Excellent analysis, Professor Ealy!! Once again, you nailed it, give me hope and bring things into better focus so that I can get through another week of this madness. Yes, the Epstein files are still there and they are not going away. Eventually, the truth will come out.
“A cult leader is someone who turns emotional weather into governance….he just needs followers tuned to his moods the way sailors stay tuned to the sky”. Gorgeous analogy. Meanwhile, this piece generates a sense of solidness. Justice is coming, and however, slowly those wheels are turning they are in fact turning and there is nothing to be done about it. Because we are not in a cult.
Can the US please decide whether it wants to be like 1930s Nazi Germany or like Cold War Eastern Bloc nations where all this do not criticize to stay in line with the government and save yourself from retaliation and humiliation was omnipresent again?
Great article. I used to believe that everyone thought like me. That loving kindness was everyone’s goal. That shame would control the wicked. I’m very naive. My bad. I no longer call myself a Christian because that word has been corrupted by Christian nationalist white supremacist scumbags. I follow Jesus and live by The Beatitudes. I will use my time on Earth to seek Truth, find Peace, be Love. ✨🙏💜🏵️💫
"And it’s the same pattern: generate heat, dominate attention, force everyone to argue about the spectacle.
But when the spectacle ends, the files are still there.
This is why the Epstein files have the energy of a horror-movie villain. You can run, scream, set the house on fire, swear you killed it, and the next scene opens with it standing right behind you, perfectly calm, holding a clipboard."
You nailed it with that paragraph. Epstein is Trump's Waterloo. He won't shake it and he knows it. Great post, Kristoffer.
The cognitive dissonance that MAGA lives with on the daily (especially now that their god-king is very evidently failing and falling apart in front in our eyes) must be burdensome.
My parents joined an apocalyptical end times cult in the 1970s when I was an early teen. They only left the cult after they were used, abused, their life savings completely gone and the extended family was in turmoil. My father, less invested and the most used finally had enough. If it were up to my mother she'd still be there in that truck camper on legs on the edge of the Alaska mosquito infested wilderness without drinking water or a toilet, used for labor but without community.
I've been a trump watcher for decades after a name dropping acquaintance/friend whose brother was an oil/gas Poobah in Dallas said, "He even golfs with Donald Trump!" Since it was 1985 and we lived in Alaska at the time I'd never heard of him. Given the breathless name drop I paid attention when his name came up in the press afterwards. I was not impressed. He seemed like a major douche at best.
When he came down that execrable gold escalator in 2015 to an astroturfed crowd my alarm klaxon went off. I've seen this man who would be god/king before. When I heard my family members that had escaped one cult exclaim how great they thought he was, eventually becoming the cult's loudest choir, I was sick. The same familial turmoil and estrangement ensued. The same demands for obedience as fealty and membership. Nope.
I'm reliving it all over again 50 years later. I'm exhausted, estranged and what I cling to is the hope that people like me, those not in the cult will stand up and hold the line in spite of the systemic damage he has wrought, some of which I believe is yet to be discovered and will be generational in scope if not in play for many decades after I'm long gone.. The Humpty-Dumpty rhyme applies here. We are broken.
Thank you for your clear eyed articles. They make me feel less alone in this Biff Tannen world.
Great article Kristoffer. I have so many thoughts running through my brain but the main thought is that Trump thinks the MAGA cult is bigger than it is. That most people are not MAGA and he doesn’t know how to deal with the truth. Trump is flailing all over the place but the Epstein files are still there and now other countries are investigating the Epstein files and consequences are coming for people. Melinda Gates speaking out is powerful. If Bill Clinton was involved in sexually assaulting children, so be it. Let the chips fall where they may.
The Clinton remark indicates what Trump can never understand, that whether we are in alignment with or were, some one person or other, when they commit these kinds of criminal activities, we think just like anybody else, they should suffer the consequences whether it be decades later or ever. If they're deceased, then let history do the reckoning but reckoning there must be.
Trump can run but he can't hide. He's too dirty in too many ways and the coverup, especially one this clumsy, can't hold forever.
Excellent analysis, Professor Ealy!! Once again, you nailed it, give me hope and bring things into better focus so that I can get through another week of this madness. Yes, the Epstein files are still there and they are not going away. Eventually, the truth will come out.
“A cult leader is someone who turns emotional weather into governance….he just needs followers tuned to his moods the way sailors stay tuned to the sky”. Gorgeous analogy. Meanwhile, this piece generates a sense of solidness. Justice is coming, and however, slowly those wheels are turning they are in fact turning and there is nothing to be done about it. Because we are not in a cult.
Let’s hope the rest of the files are released.
Can the US please decide whether it wants to be like 1930s Nazi Germany or like Cold War Eastern Bloc nations where all this do not criticize to stay in line with the government and save yourself from retaliation and humiliation was omnipresent again?
Great article. I used to believe that everyone thought like me. That loving kindness was everyone’s goal. That shame would control the wicked. I’m very naive. My bad. I no longer call myself a Christian because that word has been corrupted by Christian nationalist white supremacist scumbags. I follow Jesus and live by The Beatitudes. I will use my time on Earth to seek Truth, find Peace, be Love. ✨🙏💜🏵️💫
I always look forward to your writing. Thanks so much. The files are still there indeed.
This post is genius.
AGREED!💙✌🏽
"And it’s the same pattern: generate heat, dominate attention, force everyone to argue about the spectacle.
But when the spectacle ends, the files are still there.
This is why the Epstein files have the energy of a horror-movie villain. You can run, scream, set the house on fire, swear you killed it, and the next scene opens with it standing right behind you, perfectly calm, holding a clipboard."
You nailed it with that paragraph. Epstein is Trump's Waterloo. He won't shake it and he knows it. Great post, Kristoffer.
Like Zombies, ya can kill them but they just pop up and keep on doing what they’re doing, exposing the truth!
The cognitive dissonance that MAGA lives with on the daily (especially now that their god-king is very evidently failing and falling apart in front in our eyes) must be burdensome.
My parents joined an apocalyptical end times cult in the 1970s when I was an early teen. They only left the cult after they were used, abused, their life savings completely gone and the extended family was in turmoil. My father, less invested and the most used finally had enough. If it were up to my mother she'd still be there in that truck camper on legs on the edge of the Alaska mosquito infested wilderness without drinking water or a toilet, used for labor but without community.
I've been a trump watcher for decades after a name dropping acquaintance/friend whose brother was an oil/gas Poobah in Dallas said, "He even golfs with Donald Trump!" Since it was 1985 and we lived in Alaska at the time I'd never heard of him. Given the breathless name drop I paid attention when his name came up in the press afterwards. I was not impressed. He seemed like a major douche at best.
When he came down that execrable gold escalator in 2015 to an astroturfed crowd my alarm klaxon went off. I've seen this man who would be god/king before. When I heard my family members that had escaped one cult exclaim how great they thought he was, eventually becoming the cult's loudest choir, I was sick. The same familial turmoil and estrangement ensued. The same demands for obedience as fealty and membership. Nope.
I'm reliving it all over again 50 years later. I'm exhausted, estranged and what I cling to is the hope that people like me, those not in the cult will stand up and hold the line in spite of the systemic damage he has wrought, some of which I believe is yet to be discovered and will be generational in scope if not in play for many decades after I'm long gone.. The Humpty-Dumpty rhyme applies here. We are broken.
Thank you for your clear eyed articles. They make me feel less alone in this Biff Tannen world.
Thanks for your insights and this post!
Great article Kristoffer. I have so many thoughts running through my brain but the main thought is that Trump thinks the MAGA cult is bigger than it is. That most people are not MAGA and he doesn’t know how to deal with the truth. Trump is flailing all over the place but the Epstein files are still there and now other countries are investigating the Epstein files and consequences are coming for people. Melinda Gates speaking out is powerful. If Bill Clinton was involved in sexually assaulting children, so be it. Let the chips fall where they may.
The Clinton remark indicates what Trump can never understand, that whether we are in alignment with or were, some one person or other, when they commit these kinds of criminal activities, we think just like anybody else, they should suffer the consequences whether it be decades later or ever. If they're deceased, then let history do the reckoning but reckoning there must be.