The Twilight Zone, Donald Trump and the Awful Power of a Boy-God

One of my favorite episodes of The Twilight Zone is a nasty nugget entitled “It's a Good Life” about a six year old boy named Anthony Fremont (Bill Mumy, of Lost in Space and Barnes & Barnes fame) whose horrifying telekinetic powers make him the cruel God of the small Ohio town of Peaksville where he lives. It was later re-made by Joe Dante in a standout sequence in Twilight Zone: The Movie and parodied in a classic “Treehouse of Horror” segment.

Anthony has the power to read minds and to transform people into horrifying creatures. If anyone makes the mistake of displeasing the tiny titan they risk being sent to a spooky cornfield that’s like a circle of hell, only worse. 

Through his terrifying mental powers Anthony is able to separate Peaksville from the rest of the universe. He controls everything and everyone. In order to stay on his good side, and not endure a fate worse than death everyone pretends that the child’s whims are not only reasonable, but kind and good. 

The episode ends with Anthony deciding to make it snow in a way that will destroy half the town’s crops and create widespread starvation but rather than scold him and risk being sent to the cornfield of doom everyone insists that it was a good, good thing for him to make it snow, just as everything he does is good. 

For the last four years we have been living this nightmare with a petulant man-child with the emotional maturity of an eight year old boy named Donald Trump in place of the telekinetic little boy. 

Because Trump cannot bear criticism any more than little Anthony could, Trump’s cultists have been forced to pretend that the President’s tantrums and personal grudges and vicious personal attacks were good. 

When, for example, Trump tweeted, “So interesting to see “Progressive” Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run. Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how it is done. These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough. I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!” his supporters had no choice to say that it was good, very good that Donald Trump was telling women of color who don’t agree with him to essentially go back to Africa because he was valiantly defending the American way of life from the scourge of Socialism and not an appalling display of racism, sexism and Islamophobia. 

When Trump insisted that Sean Spicer’s first job as his spokesman was to angrily insist that Trump’s inauguration crowd was ten times larger than Obama’s and, in fact, the largest gathering of human beings in the history of the world the Trumpists had no choice but to nod in approval and insist that it was good, very good and very important that he focused on something of tremendous importance like inauguration crowd size because it was all about fighting the lies of the mainstream media (or rather lamestream media, to use Trump’s very good, very funny, very original turn of phrase) and not Trump’s enormous ego. 

Republicans pretended that every terrible thing Trump did or said or tweeted was, in fact, very good, and very necessary for a very good reason: like li’l Anthony Fremont, he was a very powerful, very immature figure. The price of displeasing Trump (or Anthony) could be enormous. 

Take Jeff Sessions. One of Trump’s very first big-time supporters, he displeased the boy King by recusing himself from the investigation into Trump’s activities in Russia to avoid a fairly glaring and obvious conflict of interest. 

Trump felt strongly that Sessions should have spearheaded the investigation so that it would result in instant, full exoneration of Trump and death sentences for treason for Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. 

Though Sessions was his appointee and staunch supporter, Trump couldn’t stop insulting him. According to Bob Woodward’s book Fear: Trump in the White House he called him a “dumb Southerner” and an ableist slur. According to CNN, Trump called him an idiot to his face and told him he should resign. 

Yet even after Trump forced him to resign after years of public humiliation, Sessions still ran for office as a Trump loyalist who would be only too happy to implement all of his former boss’ ideas. 

Even after Trump endorsed Sessions’ rival, Sessions still swore his loyalty to the soon to be ex-president, gushing, “I am one of the architects of the Trump agenda — I’ve always supported it and always will. Nothing the President can do will deter me from supporting this agenda, because my principles, just like my faith, are fundamental to who I am and immovable.”

Unlike Anthony Fremont, Trump recently lost the source of his unholy, toxic power: the presidency. Trump remains feared enough that he can still get people terrified of being sent to the metaphorical cornfield to insist that it was good, very good that Trump was devoting seemingly all of his time and energy to angrily insisting that he won the Presidency a second time, and by a landslide, when it’s pretty clear to everyone but his most deluded loyalists that he definitely lost.

Mike Pompeo, for example, responded to a question about the upcoming presidential transition by insisting, “There will be a smooth transfer of power … to a second Trump administration.”

He may have been joking. He may not have been joking. It doesn’t really matter. When asked if Trump would be attending the next inauguration, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany told Fox Business, “The president will attend his own inauguration. He would have to be there, in fact.”

Even without winning a second term, Trump still wields the power to send Republicans who displease him to a metaphorical cornfield. 

Not even death can dim Trump’s awful power. I have no doubt that when dear old dad is roasting in the fires of hell Donald Trump Jr. will be angrily demanding that ambitious Republicans kiss the ring of a new generation of Trumps/Anthony Fremonts who might just be worse than the originals. 

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