We're Drowning in Kool-Aid

If not cult, why cult-shaped?

Full disclosure: I started this post weeks ago, maybe even months ago, but was never able to finish it. Thankfully things keep getting more terrible; the despair is evergreen!

It’s okay if you’re overwhelmed right now.

How can anyone—anyone paying attention, anyone who watches anything besides MAGA State Media, anyone not drowning in the Kool-Aid (for the thousandth time, it was actually FLAVOR-AID!)—not be overwhelmed?

To quote Amber Waves (while coke-binging with Rollergirl in Boogie Nights): Too many things, too many things, too many things, too many things.

Which is the point. The constant flood of bad news and awful developments—from economic turmoil to the dismantling of essential agencies to the literal use of the military against our own citizens!—is meant to make it hard to fight back against any one thing (and meant to distract us from other things, cough*TheEpsteinReport*cough*).

The cruelty and chaos is their whole plan. But when is enough enough?

Months ago, in the aftermath of their hero insulting a minister, I asked where the breaking point might be for the MAGA contingent. But the question isn’t where the breaking point is, it’s why isn’t there one?

If deploying the National Guard and the fucking Marines to quell a “disturbance” that is entirely of their own making (watch Andor!) isn’t enough to wake these so-called patriots up, it’s pretty clear that nothing will, short of Jesus finally coming back only to be the person Trump shoots in broad daylight on 5th Avenue.

The time for disbelief and confusion is long gone. It’s beyond clear that there is nothing that Trump and his administration of corrupt looters, traitors, and Christian nationalists can do to turn off most of their supporters.

The worst case scenario (aka, Project 2025) is already unfolding before our eyes. Even if those eyes are dutifully trained on FoxNews, you’re still seeing the American military in full regalia (well, maybe not full regalia — they’re saving some pomp for the forthcoming military parade) standing against unarmed (unless you count Mexican flags) American citizens.

There aren’t many ways to spin those images (which is probably why so many MAGA outlets use photos from different conflagrations to try to justify what’s happening, or ignore it all and focus on the latest “bombshell” about Joe Biden, the old guy who isn’t president). But they see what’s going on. They know what’s going on. So what is keeping the armchair militia, who’ve spent decades saying they need their guns to fight back when the government goes crazy, from following through on their defense of freedom? What is stopping the Christians-in-name-only, who’ve spent their lives proclaiming the good news and asking others what Jesus would do, from fighting for the values they supposedly hold most dear?

I think we all know. They’re in a cult.

If Trump’s first stint as president (never mind his entire life before that) didn’t prove that the emperor has no clothes, if the insurrection didn’t make you realize there was something rotten in Denmark, if the release of Project 2025 didn’t give you pause, if what’s currently happening in L.A. (other cities coming soon, don’t kid yourself) hasn’t woken you up to the incompetency and outright maliciousness of his administration (let alone the corruption and treason), if the last fucking week didn’t finally ring the bell, then odds are you’re not merely deluded: you’re brainwashed.

You know that delightful tradition the unhinged leaders of doomsday cults have of screaming about the end times and proclaiming that the world will end at precisely midnight on whatever arbitrary date? And then when it doesn’t happen, they say, “whoops, sorry, I meant this other arbitrary date!” And when that day goes by without anyone being raptured, they pivot again, and their followers just shrug and stay under the yoke? In for a penny, in for a pound.

Compare that flip-flopping and blind subservience to the MAGA cult’s reactions to, well, just about anything Trump does:

• Of course he’s gonna lower grocery prices and bring down the cost of eggs—the opposite happens—“it’s all part of his plan!”

• The tariffs will make everything better—the opposite happens—“it’s all part of his plan!”

• You can’t leak sensitive information and go unpunished—someone in the Trump administration does it x1000—“it’s not a big deal!”

• We need our guns to fight back against a corrupt government—the corrupt government begins assaulting, arresting, and deporting citizens without due process—“America is becoming great again!”

They pivot to the party line every chance they get, regardless of what they actually think (or used to think). They regurgitate Trump’s words, they swallow his most outrageous claims (did you know he invented the word groceries?), they plaster their cars and their homes and their bodies with his logo and merchandise.

We don’t just need a new president, we need a deprogrammer-in-chief.

The most infuriating part? They tell us that we live in a bubble. They project say that we’re brainwashed by the MSM, that we’re blind to the truth, that we’re sheep who need to wake up and look at the big picture that they’re actively ignoring as they worship at their false idol’s altar.

The reason we’re so appalled by what’s happening is that we are awake, and we do consider the world outside of our bubbles. We worry about other people and how these policies affect them even if they don’t directly impact us (yet). We worry about women who aren’t our wives and daughters and sisters, and immigrants who don’t speak our language or leave in our neighborhoods, and minorities with different skin colors and different cultures, and LGBTQ people with different desires and lifestyles.

It’s the MAGAts who stick their heads in their own personal sandboxes, who spend their days protecting themselves from any group that doesn’t look like them or act like them or have the same values they have. They aren’t concerned with the world outside their bubble so long as the various Others that whoever is standing at the White House pulpit tells them to be afraid of—whether Mexicans or trans people or baby-eating democrats—stay outside of it. So long as their bubble isn’t punctured by dangers both real (however unlikely) and imagined.

Slowly but surely, they are beginning to feel the repercussions of electing their hero. Their friends are family are feeling the economic crunch. Their neighbors and coworkers are being deported by ICE. Some of them may even be regretting their vote. Most of them will remain unswayed, and the more enthralled and entrenched they get, the more dangerous the loyalists become.

We can’t wait for the spell to break, and as orgasmic as the schadenfreude will be, we can’t wait until the last lines of the “First They Came” poem. By then it will be too late.

We’re goosestepping into fascism one abhorrent newsbreak at a time, and the lemmings that call us “sheep” are leading us towards the cliff.

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What Else is New?

I’ve been away for a while (sorry!), but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been productive! Sort of.

Last year, I released a book. You can get it here, just in time for Father’s Day, and join the dozens of others who’ve bought it! I am also thinking of writing a new one. A meaner one…

Also, I played a video game the other day (for the first time in decades!), and my teenager roasted me the entire time. I might turn that into a YouTube channel, just need a catchy name for it.

I used to have a podcast. Might start that up again with a new cohost: Mom and Buried!

If you have any thoughts on any of those ideas, feel free to share them: