Fans of Amazon Prime’s “Man In The High Castle” eagerly await an announcement of season three. Having just binge watched the series, I’m spooked enough to come to wonder whether Hillary Clinton actually won the 2016 election and we’re living through a depraved illusion.
The show is a dystopian alternate history is based loosely on Philip Dick’s 1962 novel. In the television take, the Axis Powers win World War II and divide the American spoils into the Greater Nazi Reich and the Japanese Pacific States, separated by a neutral zone.
{mosads}Some characters, however, receive eerie evidence that none of it is real. They’re caught between two parallel universes. In one, America wins and life develops as we know it. In the other, Washington is a nuclear wasteland and the highest Nazi official in America — John Smith — lives in a comfortable home in the Long Island suburbs.
For those of us caught between the fiction of “Man In The High Castle” and the unbelievability of the current man in the White House, there’s this zen question: What if none of this is happening? And if it isn’t, what’s the fastest way to the parallel universe?
In that universe, we do bomb Syria just as way we did last week. We just don’t have a president who wants to withdraw our forces in late March, then allows Damascus, Moscow and Tehran to know that the missiles are coming, then tweets “Mission Accomplished!” after a significant tactical success, while 2,000 U.S. military are still in Syria, performing the mission.
In Moscow, an angry Vladimir Putin launches an investigation into the failure of his intel operation to meddle in our election. He puts further activities on hold until he gets answers. ISIS is in about the same condition as it is now, which is on the run. That’s because the military in both universes smartly pursue identical objectives. Although, in one, the commander-in-chief doesn’t have contradictory and incoherent designs.
Also, James Comey’s book isn’t a bestseller in this parallel universe. It’s not even a book because he’s still the FBI director, despite howls by the left that he resign or be replaced for almost costing Hillary the election. Politically, Democrats are slightly less sanguine about their midterm election prospects. In fact, they’re braced for disaster.
History, even in parallel universes, teaches them that the president’s party always loses seats in the first midterm. House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and his disciplined opposition to Hillary’s agenda establishes him as the heir apparent in the 2020 nomination. Ryan is working overtime, even on weekends, on the prospect.
The economy in Hillary’s universe continues to expand, but not at the same pace. Wall Street is unsettled by the failure of Congress and the White House to agree on whopping tax cuts for the rich. The Clinton administration continues regulations aimed at big oil, gas and mining conglomerates. Scott Pruitt flies coach because that’s what the taxpayers of Oklahoma can afford for their attorney general.
The right pillories Hillary for the continued flow of immigrants at the border. She responds with a nationally televised presidential address asking Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform as once conceptualized by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). Speaker Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), unwilling to hand her victory, handcuff the bill. Still, the farthest thing from the minds of “Dreamers” is the living nightmare of deportation.
There are no travel bans. There are neo-Nazi marches, but normal people know the difference between the two sides. And Fox News relentlessly claims that Hillary Clinton actually lost the election, a fiction binge watched by one man, high in Trump Tower.
Steve Israel represented New York in Congress for 16 years and served as chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee from 2011 to 2015. His latest novel, “Big Guns,” will be released today. Follow him on Twitter @RepSteveIsrael and Facebook @RepSteveIsrael.