“The Manchurian President”

We’ve all been thinking about it, haven’t we? Now, Neal Gabler, writing at BillMoyers.com, offers a thorough, scarifying comparison of our so-called president to the movie.

So, yeah, it’s real.

As the Trump presidency unravels, unraveling the country along with it, there is no real political antecedent, no lessons from American history on which to draw and provide guidance. We are in entirely uncharted waters. But there is an antecedent in our popular culture that provides a prism through which to view the contemporary calamity, especially the alleged collusion between Trump’s henchmen and Russian intelligence to deny Hillary Clinton the presidency. I am not the first observer who has noted the relevance of the movie The Manchurian Candidate. But the relevancy is more than skin or celluloid deep. It goes to the very heart of this bizarre and frightening political moment. Continue reading

Source: The Manchurian President – BillMoyers.com

Here’s how Gabler ends his essay:

Something has gone so terribly wrong in America that The Manchurian Candidate seems more like a docudrama than an absurd thriller. An American government possibly controlled by a Russian puppet, a major political party turning a blind eye to what may be treasonous conduct, an FBI that cooperated by refusing to sound the alarm and the majority of the American people helpless to do anything about it. That’s not Hollywood anymore, that’s Washington.

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