"SUCCESSION" HELD A MIRROR UP FOR ALL OF US.

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD

If you are watching “Succession” and have not yet seen the series finale, you may want to wait to read this until you have done so. Trust me, you don’t want to watch that amazing 90 minutes already knowing the outcome.

For the rest who have seen it, and for those who never watched the series, allow me to continue.

Tom Wambsgans (the name means “big-bellied goose” in German), the Midwestern, wheedling interloper whom all the siblings, most especially his wife, mocked for his lack of sophistication and his spinelessness, did, through his eagerness to compromise and prostrate himself, win the crown. He was named king of the Waystar Roy Company, or whatever’s left of the Roy kingdom; it doesn’t matter to him that he’s only the “American figurehead” to an insatiable, brutal, and abusive tech overlord - Matsson - who is ready to seize and lay waste to everything the Roy children thought was their birthright. Matsson is an even more terrifying iteration of Logan Roy for the new era, and Tom is ready to serve and obey. The man everyone underestimated is the only one left standing at the end.

Tom Wambsgans’ story has been told before, in two novels that proved the accuracy of their criticism of American society by being turned into movies by the apotheosis of what they criticized, Hollywood.

“What Makes Sammy Run?” is a rags to riches story that chronicled the rise and fall of Sammy Glick, a Jewish boy born in New York's Lower East Side who, very early in his life, decides he will escape the ghetto and climb the ladder of success by deception and betrayal. Budd Schulberg’s novel, which based the character of Sammy Glick on his father B.P. Schulberg, an early Hollywood mogul, is perhaps more relevant today than it was when it was first published in 1941.

Sloan Wilson’s 1955 novel, “The Man In The Grey Flannel Suit,” remains nearly 70 years later as the symbol of a certain kind of middle-class conformity in 1950s America, the need for a man - in this case, World War II veteran Tom Rath - to submit to the rat race in pursuit of the American Dream, regardless of the cost. Today that “game” is only more demanding and vicious in its operation.

Of course, the two novels both have dark endings. You won’t see those endings in the movies adapted from the novels because the men who created Hollywood - who were themselves the best examples of what each novel criticized - knew that their audience wanted happy endings; they were not in the business of creating anti-heroes who might make some in the audience question their lives, while pissing off the rest who were happy not to deal with any questions about their life choices. Thus, in the movies, each anti-hero found his way to redemption and a happy ending by finding his way to Do The Right Thing and still remain inside the system.

The books still “carry water” today; the movies don’t, because real art doesn’t deal in fakery.

“Succession’s” ultimate truth - why it will remain a work of drama worth watching at some time in the future for the same reason that Schulberg’s and Wilson’s novels are still worth reading - is that the show leaves Tom Wambsgans exactly as he really is. There’s no happy ending to distract the viewer from the accuracy of the story. He’s even more of an anti-hero than Don Draper or Walter White.

Tom was willing to lie about the deaths that happened on the company’s cruise line. He called a presidential election for an outright fascist because the outcome would save the company. His eyes were always on the prize, and he was willing to bear any humiliation required along the way to arrive at his point of triumph.

“Succession” comes right out and says it: this is why things are fucked up - these are the people who sell their birthright for a mess of pottage and call it success. And there are too many of them - Tom Wambsgans is everywhere.

I met Mr. Wambsgans a few years ago; he was a member of a group in the hobby I enjoy. He told me he was supporting Trump “because I’m in the oil business and Trump’s in favor of us.” He was the kind of guy who won’t hear any conversation one might start about the world the oil business has created and is now destroying. It doesn’t matter; he’s got his and when it all comes crashing down he won’t be here, so fuck you.

In her commencement speech at Colorado College last weekend, Liz Cheney spoke from experience and an undeniable moral authority, when she said, “You may find yourself confronting challenges that you could not have imagined, with very few allies by your side. When the path ahead is obscure and unclear, you can find your way by resolving to do the next right thing. Resolve to do what is right, even when it’s hard, you’re alone, even when you’re afraid — especially when you’re afraid.”

Cheney has been mocked and called a hypocrite for saying such things, derided for being her father’s daughter and for participating in a leadership position in the Republican Party as Trump came to power, for supporting his political positions, right up to the day she saw him for what he is and refused to continue as she had.

Cheney confirmed that her party demanded she accept the “big lie” as the price of keeping her leadership spot. She refused. “America cannot remain a free nation if we abandon the truth. So as you go out to change the world, resolve that you will stand in truth.”

In a way, Liz Cheney reminds me of Sir Thomas More, whose story was told in “A Man For All Seasons.” The story as it is widely known doesn’t tell the real truth: More was a Catholic religious bigot who reveled in persecuting and torturing “heretics.” He had a dungeon and torture cell created in his country home and he enthusiastically did his own torturing. In fact, he was a monster. Then, when Henry VIII - his lord and master who he had faithfully served - demanded as the price of loyalty that he renounce his faith for the church Henry had created in order for him to do as he wished, More found himself in the same position as the “heretics” he had tortured who would not recant their “heresy,” even unto death. And he joined them.

500 years later, More’s story still resonates. When the history of our time is written, Cheney’s story will be one that is told as an example. “Resolve to do what is right, even when it’s hard, you’re alone, even when you’re afraid — especially when you’re afraid.” Because there are so many who haven’t done that, who have surrendered to the fear of losing the things they have sold themselves for.

We can all agree in the abstract with Cheney’s statement. But when the time comes that one must choose, actually doing that is very hard to do. Most of us fail that test when confronted with it, when confronted with what the result of making that choice will be. We fear losing what we have.

Which is why the stories of the few who face that moral choice and choose the right answer regardless, are still told 500 years, a thousand years, later.

Unfortunately, the story that spreads is the story of the success of Tom Wambsgans. The empty man who believes in nothing, willing to do anything in his climb to the top, to serve any master no matter how vile, at the expense of anything, is now America’s Horatio Alger, the model for success for too many.

In a way, Ron DeSantis is worse than Trump, because it’s so obvious what he truly is: The Man In The Grey Flannel Suit, Sammy Glick running to catch the prize he sought all his life.

Whether DeSantis believes in what he’s selling is irrelevant. It’s impossible to tell if he has any beliefs, as the Trump campaign demonstrated yesterday with their attack ad featuring all his pro-vaccine statements made at the outset of the pandemic, on the day he announced he is running his campaign on an explicitly anti-vaccine program; god help us all if he’s in office when the next pandemic happens - as Chris Hayes pointed out, Operation Warp Speed was the one good thing Trump did during his four years in office.

DeSantis has watched the GOP’s radicalized base descend into white nationalism, toxic masculinity, know-nothingism and science denial. He fully intends to pander to the worst traits of those voters.

He is Tom Wambsgans made real.

And he’s not the only one.

Read Tim Alberta’s portrait of Christ Licht of CNN, Tom Wambgsgans in the flesh.

Inside the Meltdown at CNN

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