They're here!

Sleep . . . Sleep . . . and be born again into a world of fear and hate!

Last weekend, I had the chance (of my own making - it pays off sometimes to be a film programmer) to see INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS on the big screen. Philip Kaufman’s 1978 remake is a particular favorite of mine. From the performances to the writing to the very ahead-of-its-time shaky cam zooms to the magic trick-adjacent special effects that seem so effortlessly believable - everything gels so perfectly within the film’s 115-minute runtime.

There’s a line early in the film where a character, worried that her husband has been acting strange but not yet aware of any sci-fi shenanigans, talks to a psychiatrist who tries to convince the woman to take her husband in for a mental evaluation.

“He would eliminate whether Geoffrey was having an affair or had become gay. Whether he had a social disease or had become a Republican.”

The line got a huge laugh from the audience. My wife and I just looked at each other. You know the look—the one that says, “Too soon?”

I had programmed the film - about a group of friends who find themselves fighting for their own identity after they discover an alien plot to replace San Franciscans with plant-based pod people - as part of a political horror series that would run post-election. I honestly did not expect, however, to be watching the film in a world in which Donald J. Trump was reelected president on November 5, 2024.

It’s been almost a month since the election, and I still exist in a state of mild disbelief. I keep expecting to wake up from a dream - which would make sense since I spent election night in a sleepless state of panic, unable to entirely fall asleep and reaching for my iPad every thirty minutes to refresh the election results. Indeed, this feels like some extended nightmare - a prolonged anxiety-fueled tour of a world in which more than half the voters in America would willfully choose a convicted felon and a man repeatedly accused of sexual crimes to represent our country as its top leader. When am I going to wake up?

I have spent the last eight years trying my very best to understand people who support Donald Trump. I do not feel that everybody who disagrees with me is evil or irredeemable. People often make choices rooted in fear, and Donald Trump has excelled at marketing himself to people who are afraid. He promises security and wealth and success - he’s spent his entire life molding his persona into a luxury brand. Even still, though, Donald Trump is the man who encouraged a failed government coup. He’s a bully and a fraud and, very likely, suffering early onset dementia.

And yet America chose him.

Like Donald Sutherland in INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, I’m left walking down the street, fully knowledgeable that most of the people I pass voted for Donald Trump. This isn’t a vocal minority - Trump’s supporters are legion. More people in America voted for Trump than Kamala Harris - by a very wide margin.

They’re not coming, they’re here.

In the immediate aftermath of the election, I threw myself into the worst corners of Twitter and talk radio - trying desperately to get a preview of what the right had in store for the country. The political divide in America has grown so deep that it has become almost impossible to separate the real threats from the imagined ones. I had heard from political ads and pundits what would happen if Trump was elected president, but I wanted to hear it from the horse’s mouth. The spelunking I did into the darker recesses of MAGAland left me more scared than ever. From the political appointees Trump has picked (a literal carnival sideshow) to the hate-fueled attack on the LGBTQ community unleashed in recent weeks (I was not aware of who Rep. Nancy Mace was a few weeks ago, but now I wish I had never learned of her existence), the victors have made it clear what their intentions are - the complete and utter trolling of their political opponents. Except trolling (a term that conjures up images of hairy critters hiding under bridges and threatening goats) is too cute a term for what I see on the horizon.

Here’s the truth, though. My personal life will probably not be affected too much. I’m straight, I’m married, I’m Hispanic, but I’m “white”-presenting. If I kept my mouth shut and focused on my affairs, I would probably not be any worse off than I was during the Biden administration. That’s not the problem, though. I’m worried about the safety of my friends, my family, my community, and the very soul of the country. We have, to put it bluntly, become the bad guys.

My fear, if I’m to be honest, is the hypothetical situation, as slim as it might seem, where my life actually improves under Trump’s administration. It really does seem like, as the aliens’ control over San Francisco tightens in INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, society is headed into a sea of placid tranquility, albeit a boring one in which everybody sleepwalks through life with zero passion or curiosity.

What if Trump’s financial plans actually lead to me making more money or my money going further when I spend it? What if, in a world where a single political party has such tight control over the decision-making, crime goes down, eggs are cheaper, and the road to space colonization begins? But at what costs will these successes happen? How many families will be torn apart? How many people across the world will go without food, shelter, or protection because America turns its attention inward? How many sexual assault survivors will be forced to carry their rapist’s babies? I’m not worried about myself. I’m worried about the safety of my friends, my family, my community, and the very soul of the country. We have, to put it bluntly, become the bad guys.

In the months leading up to the release of WHERE WOLF, somebody involved with the project tried to talk me into removing any mention of Donald Trump from the book. “Nobody will still talk about the man in a few years; why do you want to date your book?”

Maybe I always knew, in my soul, this is where our country was headed. Maybe I didn’t want to forget where we had been. Maybe I was just tired of spending money on the project and didn’t want to pay to have the book re-lettered.

Either way, I’m glad I did not remove these Trump mentions from WHERE WOLF. For better or worse, Trump has cemented his place in history - now it’s up to the rest of us to see how history reacts.