There’s obviously a lot to be said about America’s demented gun culture. Thanks to the rise of Trump, sadly, there’s now also plenty to say about American neofascism. And the idea of a corporation that demands cult-like devotion from its employees even as it sacrifices their well-being for its own ends may be the richest idea American Gods has played with yet. But in simply conflating all three elements, the show loses the chance to say anything unique or insightful about them. A one-company town full of gun nuts wearing fascist armbands tells us nothing about one-company towns, or gun nuts, or fascism. It does, however, tell us a whole lot about the self-congratulatory liberalism of American Gods, which wants to be rewarded for saying “See? It can happen here,” but which is really saying “and by ‘here’ we mean ‘in this small Southern town full of brainwashed Nazis who are nothing like you and me, dear viewer.’”
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