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.

In our Truman Show, various police and intelligence entities, including the FBI and the CIA, are in cahoots with Twitter, Facebook and other social media companies. We wouldn't have known much about this except for the courageous action of Elon Musk, who everyone thought overpaid to acquire Twitter — $44 billion of the crispest — but who has been demonstrating almost daily that the deal was cheap at the price.