Thread by @djrothkopf

I just watched "The Trial of the Chicago 7." I enjoyed it very much, quirks and Sorkinisms and all. My biggest take away was the level of anger that existed in America over our tragic losses in Vietnam. They were, over 20 years, a quarter of our deaths this year of COVID.

Vietnam was a tragic error. It damaged the US grievously and does so to this day. But, bad as it was, there was at least to a point, a strategic rationale behind it. At least half, according to experts, and perhaps up to 90 percent of US COVID deaths were needless.

Terrible misjudgments led to the Vietnam catastrophe, many officials were responsible--from the military, at DoD, in the White House and elsewhere. But the COVID catastrophe can be laid at the feet of the ego of one man, the selfishness, ignorance and unfitness of Donald Trump.

People were so outraged at Vietnam that they took to the streets & ultimately, the protests led to the US withdrawal from that war. We have been in the streets this year-often & for good reason. But I don't feel we are fully as outraged at the horrific COVID toll as we should be.

Or rather, we may be that outraged, but we have been so overwhelmed by the speed of the disaster, its economic costs, the burdens of confinement, our need to take care of ourselves & families, that our fury has been muted. Too many dead to bury. Too many lives to rebuild.

Hopefully, we will channel our anger at this catastrophe--this generation's defining calamity and challenge--constructively at the polls. Hopefully, the anger and heartbreak we feel can be channeled into a crushing defeat for Trump and his enablers.

It is also impossible to watch that film and not hear and feel the haunting echoes as the government sought to use the tools of a police state to crush dissent. It is a straight line back to the last most criminal regime in our history, that of Richard Nixon.

It reminds us that the current abuses of Trump and Barr have a deep tradition on the right in our society. But, of course, it also reminds us that at critical junctures throughout our history it has been the protestors, the dissenters, who have driven progress.

To me, first-rate performances aside (and Mark Rylance is, for my money, the best actor in the world and I'd watch him read the phone book and Eddie Redmayne and Jeremy Strong do an excellent job), what this thread illustrates is the real value of a film like this one.

When the repartee, gags & dramatic flourishes that are the stock-in-trade of Sorkin fade from memory, we are left with reflections and thoughts and plumbing the depths of our own feelings at a moment that calls for all those things. And for that alone, it's well worth your time.