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Earlier this year I was telling you about watching Season 6 of Homeland. My point in doing so was less about the content of the show than about that time in which it was written. It seemed that the show’s writers imagined a President* Elizabeth Keane winning election coincident with Hillary Clinton’s victory. When that failed to happen, I went on to wonder which plot points would be better applied as a Republican assault against the first female President or as the Democrats’ assault against that actual, sitting president.

I’m now on to Season 7. This story has the advantage of knowing how the election turned out. It has the disadvantage of the counter-factual – the wrong guy won. Viewed some three-and-half years later, it also has some interesting implications when considered with the advantage of hindsight.

Back in October of 2020, I was dwelling on the appearance of the Logan Act as presented in the media. Illustrative is the consideration of the fate of its violators along with its appearance, over the years, in popular culture. That article was posted only a few days before Nancy Pelosi floated the idea of using the 25th Amendment to remove Donald Trump from office. Being so far behind in my Homeland watching, I had no way of knowing that this was a key plot point of Season 7. Ironically, the show portrays an illegitimate invocation based on pure politics, with those politics grounded in misinformation propagated by the minority party.

Naturally, the villains in this case are Republicans and the Russian connection is a real one. Nonetheless, it is not a big leap of logic to match different figures to the real “villains” circa 2018 by swapping a gender here and a party there.

*It took me a while, but I finally remembered the actress (Elizabeth Marvel) as Frank Underwood’s challenger in the Democratic primary in Season 6 of House of Cards, then playing Solicitor General Heather Dunbar. Until I figured it out, I was stuck thinking she looked particularly presidential.