ROGER KIMBALL ON THE TRUMAN SHOW: Stepping out into freedom.

Given the fire-hose disgorgement of revelations about the behavior of the FBI, the CIA and their infiltration of the mainstream media, there is ample justification for believing that we are living in some dystopian, distinctly unfunny version of The Truman Show.

In the movie, the gormless Truman Burbank grows up thinking he is living a normal, happy life in a normal, happy town. Only gradually does he realize that something is amiss. Slowly, piece by piece, the awful truth dawns on him: his entire social world is a fabrication, a gigantic product-placement concession with him as the unwitting MacGuffin.

The deception is played for laughs, mostly. There are not many laughs in our Truman Show, the one in which the FBI hatches a fake plot to kidnap Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, enlists some pathetic lowlifes to participate, then blows the cover and arrests the saps who joined them. One was just sentenced to sixteen years in the big house, another to nearly twenty.

As Glenn wrote in November, “Both the SDS and the KKK used to say in the 1960s that the guy in your group calling for illegal activity was the FBI mole.”