Cults, Gaslighting and the Sad Things I Saw Recently

I may be overstating it in the title up there. But I can’t stand what’s happening, again, in the election cycle. The relative calm I felt the past 3 and a half years after the four years of feeling chaos previously is wearing off. Once Trump got out of office I felt a lower anxiety than I did for his years in office. I think his constant tweeting and the barrage of negative talk had jangled my nerves. I didn’t really know I was so anxious, until I wasn’t anymore.

I swear I don’t watch political crap non-stop the way some of the people I know do. I think it is unhealthy. But I do pay attention. I know what I believe, what I stand for and how I intend to vote. I maintain that I am a person that votes for candidates, not parties. I have voted both sides of a ticket, because if a person on one side has a decent platform that will benefit us, they have my vote. I won’t get into how disappointed I was that our congressman Mike Gallagher stepped off from his office. I thought he was a good representative, and I voted for him, proudly. I tend to lean left, but I was pretty sure he was good for Wisconsin. He must have seen the mess in DC and said “I am OUT!” How awful that a smart, younger man saw that shit-show and knew he couldn’t do it anymore. Says a lot.

I am uncomfortable writing this stuff. But when you get a feeling about something, or someone, it’s hard to shake it. I have never liked or trusted Donald Trump. This goes back to the 80s. He just gives an awful vibe, to me. I would see him on talk shows back then, and think to myself, is this guy serious? He is a creeper. He has proven his creeper status in my mind, but a lot of people see something else. I don’t know how, but ok, I will let them have their vote, just as I want mine. I look at what his track record in life is, and I do believe that it is crooked. He has built a brand, and now he is selling that brand and so many people are buying it.

Did I watch the coverage of the RNC? Not really. I turned it on, and couldn’t stay with it long. The assassination attempt on Trump was still brand new. I have thoughts on it after the fact, but I had watched the coverage from the beginning, and thought maybe, just maybe, and event like this could change his rhetoric. Maybe a scare like that could make him seem more humane to me. Nope. But set him aside. Look at the delegates at that convention. Tell me you’re in a cult without saying you’re in a cult? Wear a “bandage” on your ear on the convention floor. Slap a wad of gauze on your ear, and put on your red MAGA hat and have the time of your life! What were we seeing? This is the group that fought wearing masks during the pandemic because they aren’t sheep? Baaaaa… Baaaa… get out the herding dogs because the sheep are getting out. Yep, I am saying it and I will stand by that. What a bunch of blind, kool-aid drinking weirdos. It’s scary.

The rhetoric didn’t take long to return. He can’t help himself. He is such a damaged person. Now, I do believe that he had a moment of clarity after being shot at. But it wore off fast. By Wednesday, I believe. He just starts with the insults, the little nicknames he loves to give his opponents, but then did he start talking about the “Late, great Hannibal Lechter?” Like did he just really put a fictional cannibal on a pedestal? What? He was off on a tangent faster than a speeding bullet, as it were. Something is so seriously wrong with him.

He is shook right now, however. His favorite whipping boy, Sleepy Joe, stepped aside. Biden announced his decision to drop out of the race, which I do believe was the right decision. He is surely in a decline, and we can’t rely on that leveling off for four years. Plus, with the whole push Trump was feeling with his assassination event, Joe couldn’t get any traction. Enter Kamala Harris. She is younger by far than both of them. All of a sudden, the oldest candidate ever for president wasn’t Joe Biden anymore, it was Mr. Vanity himself, Trump. If you think for one second that wasn’t a blow to his fragile ego, think again. He views himself as some young, virile stud. All of a sudden he is a senior citizen running his 3 ring circus without one of his favorite lions to supposedly tame.

Sad things I saw this week? The way the MAGA crowd goes for the easiest insults, as it were. The convenient way they can set aside extramarital affairs of their idol, the convictions, the large financial judgements against him, to lift him up and say that God is on his side. To say that he is a Christian savior. He is going to save the soul of our nation. He picked a guy for VP who supposedly is very far on the Christian Right. Old JD has his own problems though, some past comments and writings are proving a problem in his ideal running mate status. But I do find it incredibly sad that this is where we are now. The fighting, the negative campaigns, the way it busts at the seams of decent human behavior is just awful. As soon as he could, Trump went right back into pounding insults, and negative vibes and people on that one side, the ones with maxi pads on their ears, ate it all right up. That awful chaotic feeling is back, and its familiar feeling is making me nauseous.

I want to be clear that I am not bashing Republicans as a whole. I know many, many wonderful people who support the GOP, a lot are in my own family. They aren’t MAGA though, they don’t beat the Cult Drum, and I don’t know what they think of the circus. He strives to keep it chaotic, as a diversion tactic. While I don’t know that Kamala Harris is the answer, the question has to be, can we take four years of that roar of noise that is distracting us from something else again? He is sinister, in his approach to this, which is all by design. I really do feel like our democracy is at risk. It feels scary, and that is his intent. Scare tactics, and threats of war and anarchy if we don’t put him back in the White House. We all saw what went on January 6th of 2021. How can we let that happen again?

I don’t know answers, to any of those questions I ask, except this: I don’t think we can afford to put that man back in a position of power. I don’t think we can allow the extremist behavior of the MAGA crowd become the norm. I don’t like this, and it truly has me in a place that scares me, especially as a woman. I am not as young as I was, but I am not so old that they can’t try to dictate my life in a way that scares the hell out of me. Do what you must at the ballot box, and I don’t think I will change anyone’s mind in this little blog, but I had to get it out there. If I get targeted by the cultists, I will deal with it then. But for today, I am free and I can still express myself. Let’s hope it stays that way, for all of us.