Twilight Zone Intro from Magill Foote on Vimeo.

 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‘s Opening Narration of the Twilight Zone, seasons 4 & 5seasons 4 & 5

America has now entered another dimension. We are now traveling a land of shadow and deception with damn little substance left to it, of very few things and only bankrupt ideas. Rod Serling’s alternate dimension is far too genial and welcoming; ours, far more dystopian.

Lies, Damn Lies, & Clumsy Attempts at Deception

The road to this new dimension is paved with lies. But, we don’t have just common everyday run-of-the-mill garden-variety lies, like Bill Clinton’s I did not have sexual relations with that woman. We can all understand a married man lying about having an extramarital affair, even the president of the United States. Luckily, we hadn’t yet been consumed by the stupidity that now seems to be devouring us like ravenous flesh-eating bacteria, so he was impeached and humiliated, but Hillary forgave him, the general populace forgave him (notably Al Gore didn’t and we got W and two illegal wars and the Great Recession as a result — Thanks Al!), and his presidency and marriage continued. Now, we look back and wonder why we didn’t collectively recognize his sexual abuse of Monica Lewinsky, Juanita Broderick, and his other accusers, but the motivation for his lie was understandable.

The lies of this new dimension are special. They are bald-faced, discordant, incongruous lies. They are compound lies, recursive lies. We have politicians, organizations (Project Veritas), relatives (I’m looking at you Uncle Ingus), social media trolls, and bots that will lie with every word uttered and believe their lies even after they’ve told a second lie that contradicts the first lie! What the fuck? You’ve got two lies that contradict each other and are still missing the truth! And, in just a moment we’ll have TWO, count ’em, TWO, recent examples.

This dimension is unlocked not with the genteel imagination of Rod Serling’s telling, but with a brazened delusion plunging us into a Twilight Zone of short-sighted stupidity.

Submitted for Your Approval: Access Hollywood & Fake News

Apparently, the Ol’ Pussy Grabber has told several people that the infamous Access Hollywood tape in which he boasts about grabbing women by the pussy is a fake. A fake for all love! He’s told at least a senator and an aide and according to the New York Times, several other people to boot. I don’t know if telling Melania and Mother Pence counts, though.

How could it be a fake? Who could conceive of telling such a lie? He’s seen and heard on the tape talking and boasting about his sexual exploits — such as they are, it’s more like hearing a seventh grader bragging about finding his old man’s pornography stash. I Just kiss! I can’t help myself! God it’s painful to listen to.

He’s already admitted to its verity. He may have disputed whether it constituted a confession of sexual assault or locker room talk, but just a little over a year ago, he said he was embarrassed at having made those claims. Now, he’s claiming the tape was a fake. How could it be a fake? Well, the Ol’ Pussy Grabber don’t say, but he does mumble about how it ain’t real.

Was his confirmation that it was him talking on the tape giving his best imitation of a 13 year old’s sex talk fake? Was he making fake news himself, THEN? I swear 1984 double talk or Russian propagandists couldn’t make this shit up. They’d be too embarrassed, they’d be afraid they’d be taken behind the shed and shot, sent to the Gulag, take a face full of rats, or some such shit.

One man telling ridiculous lies does not a new dimension of existence make. But, a third of the populace believing them or at the very least continuing to support him and defend him, does. There are people… oh, fuck, how do people listen to that painful juvenile talk and still support him? The juvenileness of it alone is enough to want to deflate the hollowed out caricature of a human being and store him in the attic like some prop in a tired horror story.

Yet, here we are in this other dimension, but it ain’t Serling’s fifth dimension or even his land of shadow and substance, things and ideas. We’ve taken a hard fucking left at Albuquerque and sunk into the gaslighting delusions of a paranoid malignant narcissist.

And god, if it only stopped there, we might actually survive the duration of the Ol’ Pussy Grabber’s tenure of abusing the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office. Seriously, how much urine can be poured across that desk before the finish is removed and the wood damaged? Do you think the curator of the historical artifacts of the White House will be able to restore it?

You know that the Ol’ Pussy Grabber has had pee-hookers in — Warren G. Harding-style — so he can watch as they piss on America and all she stands for from the safety of the Oval Office couch. You know you know it. Even if it is just alleged. Even if I did just make it up. You know it is true because it has that illusion of truthiness that we all know and love.

Mission Impossible & the Shifting of Our Enemies

But, this dimensional vortex is sucking us all in, so much so, that I nearly wet myself as I watched the first season of Mission Impossible, and I came across this jumbled gem of various characters monologuing.

Those with closed minds and closed ears. When will you people wake up to the warnings from Bill Townsend and myself?
.
.
.
The American people have had their eyes opened. They now know that the enemy will stop at nothing to subvert our way of life.
.
.
.
Traitor! We could have convinced the American people to stand up and fight. To attack their enemies while they still have the power to destroy them. It’s the only way America can survive.

I’ve watched this episode (Mission Impossible, The Confession from season 1, episode 22, 1966!) four times because I was so struck by how much the John Bircher characters’ laments sound like today’s Repube, alt-right, and conservative rhetoric of dire warnings about the people who want to destroy this country!

And, no wonder, Fred C. Koch, father of the infamous Koch brothers, co-founded the John Birch Society. And you know who else had a father named Fred?

The Birchers were rabid anti-communists, so, of course, they were talking about the communists from Russia who hated us for our freedoms. They coasted on their vile mix of racist anti-communism through Reagan. By Obama’s term, they were talking about terrorists who hated us for our freedoms. But, today, we’re talking about red-blooded middle class Americans, hard-working professional journalists, and anyone else who opposes the Ol’ Pussy Grabber and his self-serving ilk hating them for their freedom to oppress Americans of color, troll liberals in general, and loot the middle class to enrich the wealthy!

In the Dimension of the Gaslighted Super-Patriot

Ever since I was politically conscious — thanks LBJ! — I hated that Dems, liberals, and progressives ceded patriotism to the Repubes, conservatives, and regressives. We’re patriots, too, goddammit! We want to build a more perfect union! We want to make good on the promises of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights! Fuck those assholes.

The Birchers and their successors are so-called “super-patriots,” but they are also the ones who are viciously turning on other Americans believing that theirs is the only way of supporting the Constitution. The great irony is that they are even willing to cede the country to RUSSIA — ain’t John Birch and Fred C. Koch spinning in their graves at that! They welcome our totalitarian enemies if it means their side wins. They would give up our democracy just so they can post their Cry snowflake! Cry! memes on social media.

It is absolutely mind-boggling. The Ol’ Pussy Grabber has gaslighted us into another dimension. But, it isn’t opened with the key of imagination; it is opened with the key of delusion, of motivated reasoning, of motivated ignorance.

Submitted for Your Approval: A Deception Badly Proffered to Prove a Lie

You unlock this door with the key of delusion. Beyond it is another dimension – a dimension of cynicism, a dimension of cognitive dissonance, a dimension of illusory truthiness. You’re moving into a land of both shadow and lies, of gaslighting and ideas. You’ve just crossed over into the United Fucking States of Fucking Stupid as we flush our democracy and 241 years of success down the toilet of grasping greed and self-serving narcissism.

It amazes how easily we shifted our focus from the Germans as our enemy of World Wars I & II to the Russians of the Cold War, to the terrorists of the War on Terror, to ourselves. We’re now pitting hard-working Americans against each other so the Ol’ Pussy Grabber can sell our democracy cheap to the Russians so his name can go on another cheap building.

Let’s have a look at the deception being used to prove a lie in Project Veritas’ latest abysmal failure: attempting to lure a Washington Post reporter into admitting they were hell bent on destroying Roy Moore for his FREEDOMS! and keeping him out of the Senate. Apparently, the bumbling fools at Project Lie-to-us would rather a child molester and vehement religious bigot be in the senate than a Democrat. Win at any cost. Win even if you have to lie, cheat, and steal. Win if you have to sell the country cheap to our blood enemy of the last sixty or so years. Just win, baby, win, so you can send Cry, Snowflake! Cry memes to liberals.