If you want to understand the hold Trump has on the Republican Party right now, we have to go back almost 60 years ago, almost a year to the day after Kennedy beat Nixon.
On that day, November 3rd, 1961, The Twilight Zone aired an episode titled It’s a Good Life. It starred Billy Mumy, who later gained fame as Will Robinson in Lost in Space. It was based on a story written by Jerome Bixby in 1953, about a little boy with God-like telekinetic powers who could transform people and things, and read people’s minds. In the episode, he eliminated any connection from the town to the outside world, eliminated electricity and cars, and if you thought a bad thought, he would kill you.
Mumy, as 6 year-old Anthony Fremont, terrorized his community. In desperation he was constantly being told he was “a good boy”, by neighbors worked frantically, hysterically, to placate the toddler, to prevent his tantrums, and avoid his lethal wrath.
So, as you wonder:
For the answer, one only has to look at little Billy Mumy as 6 year-old Anthony Fremont.
Donald Trump is the Anthony Fremont of the Republican Party. And members of the party are scared to death of incurring his wrath. The two GOP Senators in Georgia, for example, sent that letter because Trump threatened to disavow them in the runoff elections unless they did.
You can find a seven-minute snippet of the show here, complete with Serling’s intro and concluding remarks. For those with shorter attention spans, here is just the 5 minute finale.
The most important aspect of these clips is the terror and cowering of the actors portraying the neighbors.
“You monster, you!” finally snaps a neighbor, in the final scene. “You dirty little monster. You think about me!”
His hope is that, while the kid is focused on this neighbor,
“Maybe somebody in this room, who’s so sick to death of living in this kind of place, and willing to take a chance, will sneak up behind you and lay something heavy across your skull, and end this once and for all!”
“You’re a bad man! You’re a very bad man!” replies the 6 year-old monster.
“Somebody end this! Now!” cries the man, “While he’s thinking about me!”
But everyone cowers, as the monster turns the neighbor into a jack-in-the-box.
“He was a bad man. So I turned him into a jack-in-the-box.”
As someone sobs, he adds:
“And you mustn’t think bad thoughts about me either, or I’ll do the same thing to you.”
Sterling concludes:
No comment here. No comment at all. We only wanted to introduce you to one of our very special citizens, little Anthony Fremont, six, who lives in a village called Peeksville, in what used to be Ohio, And if by some strange chance you should cross him, best think only good thoughts. Anything less than that is handled at your own risk. Because if you do meet Anthony you can be sure of one thing: You have entered — The Twilight Zone.”
We have entered The Twilight Zone…..