The TV-Watching Ritual That Comforts Me in an America Ruled by Criminals and Liars

Watching old Perry Mason reruns from the late ’50s and early ’60s has been a meaningful part of my summer. The program had a special place in my family culture: Saturday nights with Perry Mason were the only time we ate dinner in front of the TV—a ritual meal of hot dogs and baked beans.

The dramas of Perry Mason all showed the triumph of Truth and Justice, and these were at the heart of my family’s values. The stories were as ritualized as our hot-dog dinners: all the evidence would point to Perry Mason’s client being the murderer, and Perry Mason will show that the Truth lies elsewhere– and even as he saves his falsely-accused client, he exposes the real murderer who then is brought to Justice.

Lies are exposed, the innocent are spared, and the guilty are caught in the snares of justice.

My family took pleasure in that world back then, and I take special pleasure in it now, when I live in a country where Truth and Justice are both on the ropes.

That comforting predictability is precisely what’s missing in today’s American order, where lies prevail and the guilty walk free.

Never before in American history has the “Department of Justice” been so thoroughly a force for Injustice—persecuting the innocent (like… like Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, ordinary election workers falsely accused and harassed; like career FBI officials targeted for doing their jobs honestly)   — and treating the guilty as allies (like pardoning the duly convicted insurrectionists who tried to overturn an election by force), assaulting the representatives of Justice protecting our common space).

America had every reason to know that making this man President would mean the triumph of the Lie over the Truth, and of Injustice over Justice. By 2024 it was crystal clear: Donald Trump was a serial criminal who never respected the rules, who treated the “truth” as nothing more than a speed-bump on the path of the Lie, and who used power to do injustice to others. Again and again he showed contempt for American democracy, dismissing every challenge to his lawless acts as a “Witch Hunt,” trampling the rights of anyone who stood in his way.

Watching Perry Mason is comforting—our hero sees to it that the Truth defeats the Lie, and that the world will wield justice in a way that makes the human world fulfilling to live in. It is terrible to live in a time where the Force of the Lie has been given power by the people’s giving Donald Trump presidential power everyone should have known he would abuse.

America is paying a huge price for putting criminals in charge of Justice. It holds a mirror up to the nation’s soul and shows how far we’ve gone wrong. Never in the nation’s history have Americans faced a more obvious choice: almost any random name from a phone book would have done less damage to Truth and Justice than electing the man who tried—unjustly—to overthrow the constitutional order with his Big Lie about who was really trying to steal the election.

In today’s America, enough Americans chose Injustice to make our nation ugly where Eisenhower’s America was beautiful. More fundamental to America today is not the ugliness of Donald Trump but the ugliness in the American consciousness that enabled such a man to win a free and fair election.

I am not happy to see my countrymen as somehow pulled into a world of Falsehood and Power wielded unjustly. I yearn again for the world of Perry Mason – a program that began its life in Eisenhower’s America, which was at least somewhat worthy of Superman’s motto of “Truth, Justice, and the American way – which leaves us in a human world we can love.

Today’s America is not a human world we can love, because criminals and liars have lately utterly defeated the forces of truth and justice. And there existed – in 2024 – an American electorate that could choose to give them that power.

Another later series also gives me a world I can love: Columbo. Whereas Perry Mason enacts the ritual of defending the innocent, Columbo ritualizes bringing the guilty to justice.

Each episode is a duel between two exceptional intelligences: the murderer, who ingeniously creates a false picture to get away with murder, and the detective, who relentlessly uncovers the truth to see that justice is done.

The two crime shows give different forms of the victories of Truth and Justice. These victories leave the human world in proper order. We can look around us and feel good about our well-ordered, decent society.

Not like America today, where the forces now in power are widening already-dangerous levels of inequality, warring against the nation’s finest institutions of science and public health, and persecuting the most vulnerable.

And in dismantling what America has done to meet the climate crisis, the ruling power is committing injustice against generations yet to come.

I believe that the America of Perry Mason’s time was, for the most part, a place where Truth and Justice were broadly shared values. A future dominated by the Lie and unjust power would have seemed unthinkable then.

But here we are.

My regular visits to the worlds of Perry Mason and Columbo give me comfort. And I yearn to live in such an America again before I die.