#44 says an awful lot about #45. The 44th episode of Rod Serling’s classic Sci-Fi TV show, “It’s a Good Life,” was claimed to be one of the best episodes of the long-running series, The Twilight Zone.
It is the story of Anthony, a six-year-old boy who has extraordinary power. He lives with his family in Peaksville, a small rural town in Ohio. Unlike modern movies and television, there are no sophisticated special effects. There are no massacres with chain-saws or knives, or walking-dead brain-eating zombies. You do not see hideous grotesque alien creatures. Nevertheless, this episode, with its innocent-sounding title, will scare the shit out of you. It is unpleasant to watch and even more unpleasant to think about. Yet you can’t help but think about it; the ideas haunt you.
This is because this particular piece of Science Fiction is a direct parallel of today’s Political Reality: We have a man with the emotional maturity of a six-year old, running the country—just as six-year-old Anthony terrorized his family and community. According to Wikipedia:
Everybody is under his rule... The people live in fear of him, constantly telling him how everything he does is "good," since he banishes anyone thinking unhappy thoughts… Never having experienced any form of discipline, Anthony does not even understand that his actions are wrong…
Little Anthony is out of control. No one can tell him what to do, or more importantly, what not to do. No one dare’s stop him—even when realizing he is a monster who can doom them all.
It is impossible to watch this disturbing episode without feeling that somehow Rod Serling had a premonition of today’s President creating havoc in White House, in the nation, and in the world.
From Rod Serling’s introductory narration:
They have to think happy thoughts and say happy things because once displeased, the monster can wish them into a cornfield or change them into a grotesque, walking horror… But when those eyes look at you, you'd better start thinking happy thoughts, because the mind behind them is absolutely in charge. This is the Twilight Zone.
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And his concluding narration:
And if by some strange chance you should run across him, you had best think only good thoughts. Anything less than that is handled at your own risk…
The monster doesn’t reside on a farm with his parents in Peaksville, Ohio; he lives in the White House in Washington, DC.