Fresh off binge watching Twilight Zone's this past New Year's and now smack in the midst of President Donald Trump's languishing government shutdown, it's struck me anew how we indeed are living in Twilight Zonish times.
The latest Trump-era "Twilight Zone" episode – "The Wall" – doesn't disappoint.
Opening scene: A stone-faced Trump sitting at the desk in the Oval Office amidst his forced government shutdown and just prior to a highly hyped autocratic fearmongering address, impetuously demanding his costly, vague “wall.”
You can almost hear Rod Serling's voice as an epilogue:
"Portrait of a man? Or a monster?
For folks out there who still aren't sure, you'll find out soon enough. And those who've sensed something amiss, something very strange indeed for sometime, it should come as no surprise to learn that you, in fact, have been stuck on an endless loop of purposeful deception.
“It's a state where fear is the weapon of choice. And it's a state that exists only in the darkest, remotest regions of a place we call .. The Twilight Zone."
Cue the Twilight Zone theme music: "Doo, doo doo, doo.. doo, doo, doo, doo.. doo, doo, doo, doo ..."
Of course, the circumstances of each real time Twilight Zone varies, but the starring villain and the sinister plot persist.
Objective: Fear and division.
Endgame: Oppression and control.
Since early 2016, I've likened witnessing Trump's baffling, precipitous venom-spewing ascent in the Republican presidential ranks to living in a "Twilight Zone playing on an endless loop."
It's like we've been stuck in a nightmarish science fiction tale of a parallel universe, where everything we believed or valued has been turned upside down and inside out – threatening our peace, stirring our anger and challenging our faith.
After three and a half years of blatant, grating demagoguery, featuring Trump's smug Reality TV mug invading our living rooms in nightly newscasts, is it any wonder we've digressed into a tribal nation with hate crimes spiking?
Yes, it's been that long since the alarmist presidential candidate, in June of 2015, ominously entered the presidential race by describing Mexicans immigrants as rapists and calling for a southern border wall that Mexico would pay for.
"Mark my words," pledged Trump. So much for that.
Trump's latest attempt at feigned sincerity on Saturday -- proposing to reopen the government by dangling temporary DACA protections before Democrats, while still insisting on his $5 billion for a wall, only deepens the surreal feel of the times.
"As American citizens, we are bound together in love, loyalty, friendship and affection," said Trump. "We must look out for each other, care for each other, and always act in the best interests of our nation – and all citizens living here today."
Sounds good. But coming from a President who has done nothing but deride and divide, Trump's platitudes rang clangingly hollow.
If the President truly has seen the light in the wake of his temper tantrum shutdown, he'd open the government without using 800,000 unpaid federal workers and their families as bargaining chips.
Many actual Twilight Zones seem to prophetically forebode of Trump – such as "He's Alive," "Monsters on Maple Street," "Eye of The Beholder," and "The Howling Man.”
But, there's one particular Twilight Zone – 1961's “It's a Good Life" – that stands out as prescient above all the rest.
In "It’s a Good Life," the tyrannical parallels are clear and chilling, particularly now amidst the President's distracting impetuous government shutdown that has sent millions of lives into limbo and risks the nation's security.
The setting for "It's a Good Life" is an isolated, rural village in Peaksville, Ohio, where a small community of mankind's last survivors live in constant fear.
The central character is a six-year-old brat kid named Anthony – a monster with supernatural powers to physically deform or disappear any living creature.
Anthony impulsively hates anyone who doesn't worship him, demanding deference to his every twisted whim.
Anyone complaining about anything, even the weather, or thinking negatively about Anthony is subject to the boy's angry, wide-eyed look and risks the monster child's wrath.
Non-conformists are turned into something hideous like a Jack-in-the-box before they are ultimately banished to “the cornfield” – a place of punishment from which they don't return.
So, the surrounding adults, mostly family, walk on eggshells around the boy, speaking flattering niceties, telling him how "good" he is and that his every evil act is "good."
"You're a bad man," declares an angry Anthony, pointing his finger at a drunken man named Dan, who disobeyed the boy by singing and challenging his authority. "You're a very bad man!"
Suddenly, Dan is turned into a Jack-in-the-box. After the father urges Anthony to spare the adults such a grotesque sight, the oddity fades and disappears, presumably to the cornfield.
"That's real good what you done to Dan," the father immediately appeases the sinister little tyrant. "Real good.”
Goosebumps yet?
If the menacing kid in "It's a Good Life" is the President, then the syphocant adults, smiles plastered on their faces, are Trump's enabling congressional Republican loyalists and supplicant cabinet.
Most of us have cringed at the creepy White House propaganda footage of Trump's cabinet members offering vain, ego-stroking, compliments to the dictator-like President – in effect endorsing the child-like commander's every misstep as "good."
Mystifyingly and disturbingly, Trump has his fellow Republican abettors tightly wrapped around his little finger, while our democratic values and sense of decency is degraded daily – and sent to the cornfield.
During his two years on the job, Trump has banished scores of administrative officials, some 50, who were fired or resigned, amidst ever simmering White House tensions.
While Trump's enabling Republicans ludicrously accuse Democrats of opposing border security and fear monger lies about the border as the main contributor to our opiod crisis, Trump has sent millions of American lives into disarray with the longest running government shutdown in history, 33 days and counting.
The fallout piles up daily, risking national security, weakening the justice system and undermining scores of programs for the victimized, hungry and addicted.
While short-staffed services for recovering opiod addicts and food stamp recipients are severally threatened, the FBI warns of multiple law enforcement breakdowns. The grand jury for Special Council Robert Mueller's Trump-Russia investigation faces delays.
Additionally, the workforce at the Food and Administration, charged with overseeing our food quality, has been cut dramatically and the national Coast Guard is expected to defend our coastlines without pay. And unpaid federal airport workers call out sick, resulting in sluggish lines.
Republican leaders Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy consistently seem inexplicably, but demonstrably afraid of Trump, tiptoeing around the President, fearful of angering their leader the way the adults in "It's a Good Life" sickeningly appeased the monster kid.
So, the President even threatens to declare a national emergency, diverting disaster relief funds from California's wildfires devastation, and Texas and Puerto Rico's Hurricane recoveries so he can build a wall.
Meanwhile, the President's arguably criminal forced shutdown was absolutely avoidable. While the country suffers, the shutdown accomplishes many goals for President.
It conveniently distracts from and may very well impact Mueller's probe into Trump-Russia malfeasance. And the longer the shutdown lingers, the more it threatens to destabilize many aspects of our Republic, opening the door to some type of autocratic power play.
The same day of Trump's first oval office address insisting on a wall, news broke of his former campaign manager Paul Manafort's sharing U.S. polling data with a Russian intelligence operative.
But the story got buried by Network news' questionable decision to air Trump's brief, alarmist incitement, ludicrously accusing Democrats of opposing border security.
As news continues to break of the President's deceptive, arguably criminal behavior -- like his consifiscating stenographer notes from his private meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin -- the president appears untouchable.
Meanwhile, the Twilight Zone theme music periodically persists in the background: "Doo, doo, doo, doo.. doo, doo, doo, doo.. doo, doo, doo, doo.."
For a couple days there, even major news outlets got sidetracked by the grand illusionist President's Burger King stunt, ordering hundreds of hamburgers to serve the national champion Clemson Tigers at the White House, stirring speculation about who really paid for them.
Who really cares?
Meanwhile, hundreds of mental health professionals have been warning us about the dangers of Trump's sociopathic, narcissistic behavior. A documentary "Unfit" about the President is in production.
In Conservatives' conflicted view, can Trump do anything to merit his ouster from office?
What will it take for Republicans to snap out if it and see the path toward destruction Trump is heading down?
When will McConnell do his duty, listen to the overwhelming cry of the American people evidenced in the polls, and allow a vote to open the government?
Much hinges on Mueller's Russia investigation and House Democrats' probes into the President's myriad misdealings from Russia collusion to emmoulments violations. But now, Mueller's grand jury may be hampered by the shutdown.
Ultimately, it's up to the American people to stay sharp and keep demanding answers from their representatives, Republicans and Democrats. To be complacent is to be complicit.
Art in the form of fiction is capable of illuminating and speaking truth louder than typical conventional foreboding analysis and criticisms.
Rod Serling's "It's a Good Life" does just that. Serling's imaginative, thrilling Twilight Zones -- packed with social commentary and moral messaging -- fittingly were ahead of their time.
They were meant for this time. This space.
If gone untethered, how long before this President, facing multiple indictments, angrily lashes out -- and banishes us all to the cornfield?
(Cue the theme music.)
