Politics & Power Quote by John Sayles

Sayles is doing what his best films do: refusing the narcotic of a clean ending while still insisting the present moment stinks. “No final victories and no final defeats” sounds like civics-class stoicism, but in his mouth it’s a warning label for American storytelling itself. The country loves a third-act triumph or a decisive comeuppance; Sayles is saying history doesn’t give you that satisfaction. Power regroups, movements backslide, institutions adapt. The fight never closes its tabs.

Then he yanks the camera down to ground level: “America is in a hole right now.” That plain, almost shrugged phrasing matters. It’s not a doom sermon, it’s a situational report, the way a director notes the set is flooded and you still have to shoot. The subtext is agency: holes are dug, maintained, and, with effort, climbed out of. But the effort won’t be glamorous.

The “dead fish in the water” line is Sayles at his most tactile and political. Dead fish don’t just signal decline; they imply contamination, a system so fouled the life in it can’t survive. It’s an ecological image that doubles as an institutional one: stagnation, rot, the aftermath of invisible toxins. You can hear his skepticism about quick-fix heroics and media-friendly “turnarounds.” If there’s hope here, it’s the hard kind: not redemption as a finale, but endurance as a method, and clear-eyed attention to what’s poisoning the water.