I’ve watched a lot of TV and if there’s one thing I know, it’s that when someone says things can’t possibly get any worse, things will always become worse. I realize everyone is excited to get out of 2016 and has high hopes for the new year, but personally, I don’t really believe that the first year of a fascist’s rule will somehow be better than watching him get elected in the previous year. And it’s pretty clear that after everyone pinning their last hopes on some faithless electors, no one will be coming to save us. So, in the interest of saving ourselves, we must look honestly at our new unbelievable reality. Submitted for your approval is my view of where we stand now, as seen through the lens of arguably the best sci fi TV show ever.

“It’s a Good Life” Season 3 Episode 8

A child has the inexplicable power of getting everything he wants. It doesn’t matter what horrible, sociopathic act of self indulgence the child is engaged in, anyone who could stop him would rather just say, “That’s a real good thing you did there,” instead of risking becoming the next target of this capricious egomaniac.

“No comment here, no comment at all. We only wanted to introduce you to one of our very special citizens, little Anthony Fremont, age 6, who lives in a village called Peaksville in a place that used to be Ohio. And if by some strange chance you should run across him, you had 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.”

“The Monsters are Due on Maple Street” Season 1 Episode 22

Open on a street, anywhere in the suburbs. Little white children play on lawns and in the streets. Their white parents proudly mow lawns and clean gutters. Out of nowhere, a shadow passes over and the electricity goes out for the whole town. Of course, this phenomenon is attributed immediately to a monster and everyone blames the weird kid because he’s different. Then, one of the resident’s car starts when everyone else’s doesn’t. So they all blame him, because that’s different. As you can imagine, the town quickly descends into chaos, filled with fear fueled witch hunts, and Maple Street quickly cannibalizes itself in an irrational clusterfuck for no reason. The last shot is of two aliens smugly satisfied how they, a foreign power, was able to manipulate this American town so easily into fervently acting against its own interests.

“The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices – to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill – and suspicion can destroy – and a thoughtless frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all of its own – for the children – and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is – that these things cannot be confined – to the Twilight Zone.”

“Spur of the Moment” Season 5 Episode 21

An older woman stares at her past mistakes. She wants to fix them, NEEDS to fix them. She chases her past self as fast as she can. She knows exactly what to do and everything will be okay, if only she could warn herself. But, alas, try as she might, the past is always just out of reach, and now she must wallow in the inadequacies of her own decisions, knowing that what she thought was right turned out to be terribly, terribly wrong. Now she spends most of her time out in the woods with her… um… questionable husband.

“This is the face of terror: Anne Marie Mitchell, forty-three years of age, her desolate existence once more afflicted by the hope of altering her past mistake – a hope which is, unfortunately, doomed to disappointment. For warnings from the future to the past must be taken in the past; today may change tomorrow but once today is gone, tomorrow can only look back in sorrow that the warning was ignored. Said warning as of now stamped ‘not accepted’ and stored away in the dead file in the recording office of the Twilight Zone.”

“The Brain Center at Whipple’s” Season 5 Episode 33

A factory owner upgrades his plant by installing a fancy new machine that can do most, if not all of the work. Inevitably, the increased automation leads to layoffs. The newly displaced blue collar workers, having nothing else to do in the face of progress, try to at least seek some sympathy from their former boss who is more than happy to turn his nose up at the despondent former employees. Until, because this is the Twilight Zone, he himself is replaced by a machine and is found at a local bar attempting to commiserate with the other unemployed about how the capitalist oligarchs (my words, not his) diminish us so (his words, not mine).

“There are many bromides applicable here: ‘too much of a good thing’, ‘tiger by the tail’, ‘as you sow so shall you reap’. The point is that, too often, Man becomes clever instead of becoming wise; he becomes inventive and not thoughtful; and sometimes, as in the case of Mr. Whipple, he can create himself right out of existence. As in tonight’s tale of oddness and obsolescence, in the Twilight Zone.”

“He’s Alive” Season 4 Episode 4

A small neo-Nazi group is trying to find traction in America, but is often mocked and dismissed, WHICH IS THE CORRECT THING TO DO WITH NAZIS. Their leader, who is tired of not being taken seriously just because he’s a Nazi, is approached by a mysterious stranger – spoiler alert it’s the ghost of Hitler. Hitler ghost teaches the would-be fuhrer how to whip a crowd into a frenzy, playing off of every prejudice and fear, claiming that they are in fact the oppressed minority because nonwhites are ruining their perfect, Anglican society. Also, something about the crooked media, probably. Eventually, he gets shot and Hitler ghost goes on looking for another.

“Where will he go next, this phantom from another time, this resurrected ghost of a previous nightmare – Chicago? Los Angeles? Miami, Florida? Vincennes, Indiana? Syracuse, New York? Anyplace, everyplace, where there’s hate, where there’s prejudice, where there’s bigotry. He’s alive. He’s alive so long as these evils exist. Remember that when he comes to your town. Remember it when you hear his voice speaking out through others. Remember it when you hear a name called, a minority attacked, any blind, unreasoning assault on a people or any human being. He’s alive because through these things we keep him alive.”

[Best case future]

“The Shelter” Season 3 Episode 3

Fancy dinner party at a physician’s house which just happens to have a bomb shelter in the basement. It’s one of those real close-knit communities; the good doctor has delivered some of the people in that room. Anyway, unidentified objects start flying towards the United States and the dinner party quickly dissolves into hysterics, resentment, and racism. The shelter can support up to three people – the doctor and his family – who quickly lock themselves in. The dinner guests decide to break down the door, which, by the way, is a terrible plan because it would render the shelter useless to everyone. Their barbarism succeeds in tearing down the door mere seconds before finding out that those objects hurtling towards them weren’t nuclear bombs, they were nothing. And now they have to live with each other.

“No moral, no message, no prophetic tract, just a simple statement of fact: for civilization to survive, the human race has to remain civilized. Tonight’s very small exercise in logic from the Twilight Zone.”

[More likely future]

“The Midnight Sun” Season 3 Episode 10

Earth is heating up at an alarming rate. In the episode, that is. Two women, who are the last to remain in a New York apartment building, comfort each other as the temperature increases. Everyone else has either moved or perished. A man with a gun shows up just trying to survive. But there’s nothing to left to scavenge. Paint melts and mercury rises. Without recourse or remedies the only thing left to do is perish in the heat.

“The poles of fear, the extremes of how the Earth might conceivably be doomed. Minor exercise in the care and feeding of a nightmare, respectfully submitted by all the thermometer-watchers in the Twilight Zone.”