Index

The Cult of the Orange Toddler

Not Christian, Not Conservative, and Not Civilized

Some years ago, at an employer far, far away, I got into a long discussion about arguing with the orange cult. In that discussion, a guy named Josh claimed that we should NOT react to the trolls’ provocations. He wanted us to turn the other cheek.

On the other side were two of us who said “Forget that, we are going to shove their shit back down their throats.” John and I both understood that the orange cult would not respond to the rest of us being civilized. We may not have been able to explain that to Josh, but we knew it in our guts.

A Miserable Truth

The sad part is that John and I were right. The orange cult has consciously wrecked everything thing civilized they could. They do every nasty, uncivilized thing they can get away with, calling it “owning the libs.” Education and intelligence make it impossible not to see the depressing irony. They act incredibly stupid, but they project it onto us.

Josh was acting more Christian than the entire “Christian conservative” bunch that make up the orange cult. The cult of orange is neither Christian nor civilized. They try to claim Christianity while ignoring everything it stands for. They explicitly disclaim civilization. Josh never claimed Christianity, but was almost quoting from the red-letter part of the Bible.

The problem with “turn the other cheek” is that it depends on the other side being civilized. The orange cult is neither civilized enough nor Christian enough to recognize a civilized Christian. I disagreed with Josh because I knew that his civilized impulse would not work. I still find myself wishing that it would.

Teaching Civilization?

That leaves the question of what we as a civilization do about the fright wing. The loons take great pleasure in being anti-civilized. They enjoy destroying the fabric of life that has held modern democracies together. Whether they call themselves Nazis, Oath Keepers, Putin, Orban, or whatever, they are in the business of making everyone else miserable. That is their entire goal. They don’t intend to win; they want everyone else to lose.

So what can we do about these wreckers? Is it is even possible to bring them into the reality of the modern world? They are wholly absorbed in denying the reality around them. Even the obvious financial penalties they pay do not affect their tribal idiocy. They also deny that reality, even as they deal with it every day. They die of COVID rather than admit that science and civilization have the only functioning solution. That is suicidal stupidity.

The sad truth is that I find myself chuckling with schadenfreude when some fruitcake suicides with Ivermectin. Failing to take the basic precaution of getting shots to reduce the chances of fatal COVID infection is idiotic. Refusing to wear masks is a very self-destructive way of giving the third finger to the rest of humanity while spreading the plague. The fruitcakes don’t want to rejoin the world; they want to destroy it, even as they die with it. Survival isn’t in their makeup.

I know it is not civilized, but my wishing they would go away is very human. After so many years of the idiocy, I don’t care HOW they go. I simply want them gone. I find myself dragged down to their childishly uncivilized level by their violence and persistence. I never fell prey to the Faux Noise effect, but after so long of being beaten, I really to want to hit back. It looks like the zombie movies and shows have it right - the only way to win is to destroy them. I keep hoping to hear about someone dying of a bleach injection to prove how idiotic the cult is, another suicide by stupidity.

Since the cult seems to have made itself impervious to reality, the only solution I can find is to eliminate them. I am too civilized to mean killing them outright. They are doing a pretty good job of killing themselves anyway. Their self-destruction is not rapid enough to keep civilization intact, though. Their continued existence allows the current pace of environmental destruction to continue. Nature doesn’t care why we are being stupid; she keeps on going and lets us die. If humanity is to survive, global warming must stop, and the fright wing and their corporate backers have no interest in that.

First Steps

The obvious first step in all this is to permanently kick them out of any semblance of political power. We have to make their stupidity an instant disqualifier. The mid-term election was a good start in that direction. With one glaring exception in Arizona, the losers admitted losing, and the system worked. The worst of the reality deniers didn’t win, leaving some sanity to prevail. It was an excellent first step, but too many freaks are still in positions where they can destroy things.

The next step is defunding them. The billionaire fascist caucus, with members like Thiel, Koch, and the Uhleins, needs to be financially castrated. They need to be paying for their damage, not paying idiots to do more of it. Actually requiring the rich to pay taxes would be a start there.

As long as they keep financing criminals, we must prosecute them for their it. Fake “Christian morals” and lunatic John Birch Society memberships are not legal excuses for paying criminals. They need to be in prison for the crimes they buy.

Start Educating People

The most significant and challenging step will be building an education system. The one that the freaks have wrecked was tottering anyway. It was an obvious failure of education when a low-life street con man scammed his way into the Whitehouse. The cult’s continued existence and popularity is obvious and compelling evidence of how badly educated we are.

Americans don’t think critically, and they prove it at the allot box. The cult “can’t tell shit from Shinola” and needs thinking skills they will never allow themselves. The rest need to be taught how to think critically. The old educational goals of reading, writing, and ’rithmetic are not enough to survive the modern world. Showing up on time was a skill that industry needed. Memorizing facts and regurgitating them without thinking about them was useful to the management of the industrial era. These are all past their expiration dates.

Those un-skills are what gave us the fright wing. Without critical thinking, they have been mercilesly scammed. The “believe, don’t think” of the fake Christian cults made it worse. Corporate fascists want stupid people to follow them, but those fascists are on their last legs. Profit margins come from employees who think and create, not from blind followers. Corporate management is far from realizing this in most places, and they are dying of it.

The fright wing is the precise opposite of what we need to keep the world alive and the economy going. We need creative, thinking people to beat global warming back so that we can survive what we can’t avoid. Profitable companies need creative, thinking people to exist and build products that keep them prosperous.

Authoritarians and fascists are death. That is what the fascists of the orange cult and their backers want. There is nothing “moral” or any of the other cult buzzwords in it. If the human race wants to survive and move on, we must progress - the fright wing’s regressive shit is pure poison. At the current rate, it won’t be a slow death. Our kids and grandkids will be the ones dying, and they will be the last.