​Scandal after scandal, through broken laws, rules, norms, and traditions Donald Trump’s presidency has seemed unassailable.   The Republican party has been overtaken by an extreme wing of “alt-righters” that are dead set on defending Trump regardless of what he does.  The Democratic party has been at war with itself as the far left fights with the moderate and conservative left on how to deal with Trump.  This is creating a disunified front incapable of doing anything.  With all of that going on, Trump has managed to reshape the Judicial and Executive Branches of government into extensions of his will by filling them with partisan persons and going around the official appointment channels where ever possible.  Surviving campaign finance issues, lying to the media and the public, instructing others to lie under oath to congress, interfering in multiple investigations, potentially using pardons as a political tool, and encouraging other countries to interfere in US elections, his presidency faces a new challenge that has people seriously talking impeachment: pressuring Ukraine to investigate the son of a political opponent. In this episode of Lessons from the Screen we are going to be talking about impeachment.  

​Those of you that follow the show know that we are not afraid of being late to the party when it comes to documentaries, and we are fashionably late here.  Although the film made its American debut in March of 2019, it hit Netflix in the first part of August, and it didn’t hit our radar until early September.  Do we need another film about steroids, baseball, superstars, drugs, and the Miami dark side?  Do we need more documentaries talking about the ineptitude of Florida and the lack of concern that parents have for their children’s health in the sports world?  Well, I guess it doesn’t really matter if we needed another one, because we got another one, and in this episode of Lessons from the Screen we are going to talk about it.  

​The Summer of 2019 has just ended however the ramifications of the things that transpired and that were discovered will continue to shape global history forever.   The social media and digital giants faced a world that was a lot more inquisitive about their business models and a lot more aggressive in how it sought answers to those questions.  A 2-year federal investigation wrapped up in April of 2019 and at its core was the largest social media company in the world and how data stolen from them was being used to shape democracies and engineer societies.  The great hack follows the story of one of the primary culprits in this game of digital shenanigans, it is the story of Cambridge Analytica, and it is the story of this episode of Lessons from the Screen.  

Following the proposal of the Fugitive Offenders and Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Legislation in February of 2019, a series of protest swept through Hong Kong that continues to this day.  The bill would have made it possible to detain and extradite people accused of criminal acts to countries that Hong Kong does not currently have extradition agreements with.  The bill was proposed because the Hong Kong government wanted to close a loophole that was allowing a Hong Kong man that had killed his girlfriend in Taiwan (a place with no agreement) to go without trial.  However the people of Hong Kong felt like the bill went too far and placed their autonomy at risk giving too much power to China.  In this episode of Lessons from the Screen, we will be taking a look at the relationship between Hong Kong and China, the bill, and the protest raging on and spreading across the globe.