Alt and Catch Fire
We’re about halfway through the second season of Amazon’s Man in the High Castle and if the series hasn’t gone off the rails (the way last night’s episode of Sherlock did), it’s certainly leaving from a different station than the Philip K. Dick novel from which it derives its name. As noted by others, there is no armed resistance, complete with nubile guerillas jumping each other’s bones any time there is a lull in the danger in the book, for instance. Reality, and even resistance, were more slippery concepts for the late, great sci-fi fabulist.
For all the comparisons between the resistible rise of Donald J. Trump and that of Adolf Hitler (and Ascent, the first volume of Volker Ullrich’s massive biography of Der Fuhrer, provides us with plenty) the show’s real resonance lies not in its vision of a Nazified America but in its portrayal of an alternate reality that the Japanese Trade Minister keeps visiting, and that the films (books in Dick’s novel) held by the story’s titular hero hint at. You know, that one where Germany and Japan lost the war, and Americans were free to carry on watching baseball and listening to rock and roll.
For that is how most liberals have felt since the election: This can’t be happening. It was such a given that Hillary would win that they began to take it for granted. Progressives were preparing to do battle with this moderate, centrist Democrat from another era, while gleefully contemplating the implosion of the Republican party. Now all the kids are wearing swastika armbands and seig heiling at the pep rallies.
The concept of an alternate reality (or multiple realities) infuses Dick’s novels (Ubik, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Flow My Tears the Policeman Said) and the idea entranced him long before he took acid, or discovered gnostic Christianity. It’s part of what made his books underground essentials in the sixties and seventies. Anyone who got high felt like they were privy to a reality the straight world didn’t get (John Lennon reportedly expressed an interest in making a movie of The Man in the High Castle); Dick’s versions were sometimes simply worse.
Now it’s much easier to get high (26 states now have laws legalizing marijuana in some form) and with Trump ascendant, it’s an attractive alternative for a lot of progressives. But when you come down, he’ll still be in the White House. The uncomfortable truth is that there are myriad realities in America, too. We were on the East Coast after the election and we drove through rural Pennsylvania on our way back from Pittsburgh. Trump country, and when we stopped for gas and coffee, our daughter, who was born in South America, was afraid to get out of the car. (I accompanied her into the gas station store; now we know where all that chewing tobacco is sold.)
About the time we got back to New England my wife and I were listening to an audiobook of Stacy Schiff’s The Witches, a retelling of the Salem trials of 1692. It was a timely reminder that parts of our country have always been a little insane, even before it was a country. As members of Trump’s transition team have tried tricks out of the Joe McCarthy playbook (asking for the names of employees in the Department of Energy who believed in climate change, and workers in the State Department who cared about women’s rights), it’s good to remember that witch trials come and go, and are always remembered with a certain amount of shame.
Meanwhile, accept that Trump won (the electoral college at least)and stop freaking out about it. We’ve had almost two months to mourn; now let’s get organized. There are many ways to resist the perverted vision of America he presents. Spokesman Sean Spicer has made it plain that President Trump will be bypassing the media to speak directly to the people via Twitter. Okay. This from a guy who can screw up 140 characters but whatever; the nice thing about Trump’s tweets is that you can reply with insults, disagreements and just flatout disrespect. Check out the responses his more bellicose tweets get; there are just as many “fuck you” messages as there are statements of support and he can’t block us all. His is another alternate reality, one we may never understand.
