Election night edition: The Donald Trump-'Dead Zone' connection

Martin Sheen in The Dead Zone

I am far from the first person to point this out, but there is an infamous fictional politician -- albeit, an exaggerated one, who bears a startling similarity to one Donald J. Trump, The character is the seemingly bloodthirsty and populist Greg Stillson in the David Cronenberg film (based on the Stephen King novel) The Dead Zone.

In the film (I've never read the book so I can't compare the characterization), Stillson is a Machiavellian simpleton: corrupt, vain and vengeful.

Ironically, the character is played by Martin Sheen, a real life liberal who has endeared himself to a generation by playing an idealized version of a president on TV's The West Wing. In this 1983 film however, he is gleefully manic, practically frothing at the mouth with dreams of being a demagogue.

The film's main conceit, that Christopher Walken can envision the bleak future (and sometimes past), is exploited to reveal that Stillson will eventually launch a thermonuclear war almost entirely to get his rocks off, a premise that Trump opponents fear is far too plausible,

Cursed or blessed with this information the Walken character takes it upon himself to assassinate Stillson to spare humanity his wrath. But -- SPOILER ALERT -- he is unsuccessful. And yet, in the process, he unintentionally exposes Stillson's cruelty and cowardice. The would-be president literally uses a baby to act as a human shield in one of the funniest and most disturbing twists I can imagine.

We get to see an alternative future where Stillson is an outcast from public life and a suicide case.

#DonaldTrump reminding me more every day of
Greg Stillson from @StephenKing's movie The Dead Zone#FeelTheBern pic.twitter.com/uZuMq0ePbc

— Phil (@PhiIIip_Thomas) March 13, 2016

Of course, on Election Day, none of these extreme scenarios needs to take place. The voters can simply turn out in numbers commensurate with polling and the shifting demographics of this nation, which all seem to spell doom for Trump's shockingly reactionary campaign.

But as a student of politics and an obsessive fan of pop culture, regardless of what happens tonight I can't shake loose the absurdity of the situation we find ourselves in. And I suppose comparisons to The Dead Zone and other works of fiction are apt, because at times it feels like we are watching a film play out in real life, except the stakes are very real and the repercussions enormous.

My introduction to Donald Trump as a child was as a tabloid fixture and he wasn't someone I paid much attention to until he decided to troll the first black president for the better part of a year in 2011, questioning his academic record and his citizenship in a self serving effort to de-legitimize him,

When powerful people in this country (here's looking at you Mitt Romney) chose to embrace Trump -- even after the president humiliated him and exposed his so-called 'efforts' to force him to release his birth certificate as all for naught -- it normalized him, even elevated him.

We watched as he became a king maker, then a backseat driver and then the standard bearer of one of this nation's two major political parties. Now, several million people are flocking to vote for him, even though a majority believe he committed sexual assault at some point in his life.

I want to repeat that -- millions of people are planning to and have already voted for someone they believe committed sexual assault.

The Stillson character was almost certainly meant to be an over-the-top, horror movie concoction -- especially since being flippant about nuclear weapons has been beyond the pale since their introduction onto the world stage. But time and Trump have changed everything, making a scene like this seem like a real possibility instead of a surreal, fictional, alternative reality: