It's been said that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. That theme is at the center of this Twilight Zone episode, as an unnamed Central American country undergoes a revolutionary change of power, and it's new leader immediately becomes fearful of threats to his legitimacy. It's a severely condensed version of Hitler's fall from dictatorship, though most will see it as Serling's take on Castro's Cuban revolution. Either way, the story exposes every dictator's reliance on an impoverished economy and promises for a future filled with social justice to carry them to victory. What they always fail to tell their followers is that they intend to live it up on the backs of the workers, maintaining power through working class reliance on 'cheap taste and short memory'. History is littered with examples, and one would expect that society and nations learn from the past mistakes of their predecessors. Instead it seems, history is continuously doomed to repeat itself, with only the names and faces changing, and each passing generation facing even higher stakes for the survival of mankind.
Review of The Mirror
