The eerily contemporary morality of HBO’s Game of Thrones
it went anti-Tolkien. Indeed, if you dared to call their creation “Tolkienesque,” the esteemed deceased English author might well rise from the grave in protest.
.. In Tolkien’s tales, magic is of paramount importance, the good is very, very good, and the evil is obvious and horrifying. Tolkien was a veteran of World War I, and he’d seen his own Mordor. The descriptions of the Black Land have eerie echoes in the blasted earth and industrial destruction in the trenches of the Western Front. In Tolkien’s time, great good faced great evil (often against seemingly overwhelming odds), and great good triumphed.
.. His work instead calls back to an earlier time, to the struggles for dynastic succession in old England. Loosely based — very loosely — on the Wars of the Roses, his books pit warring families against each other
.. This game has but one rule, “You win or you die.” The politics are gritty, good men are hard to find, and honor and virtue are often rewarded with swift death.
.. Perhaps fearing that the show would flop without a little extra help, HBO used its full premium-cable powers to lard it up with graphic sex and violence.
.. Martin’s books aren’t for the squeamish, but HBO took the lewd elements to the next level. Comedians and critics even coined a term, “sexposition,” to describe the show’s habit of using extended sex scenes as a mechanism for explaining plot points and developing characters. In family-friendly social-conservative circles, the word went out: HBO once again was using sex to sell, and Christians especially shouldn’t be buying.
.. But by the end of season six, the show was an unstoppable ratings juggernaut, watched by upwards of 25 million Americans each week. It’s arguably the most watched show on television today.
.. Season seven (out of eight) starts on July 16, and its ratings will likely surpass everything but the NFL playoffs. A true cultural moment is at hand.
.. the show’s creators have accomplished what few television or film producers have ever achieved — they have improved upon classic books and have, quite simply, mastered the art of storytelling.
.. they cast the multiple important roles perfectly, and they have shown a knack for delivering during the big moments. The plot twists, betrayals, and epic battles aren’t just watchable, they’re rewatchable. In fact, classic clips garner millions of views on YouTube as fans go relive the highlights in much the same way that Patriots fans no doubt relive the last five minutes of Tom Brady’s epic comeback in Super Bowl LI.
.. The story itself matters too, and in many ways it is the right story at the right time, holding up a mirror to modern American sensibilities and showing the consequences of modern American morality.
.. In Tolkien’s world the stakes are immense, the moral battle lines are clear, and victory actually means victory, the end of a distinct evil force. In this respect, as noted above, Tolkien was a man of his age.
.. Martin’s can feel like a treadmill of conflict where squabbling lords and ladies ignore looming threats and greater dangers for the sake of momentary advantage in a seemingly never-ending battle for control. The stakes can seem small — what’s the real difference for humanity between Lannister or Targaryen rule? — but the conflicts are still intense.
.. Whereas the typical high-fantasy novel might end after a hero defeats her enemies and frees entire cities’ worth of slaves, in Game of Thrones, Martin (and the show’s creators) ask, “What comes next?” And the answer, instead of a glorious celebration of freedom and liberty, is a period of chaos and vengeance.
.. Whereas the typical high-fantasy novel centers on the most honorable of heroes and writes him to victory against insurmountable odds, in Game of Thrones, the honorable hero loses his head unless he’s honorable and shrewd or honorable and violent.
.. Think of it as Calvinism without Christ — natural human depravity unleashed. The realities of human nature mean that evil is very, very evil, and good is also touched with the weight of sin.
.. Certain timely themes emerge, perhaps most salient among them the constant, vivid reminders that the ends do not justify the means.
.. Indeed, Martin has revealed a key truth — that pursuing virtuous ends by vicious means can so transform a person that the ends themselves change. Virtue is redefined, and ultimately virtue is lost.
.. The characters are obsessed with settling scores and vindicating their honor.
.. In fact, even the evilest of characters have their own tales of woe. They can always find a murder or a conflict or an act of defiance that justifies the next vengeful act. Just as in real life, evil has a reason for its rage.
.. While watching, one can’t help but be reminded of Christ’s admonition that even his followers should be “wise as serpents.”
.. A conservative can’t watch the show without understanding that it is, at times, almost shamelessly Burkean: Disrupt the established order at your peril.
.. several of the great houses launched a rebellion (“Robert’s Rebellion”) to depose a mad king. By any measure, it was a just war against a homicidal maniac
.. I suspect we won’t see anything like the collapse of Mount Doom in Return of the King. Maybe we’ll get justice, but it will likely be angry justice, and when the series ends, the last person on the Iron Throne will wear the crown uneasily, knowing that she (or he) left a trail of bodies on the path to power and that those souls not only cry out for vengeance but have living descendants who hear their call.
.. At issue was the question of political tactics. Did the “high road” work anymore? Don’t the nice guys always lose, and when they lose don’t the virtues they believe in ultimately lose as well?
.. an increasingly amoral society, unmoored from its traditions and full of entitled and ambitious men and women who compete for power with unrestrained viciousness. Does that sound at least vaguely familiar? Is it any wonder that Game of Thrones resonates in the modern American heart?
.. It will still have too much sex (though HBO has limited the lewdness as the series has grown more popular)
.. it will give us something else as well — a lesson that entitlement and rage have a price, and that justice gets lost when victory is the only goal. Perhaps the true rule of the game of thrones isn’t “Win or die” but rather “Win and die.” The quest for power, unmoored from virtue, is the doom of us all.
Why Travis Kalanick didn’t survive at Uber
From the moment his leave was announced, some people who knew the famously hard-charging Kalanick were skeptical that — based on how he had managed the company over eight years — he could change in the ways needed to allow him to return.
.. “A vacation doesn’t fix what he suffers from.”
.. the investors began talking daily over email, in texts and meeting in person for coffee, according to one source. By the weekend, Gurley’s venture capital firm, Silicon Valley-based Benchmark, began to pass around a draft of a letter urging Kalanick to voluntarily step down.
.. The letter — signed by five major Uber shareholders, including Gurley’s Benchmark and other top names such as Menlo Ventures, Chris Sacca’s Lowercase Capital and mutual fund firm Fidelity Investments — demanded Kalanick’s resignation
.. One moment three months ago, when Kalanick was still firmly in charge at Uber, crystallized how Kalanick was struggling to remake himself and the corporate culture. Kalanick appeared before a group of Uber’s female engineers in Palo Alto, Calif., for what was supposed to be an informal question-and-answer session.
.. He said he had met with Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg to discuss Facebook’s unconscious bias training. But Kalanick did not propose a plan to replicate that kind of training or any other concrete ideas. He only conveyed a vague notion that something needed to change.
.. Among the recommendations the board adopted included more management training and a rethinking of Uber’s 14 cultural values, items that Kalanick himself was instrumental in creating.
.. Kalanick had told Calacanis he scored an impressive 1580 out of 1600 on his SAT
.. As Uber grew, Lacy and her writers repeatedly clashed with Kalanick and the company. They wrote articles critical of how Uber treated its drivers and how female riders, in particular, faced harassment. The tension boiled over in 2014 when a BuzzFeed journalist heard Uber executives float a plan to research the private lives of writers whose coverage they did not like, particularly Lacy
“They wanted to go after my family,” Lacy said. “I’ve been in the valley for 20 years. This is not normal.”
Culture Clash at a Chinese-Owned Plant in Ohio
a major culture clash is playing out on the factory floor, with some workers questioning the company’s commitment to operating under American supervision and American norms.
.. The union, which began meeting with workers in 2015, escalated its public efforts in April with a fiery meeting highlighting arbitrarily enforced rules and retaliation against those who speak up.
.. a former employee named James Martin said the company had exposed him to harsh chemicals that blistered his arms and diminished his lung capacity. (Mr. Martin lost his job for excessive absences while on workers’ compensation leave in January.)
.. But projects can suffer when investors are unfamiliar with the American regulatory and political environment, as is true for many executives in China, where labor standards tend to be less strictly enforced.
.. He said the Chinese had little interest in training, sharing responsibility with or even engaging with American employees.
.. He lamented that productivity at the plant “is not as high as we have in China,” adding that “some of the workers are just idling around.”
.. entrepreneurs like Mr. Cao often populate their factories with migrants from rural areas, whom they expect to be relatively submissive, unlike American workers, who expect a more collegial management style. “He hasn’t ever had probably this type of pressure from a work force,” she said.
.. But he conceded that “the fundamental difference between Chinese and Americans is that the Chinese have a bias toward speed; Americans like to process things, think it through from all angles.”
.. Chinese overseas investments in Africa and Asia showed a pattern of reluctance to transfer operations to local control.
.. “At the managerial level, you see that the technical staff tends to be from China,” she said. “The one local employee they hire at a senior managerial level would be the human resources director.”
There’s no indication Comey violated the law. Trump may be about to.
President Trump’s declaration that the Thursday testimony of former FBI director James B. Comey was a “total and complete vindication” despite “so many false statements and lies” was the sort of brashly triumphant and loosely-grounded-in-reality statement we’ve come to expect from the commander in chief
.. “initiating an investigation because you don’t like somebody’s testimony could be considered obstruction. And in the whistleblower context, it’s both evidence of retaliation and, under some laws, could be an adverse retaliatory act itself.”
.. “Obviously you can report on a conversation with the president,” he said. “What the president does isn’t confidential or classified.” There is the principle of “executive privilege,” which protects the president’s deliberative process as he does his job. But that wouldn’t cover a conversation like the one between Comey and Trump.
.. “The constitutional right to go to the press with information on matters of public concern, as long as you’re not doing it in a way that will bring out classified information,” Kohn said, “the reason why that is protected constitutionally is that the courts — including the U.S. Supreme Court — have ruled that the public has a constitutional right to hear this information.” In other words, it’s constitutionally protected speech.
.. We can safely assume, though, that Trump’s team is aware that Comey likely didn’t violate any laws, and that they are simply using these arguments as a tool for undermining the parts of his testimony that they didn’t like. How they’re doing it, though, could make their problems worse.
.. “They know that they’re not going to get anything out of Comey on this, because there’s no evidence,” he added. “But they’re clearly trying to create a chilling effect. Not a chilling effect on classified information. … This is a chilling effect on people not to talk about conversations they had with the president that are not classified as a matter of law.”
.. Title 18, Section 1513 makes it a federal offense for anyone who “with the intent to retaliate, takes any action harmful to any person, including interference with the lawful employment or livelihood of any person, for providing to a law enforcement officer any truthful information relating to the commission or possible commission of any Federal offense.”
.. “They know that they’re not going to get anything out of Comey on this, because there’s no evidence,” he added. “But they’re clearly trying to create a chilling effect. Not a chilling effect on classified information. … This is a chilling effect on people not to talk about conversations they had with the president that are not classified as a matter of law.”
.. Whether or not Trump and his team would like to punish Comey for his testimony seems more straightforward.