Welcome to the Twilight Zone: I'm Not MAGA - What's Wrong with Me?

As everyone around you goes mad, the question of what to do really comes down to something as basic as knowing right from wrong, fact from fiction.

“The Twilight Zone”

You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension: a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind. You’re moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You’ve just crossed over into... the Twilight Zone. ~ Rod Serling

A high school classmate took umbrage with one of my recent political commentaries. She posted: “I’m sorry would you rather have Kamala at the helm or even worse Biden at this time? I trust President Trump to do the right decisions. He truly loves our country!!!”

As Trump wins one court case after another, and as he succeeds in bullying one university, law firm, media company, etc. after another into submission; as one Never Trumper politician after another hops on the MAGA Express; as relatives and acquaintances loudly and proudly sing Trump’s praises; and especially after the last general election with MAGA’s trifecta sweep of all branches of government and Trump’s increasing his margins with practically every demographic, I’ve begun having this odd feeling: Is there something wrong with me? Am I missing something here?

Which brings me, appropriately, to the “Twilight Zone” TV series. There is an episode, made in 1959, that is very prescient and relevant to today. “The Eye of the Beholder” is about a woman, Janet, who has just undergone the eleventh surgery on her face which the nurses and doctor lurking in the shadows of the hospital room describe as a “pitiful twisted lump of flesh.” Each surgery thus far has failed, so this is a moment of high anxiety.

As the doctor removes the last bandage, he declares this procedure also a failure. The camera pans in on Janet’s face, which is actually beautiful by our Earth One standards. The hospital staff, on the other hand, all have grotesque faces with caveman brows, bestial eyes, distorted lips, and swollen pig snout noses. They inform the patient that “the State” will banish her to a leper-type colony to be among her “own kind,” where freaks like her won’t offend “normal” society.

Then Rod Serling chimes in with his trademark storyteller’s voice:

Now the questions that come to mind: ‘Where is this place and when is it?’ ‘What kind of world where ugliness is the norm and beauty the deviation from that norm?’ …Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Lesson to be learned in the Twilight Zone.

Were he alive today, Rod could make scores of “Twilight Zone” episodes based on current events — for example, “Who’s Guilty?” the tale of a man found guilty of many crimes by the courts, but who proves to the world they were all hoaxes and escapes justice; and “The Stolen Election,” about a candidate who really won the presidential election, but was framed by the cheating other party and 64 crooked courts; and “The Tourists Who Entered Hell,” a story about innocent tourists from the hinterland who get swept up in an FBI-rigged conspiracy to take over the Capitol and blame it on the tourists; “Just My Imagination” — a twisted tale of many women who hallucinate about being sexually assaulted by the same prominent, hardworking New York businessman and then conspire to attack him in court with their manufactured dreams; and “They’re Eating the Cats. They’re Eating the Dogs,” about… well you get the picture.

So, why is it then that I don’t “trust President Trump to do the right decisions” and know that “he truly loves our country”?

I could deep dive into a philosophical discourse about how societal ills spanning decades have now come home to roost, that our political system is broken and that that dang price of eggs is just too high, blah, blah, blah. But it really comes down to something as basic as knowing right from wrong, fact from fiction, truth from lies, character from bluster. That those who inhabit Earth Two are delusional. One poignant example in history comes to mind.

There’s a photograph you may have seen of a mass of Germans, arms all raised in the Nazi stiff-arm salute — except for one man, in the rear with his arms defiantly folded and his face grimaced. The year is 1936. The place is Hamburg.

The man is August Landmesser, who joined the Nazi Party in 1931, two years before Hitler ascended to power. He remained a member until 1935 when, at 25, he fell in love with a Jewish woman named Irma Eckler. He proposed marriage. Trouble was, the Nuremberg laws banned marriage between “Aryans” and Jews. Undaunted, he quit the party and set up household with Irma. They had two daughters. In the face of unrelenting harassment, the family attempted to flee to Denmark, but was caught.

August was charged with “rassenschande” or “dishonoring the race” and ordered to end his relationship with Irma. He refused and was sentenced to three years of hard labor in a concentration camp. Irma was sent to another camp and killed. August was released in 1941 and then drafted into a penal military unit. He was killed in action in Yugoslavia in 1944. Their daughters, Ingrid and Irene, miraculously survived the war.

What the fictional “The Eye of the Beholder” and the real life tragedy of the Landmesser family tell us is that, though you may be an outlier, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re the freak, or you’re in the wrong. On the contrary, you may find yourself in a situation where everyone around you has gone mad, but you, the outlier, are the beautiful one or the right one. No grays here. Just right and wrong. Fact and fiction. (See The Moral Collapse of the American People for my in-depth take on this.)

I know where I fall. How about you? And at what cost are you willing to defend your values?