"American Horror Story: Cult" introduces its Michigan setting with a sequence about election night 2016 that is the most rollicking, terrifying, hilarious, disturbing and sorrowful TV commentary yet on its surprising results.

Inside a room with a well-worn couch — it could be somewhere in Macomb County — a jittery young man with stringy, blue-dyed hair (Evan Peters) watches Fox News alone as the numbers indicate Donald Trump has won the presidency.

"The revolution has begun!" he whispers, eyes pointed to the ceiling. He's empowered. He's manic. He could be a lonely single guy who doesn't have a job and is living in his parents' basement.

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Meanwhile, in the much more upscale living room of a Craftsman-chic house — perhaps nestled in Royal Oak or Ann Arbor — a small gathering is glued to MSNBC, sipping red wine, as the impossible happens.

"I won't believe anything until I hear Rachel Maddow say it," says a distraught woman (Sarah Paulson) as Hillary Clinton's assumed victory evaporates before her eyes. "She's the only one I trust."

Of course, these aren't real people who were in real-life metro Detroit when the predicted outcome turned upside down in November. They're fictional residents of Brookfield Heights, Mich., a made-up city that's home to paranoia, fear, rage, audacious stereotypes and a possible insane clown posse (an accurate description, not the actual Detroit hardcore rap group).

The seventh season of "American Horror Story," the FX anthology series created and produced by Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk, veers away from the more obvious inspirations of past years — a terrifying mental institution, a demented carnival, a haunted hotel — to a very contemporary shocker. The scary stuff here is the direction America is heading right now, which is either catastrophic or a necessary course correction, depending on whether you've considered buying a "Nasty Woman" T-shirt or a "Make America Great Again" hat.

This is no somber PBS take on the creeping anxiety of those concerned that our democratic values and governmental norms are being chipped away by the current commander in chief. In the early episodes made available to critics, Murphy and Falchuk deliver a fun-house mirror version of the stress that Clinton supporters felt last year — and the sense of disbelief that's continued in 2017. Even during news lulls, a steady stream of head-scratching, eye-popping tweets from the commander in chief keeps the tension dialed to 11 on a scale of ten.

Is this really happening? It's a feeling those who vehemently oppose Trump's version of leadership experience nearly every night when, yes, they tune in to Maddow. It's also a question that haunts a main "AHS: Cult" character, Paulson's ultra-phobic Ally Mayfair-Richards. Plagued by what are either hallucinations of creepy clowns or the early detection of a true, deadly menace, Ally admits at one point, "I think I'm losing my mind." To emphasize her uneasiness, the camera often does that reverse-tracking zoom from "Vertigo" when she's having a panic episode. It's a great visual trick and one the cable news networks should consider adapting. (Just picture CNN's Anderson Cooper in a "Vertigo" zoom while interviewing Stephen Miller).

But the surprising, energizing twist of "AHS: Cult," at least so far, is that it satirizes both sides of the political divide with a devilish smirk. Kai Anderson, the aggrieved white guy played by Peters, smears his face with ground-up cheese puffs and incites a group of Hispanic men to beat him up in order to gain sympathy for a city council run. Wicked parody, right?

Ally is also subtly mocked as a scaredy-cat liberal who talks a good game about building bridges but hides inside her privileged bubble of being one-half of a visibly affluent, restaurant-owning lesbian couple with an immigrant nanny. And except for her ultra-competent, seemingly fearless wife, Ivy (Allison Pill), and their adorable son, Ozzie, Ally mostly interacts with characters who eventually may be revealed as either her mortal enemies or total oddballs.

Billy Eichner and Leslie Grossman portray her neighbors Harrison and Meadow Wilton. He raises bees (hives and honey are an unexplained scary subtext of the "AHS: Cult" promotional art) and hoards guns. She watches all the "Real Housewives" shows, "even Atlanta." Together, they serve as copresidents of the Michigan chapter of Nicole Kidman's fan club.

Another character with mysterious motivations? Billie Lourd plays Winter Anderson, Kai's mysterious sister and a former Clinton campaigner who says being retweeted by Lena Dunham (who's been revealed as a guest star) was the proudest moment of her life.

For all of its funny tics, "AHS: Cult" isn't entirely a laughing matter. Kai, played with exquisite menace by Peters, is on a very dark journey that seems summed up by his muttering that "there is nothing more dangerous in this world than a humiliated man." Hmm, is this a nod to the reports that Obama's lacerating jokes at the 2011 White House Correspondents Dinner spurred an embarrassed Trump to run for the Oval Office?

Kai doesn't like inclusiveness. "Enjoy your latte, bitch," he says after dumping coffee on Ally and Ivy. It's eerily reminiscent of the scene in a coffee shop in Hulu's "The Handmaid's Tale," where a barista verbally attacks Elizabeth Moss and Samira Wiley's characters in the time frame before women are completely stripped of their rights. Both scenes are a reminder that open displays of hate are often indicators of much worse to come.

But what about those clowns so prevalent in the "AHS: Cult" ads? They are represented chillingly by — spoiler alert — the return of Twisty the Clown, the lethal presence from the "AHS: Freak Show" season and by other masked, murderous figures who are real — or are they? Could they be a metaphor for America's violent tendencies? Maybe they're a sort of "Clockwork Orange" spin on the lack of empathy bred by the alienation of living life online? Whatever Murphy and Falchuk have up their sleeves, I'm watching through my fingers.

And, yes, there are several references to Michigan that will jump out at local audiences like a bucket full of clown-tossed confetti. Eichner casually mentions that he's a fitness trainer at a Northville gym. His wife, Meadow, jokes about his no-questions-asked trips to Detroit. A moving truck bears the name "Michigan Brothers." At one point, Kai yells at a flock of TV news reporters, "Look at my face, Michigan! I'm done complaining."

This summer, Detroit has been the subject of a movie about real-life horror. "Detroit" portrays how three unarmed African-American teens were killed in 1967 during a brutal raid by white law enforcement officers. The film by Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow cratered at the box office, an outcome that could have been predicted. After all, summer moviegoers were choosing between Spider-Man and the awful legacy of systemic racism.

With such a horrific reality already in the public eye, metro Detroiters may not even blink at being linked to something like "AHS: Cult." The show has to be set somewhere. Given Michigan's pivotal role in the election, it's as good a place as any. "You want to know who to get mad at for this? Our own state of Michigan," says a neighbor of Ally's on election night as Trump and Clinton fight to the finish. "She's losing by 10,000 votes. That's the size of this town."

Don't blame Michigan for what's happening in the country. One message of "AHS: Cult" seems to be that we're all in this together, for better or worse. There's a moment in the first episode where Ally stops short of bashing Trump because she realizes that the stranger she's talking to is a fan of the president. How can you tell where another person stands? How do you talk about the political divide in a society that's disconnecting from personal relationships and hooked to devices that allow anonymous expressions of disdain?

And how do you find the courage to risk your own physical and emotional comfort in order to do what's right? When a key characters grabs a bottle of rosé as a potential defense weapon in the first episode, it's clear there isn't enough wine in the universe to make this mess go away.

Contact Julie Hinds: 313-222-6427 or jhinds@freepress.com.

'American Horror Story: Cult' season premiere

10 p.m. Tue.

FX