, any act in support of an illegal order is supporting that order. You know, even if you weren't the one carrying out that order, he says.
• 23:18
  JOSH: It makes you an accomplice to that order.
• 23:20
  JOHN: Makes you an accomplice. And McDonough responds, you know, you're splitting the hair mighty thin here. And that's, that's the moment. Yes, exactly. It's not a simple black and white debate. It's not a simple, you know, I'm right, you're wrong. Heroes versus Villains. And what was I reading about the way that we wrote TV shows, especially based on like 19th century idea, like this idea that there's always this clear cut villain and the clear cut hero, how it's defined, how it's written, how it's executed. This is not that this is a nuanced position because Mac is not a bad guy. He's not. But so you understand what he's doing is he, is, is he an accomplice to the murder of civilians? Yes. So what does that mean? What does that mean for our idea of a military. Now Sheridan ultimately succeeds tactically here and he, he says that in the end this is another area we realize, okay, Sheridan isn't necessarily entirely buying into his. It's. He's not making it about him because when towards the end of the episode and they say, you know, like, we won today. And he, and he immediately turns around and said, we didn't win anything here. We accomplished the mission objective and the price is horrible. Like there wasn't a celebration. There wasn't this like, I'm the hero, I came in, I did it, yay. It was. No, I hate that I had to do this. We accomplished our directives and damn it, I don't even want to have to continue this. Like, that's, that, that's the sort of regret that, that's the sense we get when we hear about sort of historical military figures on both sides of conflicts that they are sort of reluctant soldiers, they're following orders, they're doing things because they feel they have to. Well, Sheridan feels he has to do this, but he's not celebrating it. And that's when as we get to weave this into like why this strange military meeting of last week inspired this is because that's not the sense you get at all from the President or the Secretary of Defense. The Secretary of Defense again comes off like a angry teenager who's ready to fight anybody and makes it about him and his views and this delusion about that there are fat military officers or something like that. It's like, what world is he living in? The. Obviously the obsession over gender, which never has our military lower its standards. They've altered the rules to allow for anybody who regardless of gender, meets those standards. But that is wildly different than lowering standards. And he can't even see the difference between the two because he's a, let's put it out there, that man is a Christian Dominionist, a Christian nationalist. He outright believes in that view of the world, of those views being imposed upon others. And gender is key to that. The idea of women being the military is completely anathema to him in the first place. And now he has the opportunity to at least try to roll back their role in combat. This is not a nuanced view. It is not a. There's no evidence of self questioning. I mean, he was up there ranting like this. And I'm saying, well, I remember somebody else who got up there and ranted like that at a podium. But in this case definitely came off as a child. There's no self reflection. I have the feeling from the retired flag officers who are interviewed that they came up through the ranks in many ways. Like Sheridan, like MacDoughan and even like Captain Trevor hall, the Clark loyalist played by Scrubs Guy brilliantly.
• 26:35
  JOSH: And Jenkins, not the Jeopardy one Jeopardy guy. So this is how much of a Babylon 5 nerd I am. When they were talking about the new host of Jeopardy, I was like, that general from Babylon 5 was on scrub.
• 26:45
  JOHN: Amazing, amazing. All the captains and all the commanders, the first officers were really well played in this episode because the conflict they had and the loyalty. And I can imagine that being in the modern US Military, this is meant to be a variation on that in the future that these officers are sitting there with a speech like what, what do we do here? And what you get from Captain McDoughan is you. They're never looking for an opportunity to disobey orders. That is the last thing they want to do. So much to the point that even as he knows that he's assisting or at least providing cover for illegal orders, he hasn't taken any action. He outright said, oh, you don't follow it, then what are you doing right now? That's not how the military works or even should work. And we, we think of it sort of in a fantasy way that if the rules are in the military code of justice is set out that you don't follow in a legal order, no matter where it comes in the chain of command. We don't have many examples of that even in our history of people standing up because most of the time you're going to be destroyed as a result. A court martial would be the least of your of your worries. So you can't expect that's gonna be. That's gonna only happen in extreme circumstances. And what Sheridan does in this episode is that he gives the first opening for these officers because a viewer could take away that after the battle is resolved and Captain hall is removed from command by his first officer. That we said, well, why did two of the ships so quickly join Sheridan? Well, it wasn't really a quick thing. It's the. That existing in a standard military hierarchy and chain of command, that chain was then broken and they were forced to choose. And they then made their choice. And they in turn become loyal to the command structure that Sheridan is going to have. They're not just going off on their own to say, like, oh, what do we do? Except for the ships that simply decided we're not going to engage with either anymore. We're going to now defend this colony against the forces that come to oppress it. And Sheridan giving them those numerous options again shows he wasn't making it about him or his ideology. It was, okay, we've accomplished our objectives here, one, if you will. But instead of saying we will destroy our opponents, it's saying, we're giving the choices. Go home, which means you'll be an enemy in the future. We'll have to fight you again. Go home or stay here and defend Proxima, or join up. That's why Sheridan is the hero of the show. He's taking that approach. And just to go back to what you've done about, like, how much time they spent discussing this, Ivanova is doing the same. Every character is really having nuanced discussions about what this means, what the implications are. And Sheridan keeps on giving opportunities in the heat of battle to say if they are non combatant, do not fire. Holding back his own troops and saying, you have to follow my orders. In the sense that, like, the military discipline has to exist for you not to fire even though you're afraid as you approach that destroyer and they could then blow you out of the sky like you're completely vulnerable. Now, that's a combination of discipline as well as, I don't know, I need another word for it, that, that Sheridan shows and that his own officers show in that and his own troops show in that. That's sort of the ideal of the military. At least I think that's what people aspire to. So, yeah, some ships retired from the field and we're not going to get involved anymore. But he wasn't looking for blood. And that's, that's the big difference. The sense you get from the speech we watched and that you get from what happened in the real world was these were not people who understood that aspect of military culture.
• 30:11
  JOSH: Is it that they don't know or they don't care or they simply disagree with it? Because it's not. It's an impediment to what they want and in their version of a military that would not exist in that same way.
• 30:26
  JOHN: I, I think that's very clear cut when it comes to Trump. He's outright said that so many times, and he can't, even without the military, in terms of the democratic constraints that have been put on him. He was so frustrated in the first term at these checks and balances as the institutional guardrails that constrained up until now, any previous president. And that idea and how he sort of lionizes not only the strongmen rulers of other countries, but outright monarchs, he wants that power. And that's something a little different than we faced with most presidents I'm aware of on our history is that I think to become president you have to have some desire for power in the first place. But the desire for absolute power is something very different. And the ability to make sure there's no opposition to you, that at least that no one can, nobody can exercise power against you. And that's what's fundamentally against our Constitution and we talk about in the show, the Earth Alliance Constitution, is that no person is supposed to be able to go against the core rules of your government and society. You can change those rules through a process and a mechanism that can vary from system to system. But the idea of just one person, by fiat, being able to say, I'm doing what I want to do because I can do it. And that's what we're facing right now is there is no legal authority for a US President to deploy the military inside the borders of the United States except under very specifically legally defined situations.
• 31:56
  JOSH: Well, that's why they are promoting this myth that we are in the midst of an invasion, and they're using that word, invasion very specifically of illegal, of violent, illegal immigrants. The thing too, that I think is quite, not quite sure what to do with, I think there was a constraint on that power because there was a perception or even a reality that, like, voters simply wouldn't stand for that and they wouldn't be reelected. Right?
• 32:25
  JOHN: Yeah.
• 32:25
  JOSH: And I think at least as recently as the 1970s, I think that was true then, but that has changed in the last 50 years. I think it has to do with the fracturing of the media landscape. And I'm not just talking about because of social media in recent history. I'm talking about there used to be rules about how many news outlets you could control and what sorts of voices you were able to put out on your air.
• 32:53
  JOHN: Fairness Doctrine.
• 32:54
  JOSH: Yes. Right. Yes, yes, yes. You know, I'm not saying that that's the answer Necessarily restoring that. But there was a sustained attempt to make it easier to control the narrative.
• 33:05
  JOHN: There's no doubt there. Because the shifts, well, predate social media and even the Internet. You see the shift when it came to AM radio being largely weaponized by one part of the political spectrum with a direct intent. And then the consolidation, as you said, of local news sources, local newspapers. And the rules against that is, it's an interesting idea because economically we understand the idea of monopoly and we think of, oh, well, that has to do with prices. It has to do with whether consumers are getting a good deal or whether there's a monopoly and a company can just do whatever they want. Well, the same has always been true in media, and we faced this battle many times before. The Hearst publications, the first part of the 20th century is that regardless of what the core political ideology of the owners is, whenever one small group of people has large control over, over a substantial amount of whatever the media of the day is, it's going to shape its way to their vision. But also it's going to delegitimize the very notion of media. It's going to delegitimize the idea of reporting journalism, anything else, because one group's viewpoint is going to be so filtered through the things that they own that some viewers can be like, well, I can't trust that. I can't do that. And I think, like, that we create a mythical history of like, how good the media was in the past. But some of the reality was that, yes, people trusted Cronkite, older Cronkite, they trusted a lot of the reporters in era, especially after the McCarthy era ended, so much that came from the idea that, well, yeah, that they have a political bend. Everybody does. You have that. But people could engender trust by doing the best they could. And we all had this agreement in that whether it was the media companies themselves and the people consuming that media were like, yeah, no, I recognize that bias is present somewhere, but that people are doing their best job. And maybe I don't have to agree with everything, but I'm getting reasonably accurate information that I can make a decision on my own with that trust is being underlined. And that's something that's deliberate. We keep on going back to what, fascism, even authoritarianism in general. Fascism is just a very. It's. The problem with that word is it's so specific to a time and place, an economic model. It is relevant today, but now it's like it's become a curse word rather than a valid Descriptive word. But authoritarian is a much bigger umbrella that encompasses different forms where there are these patterns. And one of them is media consolidation and eventual capture, if not by the state, by incredibly powerful people. Berlusconi and Italy controlled a massive amount of the media of Italy then became their prime minister for numerous elections and was able to manipulate that. So whatever his political views, it's not even. Doesn't matter left or right, per se. It's like he controlled so much that he got to wield an incredible amount of outsized power. And Babylon 5 deals that in this very episode too. So in this very episode, you have another use of Commander of Onava and the Voice of the Resistance. Now, what is that Voice of the Resistance? It's a really interesting thing that in the previous episodes she's looking for purpose in life after the Shadow War. And they had this idea, which is that, like, they recognize that the biggest thing that Clark has outside of the military and maybe bigger than the military, which they refer to in this episode is his propaganda machine. That's the Ministry of Truth, the Ministry of Peace, of Night Watch, everything else. And this massive machine he has of propaganda which gets people to believe just like they're trying now. Like, oh, the city is a war zones. They're telling these stories over and over again and nothing can get through to the people of the Earth alliance because media has been so captured there by President Clark and his cronies and forces. Which again, is where I would go back to Garibaldi and say, all right, your corporate CEOs. There is no pushback. They keep on saying they're doing background stuff, but it's like, well, where is it? Which is why I think it's such a well run story on that line too. So the fantasy about Babylon 5 is that a Sheridan is not only able to break away in severed dreams but by the time this episode airs he has been gifted a fleet of White Stars by the Vorlon and Minbari alliance from the Shadow War. Like, that's where the fantasy comes in that that's not. There's no comparable thing that's going to happen in our world for that unless aliens do come down or, I don't know, something, but I'm not betting on that one. But what the second part, which is also a bit of a fantasy but is a little more relevant is the voice, the Resistance. What Ivanova is doing is she's using the technology of the Great Machine nearby and instead of using it for war purposes as well. Wait, the technology in this Ancient powerful device that can see and communicate across the entire galaxy is that they can get through the blockade. Both the signal jamming and the information manipulation of the Clark regime. That's incredibly important and incredibly potent. Our own country now has known the power of that. Trying to broadcast radio stations, other countries during the Cold War, things like that. And Ivanava is key to that. And in this episode, that's why she's sharing this information. These colonies have been freed. They're now being defended by forces that were part of the Earth alliance but have broken away and are staying there to defend these colonies from the illegal and lethal acts of President Clark. That's amazing. When that message gets through to other people, yes, they're coming up against a propaganda. But now they're saying, wait, this person here, maybe they're lying. But what they said was that the colony has been freed and our own ships are defending it. And they're not really, like, doing anything horrible. What is this? It breaks through. And that's the sort of frustrating part of, like, well, how does that happen? If you feel like the algorithms of social media are controlling things and manipulating us, what is that? Breakthrough moment?
• 38:33
  JOSH: Yeah. There were several things in this episode that didn't necessarily strike me as naive because there are in universe justifications for why it is that way. Like, for example, the opening scene of the episode. Sheridan is delivering a speech to the League of Non Aligned Worlds to ask them to void their treaties with the Earth Alliance. And he gives this speech in the council chamber where he's laying out all the reasons why the Clark regime is corrupt and illegal and out of control. And everything he says, when you lay it out like that, it makes this seem very justified with the caveat that you have to know this information one, and you also have to believe that information number two, which, if the main thing that I have taken away from the last decade plus living in the United States in the early 21st century is that just giving somebody access to the truth, just showing somebody what's real, giving them correct information, that's not the silver bullet that I used to think it was.
• 39:40
  JOHN: Oh, I agree with that. And that's why that scene is so good and why Jamis knows what he's doing when he writes out these episodes. And like anybody who has strengths and weaknesses, but, man, this is that the League of Non Aligned Worlds is murmuring about what Sheridan is saying. And then Jakkar gets up to speak and he takes it from a totally different angle because Sheridan was getting awfully, like, haughty with himself. I'm declaring those treaties null and void. Okay, good for you. Like, why would. These are also ambassadors. They don't have the full authority of their government. Their representatives are governed. Like, what do you think you're doing? Jakar gets up there and says, this is the answer to your question. Like, truth isn't enough. Information isn't enough. He says, where was Earth when your borders were being violated? Where was Earth when the Shadows were rampaging through your territory like they promised you at the end of the Earth and Bari war? All these things. I worked with them. I delivered weapons to them. I did all this other stuff for the Earth alliance, and they didn't show up. And who did show up? Sheridan. And that's the moment when the League shifts over and you realize, okay, you can present the truth, you can present a compelling argument. But when the self interest. When you join the idea of self interest and loyalty, that's an incredibly powerful tool, a dangerous tool, because it can be used by anybody for very nefarious means. And Jakkar understands that. Yeah, that's a really good point.
• 41:05
  JOSH: Yeah, that's a really good point. And you know what is interesting about that, that you just made me realize, so what Dakar is doing in that moment is he is giving the rest of the ambassadors permission to go along with it, right? Like, nobody, even if they kind of agree with Sheridan, like, nobody wants to be the first one to stand up and say, okay, yes, I'm behind you. Very similarly, when we were talking about McDoughan, Mackie, right? Sheridan, what he did for Mackie, who clearly saw what was happening, right? What Sheridan gave him was the permission to act on what he probably was already thinking and feeling. Something else that I noticed this time during the battle sequence, I had understood this. I remember this, but for some reason, it stood out to me more. The emphasis on our objective here is not just liberating Proxima 3. It is also to see who's really on their side and who sympathizes with us, right? The way they were trying different things to be like, okay, well, the Juno or whatever is not doing anything. It's just sitting there. Okay, well, let's go over there and say, hey, we're not going to shoot at you if you don't shoot at us. And they do that, and they don't shoot at them, and they're like, okay, then they're out of the fight, right? Like, they are trying to figure out who stands where. Which stood out to me very much, because I think we're all doing that same mental calculation all the time. When you hear somebody, particularly a Republican, stand up and say something in front of a camera, I'm constantly like, yeah, but what do they really think? Like, why are they. It's like, I hear what you're saying. I know how you voted. But what do you really think? If you weren't so fearful, what do you really think? How would you really vote? What would you really be saying about this?
• 43:04
  JOHN: Right.
• 43:04
  JOSH: The other thing that I thought was very interesting was when the jig is up, so to speak, the battle is done. Sheridan is requesting the surrender of Ken Jenkins ship. I forget what it's called. The Heracles.
• 43:18
  JOHN: Yes, that was the Heracles.
• 43:20
  JOSH: He's like, you're disabled. Surrender. And Ken Jenkins is like, no, he won't do it. I'm the one they'll hold responsible, not you. I'm getting away. He's not thinking about his crew. He knows he's committed war crimes and he's worried about his ass.
• 43:35
  JOHN: Isn't that an interesting juxtaposition of what he says earlier when he says about Mackie, I knew he didn't have what it takes. You think in your mind, well, what is it that you mean by what it takes? You mean by what it takes to fire on civilians? Because he clearly didn't have what it takes to put the lives of his own crew members.
• 43:56
  JOSH: Because that's not what it's about for him.
• 43:58
  JOHN: No, what it takes mean, are you going to serve Clark? And are you going to be a good, I don't know, murderer? Are you. Are you going to do the things that we want to bully people around for? And that's the difference. And I really do think when I think of our military or anything like that, that they are closer to this ideal, whether it's ideals written to this show or previous. And I want to go off on a little bit of a tangent here that mixes this and what you said about giving permission. That's a huge theme of this, is giving permission, but also the role of the military. So the quick tangent is McCarthy era, we're familiar with, and the Red Scare, the fear and the complete control that one senator seemed to have over the entire narrative. And everybody was desperately afraid of being called a communist. He ruined thousands upon thousands of careers and lives. People were jailed. There's no understating how reckless and destructive and really damaging to the core values of a democracy that that era was. We all know that end line that ostensibly ended McCarthy era. But the context of that is really important. It had to do with the military. So basically McCarthy had been going after the military at that point, you know, accusing them of harboring communists, of being so and more, more specifically being soft on communists. He's this idea that there were tens of thousands of these sleeper agents just waiting. And the dramatic confrontation was between him and Joseph Welch, who was then the special counsel for the U.S. army. And I was reading up a little bit on that and I said, wow. So apparently McCarthy became very agitated as Welch was there being questioned and took apart the argument of McCarthy about each one of his arguments and the witnesses that he was trying to destroy. And then after McCarthy tried to go after a young associate at Welch's law firm and basically accuse it of being a legal arm of the Communist Party now and by extension essentially the US Army. Welch famously says, until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, the audience breaks into applause, the newspapers start reporting this. And that moment, it was actually one moment broke the spell that, that McCarthy had cast upon the entire country. Now, people. But the thing is, I use that phrase like it was a spel imposed upon and he had some sort of control. No, it was that the Senate that only months later condemns their fellow Senator was waiting for permission. No one had managed to have the moment either. The combination of courage and the combination of just the right circumstances to line up that when you could say that final line, have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last that it broke through where everybody else now felt they had the same permission to stand up against a person that can only be described as a belligerent bully who was reckless, who was cruel. We do as human beings, we need permission to act in so many cases. And that's not. That's just how we are. We're social creatures. We want acceptance from our peers. We want the comfort of security of knowing that our peers have our back. And that's McCarthy preyed upon that. And the important thing to realize about our current political environment is that McCarthy's number one aide, the man who was largely the architect and maybe was a young man really whispering in the ear to McCarthy is Roy Cohn is wild because he is effectively the godfather, quite literally to Donald Trump. He is his mentor, he is his stand in father, the man who taught him everything he knew. And Trump is following the textbook like he. He got perfect A's across the coursework of Roy Cohn's instruction, which is literally the McCarthy era, like the historical repeats and parallels. That's why you can write stories, because these things actually do exist in the world. And I do think that at some point we're going to have these moments of permission being granted. I hope it is never related to a military engagement that has to get that point. But that's the core of the story, is that all these people were waiting, the military was waiting for permission to say, we can't carry out these orders, we can't carry out murders against innocent civilizations. So when the President of the United States stands in the real world saying that we should be using the fictional violent cities, but real to him and real to his followers as training ground for the US Military, completely against the laws of this country, you begin to see, yeah, you got to follow the orders of the commander in Chief. It's a very rare and circumstance that you would ever oppose that. So what's going to be that line right now? There's a lot of legalese going on about like where the National Guard can be deployed, the workaround. He tried another state's guard. So what is that line going to be? Because I don't think we're going to see a moderation of this. We may be very agitated about and concerned about this issue right now, but I don't think it quite has reached anywhere near that level of boiling water across our country. Will it be when there are a thousand troops, ten thousand troops in a city, or when we see the videos, where will it require a massacre? I don't know. I do know that we've already seen videos of that Blackhawk assisted raid in Chicago and that countless citizens were taken because they were black and brown, their apartments destroyed and ravaged, their, their possessions stolen by what federal officers? I go, what possible justification is there for that? Even if your ostensible goal is, is to enforce the law of the land as it is in regards to immigration and legal residency, none of that is legal. None of that is to say nothing of being acceptable. You can't just burst into without warrant, without anything. And again, many of those people hopefully get some nonprofits to help them sue. But Lord knows what's going to happen with that. Like the idea that you can without warrant. And I can't imagine a judge saying like, yeah, it makes sense. You, you now have a carte blanche warrant against an entire building. What have they researched every single apartment number in that building? Obviously not. So there's no legal basis for that action. It was carried out by very willing federal officers. They were not Military, but they were assisted, as far as I can tell. I don't think our civilian infrastructure here has Black Hawk helicopters. So we're beginning to get to that line of, okay, well, you can't use them directly, but they're. But the rules are very gray. The military can be in a support role, can be doing this. But that's this episode's question. Is that like, well, maybe you're not the one actually carrying out that raid. You're not the one carrying out the murderers, the massacre Proxima 3, but you're supporting it. You're giving logistical support to it. What does that mean? And I really am curious what's going through the minds not only the flag officers, because obviously this meeting focuses on that 800 or so flag officers. What's going through the minds of the rank and file soldiers. One thing to keep in mind about what Hegseth also said, which is doesn't get nearly the same level of headline, is the elimination of the ability to file anonymous complaints and many complaints against your fellow military and anything else. And more importantly, he added a new caveat, that if you are going to file a grievance against your superior officer or anybody else, if that grievance is determined not to be valid, not to be false, but I'm saying not to be valid enough to warrant you are now going to be punished. That's wild. And again, I could only imagine an angry teenager who wants to rule over something coming up with such an insane new policy. Like, I thought it was bad enough that he was ranting about this like phantom of like fat officers, but now he's actually saying is that he's so angry with his vision of warriorism that people had been effectively going through legal channels to say somebody is violating the U.S. code of Military justice. He basically doesn't want that. And he's outright. The other thing he says in relation to that was that for all intents and purposes he's going to try to eliminate as much of the rules of engagement as he can. And this episode here, they specifically cite the rules of engagement as the reason for why they're doing this. And that stuck out to me when I'm watching rewatching the episode the other day was, oh wait, that's what Hegseth was saying is that they basically want to take the gloves off, not have a rules of engagement. And I think, I don't know. This is where I would be curious about more of his history. I know that from his Fox News days he always seemed to rant against any idea that anybody in the military could be held accountable for an action taken in the heat of war. Now, we've had the rules of engagement for quite a long time. It has a history going way back. It tends to have been more enforced in recent decades. In the recent century. But he seems so upset by that. The idea that anyone would be held accountable for an action. War, it's just war. You're a warrior, you have to win. And that's it.
• 52:43
  JOSH: Yeah. I mean, I think it is quite striking because it is the antithesis of Sheridan's view of might. Right. Like might does not make right. Might is a last resort. That's not what makes you powerful. You know, it's really disgusting. It's a very simplistic view of certainly war and the military, but just also what power is and what it means and really what it boils down to. And this is why Christian Dominionists have found an ally in Donald Trump, who I don't think for a second has any religiously motivated convictions, but what joins them. They all believe that power is rightfully theirs. For Trump, it's because he's. He's a man and he's rich, he's genetically superior. For the Christian Dominionists, it's a religiously dressed up version of that. It's just sort of, you know, we are following God's law, we are divine, we're supposed to have the power. We are fulfilling the word of God or the wishes of God or whatever it is. The point is that the power is naturally theirs. So whatever constraint is placed upon it is inherently wrong, is inherently immoral. Because what is moral is that there are certain people who are supposed to sit atop the hierarchy. Whether you believe your power derives directly from God or because you believe you have superior genes, you think you are inherently more worthy of wielding that power and you're supposed to be in charge. So whenever someone lesser than tries to tell you, you can't do this, you can't do that, you have to accept this. You have to accept that that's an affront to their worldview.
• 54:30
  JOHN: Yeah, it really is, because it's the desire to wield and execute power, to impose your will upon others, which is also, again, a very childish impulse. It is, I shall control everything in the world to both feel safe and to feel fulfilled. I want to revisit something because I was thinking about, you know, how easy it is to mistake even what we say as it goes into hyperbole, you know, and things. And so I brought up the quote about the Rules of engagement. And the reason I brought that up is because I remember discussing it with somebody and they said, oh, he suggested we abandon the Geneva Conventions. Well, that specifically was not said. Nor was there a specific quote saying that we should not have any rules of engagement. But you can take this quote as you will and then see, compare it against the fictional character of Sheridan. Compare it against the idea we have rules, engagement. The end of his quote says, we also don't fight with stupid rules of engagement. We untie the hands of our war fighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt and kill the enemies of our country. No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement. Just common sense. Maximum lethality and authority for war fighters. That's what he says now. So. So to parse that, clearly, he is not saying throw out all rules and engagement, but he's clearly defining that he doesn't agree with the rules of engagement that exist today and wants a massive overhaul. Prior jettison of most of that. And the context of that part of the speech he was giving was another weird concept that we've been seeing that came again from the President's, you know, up until now, unofficial renaming of the Department of Defense into the Department of War. He says we have to be prepared for war, not defense. We're training warriors, not defenders. We fight wars to win, not to defend. Defense is something you do all the time. It's inherently reactionary and can lead to overuse, overreach, and mission creep. Interesting. Goes on to say, war is something you do sparingly on our own terms and with clear aims. We fight to win. We unleash overwhelming and punishing violence on the enemy. Now, just like a stop clock, there's one part that I very much agree with that quote, which is war is something you do sparingly on our own terms and with clear aims. Absolutely. The idea of mission creep has been a disaster, whether it was Iraq or Afghanistan or anything else, Vietnam. So that's like, okay, you make one small point of that is completely correct. But the overall part of it and this idea of changing from defense to war. Well, war is also something. You don't go to war for fun. You don't go to war to protect oneself in most circumstances. Otherwise you are defending yourself. One may declare war preemptively when somebody has begun invading you, sure. But defense, at least as I was raised, is the purpose of the modern US Military. And we may be defending our allies. The mission creep has been we defend our interests. Maybe that's what he's talking about, but the idea is that you can't really delineate that. And this, like, obsession with war and warrior, that's terrifying because the wording he used is, okay, we do it sparingly, but we will unleash overwhelming and punishing violence on the enemy. That's great, but where does that end? Does that include nuclear weapons? Does that include chemical weapons? Is he just talking about individual soldiers being warriors? Like, that's what I want to know. And I don't think he has the nuance to get there. But that's the scary part. What's the limit of this warrior ethos that he claims he has? And does that mean that, you know, now we have the factual basis? Okay, he's not going to take those medals away from, you know, from the soldiers of Wounded Knee. He's removed ability to seek grievance for breakdowns in the chain of command and abuses of military policy. So what he wants is lack of accountability. But the accountability that is relevant is follow the orders of the people at the very top, no matter what they are. With the idea of lethality. And this, again, we use to intimidate, demoralize, hunt, and kill the enemies of our country. It's like, yes, we all know that's part of war, but this obsession with that component, I haven't heard that kind of language in my lifetime from a secretary of defense. We know that's what the military is trained to do, but that is not what the. As the not. That is not the only thing that the US Military is trained to do. That's been. Its great accomplishment is mixing the. Just whatever this warrior thing is with a disciplined force that serves a civilian government. You know, if the military is going to serve the civilian government but go to war against its own cities for training purposes, we've had a breakdown. Yeah.
• 58:50
  JOSH: Hearing you say that or read that, rather, it sounds like he's preparing not only the people in that room, but also the country for this idea that we are going to start declaring war on certain places or certain people.
• 59:03
  JOHN: And this was. This was set in motion in the first term. The famous scene with Trump standing there with the upside down Bible.
• 59:08
  JOSH: Oh, yeah.
• 59:09
  JOHN: You know, and he's asking, he said, well, can't you shoot at the protesters? You know, not like, lethally just to, like, shoot them in the legs and the knees. And he brought along the chairman, the Joint Chiefs, is like, you know, what later turned out to be sort of a press moment, who was adamant and clear is like, we can't do that. Doesn't matter if you want that as president. That is a fundamentally unconstitutional order. That is not what the military is allowed to do. It's not what they should be doing, but it's not what they're allowed. That's the point. They're not allowed to do that under US Law. He said that the President upset him enormously, but that was in term one. Now, all these years later, and the grievances only piling up and putting in people like Hegseth, firing various, you know, officers, including the previous chairman, the Joint Chiefs. I think you're right. They're preparing at that idea that, oh, no, the military can be used, and even if we know it's wrong, they'll be protected from enforcement. I mean, people forget that the Nuremberg trials were holding people who committed the most heinous amongst. Amongst the most heinous acts of the 20th century accountable. But what they did in the Third Reich is they were brilliant at trying to legalistically justify their actions. They had cadres of lawyers contorting and manipulating legalese to justify their horrific actions. And what those trials ultimately says, okay, you may have been following orders. You may say, hey, I'm just doing what legally I was told to do. And it was all within the printed documents. That's great. And the Nurburgri, you managed to manipulate the laws and water down the rule of law so you could justify the Holocaust in the end. And the limit was that the rest of the world imposed these trials upon the Germans of the Second World War. And I think you're right is that they're preparing the idea that, oh, no, no, no, you're going to be inoculated. You may be given an order to massacre civilians, but that is acceptable now because we've changed the rules. Rules, even though we haven't changed the rules, we've just said they're changed. We're just telling you that it's okay. And that's. And that's classic authoritarianism, is you just say you're changing it, you set new.
• 1:01:06
  JOSH: Expectations, you're giving them permission.
• 1:01:09
  JOHN: Yeah, yeah. And it's not to say like I think we have amongst the most disciplined and honorable service members.
• 1:01:16
  JOSH: I think so, too, but I don't want to have to find out.
• 1:01:19
  JOHN: Yeah. I don't want to have to test it. I don't want to have to test it. That's a scary. That's a scary place to be.
• 1:01:24
  JOSH: Yeah. Jesus Christ. Just a couple of other things that I noticed that I just wanted to mention. I thought it was really smart how the first officer of the Heracles ultimately went against her captain and the first officer of the Vesta went against his captain. It was sort of the inverse. Like, for the inverse reasons. It's like you had the hardliner in charge on the Heracles the host of Jeopardy, and the hardliner first officer on the Vesta in universe. I wonder if that was deliberate. So you have one known quantity to keep the other in check. But from a writing standpoint, I thought it was very effective just showing that, you know, lines are being drawn and some people are going to choose this and some people are going to choose that. And I thought that was quite effective. I also noticed, I'm sure I'm reading way too much into this but the first officer of the Vesta who pulls a PPG on MacDoughan. Great line, by the way. It was really badass. You hear the charging up of the gun, the camera stays on MacDoughan, and he's like, I always knew you wanted a promotion, Bob. Never knew how badly until now. That's a really great line. But that first officer's name is Philby. And when I hear the name Philby, I think of the traitor in MI6, Kim Philby, who, you know, was working for the Soviets and was operating at the highest levels of MI6. It's what inspired Le Carre and Tinker Taylor, soldier, spy. So I don't know if it was in there intentionally. I know that JMS is something of an angle file. In fact, he just relocated to London in the last few months so I wonder if in his mind, when he thinks of a traitor in the ranks, he thinks Philby. That just stuck out to me. I would be remiss if we didn't mention something about the incredible scenes between Londo and g' Kar in this episode.
• 1:03:05
  JOHN: Oh, I was just thinking about that. Yeah.
• 1:03:07
  JOSH: God, they're so good. And also the direction of this episode, it's deceptively straightforward seeming. Mike Vihar, who, once again, he's the MVP in terms of Directors of Babylon 5. In this episode, he has to stage some very involved action sequences while at the same time there are several very talky dialogue scenes that play on a lot of levels. The scene in Ghakar's quarters, it's two guys in a room and it's a long scene. Actually, most of the dialogue is from Londo. So one guy's talking in a room with another guy who's sitting. How do you make the. That visually engaging or cinematically engaging? And like that scene, like I was on the edge of my seat the whole time. Obviously, it's enormously informed by knowing the history of these characters. The performances were amazing. I actually thought, again, for the first time watching this episode I felt a little bit differently than I used to. I couldn't believe the balls on Londo. I mean, or I guess the tentacles on Londo for trying to make nice with g' Kar and then getting mad that he's not even giving him an inch. I'm like, you destroyed his world. You sat in a room where he was tortured and humiliated. And like, yes, at the last minute, you found it within yourself to do the right thing because it happened to align with what you wanted. He even says, I kept my promise to free Narn. I could have just as easily changed my mind. The lack of. See, it's also hard because you like seeing Londo starting to reckon with what he has done.
• 1:04:45
  JOHN: Yep.
• 1:04:46
  JOSH: But his lack of self awareness in that scene really struck me this time. It's like, you really think you can go into this room and g' Kar will just agree with you and share a drink. And share a drink.
• 1:05:00
  JOHN: Like, my God, the symbolism of that, like.
• 1:05:02
  JOSH: And it's to Ghakar's credit that at the very end, he knows that he's right. He just hates that he's right.
• 1:05:10
  JOHN: Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:05:11
  JOSH: And I love his little caveat at the end. He's like, I will sign my name, but not on the same page.
• 1:05:17
  JOHN: Very Ghakkar.
• 1:05:18
  JOSH: I love it. I love that.
• 1:05:20
  JOHN: So well done. And, you know. You know, what's funny is that you can always count on Londo and g', Kar, both of them, to do the right thing after they've likely exhausted every other option. And g' Kar comes around to that earlier in the show than Londo. But, you know, when you think of first season Jakar, like, he actually did a lot of the right things but only after he did a lot of the wrong things. And that's why, you know, in the fifth season, they basically become friends. And I love how that process evolved, by the way, too in there, it's like, are we becoming friends? Like the very. Like, they couldn't even believe it themselves. But that fits so well with the idea of Wando having all these opportunities. As the prophecy, you know, sort of showed. It wasn't Lady Marilla, it was Lady Morella. Was it Lady Marella?
• 1:06:02
  JOSH: Yes.
• 1:06:03
  JOHN: Okay, so there are two prophets that he sought out and you know that he will have these repeated opportunities to turn it all around. But in the end, they'll be one and it'll be the greatest sacrifice. And he does that in the end. So in the end of Babylon 5, this story is largely, in many, so many ways, about Londo. And he does, in a sense, he does gain redemption at the very end.
• 1:06:23
  JOSH: And nobody knows it, though.
• 1:06:24
  JOHN: And nobody's gonna know it, which is the price. That's the price, you know. But, I mean, he will. He knew it upon his last breath. And maybe that's what mattered. I don't know. It's such an interesting story. And it's why they're so compelling and why Jakar is so compelling. And that moment. Because they look at what. When Londo is describing it he's using the same language that Jakar had been using to his own people. You know, that the humans. Jakaria is. The humans are the key. Londo says the humans are the bridge. And this is while the majority of humans are under President Clark and are effectively going along with him. Outside of Babylon 5, humans did not fight the Shadow War. That's something to really, like, drill in, is that. Yes, the show was showing humans for. At the forefront because it was shared in Babylon 5. But by and large, Earth was partially under the thrall of the Shadows and wasn't involved in the larger military.
• 1:07:16
  JOSH: Well, yeah, but that's sort of what he's referring to, isn't it? He's saying the humans are the key. What he means is, I think, like, helping Sheridan overthrow this authoritarian government.
• 1:07:26
  JOHN: Yep.
• 1:07:27
  JOSH: That's the key. Like uniting over. That is what is bringing all of us together. It's what allows for this meeting to happen because we have to help our friends.
• 1:07:38
  JOHN: Yeah. The vision of this show is that the humans are not put on a pedestal. It is that, yes, they're the key. Sheridan of the main characters, everything else. But it's like, wait. The Centauri go around and around. They are, you know, weakened imperialists in the beginning. Then they're beaten down. Then they come roaring back and are genocidal against the Narn. But the Narns started off as beginning to become militaristic themselves strike back at their abuser but then begin to strike back at others. And then they're beaten down hard. And as they're freed, want to give Ghakkar all the power turn him into a dictator and he refuses. So the Narn and Satori aren't like a stereotype of one behavioral construct which some other shows tend to do when it involves alien species. They're going through these Same journeys. And now the Humans are going through it. We sort of sidelined them for a good chunk of season three and into early season four. And now it's like, no. Now that same cycle has to unfold. And as this is actually unfolding the same thing is happening with the Minbari themselves the older, supposedly more enlightened society. And they're in a civil war. And the militaristic warrior caste is upset and everything breaks down in the Minbari. And the Great Council has already been broken. And an entirely new governmental structure is founded by Delenn and the erstwhile warrior cast members who've turned against their leaders. Every group that had prominence in the show to have time to go into the depth of their societies had this happen. That nobody is just, like, cool, we've accomplished the great thing. We're an awesome society. We don't ever have to worry about anything ever again.
• 1:09:11
  JOSH: Yeah. But you would imagine the Minbari, for example, very good candidates to be these, like, enlightened Vulcan, like characters.
• 1:09:18
  JOHN: And you see that they are just as vulnerable to authoritarian claims as the warrior cast wanted to impose their will upon the other two thirds of the population. It's really. And you can tell. Well, this is the story that JMS wanted to tell. It is the warning of authoritarianism, but it's also not a warning in the abstract. It is recognizing that it is fundamental.
• 1:09:40
  JOSH: Yeah. It's the universality of it. Yeah. I think we were talking once a while back about how, you know, maybe the key to not succumbing to the cult of authoritarianism is, you know, but for the grace of God go I. It's like you have it within you. You're not special. And above this.
• 1:10:04
  JOHN: Yes.
• 1:10:04
  JOSH: And it's almost like JMS is saying the universality of this. We have to acknowledge that this happens to everybody. And the only way to forestall it or work against it is to have that humility about how it happens, why it happens, who it happens to. Because I think a huge problem culturally in our national psyche here that is still affecting how we are reacting and conducting ourselves is this idea that this kind of thing simply can't happen here because of who we are. Right. And that's wrong. So very clearly wrong.
• 1:10:42
  JOHN: When I think about that quote about, like, you know, like, it's always misused, you know, the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. That that term often gets militarized in its context. And what it really means is that, you know, you have to be on the constant lookout for those impulses. For those kinds of leaders, for the demagogues, and then more importantly, the impulses in oneself to respond to fear, to respond to the. To the insider, outsider, you know, sort of phenomenon and review with oneself to say, oh, is that bit of fear I just had is. Is that something that's being prompted in me and is it really valid or is it just more of that instinct to distrust and therefore create these, you know, pathways towards authoritarianism? Authoritarians don't exist because they're good at imposing their will upon people. They exist because they feed and manipulate the fears of people. And I guess strengthening. I guess the answer to that is how does one charge strengthen oneself against fear? You know, especially fear of the other makes you less susceptible. So a society that's less susceptible to authoritarianism is one where the members of that society look around and aren't nearly as afraid of each other and aren't nearly as afraid of the others who aren't part of their society. And that's, you know, all these space faring shows oftentimes start with that premise because you have this multitude of different alien species. And what Clark is doing at home in this show is he's creating the fear of the alien. Whereas Babylon 5 stands for the idea of all these wildly different species coming together and doing stuff together. Commerce, sharing of different, you know, they share different religions with each other. Sometimes they do all kinds of different things. And that requires getting over some of that fear. And that's sort of the inoculation against authoritarianism. So why is Babylon 5 one of the first places to stand up against it? Because they've had to deal with their fears.
• 1:12:51
  JOSH: That's a really good point, actually. Why is Babylon 5 one of the first places to stand against it? I mean, it's actually.
• 1:12:57
  JOHN: Yeah.
• 1:12:58
  JOSH: I mean, they are a hub where all of the various alien races and cultures mix.
• 1:13:04
  JOHN: Yeah. And. And it is, as the first season sort of portrays it, it can be a mysterious and scary place, but the only thing that holds it together is people working through that.
• 1:13:15
  JOSH: Yeah.
• 1:13:15
  JOHN: And on the more like, you know, positive, brighter version of that is you get the Federation and Star Trek, which is just the integration of all these. But you don't get much time with that concept. Deep Space Nine got closer to it. But Babylon 5 dives deep into that idea of like, well, what happens when you do have these little group, you know, all these disparate groups coming together with wildly different cultures and how do they coexist? And the answer seems to be they work best, that fear and Sheridan and And. And even before him, Sinclair. But they're always managing the. The. The fear expectations, especially the League of Non Aligned Worlds because that's the group that is. They're less powerful than the major players of the Norn. Centaurian humans and Bari. And they're afraid of each other. So what does Sheridan have to do? Like, what is it with the White Star fleet? He's not enforcing anyone else's will upon the League. He is helping them to. Initially, it seems. Oh, he's just protect their borders. Well, he's helping them protect their sense of safety without. But. But doing it in a way that leads to greater trust of other members of the League rather than the more isolationist. Oh, we have to protect our borders away from these other people. And it's us versus them. So eventually you have the League dissolved and become the alliance.
• 1:14:39
  JOSH: Which ironically kind of works when they all unite to kick the shit out of the Centauri.
• 1:14:44
  JOHN: Yeah. And that was one of those evidence of where they sort of. Where the Alliance. Well, as I said in Deconstruct. Was it deconstruction of falling stars? Were that sort of like. Or it was the episode before that the alliance, you know, would. Would waver and crack, but it would hold. And, you know, the alliance was manipulated heavily when that happens in the fifth season. And tragically. And you see. Well, yeah, you totally understand why they're doing what they're doing. And then it is Sheridan and others who have to, like, come in and be like, hold on. You have to hold back these impulses.
• 1:15:16
  JOSH: And even then, you know, they weren't successful. I mean, they laid waste to some.
• 1:15:21
  JOHN: Laid waste to a. Yeah.
• 1:15:23
  JOSH: And, you know, so they got their pound of flesh and.
• 1:15:25
  JOHN: Yeah.
• 1:15:26
  JOSH: You know, I think that that's the only reason Sheridan was finally able to. That. And because, correct me if I'm wrong, now we're getting off on a tangent here. But they didn't share the information that the Centauri ships were under the control of the Drock. Right.
• 1:15:38
  JOHN: Too long ago. I was watching some of those episodes within the last year or so. But I have to check the timeline on that. I think they were, like, figuring that out at that point. And it was still a lot of like. Yeah.
• 1:15:48
  JOSH: But I think that was to make our characters understand what was happening. Give it anyway.
• 1:15:52
  JOHN: And that's one thing where again, like, you see how things can be manipulated.
• 1:15:56
  JOSH: Yeah.
• 1:15:56
  JOHN: And people go off and they think they're doing the right thing. And you didn't get the sense outside of. You get the sense of Captain hall of the Heracles, that he was a bit of. That he was an asshole and that he was sort of getting off on this like that. That that was him. And you need. You sort of need that character in the story. The rest of the captains were following orders, most of whom did not necessarily like what they were doing. But then what about the first officer of the Vesta? He was part of a, you know, what seemed to be a younger guard of loyalists to Clark installed that purpose. And they were the true believers of Clark. Maybe they're true believer opportunists. There were a lot of opportunists in the Clark administration as we saw throughout the show. And one quick thing I want to talk about, like the way they keep on talking about Clark in this and. And they do very specifically mention his propaganda wing and what the effect of it is. I like how they. This isn't like a simple, like, oh, military one fights military two. And whoever wins, that was. It was about. No, the military are not even the main players in this. You know, really, the propaganda and the political manipulation. All these ministries are. Are the manipulation. But one of the major differences between this fictional world and our real world in terms of the political leadership structure is that Clark is not portrayed as a charismatic character and is not portrayed as a character that we regularly see or himself seems to crave attention and validation. He wasn't written to that degree or portrayed that way. This, what I observe in our current circumstance is an individual who is constantly looking for that adulation and everything else. And that. And that's. That's why how that would play out would be very different, I imagine, than what Clark is doing. And obviously in the Babylon 5 world, Clark wants this. He talks about this when they. When they get the intercepted transmission of his. But, you know, he's been working with the Shadows. He's also being manipulated by the Shadows. So there is this ancient force that is also mucking around in the politics of Earth. As far as we know, that is not happening in. In our world. So this is, you know, there can certainly be more focus on the charismatic leader, which Sheridan on the show is the charismatic leader. He's the one with charisma. He's the one who people sort of do follow along in many ways because of a cult of personality. You don't get a sense that Clark is followed by anybody for a cult of personality.
• 1:18:21
  JOSH: Well, you know, that would make sense. It's almost as if, you know, I think there's an implication that Clark is able to do what he does not coerced or manipulated into doing what he does. He wanted this, but that it was made possible via the Shadows. What do you want? Well, I want to rule the universe or whatever. And they're like, okay, you know, we can help you do that. Maybe the real world analog is Trump's uncanny ability to command attention.
• 1:18:51
  JOHN: Yeah.
• 1:18:52
  JOSH: Like, that's like that sort of superpower he has. You know, whereas for Clark, his superpower is that he had the backing and support of, you know, one of the most ancient, all powerful.
• 1:19:02
  JOHN: Yeah.
• 1:19:03
  JOSH: Races in the galaxy.
• 1:19:04
  JOHN: So the, you know, the personality and the core mechanisms they use in terms of interacting with other people are different. But then once they get there, the way they wield power is similar. Stoke fear of the other, you know, stoke fear of the aliens. Stoke fear of these other groups. You know, right before Babylon 5 succeeds. The big trigger point for. For Clark to seize even more power and declare martial law is the Revelation. The Shadows exist even though he's, their, you know, collaborator. It's like, oh, okay. It's whatever they can do to provoke fear. And when you have a US President say, like these violent cities, you know, putting up a narrative that is demonstrably false, you know, it is to create that fear. It is to also otherize people and everything. And in the Clark administration was about otherizing any. Anyone who's an opponent. But you need the other. You need whoever it's going to be. You need an Other to rally people against. And that's. I don't, you know, fighting that impulse is the trick. As I said, like, having people work on their own fear. Creating these, these alliances is the way to do that. But, and I don't. I don't know what the answer is in terms of what happens today, because it's. That's where the fun of comparing the show ends. There are no Shadows. There is no White Star fleet there. So what we're going to see in terms of, you know, the way things go politically, will it be. Will it eventually be somebody who's attached to the military having that moment that, that. That moment that says, you know, have you no decency? And opening the floodgates of people saying, wait, none of this has been decent. This has been cruel. It has been reckless, and now they have permission to both speak out and more. So, you know, whether it's speaking out, voting against what's, what's happening. I keep hoping there will be that.
• 1:20:56
  JOSH: Yeah, I agree. I think you've articulated it. What is that moment that will grant people permission? That Will break the dam that. Have you no decency, sir? Moment. Yeah, no, that's interesting. I'm also just hoping that like what I'm getting from this episode specifically is yes, propaganda media information is important, but ultimately it's a military solution, which I'm not thrilled with that idea, you know, leaving this episode.
• 1:21:25
  JOHN: Sheridan didn't want it to be. He hoped for more than a season. That that wasn't.
• 1:21:30
  JOSH: Doesn't change. That doesn't change.
• 1:21:32
  JOHN: It wasn't necessary. But you know.
• 1:21:34
  JOSH: Yeah, but also speaking of media, I think next I would like to finally do a media focused episode either now for a word or the illusion of truth or something because stuff that also happened that we didn't get into because of the insanity of the speeches, the Jimmy Kimmel stuff, the Charlie Kirk stuff.
• 1:21:51
  JOHN: Yep.
• 1:21:51
  JOSH: Like it's, this just, it's bonkers. It's bonkers. It's all how we get our information and who gets to say what and what viewpoints are acceptable and who's the defender of free speech and who isn't. It's like Babylon 5 does have a lot to say on that.
• 1:22:06
  JOHN: It does have a lot to say on that. And one of the very things of this, you know, exercise here, of this discussion, because it actually gives us a chance that you sound like all these things, all these relevant topics, is that by, by taking a single episode and focusing on it, we get to take a beat, we get to slow down and we get to focus. And the very thing that this administration and the techniques that they are deploying that are well known is to overwhelm with thing after thing after things. You can't be fixated on the one bad thing. I mean, it's important, you know, like, as silly as is, it was a three day news cycle a little over 10 years ago that the president wore a tan suit. A three day news cycle. But that's because the insanity of that aside, there wasn't a barrage of insane things to contend with. And that's, that's the current design is that the more you push, the more you do. You can't even get your, your shoes on to stand up and say, like, oh wait, I've got to deal with this thing before the next one and the next one, the next one, the next one's happening. So even this kind of opportunity to say, well, yes, we can't focus on everything, but what can we actually slow down, approach and have a long discussion about? And when you're really looking at how to fight back a onslaught of sort of like authoritarian techniques. I think the most. One of the most key things to do is to slow yourself down and say, yeah, I won't answer to every single one of those points. That's a debate tactic that's also used is don't ask the question, but barrage your opponent with even more questions. Ignore them not because they're not relevant, but to say, like, I'm actually going to focus and give the time to something so I can think it out and then they won't be able to take that away and distract me. But, man, that is hard to do in this landscape. Yeah, I can't wait to do a media episode. I also, I'll make the comment in that episode that if you watch 90s television and I'll get the examples for that episode, there are so many character or bit actors that just play newscasters on all these different shows. You're like, that's sort of funny. So, yeah, that'll be a fun one. So any. Any last thoughts? I think I've. I've exhausted thoughts from myself on this one.
• 1:24:22
  JOSH: I mean, that's more or less all that I had to say. Jakar did have a line, you know, Londo asked how the eye was and Jakar is like, it sees. And we've talked about Jakar as a Cassandra figure. But in the context of this and in the context of what's going on in our real world, I was like, wow, d' Kar has a superpower now where he can see exactly what is going on and cut through all the propaganda and see everything for what it is. He has that sight. And I just wish could figure out how exactly to give everyone eyes at sea, you know. Anyway, we are last best hope. We will return, hopefully sooner than last time. Reach out to us. If you want to hear a specific episode discussed, Please reach out lastbesthopeb5gmail.com eventually, when we are on social media, you just have to search for Last Best Hope B5. That will be our handle everywhere we are. And want to leave you with the idea that sometimes peace is just another word for surrender. Sam.