I Won't Believe Anything Until I Hear Rachel Maddow Say it!

 

 

"You were wrong. There is something more dangerous than a humiliated man. A nasty woman."

 

~Ally Mayfair-Richards 

American Horror Story, Cult

 

 Donald J. Trump Booking Photo

#PO1135809

Watch the clip. It was produced in 2017. The Trump Halloween mask looks exactly like Trump's mugshot, which was taken just yesterday. Do you ever feel like you live in every season of that show? Now, don't get me wrong, I love horror, always have. I grew up on Creature Features with Bob Wilkins, on KTVU channel 2, which aired late on Saturday nights. It was a great cheesy camp. Lots of Vincent Price and Lon Chaney jr. Bella Lugosi too! I have watched horror whenever I got the chance! So when American Horror Story debuted, I fell in love with the show instantly. I have really enjoyed all their seasons to day, but so far the one that has deeply resonated with me was called, Cult. It wasn't quite about Trump specifically, but rather it served as a warning about what we can let ourselves become when we allow ourselves fixate on a single line of thought. Of turning our critical thinking over to obsessive devotion to... well... anything or anyone.

 

Is it a need to belong? Maybe. Is that what the "silent majority" means when they yell and attack the rest of us? Are the just wanting to belong? Maybe. I am not sure,  but one thing is really clear, Donald Trump thought so, and he knew that all he needed was a foot in the door of discontent, even if that foot wore a clown shoe. The circus of the world needed a few hundred thousand court jesters, so the masses came running and the MAGA cult was born. Why not? Insurrections began in other countries for partially, you have to throw in the word "patriotism" and you have the makings of a dangerous situation. But keep in mind, Sarah Palin designed the circus tent during the 2007 election cycle, when the Tea Party Patriots was conceived. She failed, but the circus quietly continued with the help from Ted Cruz.

 

And a little while later the biggest clown now had the biggest big top of them all. He had a circus called MAGA otherwise know as a CULT.

 

And like most leaders of cults, he will not only NEVER love them. He will never satisfy their needs or wants. He will always beg them to literally bail them out, and he will always, always, demand that they do his dirty work, and most of all, he will throw them to the wolves, or perhaps sell them outright. He did that last one once before when he lied about Covid-19 to further his own agenda. He lied about all of it. People died. Nothing changed. He came as close as it gets to shooting someone on 5th Avenue, and got away with it. Charles Manson. Jim Jones. David Koresh. Marshall Applewhite, and the fictional Kai Anderson, the mentally ill leader of season 7 of American Horror Story, Cult.

 

From the start I identified with Ally Mayfair-Richards. She had fears and phobias. So do I. She was a democrat who cared deeply about her country. So do I. Donald Trump terrified her. And I share that too. She let her fears make her act irrationally. Paralyze her. And I pretty much did that too. When I wasn't crying, I was stomping my food in anger. I finally sought help, and today my confidence is almost back to pre-Trump levels. I am happy. I have better skills for handling things. I am exhausted from the last couple years, and really the last few months as well, but I get up, every day, and face life... with a little help from Alan, who has let me retire for a while, while I gain my footing again.

 

I don't know what the next couple years, leading up to the national election, will be like. I have an feeling it won't be good. Hopefully things won't turn out like it did for the town that Ally and Kai lived in. Hopefully, America will give up on Trump's drama. Hopefully, America will embrace rebuilding American ideals of community and and the use of the Golden Rule. Evil has been losing in the last few elections, so maybe the population at large will learn and grow in that. 

 

Now, about that quote. The first episode of Cult, takes place on the night of the election, in 2016. Ally and her wife, Ivy, were holding an election party, and watching the worst unfold. Hillary was losing, and only by a little in their small town in Michigan. Her neighbor from across the street, who also just happened to be a city councilman, pointed out that if Hillary didn't claim more of the swing states, her chance of winning was over. To which Ally replies...

 

"No! That's bullshit.

 I won't believe anything until I hear Rachel Maddow say it!"

 

Ironic, isn't it?

 

Monsters

"It was written... I should always be loyal

 to the nightmare of my choice."

~Joseph Conrad

Heart Of Darkness 

 

We are living in strange days. A presidential election in America had become something that I had never seen in my lifetime. A deeply divisive, dark Shakespearean play of dirty tricks and lies which led to Donald Trump's celebrated but unlikely win, and in less than a week, he will take the oath of office and become the next president. Since the election, two months ago, things have gone from depressing, to downright scary. In November, when the unlikely happened, I began to grieve. Hillary had lost to a man who promised everything to his supporters, with no details how it would be accomplished. Hillary had not promised everything, but did give a lot of details about what she knew she could change for the better. It all should have been a no-brainer for American voters. Experience. Concrete plans. Wisdom. Instead America had decided to go with Donald Trump, all because he promised to "shake things up" in Washington D.C. and beyond, and had brought the right tone of hatred to feed his supporters the red meat they craved so much.

But make no mistake... Donald Trump's win came by way of the Electoral Collage. He didn't win the popular vote by 2.9 million votes, but we have to stand by the voting system in place, so while most American's, who bothered to vote wanted Clinton, what we are apparently stuck with is Trump. Or are we? Things surrounding Trump has taken a strange turn. So strange that life right now feels like all of us are minor characters in a spy novel. We have an actual MI6 spy, Christopher Steele. We have a covert dossier on Trump, complete with salacious details, can you say... "golden showers?" We have international intrigue. And finally we have a bigger than life villain, bigger than Trump himself, Vladimir Putin. 

Trump will take the oath of office on January 20th. It's my fear that we are living in the last week of any kind of normal for quite a while, if ever again. It's my fear that when Trump takes the oath, our country will become something completely different than the free land I grew up in. Something spooky. Something less free. Something strange and lost. I feel this way because of the revelations that have come out this past week, contained in the information discovered by Christopher Steele while he was performing opposition research for one of the candidates running against Trump in the republican primaries.

There is something much worse than "golden showers" in that dossier. Something dark and unnatural. Something that apparently spooked the former spy to the point that he decided that it needed to be seen by the FBI. That implies a crime... a serious one. We all know right now that American's can no longer trust the FBI, at least the FBI under the leadership of James Comey. That fact was made perfectly clear Friday evening by democrats, upon leaving a closed door meeting with Comey on Capitol Hill. 

As Americans we all should have the right to know what shook everyone up so much. But you can't unlearn a fact, once it's in the open. When Trump's Access Hollywood tape came out, and I listened to his stupid voice bragging to Billy Bush about grabbing women's genitals, I actually tensed up so much I hurt my back and neck. It was like no other pain I have every experienced in my life. And to this day, it hurts every single time I think about what Trump said on that tape. Once it was played, once I heard it, there was no going back. Life changed.

Life is about to change again when Trump takes office. And it will change yet again when the investigation into the Russian influence on our democracy is all said and done. We won't be able to un-ring that bell. It will be horrific. It will be devastating. And it will change America forever. It will always be a part of our history, and it will probably change our path forward. And we won't be able to not know it. The America I find myself in now, is not the America I grew up in. On it's own that is normal. It's expected. But when I was a child, someone as unprepared as Donald Trump is on the surface, would never have gotten this far, but then when I was a child there was no such thing as "fake news." Or "reality TV." And Donald Trump wasn't even on the map. One thing that hasn't changed since I was a child. Monsters. And the evil deeds they do.

Will America recover, when all is said and done? 

Shrug.

I wish I knew.

Rachel Maddow said last night on her show that

 "knowing is better than not knowing."

 I hope she's right. 

 Mood: Quiet

~Me