America's Still Trapped In Suspended Animation (As The GOP Runs America)

 

 This is obviously a strange time to be alive. It's even stranger if you started a blog in 2005, called The Macho Response, that predicted the cultural shift we're now experiencing, including - and probably especially - the defeat of the Democratic party. In hindsight, it wasn't that hard to see coming, because TMR was analyzing the deeper reasons America's been failing, not just moaning how bad it is to be where we are. And those underlying forces - like a love for NewAge cultism - still aren't being anywhere near fully addressed. If they were, we wouldn't have the husband to a "reiki master" and homeopath in charge of Medicare. 

Oh well. At least cartoons, today, better reflect our cartoon lives.

  

While the "6-7" meme is cute (and definitely not some "Satanic Numerology bullshit") it's also illustrative, in the wake of "Rapture" claims and the shooting of Christian grifter Charlie Kirk, because it reflects how easy it still is - even in 2025 - for seemingly-educated and intelligent people to get swept away by low-calorie ideas. South Park's contrast (of kids enamored by "6-7," with something equally powerful but invalid that adults are into, like Peter Thiel and the Christian concept of an Anti-Christ) nails how dangerous this cavalier treatment of beliefs is: as school authorities are coming down on innocent kids over nothing, for religious reasons, the powerful also decide they also see threats to us all. 

The difference is, the kids know the idea they're playing with is nothing, while, by the time they become adults, they're treating all of it like it's very real. And - except for kids having fun for a while - no good is coming from any of it. As everyone takes action.

    

Today, contradictions, of all kinds, are starting to pile on top of one another. When Democrats were in power America saw encroaching fascism. Now, the GOP was complaining that people are shooting at them, before the Young Republicans were caught admitting they're Nazis who love them some Hitler. And this led to JD Vance - who, at the start of the administration, made it known he'd punish anyone being so antisemitic as to criticize Israel's genocide - now claiming these ultimate of antisemites on the right are just kids (in their 20s and 30s) having fun. 

You know, like 8-year olds, on South Park.