The Madness began pre-production in early 2023, but it managed to see with eerie accuracy where the United States would be after the reelection of Donald Trump on Nov 5, 2024. by Charles Mudede On November 28, 2024, Netflix dropped a TV show whose creators appear to own something like a crystal ball. Watch and see for yourself. Though the series, called The Madness, began pre-production in early 2023, it managed to see with eerie accuracy where the United States would be after the reelection of Donald Trump on Nov 5, 2024. The plot: A black CNN contributor, Muncie Daniels (Colman Domingo), is wrongly accused of killing a very popular neo-Nazi influencer Mark Simon (Battlestar Galactica's Tahmoh Penikett). But a good portion of the public actually think the murder is not at all a bad thing. What’s wrong with killing a social media hatemonger, a man who promotes the "final solution" for all races who are not white? Meanwhile, Daniels is visiting New York City when he realizes he’s a wanted man. He has a record of supporting radical causes on CNN, and the murder has been pinned on him. He buys a baseball cap, glasses, a hoodie, and gets out of town on a Greyhound-looking bus. Any of this ringing a bell? He only lacks a backpack when he enters a bus filled with working-class people.  Well, it turns out that people involved in some conspiracy related to the murder are billionaires with a white nationalist agenda. Indeed, one even made his money in the tech industry. They own the media. They own politicians. They own America. The show, which has 8 episodes, has its ups and downs. And this is to be expected as its story is built like a roller coaster. But The Madness does capture the fantasy at the heart of the events that followed Luigi Mangione's much celebrated murder of the UnitedHealthcare's CEO, Brian Thompson: No one would snitch on him while he was on the run. Of course, this happened. It was a McDonald's employee in Altoona, Pennsylvania. In The Madness, Daniels escapes to a Philadelphia hood for cover. Here, we see what many hoped would happen to Mangione: no snitching. In fact, the neighborhoods throw a barbecue for the fugitive. How are you going to turn a brother in for killing a rabidly racist white man? Not happening here, where we are brutalized on the regular by the police. Throw some more ribs on the fire. Pop open a Bud. Sit back and relax. We are all your friends here. Is this not what many fantasized, hoped, prayed would happen to Mangione? He shows up in, say, Seattle. He is instantly recognized, he is quickly secreted to a comfy basement apartment in Columbia City. Neighbors who learn about his hiding place bring needed supplies: burner phones, fake passports, dark sunglasses, weed, chapbooks filled with revolutionary poetry, Hokas. And in the shadows of the night, he (disguised) takes a ferry to a remote island with lots of old hippies and no snitches. There, he lives happily ever after as a farmer whose produce is mysteriously popular at farmer's markets around Seattle. The fantasy captured by The Madness is about something that many Americans hoped the murder of the healthcare CEO would finally provide: common ground for all wage-earning Americans.