The Twilight Zone
I recommend it if you haven’t seen the 1962 episode of “The Twilight Zone” called “To Serve Man.” Spoiler to follow. A giant race of ostensibly benign aliens come to earth. They thaw the suspicions of the leaders of earth with gifts of technology and science. One of the aliens leaves behind a book. A young female code breaker manages to translate the title of the book. It reads, simply, “To Serve Man.” She and her boss think that’s ever so wonderful a title. She goes to work attempting to translate the rest of the book.
The aliens are so marvellously accommodating to the people of earth that they offer everyone a free trip to visit their home planet. The young lady’s boss decides to take advantage of that offer. While he is boarding the spaceship, the young lady comes rushing toward him and shouts after him, “Mr Chambers, don’t get on that ship! The rest of the book, “To Serve Man,” it’s … it’s a cookbook!” The alien behind him pushes him onboard and the hatch closes behind.
All these years later and the power of that scene from that episode still manages to send chills down my back. It’s an astonishing and ironic and disquieting conclusion.
It’s also undiminished by its flaws. Why would the alien carry around such a book and “just happen” to leave it behind? How is it that an alien language can be “translated” by a code breaker? But never mind. It’s a brilliant piece of amazing writing.
Naturally I can’t help but bring that plot forward into the politics of today. Republicans come to cynically seduce us into bringing their beliefs and their way of life with the promise that their way is the best way. But their leaders make no secret of their true intentions. They “just happen” to leave behind their playbook everywhere they go.
No need for a code breaker or a translator. Their meaning is clear. They don’t even try to hide their hypocrisy or their lies in sophisticated deception. Their playbook is obvious to anyone who can read plain English. It’s a cookbook.
They can’t keep their stories straight and they don’t bother to try. Now the events of January 6th are nothing more than a quiet and orderly visit by tourists, now it’s FBI agents disguised as false flag Republicans rioting and destroying property and attacking the government. Now it’s Donald Trump keeping harmless mementos that are rightfully his and that he has “declassified” with his mind, now it’s top secret documents planted by the FBI in order to incriminate the poor, beleaguered former president. Now Trump’s daughter and son-in-law make billions from the Saudis by exploiting their Oval Office jobs and that’s just fine, now they want to destroy and imprison Hunter Biden for making a few measly millions by trading on his father’s name while his father is out of office.
We stand and watch them, jaws agape, and we wonder aloud to each other how they can sustain such hypocrisy, how they can stand to look at themselves in the mirror. But we’re missing the point. They understand perfectly well that they look like hypocrites to us. But their message isn’t for us. Their message is for their base. They just use our media and our naive indulgence to transmit that message into the Fox News spaceship that is the echo chamber of their rabid, uncritical MAGA followers.
We’re running after those followers, warning them that “it’s a cookbook!” They already know that. They already know that and they don’t care. Being eaten doesn’t bother them, as long as they don’t have to be “woke,” as long as pregnant women are forced to carry and Second Amendment loonies are allowed to carry, as long as the “brown hordes” who are “poisoning the blood” of white Americans are stopped by a wall that will never be built, as long as they think they “own the libs” — they are content to be sauce for the goose.
That is the true Republican twilight zone, and we seem to think that their MAGA followers are reachable by simply shouting the words: “It’s a cookbook!” I’ll say it again, they already know that. They just don’t care. Our job isn’t to educate them into understanding that they’re nothing more than food for their paymasters. Our job is to educate them into not wanting to be food in the first place. That’s our real challenge, and it’s a challenge we will never meet until we finally fully understand it. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.