America Has Entered The Twilight Zone

2016. It has been and will go down as one of the most notorious election cycles in American history. Who would have predicted the man that starred on The Apprentice would run for president, let alone against Hillary Clinton? There has been the investigation into Clinton's emails, racist and xenophobic comments from Trump and countless opportunities for the media to analyze, persuade and mock it.

Blanketing it all has been a certain kind of darkness. Careful, America. You are now entering The Twilight Zone.

On Halloween, after several weeks of watching on-and-off, I decided to pick back up with The Twilight Zone Original Series – somewhere in Season 5 after watching the episodes "Queen of the Nile" and "The Masks," the latter of which A.V. Club referred to as the scariest Twilight Zone episode of all time, there was one titled "I Am The Night–Color Me Black."

In a small town, there is a criminal who is facing the death penalty. A majority of the town is ready to watch him die. On the day of his scheduled execution - a hanging - it is 7 a.m. and yet it is still dark as night outside. The minutes pass but the darkness stays. Reaching 9:30 a.m., the time of the execution, the townspeople cheer and yet the darkness doesn't let up. There is no sign of sunlight. 

In the final minute of the episode, two characters exchange about when daylight might return:

"And it'll lift. And there'll be the old sun, high up and bright. You wait and see."
"Well, it could happen, couldn't it? Couldn't that happen, Koch? Colbey? There'll be sun again. There'll be daylight."
"I don't know. I don't know if there'll ever be daylight again."

In typical episodes of The Twilight Zone, where a sci-fi twist would reveal itself, there is instead a somber explanation delivered by Rod Serling.

He explains:

"And still the phenomenon remains unexplained except for the reports coming in of similar occurrences here in the United States and elsewhere. At 2:00 this afternoon a dark cloud appeared over a street in Dallas, Texas. The mayor of West Berlin verified that a rectangular area over the Berlin wall has suddenly gone dark. In Budapest, european newspapermen passed over censorship an article about several square blocks, including a political prison which was suddenly thrown into darkness early this morning. In Birmingham, Alabama, an area in Shanghai, the entire northern section of Vietnam, a section of Chicago, Illinois, the darkness continues to make itself known. A sickness known as hate; not a virus, not a microbe, not a germ- but a sickness nonetheless, highly contagious, deadly in its effects. Don't look for it in the twilight zone- look for it in a mirror. Look for it before the light goes out altogether."

Like The New Yorker stated, there are two Americas: one that Trump is targeting, and one that Clinton is. In other words, an "old America" and a "new America." The chasm in political ideals represented by each candidate is obtusely embodied in their respective support bases. In Trump's supporters, there is a hate for opposing candidates and a hate for opposing ideas, and it is a sickness. 

Start working to make change. Before the light goes out, America.