The American People Should Know Don Trump Thinks the President is Above the Law
PLUS: A review of the FX limited series "Shōgun"
For Democrats hoping the law would catch up to Donald Trump before voters cast their ballots in the 2024 election, this past week was rough.
The Supreme Court announced last Wednesday it would decide a dispute in the federal election subversion case brought by special prosecutor Jack Smith concerning whether a former president enjoys immunity from criminal prosecution for acts taken while in office. That election subversion case was originally slated to begin this week, but last December, Trump appealed trial judge Tanya Chutkan’s ruling that Trump lacked immunity from prosecution. Smith petitioned the Supreme Court to skip the appeals court and hear the case, but shortly before Christmas, the Court rejected Smith’s request and ordered the U.S. Court of Appeals to take it up. That court heard the case in early January and issued a unanimous ruling a month later that Trump lacked immunity. Trump then appealed that decision to the Supreme Court, which decided this past week to hear the case during the week of April 22.
Most court watchers assume this is a pretty open-and-shut case that will affirm Chutkan had it right all along: Trump isn’t immune from prosecution. What has Democrats upset, however, is that the Supreme Court is taking its time resolving this dispute, which keeps pushing back the start of the trial. Right now, the earliest the case could get underway would likely be mid-August, which would mean the trial would occur during the height of the 2024 campaign. Any further delays could prevent a jury from handing down a verdict before Election Day or even keep the case from going to trial before Inauguration Day, after which a potential President Trump could order an end to the prosecution all together.
The Court’s handling of the case is pretty sus. Given the importance of the case and the demands of the calendar, why didn’t the Court hear the case directly rather than route it through the Court of Appeals? After the Court of Appeals issued its ruling, why did the Court take two weeks to issue a one-page order announcing it would hear an appeal of that decision? Why will it take nearly two months for the Court to hear that appeal? At this rate, should we really expect the Court to issue an opinion quickly, or is it more likely that opinion will come at the end of their term near the end of June? (The Court could move quickly on this stuff if it really wanted to. Twenty-four years ago, the Florida Supreme Court ordered a statewide recount of all undervoted ballots cast in the 2000 presidential election on December 8. The Court accepted an appeal the next day, heard arguments in the case two days later, and the following day issued its opinion in Bush v. Gore, which effectively decided that year’s election for George W. Bush. All in a long weekend’s work, basically.) One can’t help but think there are forces within the Court—my bets are on Ginni Thomas’s husband, Clarence—that are delaying the case as much as possible.
With it now much more likely that voters won’t definitely know if Trump is guilty of election subversion in the 2020 election before they cast their ballots in the 2024 election, Democrats are now hoping the other case Jack Smith is overseeing—Trump’s classified documents case—might make it to trial sooner rather than later. While the election subversion case poses the greatest legal peril to Trump, the classified documents case is the most straightforward and the easiest to prosecute. The judge in that case, however, is Trump-appointee Aileen Cannon, who, like the Supreme Court, is taking her sweet time processing the case. Cannon held a hearing this Friday to set a start date for the trial (it was supposed to begin in May) and told Smith’s team she felt a July start date was too ambitious. Trump’s team prefers to wait until the election is over but offered an August start date, which could conflict with Chutkan’s case if it ever got underway. Regardless, Cannon has implied there’s a lot of pre-trial work that still needs to be done, so expect any date to eventually slide later into the year.
Meanwhile, in Atlanta, the Georgia election interference case remained entangled this week in a hearing to determine if Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis ought to be disqualified on account of her romantic relationship with the lawyer she hired to prosecute the case. Trump’s lawyers have argued Willis is personally profiting from her prosecution of the ex-president via that relationship. Everything I’ve read suggests Trump’s lawyers failed to make their case and that Willis won’t be disqualified, but it’s an awful look for the D.A. regardless. Her defense was very unconvincing, but while that may not matter in the end, it allows Trump to claim he is the victim of a politicized prosecution.
That leaves the Manhattan case involving Trump’s hush money payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels, which is set to go to trial on March 25. Many legal experts have cast doubt on the strength of that case, but even if a jury does return a guilty verdict, it is unlikely Trump will face a significant punishment. It’s also unlikely a guilty verdict in that case will change many voters’ minds about Trump.
So yeah, it hasn’t been a great week for those hoping the legal system would deliver this country from the scourge that is Donald Trump. But it also felt like a week when Democrats began realizing they can’t count on the courts to win this election for them. The hope has always been that Trump would be dragged into a courtroom and forced to face the facts, and that a guilty verdict would authoritatively disqualify him from holding office in the eyes of a rock-solid majority of voters. But as Democrats were reminded this week, within an adversarial legal system, the side they aren’t rooting for has cards they can play as well. Judges have a will of their own, too. Maybe that means a thumb ends up being placed on the scales of justice for Trump. Maybe that means a thumb ends up being placed on the scales of justice for those prosecuting Trump. Or maybe that means those judges are just seriously concerned with matters of due process and constitutional law. Regardless, Democrats shouldn’t assume the courts will operate according to their political needs.
Additionally, Democrats were always going to have a hard time turning Trump’s legal woes into political gold. Trump’s guilt may be really easy to prove in the classified documents case, but in the grand scheme of things, voters may consider that small potatoes when it comes to deciding who they want in the White House setting the nation’s economic, immigration, and foreign policy agendas. As for the election interference case, as deplorable and, frankly, disqualifying as Trump’s actions were after the 2020 election, Trump’s lawyers were always going to insist what Trump did wasn’t technically illegal, which would have the effect of obscuring the significance of Trump’s actions and turning the case into a political football.
There are all kinds of reasons why Democrats would like to see the legal system sink its teeth into Trump. Some undoubtedly want to use the courts to eliminate a political nuisance. But many simply believe Trump has committed crimes and ought to be held accountable for his actions; furthermore, they believe it is important to affirm that, in a system based on the rule of law, no one, not even the President of the United States, is above the law. Others will emphasize it is important to definitively establish Trump’s criminal inclinations so Americans can factor that into their vote for president in 2024.
That last reason is an interesting one because it is a blend of the first two reasons: It is motivated by both principle (both the rule of law and the idea that a criminal should not serve as President of the United States) and politics (a desire to turn that principle into a campaign issue.) Some will object to politicizing principle. After all, that’s why we have an independent prosecutor’s office: We want the law to operate free of politics, so that the legal system isn’t used to persecute political opponents. It’s better to resolve political disputes through the political process than through the legal process.
But principles motivate politics, and it so happens we’ve reached a point in American history where the principle of rule of law is up for grabs. A former president who is also his party’s likely nominee for president stands accused of not only possessing but refusing to return numerous classified documents to the United States government and attempting to use fraud and force to overturn the results of an election he lost. His argument isn’t so much that he didn’t do these things but that as president the law can’t touch him for doing these things. So we have a political dispute over a principle, one that should weigh heavily in the minds of many Americans and that could play a major role in determining who they vote for this November: Is the President of the United States accountable to the law or above the law?
More than the details of any particular court case, the American people are owed a debate on this more general issue. The American people deserve to know if Donald Trump believes the President of the United States is above the law. It’s a matter of both principle and politics, and Democrats should not shy away from pushing it to the forefront of the 2024 election.
Here’s my idea for how Joe Biden could do that. The political utility of Jack Smith’s two cases are now in doubt. So freeze them. Smith is accountable to Attorney General Merrick Garland, and Garland is accountable to Biden, so Biden can do this. Biden should say he does not want to leave the American people with the impression his Justice Department or the federal court system is waging lawfare against his political opponent by putting Trump on trial during the 2024 campaign, so he is requesting Garland freeze both cases until Inauguration Day 2025. At that point, whoever is serving as Attorney General can do whatever they want with the cases: Resume them, keep them frozen, or dismiss them. (Biden should add that as much as it pains him personally and despite the political peril it poses to his campaign, he is not requesting the Justice Department freeze its investigation into his son Hunter.)
Freezing Trump’s cases would shift the burden of this debate over the rule of law onto Trump. Trump would need to address whether he, if elected president, would allow Smith’s cases against him to go forward (and accept any consequences that result from them) or if he would dismiss them. If he promised to let them go forward, Biden should remind voters Trump is a serial liar who can’t be trusted. If Trump said he would leave it up to his Attorney General to make that call, Trump should be pressed to guarantee that his Attorney General would not dismiss the cases. If Trump sought to dismiss them on the grounds that he did nothing illegal, he should be asked why a jury shouldn’t be allowed to make that decision instead. And if Trump sought to dismiss the cases on the grounds that the president can’t be prosecuted for such actions, he should be asked why the Supreme Court shouldn’t be allowed to adjudicate that issue.
More importantly, however, by freezing the cases, the debate over the underlying principle behind these cases—whether the most powerful person in the United States is accountable to the rule of law—would move to the center of the 2024 election. My suspicion is a solid majority of the American people do not believe the president and other powerful people ought to be above the law. Biden could emphasize how he allowed investigations into himself and his family to proceed while in office.
But Trump would be seriously exposed on the issue. His lifelong record as a scofflaw (he and his companies have been defendants in over 1,900 cases) along with his tendency to brag about how easily someone in his position could/can get away with crime (shooting someone in the middle of 5th Avenue, grabbing women by the genitals, etc.) would be relitigated. Trump would have to answer for claims made on social media that presidents a.) would be stripped of their authority if they weren’t granted “complete and total…immunity” (completely false, as the Constitution not only limits but grants presidents powers unique to the presidency, and presidents have long exercised the office’s authority without a guarantee of immunity and with the understanding that they are bound by the law) and b.) are entitled to immunity for actions that “cross the line” (actions that “cross the line” are almost by definition prohibited, as such a “line” would serve no purpose otherwise.) Voters would need to reckon with the implications of Trump’s longing to serve as “dictator for a day” if he was not accountable to the law. His lawyer’s assertion that a president could order the military to assassinate a political rival without legal consequence would be made famous. By extension, both Trump and Biden would have to go on record about whether President Biden at the moment could order the murder of a political opponent and get away with it. I’m sure Biden would say no. I have no idea how Trump would mangle an answer to that question except for that it would probably involve the word “border.”
I wouldn’t expect the MAGAverse to abandon Trump over this. If anything, they’d probably rally to Trump’s understanding of executive power as unlimited in scope without considering what might happen to them if Biden decided to a similar position sometime this year. But it would hopefully be enough to force conscientious Americans to reckon with the elemental danger Trump poses to American government. However dissatisfied these voters may be with either party’s presidential nominees, they would have to acknowledge there is only one candidate in the race who stands for principles fundamental to American democratic government and the rule of law.
Democrats have good reasons for wanting the prosecutions of Donald Trump to go forward, the most important of which is that presidents who abuse their power must be held accountable to the law. Furthermore, Democrats have good reasons for wanting to turn this into a political issue, as Trump and his Republican enablers threaten to undermine the American political system by trampling upon the rule of law if Trump returns to the White House. The American people ought to know if Trump is guilty of the serious crimes he’s been accused of before they vote this fall, but more fundamentally, they deserve to know if Trump believes he is above the law. If the courts are in no hurry to help process that issue for the American people, then Biden and the Democrats should do what they can to force the country to confront it. The principle at stake won’t speak for or defend itself. It’s up to Democrats to push it to the fore of our nation’s politics and leverage it to their maximum political advantage.
Signals and Noise
During his visit to the southern border, President Biden challenged Trump to “join me” in passing a border bill rather than “telling members of Congress to block this legislation.”
“Nobody can explain to me why allowing millions of people from places unknown, countries unknown, who don’t speak languages. We have languages coming in to our country, nobody that speaks those languages. They’re truly foreign languages. Nobody speaks them.”—Donald Trump, speaking during his visit to the border
“[Biden’s visit to the border] on Thursday [is] a cynical, sick political stunt by the president, and frankly it is beyond disgraceful. We will be at the border with President Trump on Thursday.”—Sean Hannity on FOX News
In that interview with Hannity at the border, Trump said he would use local police to implement his plan for mass deportations and grant them immunity “to [do] the job they have to do.”
By Shane Goldmacher of the New York Times: “How the Biden-Trump Border Visits Revealed a Deeper Divide” (“But the dueling border events were about something even more fundamental than immigration policy. They spoke to the competing visions of power and presidency that are at stake in 2024 — of autocracy and the value of democracy itself.”)
A Gallup poll found 28% of Americans list immigration as the most important problem facing the country (trailed by “the government” at 20%). A Monmouth poll found 84% of Americans said illegal immigration was either a very serious (61%) or somewhat serious (23%) problem. For the first time, a majority of the public (53%) supports building a border wall. A Pew Research poll found 73% of Americans listed strengthening the economy as a top governmental priority.
The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco released a report that found one of the main reasons behind the current economic boom and quick post-pandemic recovery is immigration, which filled gaps in the labor market.
David Frum of The Atlantic writes about the pivotal role outgoing Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador—who exercises significant power over the number of migrants allowed to cross into the United States, and has expressed a preference for Trump over Biden—may play in the 2024 presidential election.
Don Trump and Joe Biden won last week’s party primaries in Michigan, but it wasn’t pretty. Trump crushed Nikki Haley but once again underperformed the polls, as Haley netted a little over 26% of the vote. Biden handily won his contest but lost 13% (over 100,000 votes!) to an “uncommitted” protest vote organized around his refusal to call for a ceasefire in Gaza. No one knows how many of those Haley and uncommitted voters will find their way back to their parties’ nominees come November.
Washington state’s largest labor union, the United Food and Commercial Workers, has endorsed voting “uncommitted” in next month’s Democratic presidential primary. While it plans on endorsing the Democratic nominee in the fall, the union is concerned about Biden’s ability to win the 2024 general election and his policies concerning Israel’s invasion of Gaza.
Ronald Brownstein writes for The Atlantic about the challenges facing Biden on the economy, zeroing in on the role consumer sentiment plays in voters’ evaluations of the sitting president.
Marcela Valdes of the New York Times takes a look at the electoral bloc that may decide the 2024 election: People who choose not to vote.
Republican Florida Senator Rick Scott said he would “absolutely” support Trump for president even if Trump was convicted of a crime.
Philip Bump writes in the Washington Post that Hunter Biden’s testimony before the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees gave Republicans the rebuttal they didn’t want.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat writes about how Don Trump, an obviously immoral/amoral man, has acquired a holy aura among his followers. Ben-Ghiat further connects that to the tendency among autocrats to deify themselves.
Trump is slated to meet with Hungary’s autocratic leader Viktor Orban next week at Mar-a-Lago.
A 1/6 rioter and self-described “loser” was sentenced to three years in prison for beating Capitol Hill police officers with a hockey stick and a sharpened metal pole during the insurrection. Don Trump characterizes such people as “political prisoners.” The Justice Department asked for an eight year sentence, but the judge overseeing the trial—the same judge overseeing Trump’s federal election interference case—pared it back.
Matthew Goldstein of the New York Times reports Trump’s sale of his TruthSocial social media company could provide him with a $4 billion lifeline to help pay his legal bills and penalties. But now the co-founders of Trump’s site (a pair of contestants from The Apprentice) are suing him, claiming Trump and others schemed to deprive them of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Trump’s lawyers admitted in court he didn’t have the cash on hand to cover the $450 million penalty stemming from his civil fraud case if he wants to appeal.
Alex Isenstadt of Politico reports the Trump campaign has told lobbyists in Washington DC they are paying attention to who votes in Sunday’s Republican presidential primary and that they won’t have access if they don’t vote.
Mitch McConnell will step down as Senate Minority Leader in November. By John Nichols of The Nation: “Good Riddance to Mitch McConnell, an Enemy of Democracy” And by Michael Starr Hopkins of The Hill: “Will Mitch McConnell Finally Reject Trumpism and Choose America?”
By Zachary Basu of Axios: “Trump Looms Large in McConnell Successor Race”
Joseph Zeballos-Roig of Semafor reports Republican senators are starting to warm to the House’s $78 billion tax bill.
Following an “intense” meeting between Congress’s four top leaders, President Biden, and Vice President Harris at the White House in which everyone in attendance apparently ganged up on House Speaker Mike Johnson, Congress passed another stopgap spending bill to yet again avert a government shutdown. The stopgap that passed the House relied mostly on Democratic votes. The new deadlines are March 8 and March 22..
Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries hinted a rump of Democrats might be willing to save House Speaker Mike Johnson if conservative Republicans tried to oust him for allowing a vote on the Ukraine aid bill.
Jordain Carney and Olivia Beavers of Politico find that House Republicans are worried all their serious-minded and responsible members are headed for the exits.
The Democratic-controlled New York state legislature adopted new congressional maps that only slightly altered a court-drawn map that favors Democrats. The legislature could have drawn a map that more aggressively favored Democrats but chose not to, a strange choice since the person who stands to benefit the most from a House Democratic majority—House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries—is from New York. Democrats still have a good shot at unseating four Republicans.
A federal judge in Texas ruled that a law passed by the House using proxy votes during the pandemic violated the Constitution because members were not present in the House while casting votes. The ruling brings into question all sorts of laws passed during the pandemic. (BTW, the law the state of Texas felt compelled to challenge was a 2021 law that provided additional protections to pregnant workers. Go figure.)
Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post digs into Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s decision to hire a law clerk who sent racist text messages when working with a conservative group connected to Thomas’s wife Ginni. It’s a bizarre case, as the clerk was invited to live with the Thomas’s after the texts came to light and she was fired from the conservative group she was working with. Writes Marcus, “This episode is a stain — and not just on Clanton and Thomas. It taints the entire federal judiciary, which has proven itself institutionally incapable of and unwilling to enforce basic ethics rules.”
Alabama’s Republican legislature rushed to pass legislation protecting I.V.F. clinics following a state Supreme Court decision that ruled frozen embryos are children.
Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi blocked passage of a bill that would have protected in-vitro fertilization throughout the nation. The bill’s author, Democratic Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, is a combat veteran who lost both legs in Iraq; her two children were conceived via I.V.F.
“While a pregnancy might have been difficult on a 10-year-old body, a woman’s body is designed to carry life.”—Ohio Right to Life leader Laura Strietmann in remarks about a 10-year-old girl who was raped and had to travel to Indiana for an abortion. (The vehemence with which these comments were delivered is something to behold.)
Leah Britton of the Arizona Mirror reports a Republican-sponsored bill moving through the Arizona legislature would allow ranchers in the state to shoot and kill undocumented immigrants passing through their land.
Lee Guthrie of the Tahlequah Daily Press reports Republican Oklahoma State Senator Tom Woods stated during a public forum that LGBTQ people are “filth” who are not wanted in the state of Oklahoma. Said Woods, “I represent a constituency that doesn’t want that filth in Oklahoma. We are a religious state and we are going to fight it to keep that filth out of the state of Oklahoma because we are a Christian state – we are a moral state. “We want to lower taxes and let people be able to live and work and go to the faith they choose. We are a Republican state and I’m going to vote my district, and I’m going to vote my values, and we don’t want that in the state of Oklahoma.” His remarks come in the wake of the death of non-binary teenager Nex Benedict, who died a day after being beaten up in a school bathroom. Police reports have not linked Benedict’s death to the physical altercation.
Hannah Knowles of the Washington Post writes about Republican North Carolina gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson, whose offensive, often hate-filled comments distinguish him from other Republican firebrands.
Israeli troops killed over 100 Palestinians after firing into a crowd waiting for food in Gaza City. Israel said the crowd approached an aid convoy in a threatening way. Hamas leaders said the deaths made a hostage deal more difficult to negotiate.
The United States began air-dropping humanitarian supplies into Gaza. The first delivery included 38,000 meals-ready-to-eat.
Barak Ravid of Axios reports the United States is giving Israel until mid-March to ensure it will abide by international law when using American-supplied weapons and allow humanitarian aid to flow into Gaza.
Following remarks by French President Emmanuel Macron that NATO should not rule out sending non-combat troops into Ukraine, Russian leader Vladimir Putin warned of nuclear war if western nations sent military personnel to Ukraine or delivered long-range missiles to the country.
Sweden is set to become a member of NATO now that Hungary has become the last NATO member to approve the Scandinavian nation’s bid.
France became the first nation in the world to enshrine abortion rights in its constitution.
Vincent’s Picks: Shōgun
If you’re like me, you may be wondering why our times call for a 10-episode limited series about the political machinations of early 17th-century Japan. Having seen the first two episodes of Shōgun, which airs every Tuesday on FX before streaming the next day on Hulu, I might offer this as a reason: It tells a damn good story, which will always work regardless the era. A blend of House of Cards (but without the melodrama) and Game of Thrones (but without the fantasy) Shōgun is a fully immersive small-screen epic, a show that puts the prestige back in Prestige TV.
Shōgun is based on the best-selling 1975 historical novel of the same name by British author James Clavell. That novel, which served as something of a primer for many English-language readers on Japanese culture, was adapted for an Emmy-winning television miniseries starring Richard Chamberlain and Toshiro Mifune in 1980. This latest version of Shōgun has been in the works since 2018 and is distinguished from its predecessor by shifting its focus from the story’s main western character to its Japanese leads.
Loosely based on real events, Shōgun is set in feudal Japan during the late years of the Sengoku period (1467-1615) and just prior to the Battle of Sekigahara (1600), which led to the establishment of the Tokugawa Shogunate that would rule Japan for the next two-and-a-half centuries. The characters are fictional analogues of real people, so don’t think for an instant you’re watching some sort of docudrama. My understanding (I’m no expert on this, so I can’t confirm) is that the show’s historical fidelity is found in its depiction of 17th-century Japanese society, with some wiggle-room for dramatic license I’m sure.
Shōgun begins a year after the death of Taikō, a daimyo (feudal lord) whose only son and heir, the child Yoechiyo, is not yet old enough to claim his father’s title. Five daimyo regents, including Lord Yoshii Toranaga (based on Tokugawa Ieyasu, the eventual founder of the Tokugawa Shogunate, played by Hiroyuki Sanada) and Toranaga’s chief rival Ishido Kazunari (based on Ishida Mitsunari, played by Takehiro Hira) are designated rulers in the child’s stead. Toranaga’s loyalties lie with the deceased Taikō and the young Yoechiyo, which doesn’t sit well with the other daimyo regents, who would like to fill the power vacuum themselves. When Toranaga receives a summons to meet with the other four daimyo regents at Osaka Castle, he correctly assumes they are plotting his assassination.
Meanwhile, the Dutch ship Erasmus drifts into a coastal Japanese town where its few surviving, starving crewmembers are taken prisoner by the shifty and depraved samurai Yabushige (Tadanobu Asano). Among the crew is English navigator John Blackthorne (based on William Adams, played by Cosmo Jarvis), who tells his shipmates to continue pretending they are sailors aboard a merchant vessel. In reality, Blackthorne has been dispatched by Queen Elizabeth of England to locate Japan via the Straits of Magellan, lay waste to any Spanish or Portuguese settlements he finds along the way, and establish relations with the Japanese powers-that-be on behalf of the English Crown. Jarvis portrays the gruff-voiced and foul-mouthed Blackthorne as a complete fish out of water, almost at times to the point of comic relief. The pirate’s plight is complicated by his hatred of Catholics, which earns him little sympathy from the few Europeans in Japan he can speak with.
When Toranaga gets word of Blackthorne’s shipwreck, he orders Yabushige to bring the Englishman (whom the Japanese call “Anjin,” or “pilot”) to him in Osaka. Toranaga correctly senses the Protestant Blackthorne could be of use to him. As it turns out, the Portuguese Catholic missionaries who have established a foothold in Japan are intimately involved in the mercantile affairs of the Portuguese empire, which, as Blackthorne eagerly informs Toranaga, claims to “own” Japan. Of the four daimyo regents opposed to Toranaga, two are Catholic converts aligned with the Portuguese, who are certain an English Protestant who suddenly shows up in Japan is up to no good. Perhaps Blackthorne’s status as a non-Catholic European can be used to drive a wedge between the daimyo regents, who already seem destined to go to war with one another once they eliminate the threat posed by Toranaga.
The other character rounding out the main cast is the noblewoman Mariko (based on Hosokawa Gracia, played by Anna Sawa). Her allegiances are bound to be tested. Married into the family of Toranaga’s trusted lieutenant Hiromatsu (Tokuma Nishioka) she is also a Catholic fluent in Portuguese and sympathetic to Father Martin Alvito (Tommy Bastow). Called upon by Toranaga to translate for Blackthorne, Mariko faithfully relays what the Protestant knows about a secret army of Catholic Portuguese-trained Japanese warriors awaiting orders in Macao even though she neither believes it nor trusts Blackthorne. History tells us what role she’ll play in this drama, but for now at least she’s something of a wild card.
Shōgun is the sort of story that is best told over the course of a ten-hour limited series. The program immerses the viewer in Sengoku-era Japan, taking time to establish the setting and cultural backdrop in a way that isn’t rushed or perfunctory, as many big-screen epics often feel today. The palace intrigue driving the story is allowed to marinate as well, so viewers can better appreciate Toranaga’s patience, cunning, and opportunism. This isn’t an exercise in slow TV, however; the plot developments come fast and the action is vivid. You’ll be riveted as the knots slowly but surely tighten around these characters. (Be forewarned, though: The show is violent, at times startlingly so, as when a villager in the first episode is suddenly beheaded, and occasionally gruesome, as when one of Blackthorne’s imprisoned crewmembers is boiled alive.)
The plot of Shōgun alone is enough to keep viewers anticipating each new episode, but the show is also an exploration of fate and destiny. Blackthorne, for instance, is convinced he’ll survive his ordeal because he always has, suggesting in his mind at least that he is destined for, well, something. But Blackthorne is also someone who chalks up his success to his wits, which implies agency. (He also shouldn’t rule out the role fortune plays in his adventures.) The show’s other characters often remind Blackthorne his western notion of free will is out of step with Japanese perspectives on life. Staring down his own political predicament, Toranaga is prepared to accept whatever fate has in store for him, even if that fate entails death or seppuku. That, however, does not keep the feudal lord from scheming against his rival daimyo. Perhaps his destiny is not yet set in stone.
One other stray thought I had while watching Shōgun: I was struck by how none of the daimyo offered a compelling vision for Japan’s future. The noble Toranaga seeks continuity with the past, while his rivals would undermine the status quo and upend Japanese society by welcoming the Portuguese as colonizers. It’s not a perfect parallel to our moment by any means, but that feeling of defending a past rather than fighting for a future may be an aspect of Shōgun that quietly resonates with audiences in our time.