I grew up watching Alfred Hitchcock films, in 1974, it seemed like I was trapped in one.
Still reeling from the deaths of my sister and mother and getting no help for that because my bipolar aunt and her adulterous husband thought that seeking mental health help for kids was a waste of their time, I was expected to suck it up and be a man. And suffering from culture shock from moving from the KKK capital of Michigan to an even smaller town in SW VA where if you were the slightest bit different you were bullied and looked upon as weirdo, I had to make do as best as I could. My aunt bullied me and her children followed her example, with her illiterate son Matthew at one point trying to murder me by shooting at me with a rifle. When the bullet hit the trailer near where I was standing, my uncle flew into a rage, not because I could have been killed, but because his property was being was in danger of being damaged. The look of disgust on his face when I told him that his son had tried to shoot me showed me he could not care less about my life and that his trailer was more important then my life. And with the bullying I had to endure for being an outsider in a small town made me feel like a target constantly.
On a national level we were finding out Nixon was a crook who put targets on anyone who disagreed with him and that the FBI was spying on anyone considered a threat, like leftists, black activists, gay folks, anyone Hoover didn't like.
This work represents all that. And the sad thing is, not much of it has changed.
