I used to love “The X-Files.”
Like millions of Americans, I unfailingly followed FBI agents Mulder and Scully’s search for the truth in a labyrinth of conspiracy. But a few years on, after one too many red herrings and blind alleys of plot, it began to be obvious to me the conspiracy would never be unraveled — could never be unraveled — because unraveling it was not the point of the show. No, the conspiracy itself was the point, the need to maintain a sense of unsettlement and unease, of our heroes buffeted by malevolent, unseen forces.
What was once television has now become politics.
Or has no one else noticed how the Republican candidate for president, his surrogates and his voters, have put forth a series of interlocking conspiracy theories so byzantine and confused as to make “The X-Files” seem like “Scooby-Doo” by comparison?
Combined and distilled, these theories go something like this: President Obama is a gay Kenyan Muslim who, with the transvestite Michelle and two kidnapped children masquerading as his family, usurped the White House and now plans to hand it off to the corrupt and murderous liar Hillary Clinton, who plotted with the Commission on Presidential Debates to schedule two of their face-offs against NFL games and who has rigged next month’s election to defeat Donald Trump and keep him from making America great again, even as his taxes are being audited because he’s a “strong Christian” and the lying media continue to treat him with unfair meanness.
There’s more, but you get the gist. The common denominators: unsettlement and unease; our hero — and, by extension, the people he represents — buffeted by malevolent, unseen forces.