The Dark Money Game, the new two-part documentary from Alex Gibney, confirms the worst: America has all but succumbed to the terminal cancer of corruption. It is difficult to say how much time is left, but that end is a certainty. Things fall apart: It’s scientific, goes the Talking Heads song. Gibney’s film is inspired by Jane Mayer’s book, Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right. Mayer is a longtime staff writer at The New Yorker and has been nominated a number of times for her reporting on the dark side of #American politics#. She appears in the film, providing journalistic testimony that strengthens Gibney’s analysis.
Mayer’s book opens with a famous quote from the American jurist Louis Brandeis: «We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.» Mayer’s book title and this quote prove to be prescient, prophetic even, and dismayingly ironic as the film moves from the corporatisation of American politics, as demonstrated by the passage of #Citizens United# in 2010, to the stinky corruption destroying the #Supreme Court# today.
The Dark Money Game is largely a character-driven narrative. Insiders and proselytisers; operatives wearing bugs; converters and convertees; and, more than anything, power brokers are shown working largely behind the scenes in the dark and away from public scrutiny to create what #Hillary Clinton#, herself no slouch when it comes to corruption, once describes as «a vast right-wing conspiracy.» Boy, did she get that right.
Ohio Confidential
In Part One of The Dark Money Game, «Ohio Confidential,» we’re introduced to the House Bill 6 First Energy bribery scandal in the state of Ohio, the largest ever such corruption conspiracy. The essential players are executives at #First Energy#, former Ohio House Speaker #Larry Householder#, former state Rep. #Jay Edwards# and the late lobbyist #Neil Clark#, a wannabe mafiosi who committed suicide as a result of the breaking scandal. According to local media outlet WKYC, FirstEnergy admitted to funnelling $60 million into a dark money (or 501(c)(4)) group called Generation Now to ensure the passage of House Bill 6, which included a $1.3 billion bailout for two failing nuclear power plants. Staggering corruption.
Gibney chooses an interesting device to open the narrative: he has the ghost of Neil Clark provide the voiceover, telling the viewer in a confiding, wiseguy tone that he’s about to come clean. «Machiavelli was a pussy,» Clark tells us, «His writings provide a roadmap on how to play the game of politics with tools of deception, cruelty and crime… I spent nearly 40 years working in politics in #Ohio. I learned of bribes, crimes, personal scandals at the top leadership of Ohio’s government, some of the state’s most beloved public servants. More importantly, I knew how to keep their secrets. That was until the FBI chose to end my career.» And that begins the toxic spill of details of government malfeasance and criminality in Ohio.
Gibney shows us how reformers were openly laughed at in public hearings. He then draws the narrative to the creation of the #dark money# systemic cancer known as Citizens United, a law that gives corporations personhood and allows for untold and anonymous money to be raised through #superPACs for political campaigns. Money could now be spent to influence a failing democracy.
Wealth of the Wicked
In Part Two of The Dark Money Game, «Wealth of the Wicked,» Gibney follows the metastasis of money, showing its growing control and the «corruption to the core» of The American Way™. We learn of the workings of a little-known but highly influential group called The #Federalist Society# for Law and Public Policy Studies, a conservative and libertarian group of neo-originalists whose mission is to reverse what it sees as the saturating influence of left-wing ideology in academia, governance, and public policy. A major victory for this group was the reversal of the Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision, which legalised abortion./p>
Along with ideologues in the right-wing #Heritage Foundation#, who are behind the desire to make America great again by getting rid of diversity laws, multiculturalist protections and economic opportunity, Federalist Society members work to restore an America that would have been just fine as British colonists — if mad King George hadn’t insisted on all that evil taxation without representation.
In conjunction with the current dismantling of government in America and the total ascendancy of crony capitalism, Gibney (and Mayer) paint a bleak and terrifying future for Americans and the world.
In Part Two, Gibney demonstrates how this group has stacked the Supreme Court with jurists who are members of the Society. He provides many instances of their material corruption and the literal back door to their hungry hearts. He shows how the justices have essentially provided President Trump with a «gratuity» in the form of giving presidents immunity from prosecution. The American Civil Liberties Union wrote, «The Supreme Court’s decision to grant presidents immunity from prosecution for criminal acts committed while in office not only gives #Donald Trump# a free pass for his past crimes but sets a dangerous precedent for all future presidents.»
Gibney has Mayer sum up what the viewer has seen depicted. «What I fear is that we’re entering a phase of crony #capitalism that may be beyond even what we saw in the Gilded Age.»
In conjunction with the current dismantling of government in America and the total ascendancy of crony capitalism, Gibney (and Mayer) paint a bleak and terrifying future for Americans and the world. There is a sense of carving up what’s left of the world’s resources. Grabbing all over the place. Just yesterday, I read of a call for a new Yalta, a reference to the post-WW2 alliance that divvied up the world into spheres of influence.
Gibney has been described by Esquire magazine as «becoming the most important documentarian of our time.» He has directed Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005), Taxi to the Dark Side (2007), Zero Days (2016), and produced last year’s The Bibi Files (2024), among many others.
The Dark Money Game is streaming on HBO Max.
