Don't Be Dismayed. America Loves Horror.

It's Cult-Ready & Bloodthirsty...

J.R.R. Tolkien’s Watercolor of Sauron from The Lord of the Rings

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Please enjoy this audio reading of this essay recorded for you by yours truly.

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And it loves to see a villain go to work. Freddy Krueger, Michael Meyers, Jason, The Wicked Witch of the West, Gollum, Loki, Darth Vader, Voldemort, Alexis Carrington, Michael Corleone, Villanelle, Dick Dastardly, Regina George, The Joker, King Joffrey, Maleficent, Scarlett O Hara, Catwoman, Bill the Butcher, Cruella De Vil, Mr. Burns, Pennywise – please hold while I take a sip of my coffee – HAL 9000, The Terminator, Baby Jane, J.R. Ewing, Gordon Gekko, Iago, Logan Roy, Skeletor, Scarface, Don Draper, Seinfeld’s Newman, Captain Hook, Bonnie & Clyde, Dracula, Constance Langdon, Lestat de Lioncourt, Lady Macbeth, Rhett Butler, Harley Quinn, Tom Shelby and his Peaky Blinders, Ursula, Frankenstein’s Monster… we loved them all and yes, I could go on and on listing names.

There’s a reason why the president waxed poetic and just went on and on and on about Hannibal Lecter during his campaign rallies: “Has anyone seen ‘Silence of the Lambs’? The late, great Hannibal Lecter. He’d love to have you for dinner.” This isn’t a sign of senility. Trump knows America loves its villains. He knows because we dress up as them for Halloween and quote them all the time:

My Precious.

Greed is good.

I’ll get you my pretty and your little dog too!

Out! Out! Damned spot!

Why so serious?

I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti

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By Posterstock

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Trump knows we root for villains because years ago, every week, we turned on the TV to watch him say “You’re Fired!” Trump understood then as he does now that every villain needs a good catchphrase. Or…

A good gimmick.

After Thanksgiving dinner, me and the fam pushed up from the table, rolled into the living room and watched Cocaine Bear. Here’s the gimmick: an American black bear gets hooked on bags of cocaine left in the forest after a botched drug run. Jonesing for her next hit, the bear goes on a drug-fueled rampage through the deep Georgia woods, beheading and violently dismembering anyone who gets in her way.

We rooted for the bear.

It’s not her fault. She didn’t make the drugs. She didn’t bring drugs into her neighborhood. She didn’t ask for this. We shouldn’t demonize addicts.

The funny thing about villainy in movies is that villains tend to be thick as thieves, but their prey? Mmmm… not so much. If only those campers had stuck together. If only the man of the situation didn’t feel the need to man up and go look for a phone to call for help. If only they didn’t say, “You go this way and we’ll go that way.” And heaven knows, “I’ll go see, you wait here, I’ll be right back,” is the kiss of death. Frodo and Sam would never have made it to Mordor if Sam hadn’t realized Gollum had played him. They made it because Sam doesn’t leave Frodo to save the world on his own. The prey that stays together typically survives together. They’re the ones who make it. They’re the ones who make it out the end of the tunnel of bloodthirsty chaos – alive and well. Also…

There were more campers than Jason. More dreamers than Freddy. Unless it’s a zombie apocalypse, there are more of us than there are of them.

There are more of us than there are of them. There are more of us than there are of them. There are more of us than there are of them. There are more of us than there are of them. There are more of us than there are of them. There are more of us than there are of them. There are more of us than there are of them. There are more of us than there are of them. There are more of us than there are of them. There are more of us than there are of them. There are more of us than there are of them. There are more of us than there are of them.

There are more of us than them.

And Trump understands this, which is why he invokes all-powerful, omnipotent words like “vindication” and “justice” and “retribution.” He’s using the language of the baddest villain of them all – the Old White Man God of the Old Testament. Banish them from the garden. Curse them. Plague them. Burn them. Drown them. Storm their cities with sword and spear. Infest their camps with venomous snakes. Let the Accuser have his way with them. Kill their first born.

Trump doesn’t need to read the Bible to understand this. In fact, it works best if he doesn’t. It’s easier to manipulate the idea of a Hellfire & Brimstone God than to investigate the narrative. Christians around the world have done this for years – White American Christians ever since the White Lion arrived on these shores. When asked at a bible study “If you could have dinner with anyone dead or alive, who would it be?” a White, Christian, daily Bible-reading woman sitting right next to me said, “Thomas Jefferson.” A rapist? A racist? A eugenicist before eugenics? A liar? An enslaver? A human trafficker?

Her God is a villain and she’s rooting for him to return and finish the job, send holy bodies into the eternal fires. She prays for this every night.

Trump knows this. America doesn’t see it.

But America loves a villain.

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My New Daily Habit for My Black Wellness

I’m fully invested in Netflix’s timelesz Audition Project. It’s J Pop idol documentary, meets American Idol meets Great British Bake-Off but without the baking. It’s slice-of-life meets cozy fan-fiction.

All I can say is I live and I love. I can’t help it y’all – timelesz. I stan.

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