Spooked By Caution

I have never been attracted to horror films, but it is even worse living inside of one. These past eight years have been a Nightmare on Elm St. with Citizen Kane meeting the Godfather in the Cuckoo’s Nest. The script is so unlikely Louie B.  Mayer would have turned it down as a B-movie. A storyline of an ignorant and arrogant American cult leader would surely have no legs. It sounds like a Texas Chainsaw Massacre cleaving the country right down the middle.

But wait. Suddenly an opposition has grown overnight or fortnight. Two robust candidates have emerged and captured the narrative. Echoes of Frank Capra. The emperor is seen to be naked. The flim-flam man lost his megaphone, and the cardsharp has nothing but arm up his sleeve.

I know I should bask in the limelight but there is still another act to go. Maybe the groundswell will see us through to November 5^th and beyond. Maybe there will be a wakening from the somnambulance in the heartland.

Not so fast, my friends. Even though Democrats have commanded the storyline for the past few weeks, there is so much to be spooked about with what ifs.  My early movie-antennae tell me to be aware. We may be living in a bubble that can burst before the credits roll. I’m getting the whiff of nefarious deeds being set into motion by MAGA operatives and their overseas allies.

Aside from voter suppression and plots to decertify ballots there is also a very eminent threat that the tension in the Middle East could ignite into a regional war. Netanyahu is not averse to a conflagration drawing us in and serving the Trump agenda along with his own. Such horrors concern me at a visceral level even more so than the genetically modified tomato that ate Chicago, soon to be released at a theater near you.

It could be that too many horror films have spooked me for life. My cerebral cortex has no defense against my reptilian medulla. Or maybe this is no Apocalypse Now but a documentary.