The Twilight Zone aka Trump's Washington

Washington

RANKED as one of the best television drama series of all time, The Twilight Zone - which was shot entirely in black and white, and which ran for five seasons from 1959 to 1964 - fused several genres, including science fiction and fantasy. It told the stories of people who suddenly found themselves in unexpected extraordinary situations and were unable to flee them.

The creator of the popular television series, Rod Serling, would introduce each episode and its main characters, who were being transformed into alternate realities, by announcing that they were entering "another dimension".

"You are travelling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. Your next stop, the Twilight Zone!"

American fans of the series, who celebrate the National Twilight Zone Day, decided to mark the occasion this year by highlighting one of the episodes, "The Obsolete Man". It imagined a world in which the government actively discourages people from believing in proven facts and elected officials look back on the rise of strongmen with nostalgic fondness. Imagine that!

"Donald Trump is president of the United States. Britain has left the European Union. Captain America is the new fascist supreme leader of Hydra," suggested one of the organisers of this year's National Twilight Zone, adding: "Unfortunately, this isn't The Twilight Zone, a place where I'd much rather be right now."

Well, it's still not as bad as in "The Midnight Sun" episode. In that episode, we were transformed into a time when after Earth had slowly moved towards the Sun, and introduced to two characters who were spending their days in New York City's scorching heat while the city plunged into chaos. People, fearing that they had no future in the world's new harsh climate, turned to violence, and the two characters found solace in the vibrant paintings of lakes and waterfalls as a reminder of what the world they had lost.

Hopefully, it would be some time before we enter that stop in The Twilight Zone. But we're getting there. To quote former president George W Bush, who after attending Mr Trump's inauguration and listening to his address with its dystopian vision ("This American carnage stops right here and stops right now") reportedly said, "That was some weird s**t."

And with all the indications that Mr Trump is planning to withdraw from the Paris climate accord, the notion of a crumbling New York City that falls victim to the blistering heat could turn out to be more than just an old episode of The Twilight Zone.

Or imagine an episode in which a former US administration official or lawmaker returned to Washington last Tuesday evening after an absence of many years just as Mr Trump announced that he was firing James Comey, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), from his job.

He or she may feel that, indeed, they were travelling through another dimension. A journey into a capital city where there seems to be no fixed norms, no agreed-upon-rules and protocols, and where the unexpected happens 24/7. Your next stop, The Twilight Zone aka President Trump's Washington.

A US president firing a top-level official in his administration is no mere fantasy. In fact, Bill Clinton fired his own FBI director in 1993, after William Sessions refused to voluntarily step down amid ethical concerns. Presidents have the constitutional right to do that.

But when they do that, presidents do follow some rules of etiquette, especially when it comes to a respected and long-serving public official such Mr Comey who, after all, wasn't accused of breaking the law or violating ethical standards.

So the president invites the dismissed official to a meeting at the White House, thanks him for his service, and allows him to save face by writing his own letter of resignation while providing him with an opportunity to say farewell to the FBI agents. And let's not forget the customary send-off gold watch present!

In the case of Mr Comey, the firing resembled that of a low-level employee in a company being ordered to vacate his office by noon and to return the keys to the company. In a way, the dismissal of the FBI chief had almost all the makings of the so-called perp walk, the act of walking into or out of a police station, that a person in police custody is made to perform for the benefit of the media. Just minus the hand-cuffs, in the case of Mr Comey.

At the end it came to a short letter, informing Mr Comey that he was "terminated, effective immediately" that Mr Trump's personal body guard delivered to the FBI headquarters and whose contents were leaked to the press and broadcast on cable television just when Mr Comey was addressing a group of FBI agents in Los Angeles. Or as a famous television reality show host used to announce at the end of an episode, "Director Comey, you're fired!"

But this was less like the entertaining The Apprentice, and more like the weird The Twilight Zone. The White House's bombshell announcement that sent shock waves ricocheting through Washington only added to the growing sense of the surreal - of the "can-you-believe-this-is-happening?" - that has been engulfing the city since Inauguration Day. It started with the scary Inaugural Address, followed by the phone call the president, the Leader of the Free World, made during his first day in office to the director of the National Park Service complaining about the official photos of the 2017 inaugural crowd that made it look like it was not as big as former president Barack Obama's in 2009.

That was followed by the firing of Michael Flynn; the appointment of Jared Kushner; then bizarre presidential statements and tweets; silly fights with the press and nasty attacks on the judiciary - 110 days and still counting of weirdness not seen in Washington since the Watergate Scandal.

Indeed, if our visitor to The Twilight Zone version of President Trump's Washington is old enough, he or she would recall that turbulent era in American politics, when a major political scandal, centring on then-president Richard Nixon who was trying to cover up his involvement in ordering the break-in at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters at the Watergate Office complex in Washington.

Which explains why everyone has been referring to the "echoes of Watergate" when discussing what is occurring in Washington these days, where the debate is between those who think that Mr Trump just doesn't know what he is doing and those who believe that he does and that he is trying to cover up his involvement in alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign, that included the hacking into the DNC computer server, which the former FBI director was investigating when he was fired by Mr Trump.

And, indeed, the Watergate analogy was employed after Mr Comey's dismissal last week, when journalists recalled when Mr Nixon ordered the firing of the special prosecutor who was investigating the Watergate scandal, leading to the resignation of the attorney-general and his deputy on Oct 20, 1973, in what became known as the Saturday Night Massacre. Will we be recalling last week's events as the Tuesday Night Massacre?

There were no happy endings in The Twilight Zone episodes where the main characters weren't able to escape from the blistering heat of "The Midnight Sun" or from the tyrannical regime in "The Obsolete Man".

When it came to the Watergate scandal, however, Americans were able to escape from the political nightmare that seemed to overwhelm President Nixon's Washington. Mr Nixon was forced to resign from office and his aides who had orchestrated the crimes he helped to carry out ended up serving several years in jail.

Gerald Ford who succeeded the disgraced Mr Nixon in office announced during his inauguration that "My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over". Will Americans in 2017 remain stuck in The Twilight Zone, discovering that there is no way to run?