A friend from London e-mailed me recently and asked, “what the hell is going on in America?” He seemed disgusted, even angry as if it was all somehow my fault.

He left New York City for London in 2016; he didn’t want to live in a country ruled by Lord Voldemort, he told me.

He discovered that England was also crazy, but less so, he said.

It was a big question, and I wasn’t about to try to answer it with an e-mail. I wasn’t sure I had any right to answer at all. I live on a farm in upstate New York, a long way from Washington in every way.

My friend is very bright and has an even shorter attention span than I do, so I wondered if there was a simple way to reply to him when I woke up this morning. When he mentioned Lord Voldemort, things began to focus on me.

Some bulbs went off in my head.

I wrote him back early this morning, and I thought I should share my conclusions.

“Well, Dylan, I said, you were right four years ago, I think, although nobody took you seriously.

Here’s my answer: Lord Voldemort did take over the U.S. and cast a spell on half of the country. Fresh from the Wizarding Wars in Harry Potter, he created the Death Eaters, re-christened them  Proud Boys, and absolutely and unequivocally denied that he killed both of Harry Potter’s parents.”

The witnesses to the crime were all lying, and no bodies were found.

It was, he said at the time, nothing but a witchhunt. And Voldemort was nothing but a genius – if you were accused of being guilty, then you were innocent. It was the people accusing you who were guilty.

Voldemort had turned the whole idea of justice upside down in one stroke. He did the same with governing. The less you did, the better you were, the more you stole, the more honest you were seen to be.

Rather than build his own Army, I explained to Dylan, Voldemort took over the minds and morals of a whole political party – this was fiendishly clever – and skipped over the Wizarding Wars that the Death eaters were already waging against the Ministry of Magic a/k/a/ once called the U.S. Capitol.

He vaporized the party’s original members and replaced them with zombies and trolls who inhabited their bodies but ate their souls.

Voldemort learned from the Wizard wars: he stopped fighting on the outside and came in to fight from the inside.

He was, in fact, the chief lunatic taking over the asylum. And he disguised himself brilliantly.

The whole country seemed to go mad – up was down, down was up, people spoke in tongues, created vast and complex conspiracies, paraded behind giant banners, worshipped strange Gods, sacrificed to devils,  shouted for blood in stadiums, threatened scientists and health care providers, and promised to kill anyone who challenged them.

Sedition was patriotism, and patriotism was treason.

Voldemort even chose a new name when he arrived: Donald Trump Voldemort. It was never known if Voldemort took over Donald Trump or if Trump took over Voldemort or fell in love and just got together.

This new Voldemort had a much better hair set up than the original Lord Voldemort, who was forbiddenly bald, but there were similarities. They became one, much like a Senator named Lindsey Graham and Trump had come to love one another.

They were no longer different things; they were one thing.

And they all loved one another; each had been waiting for the other for all time. Together, they were a powerful tribe.

Donald Trump Voldemort fired up the long-simmering Culture Wars, Created an Army Of Democracy Eaters, and ended up killing many sick older adults and police officers. It was deliciously and successfully evil.

He never said he was sorry about the older adults; he never said he was sorry about the dead police officers.

He persuaded millions of people that God had sent him to the United States to pick conservative judges, that Jesus Christ was a far-right extremist, that an awful pandemic was a hoax,  that vaccines were a Communist plot, and that drinking bleach rather than taking vaccines could save them from this plague.

Even for Voldemort, this was magic on the grandest scale; it made the Harry Potter wars look like playground skeeball.

Donald Trump Voldemort also waved his wand a few times and entered the heads of the Republican Party and many millions of once good citizens and played with their minds; sucked up their spirit and replaced them with the nature of trolls and dybbuks.

Now, millions of cursed and stricken people – all the lunatics in the land all believed that an election had been stolen from them. They were angrier than ever.

They all acted in sync with one another, and skeptics and unbelievers were “censored,” which means they were never seen again. Dissent was forbidden and ruthlessly snuffed out and punished.

The idea that something had been stolen from them galvanized the lunatics who worshipped their Lord. They formed a troll Army and waited for the call to march.

They broke free and revolted. They marched and fought. They were not harming the people they beat, injured, and threatened. They were saving us all, just as Voldemort swore he was doing in the Wizarding Wars.

The new Voldemort – the Donald  Trump Voldemort – and his powerful magic spells turned the world upside down.

He could turn any brain into slavering jelly; his Zombie potions were super. It was true that everyone who got close to him was disgraced and destroyed, but that never stopped the flow of pilgrims and worshippers. Truth only made the lunatics more determined.

Lies were a sign of strength and wisdom, the savior’s mark, the new leader.

If you believed him, you would never be offended by his lies; you loved him all the more for each one. That’s how magic works. That’s how Voldemort worked.

People resisted at first, but they fell under a spell. Soon, no one left to fight, except the new lunatics – women, people of color, Democrats, socialists, whistleblowers, gay and trans people, Mexicans, immigrants, refugees. Voldevort threw them into asylumns or drove them from the country or into hiding.

Things that would have seemed absolutely absurd a few years ago were accepted altogether. The day was night, and the night was day, and lies were the truth, and the fact was whatever Voldemort said they were on a given day.

It was understood they were lies; that was the point.

Millions of dizzy citizens, their heads turned upside down, raced through the countryside with big shoes, huge flags festooned with giant posters and banners.

They burned protesters’ flags, drove them off the road, stole their data, and threatened their lives and families.

(The First Wizarding War was a major conflict; it began in 1970 and ended in 1981. It marked the first “reign” of the most powerful Dark Wizard of the time, Lord Voldemort. The war took place at the height of his power and caused great panic among the magical and Muggle communities.

The Dark Lord’s insurgency was supported by his Death Eaters, a covert and violent group of dark wizards and witches who served him and brought terror to the world. Voldemort was defeated on Halloween, 1981, by the infant Harry Potter. Voldemort would be back.)

Fear and rage rained down on the land.

In one sense, 2016- 2020 was an old story, Dylan.

The inmates had taken over the asylum.  One of the most famous quotes in the history of sections, and here it is, playing out right in front of all of us.

Of course, there was no reasoning with lunatics, especially furious ones, and no understanding of them. They overwhelmed and bewildered us at first. There were few known ways to beat them back apart from hitting them on the head with sticks and chasing them around into confinement.

The lunatics had big weapons now and websites and secret links to the dark Internet. For the first time, they could talk to each other whenever they wished and trade lies and conspiracies and grievances.

Their lies became a new truth, a kind of faith that could not be questioned. They became a religion all their own, even as the great religions faded and weakened.

The lunatics were always around, but they were never in charge before; they lived, like dogs once did, on the fringes. Most didn’t dare to come out into the open.

That changed. Slowly, the lunatics became the leaders, at least for a while.

Donald Trump Voldemort had stirred up some potions. He brought them into the center, even into the sacred Congress, where new members – the lunatics especially – could now believe openly political opponents are pedophiles holding children captive in restaurants and government offices, and wealthy Jews are starting wildfires with their new laser guns.

Here’s the interesting part.

To believe this all, one has to be a lunatic. But only for a short while.

If enough crazy people take over the asylum or produce cable news channels, or are interviewed often enough, then what is crazy today becomes reality tomorrow. The sane becomes the lunacy. Perhaps one day, they too will rise and turn reality upside down again.

And there is the new Death Eaters, rising like the troll army to threaten people and make lies the new truth.

This can go both ways.

If the lunatics finally take over, they can be the same ones, and we can be the lunatics, and we can take over from them.

In a sense, this may already be happening; that may be the final story of the left and the right, the appropriate fate for dunderheads who can no longer think for themselves after years of what came to be called “partisan conflict.” The label people, the hollow men, and women of the left and the right.

They will war back and forth for all time. How demonic a plot is that?

Donald Trump Voldevort went too far, as all the great villains do. His success went to his head, thrived under that nest. He was arrogant and greedy; he was brought down, banished to his tacky castle in Florida, the sunbathing and golfing capital of the lunatics.

He threatens to come back, as Voldemort always did, but evil wizards have this wretched history: once defeated, they are rarely seen or heard from again.

It all makes perfect sense, Dylan; if you are crazy and crazy, you are no longer hiding out in caves and hiding. You’re probably thinking of launching your own PAC. If you are crazy, you are sane, and if you are sane, you are crazy. It’s important to understand that.

Does that make sense to you, Dylan?

The lunatics are finally free; they get to travel to the Big Tent and make the laws that govern the world.

I think it’s really as simple as that.

Now that Donald Voldemort is no longer in charge, the lunatics might be pushed back a bit, stand out more, frighten people who are not used to seeing them.

They’ve already made the U.S. Capitol a crazy house and pissed off the FBI,  and they are arousing the Wizards Of Good on the other side,

Never despair; Harry Potter reminds us that even the Voldemorts can be defeated and driven back into the shadows.

I haven’t heard from Dylan yet; I’m eager to see what he thinks. This all got me to researching the famous quote about the lunatics taking charge of the asylum, the inspiration for this piece.

Of course, a “quote investigators” website had the answer I was looking for.

The earliest match for this metaphor about lunatics and asylums traces back to the 1926 book “A Millon and One Nights: A History of the Motion Picture Through 1925” by Terry Ramsay.

The statement was applied to the upstart movie studio United Artists and its four founders: film director D.W. Griffith, actor Charlie Chaplin, movie star Mary Pickford and matinee idol Douglas Fairbanks.

When Richard Rowland, then head of the Metro Pictures Corporation, heard the news, he pondered the significance for a full second.

“So,” he remarked, “the lunatics have taken charge of the asylum.”

Yes, they have. That’s what the hell is happening in America. Harry defeated Voldemort thanks to the Elder Wand, who refused to harm its true master and turned on Lord Voldemort, instantly killing him.

How fitting a story if our savior were a child, rising from the mist to strike down the Angry Old White Men fighting to stop the clock with his magic want.

It sounds like a long shot, but is it any stranger than the story we have been living through?

Photo: Lord Voldemort.