The Season 3 Finale of Cobra Kai is the Metaphor We Need Right Now
We took a quick break from watching our beloved political institutions burn around us last night and watched the season finale of Cobra Kai.
Since it's still early in the release, we were going to try to limit the spoilers, but really this entire post is a spoiler, so take a break, binge the season, and come back when you're ready.
Now that you're warned, here's why the season finale of Cobra Kai Season Three is a metaphor for U.S. politics and why it, however seemingly unlikely, provides us with the path forward.
The season finale of Cobra Kai Season Three is a metaphor for U.S. politics.
For those who don't know, the series centers around the return of Johnny Lawrence, the antagonist in the Karate Kid, who comes back to relaunch the Cobra Kai dojo as a way to regain focus in his life. He quickly comes to blows with Daniel LaRusso, the protagonist from the original film. A bunch of stuff happens that we're too tired from watching insurrections all week to detail, but the upshot is that both start karate dojos, each devoted to a different style of karate; Johnny's Cobra Kai is ruthlessly aggressive and LaRusso's is peacefully defensive. When sociopath John Kreese, Johnny's original instructor, returns to assist him, Johnny quickly realizes that he's putting the kids in harm's way. A bunch of other stuff happens, leading to Johnny's favorite student, Miguel, being seriously injured in a student melee.
What emerges from this horror show of students whacking each other with sharp objects and kicking each other off balconies is the budding recognition that you actually need *both* offensive and defensive skills to succeed in both karate and life. But even more than that, as the violence grows, both sides start to realize that the people on the other side are not in fact the enemy, but that they're all being used by their common enemy, the shadowy figure of John Kreese (whose background we're still confused about, but like we said, it's been a long week).
If the parallels aren't clear yet, let's lay this out for everyone:
Two groups take extreme sides where there's no apparent middle ground.
They sort of realize this is dumb, but their differences allow an extremist demagogue to take over and start instigating young and disaffected people to violence.
They finally realize that in order to avoid total destruction, they must band together and use their joint powers to save the next generation from themselves.
At first, the sides each view each other as fundamentally terrible people, but gradually over the course of Season Three it becomes more clear that there are good and bad people on both sides. The good people from both groups come together in opposition to the *real* bad guys, the white supremacists and Donald Tru... ahem, we mean John Kreese and his dojo of sociopathic lunatics.
An ex-girlfriend from the past shows up to bring both Johnny and Daniel together, providing the historical memory that allows them to realize they were both wrong and they needed to move forward (more on Ali Mills later).
So that's how Season Three ends: with Miyagido and Lawrence's incredibly named Eagle Fang dojo coming together to form something new. A new alliance. A principled alliance. One based on balance, mutual protection, and friendship.
A new alliance. A principled alliance. One based on balance, mutual protection, and friendship.
WHAT'S NOT TO LOVE?!?!?
So, how could this happen in the real world? Well, we're less optimistic here than we are for the fate of the Cobra Kai cast because the United States is a bigger, more diverse, and messier place than three fictional karate dojos in Southern California, but there are some hopeful signs.
One hope we have is in the Constitution itself, played by Ali Mills in our now-painfully stretched metaphor. Now, we know, we know. Some people hate the Constitution because of the Electoral College and also because it's old or whatever. But here's the thing. After what happened last Wednesday, when everything else seemed like it was falling apart, we still had the Constitution to fall back on. When you get rid of constitutions or change them constantly or just plain undermine them at every turn it becomes easier and easier to completely ignore them and then, when crisis hits, no one knows what the rules are anymore.
But after last week's riots, just like after the sociopaths took over Cobra Kai, everyone at the very least knows what options exist. We have constitutional solutions to this problem, whether we use them or not. The 25th Amendment exists to temporarily remove a president from power once he has lost the capacity to rule. Impeachment exists as an avenue to remove a president from office and, with an additional vote, prevent him from running again. Even more than that, after hiding under desks for a few hours, a terrified but determined Congress still knew what it had to do on January 6. It had a constitutional duty to certify the votes, and that's what it did, protest votes notwithstanding. So as much as some Americans might poo poo the Constitution for being old and feeble, it actually did a great job of doing exactly what we want constitutions to do in crisis: it provided reassurance, it provided guidance, and it provided a rule book for moving forward.
The Constitution did a great job of doing exactly what we want constitutions to do in crisis: it provided reassurance, it provided guidance, and it provided a rule book for moving forward.
But like the Ali Mills character in Cobra Kai, the Constitution also serves to remind us of our shared past, our historical flaws, and our joint endeavors. The things we stood for (or failed to stand for) and the things we made it through together. Inspiring, right?!?!?
Will this be enough in the future? Of course not. The Founders knew that constitutions alone are mere parchment barriers. Without a supportive political culture and the institutions that culture supports, constitutions fall very quickly. We need people who will defend those constitutions and who take seriously the institutions the Constitution creates.
Some folks like Ben Sasse and Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) are providing crucial push-back against the violence spilling out of their party. This has clearly been a wake-up call for the GOP moving forward. That's an important and hopeful sign. Will it spawn an Eagle Fang/GOP spinoff? Maybe! Colin Powell has already shed his GOP alliance like Justin Amash before him and Lisa Murkowski has made it clear she doesn't need the GOP in its current form anymore either.
And while it's too soon to know whether the kids in Cobra Kai/the GOP all come together to resist Kreese/Trump or whether the various sociopaths have some kind of awakening that makes them lay down their arms and white supremacist sympathies, what matters right now at the end of season three is that there are CLEARLY bad guys.
John Kreese is a bad dude. He does terrible things, borne out of tragedy and mistaken loyalty (maybe), but whatever his motives he can't be trusted around young children and needs to be put safely away. It's clear from Wednesday's events that there are quite a few of those people out there in the American context too. Maybe Trump is misunderstood, but ultimately he's too dangerous to remain in power and he should be impeached to ensure he doesn't gain it again. And we should push for accountability: arrests for those who rioted, and removal from office for those who overlooked it. Accountability not only punishes those who put other people in danger, but it restores trust in the institutions and norms that were damaged. It's a crucial part of the process.
But we also need to take the lesson from the season finale of Cobra Kai that some of the people on the other side are in fact our friends. Probably not that dude in the hat with the horns on it and probably not anyone actually rioting in the Capitol, but there might be people who voted for Trump who are also horrified by what this has wrought who we could find common cause with (Ben Sasse, for one). Or, perhaps more likely, we can rebuild with those in the GOP who were Never Trumpers to begin with and who are willing to work to start rebuilding. There are strengths and weaknesses to both conservatism and progressivism, and seeing the yin to the other side's yang might help us move forward.
But like Miyagido and Eagle Fang, rebuild we must. Otherwise, as we saw in these final Cobra Kai episodes and in the chaos at the Capitol, the next four years will be brutal, painful, and possibly even more violent. And we'll be set up for a 2024 even worse than 2020. For all our sakes, we can't let that happen. And the way we start is by uniting together, Democrat and Republican, to get rid of John Kreese/Trump once and for all. Impeachment is not only a good option -- it's our only option. Only then can we start rebuilding something better in Cobra Kai's place.