September 11, 2001 – terrorists flew hijacked passenger aircraft into major buildings in NYC and D.C, killing thousands of people. It was a dark day in American history. But for fans of the so-called technothriller and specifically the creator of the genre, Tom Clancy, the events of that day had an eerie, depressing familiarity. Clancy had written a very similar scenario in his book “Debt of Honor.” Movies are dominated by bringing fiction “to life,” but movies aren’t exactly life and when fictional events become actual reality the impact is quite, quite different.

You’ve been reading the word “gaslighting” a lot lately. It is defined:

psychological manipulation of a person usually over an extended period of time that causes the victim to question the validity of their own thoughts, perception of reality, or memories and typically leads to confusion, loss of confidence and self-esteem, uncertainty of one’s emotional or mental stability, and a dependency on the perpetrator

The term’s origin:

The term “gaslighting” was coined from the 1938 British play called Gas Light, in which a husband manipulates a wife into thinking she is crazy by slyly changing the intensity of the gas lights in their home when she is left alone. He does this in an attempt to make her believe she cannot trust herself or her memory.

A play turned into a movie in 1944. You’ve been hearing the term this week because of the continuing efforts of legacy media to try and make us forget Kamala Harris’ long record of bad governance and hyper-left positions and statements. The effort continued apace yesterday – here are two more examples. Once again, fiction becomes reality, and the reality is unnerving.

I have been searching since Monday to explain why, every morning, I wake up, sit at this desk and try to make sense of a world that just does not seem real and try to find a way to cope with the unreal reality of it all. Tarzana Joe’s poem from yesterday strikes at the feeling to a large extent, but still does not entirely hit the mark. The word I want to use is “discomfit” but that is insufficient as comfort is not the only issue. It’s not just that the events of the day are moving so rapidly and in such an unprecedented direction – there is a general sense of something being very wrong and something awful about to happen.

There was a certain unique horror on 9/11 having fictionally learned of the scenario a few years before. The general unease can be attributed to the gaslighting efforts of legacy media, but as I search for explanations neither of those fully capture the sense of wrong that underlies each day lately. But looking into movie/reality parallels has provided some further insight.

It is a staple plot of thriller and sci-fi to have the leader of a nation or the world, or whatever be a sleeper agent of some sort. Sometimes they are simply in the thrall of evil, a puppet – sometimes they are a shape-shifting alien, and in the most gruesome such stories they are aliens in human suits. All such stories climax in a big reveal, when the world learns that the leader is a false front of some sort. In those most gruesome versions, the suit fails in some fashion revealing a hideous monstrosity of an alien that bursts forth from the suit proving to be many times larger than could possibly fit in the suit to begin with. “The Manchurian Candidate” is the most sophisticated of such stories to hit the big screen, but such stories are countless – and if you dip into the world of comic books nearly infinite. The recent MCU streaming series “Secret Invasion” was a miserable failure of an attempt at such a story.

I have always marveled at such stories. How so many could be so fooled for so long. Of course, there is always the hero that figured it out long ago and is standing ready to battle the evil when the big reveal happens, but the general public are simply startled by events having never picked up a single clue. The levels of gullibility and inattentiveness involved tend to stretch the credulity of such stories.

But here is the thing, we just lived, in reality, through the big reveal. The human suit began to fail at the Trump/Biden debate of a few weeks ago. And over the ensuing weeks we saw it tear just a little bit more each day until the cackling monstrosity within – Kamala Harris – emerged. But now reality has departed from fiction. No hero emerged to immediately slay the monstrosity – instead in meeting with Netanyahu while Biden took a nap, the monstrosity consolidated power and the coup moved from an inter-party candidate matter to about the actual office itself.

Sure Donald Trump lies in wait and come the election could well slay the beast. But for now until November we have to watch the monstrosity continue to grasp and exercise power. We have to watch a significant portion of the population fail to see the monstrosity and still see the human suit. Gullibility still reigns for many, many people – and that is deeply unsettling. We now exist is a sort of purgatory where instead of the satisfying fight to the death we have to watch the protagonists yell at each other and call each other names for three months and pray that the good guy will win, knowing that if he does not the future is most bleak indeed. Further, given how many have not seen the monstrosity in front of their face, despite the big reveal, we are fearful that there is enough gullibility in the nation that the bleak future remains within the realm of possibility. In the stories, when the mask falls off of The Red Skull, you know beyond the shadow of a doubt that Captain America is going to kick his butt. But no such certainty is present in the current actuality.

I’m not at all sure I like bringing my stories to life as much as I thought I would.

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