THE KOOL-AID DRINKERS
If you read about politics at all you will have heard the term “Kool-Aid Drinker”. If you have any familiarity with the story of Jim Jones and his Jonestown Kool-Aid mass suicide you understand the implication. It refers to people who insert a firewall between themselves and reasoned critical thought, and subscribe to a pattern of belief regardless, even, of mounting and verifiable contrary evidence. Most of these people aren’t geniuses.
On the informative website satanwantsgun.com Pastor Harry makes the case that Satan (Democrats in this case) wants to take away your guns (assuming you are man enough to own some). Harry’s reasoning is a little complicated but, essentially, he argues that “one world government” will have its base in Western Europe (those damnable French!) while the Vatican will be the center of satanic worship. The Antichrist will appear on earth and wage war against all who oppose him (gays and liberals), while his minions in one world government round up all the all those hot, hard and smooth Walther P-38’s and Glock 9mm’s; oh baby let me stroke that Glock. The Antichrist will then require everyone to pledge allegiance to him, and all his disciples will have a computer chip embedded in their hand which will serve the same purpose as the “Mobile Speedpass” – and which, without one, you can’t get any gas, or hotdogs.
Here is the essential point I’m making: Pastor Harry is NOT a Kool-Aid drinker. Pastor Harry is a lunatic.
Kool-Aid drinkers usually don’t put that much thought into their obsessions. They just want somebody that they can believe in who will do all the thinking for them. What makes Kool-Aid drinkers different from lunatics is that lunatics will sometimes believe just the opposite of what they once believed (I give you David Horowitz).
What is it that compels people, past all reason, to believe in total bullshit? What is it about some people that allow them to cling to a fantasy long after it has died a public and gruesome death? And what is it about those people that, sometimes, make them cling even harder to the belief when it is at its gruesomest, deadest, bullshitiest, rancid worst?
The Kool-Aid Drinker is the true-believer who suffers from an apparent cognitive disorder characterized by a belief in a reality that only exists in a zone that is not available to people who think rationally. Contrary evidence only compels the Kool-Aid Drinker to modify existing beliefs to account for the contradicting facts. When the Reverend Jim Bakker went away to the slammer for stealing (and using ministry money to payoff someone he had been porking), many of his flock just waited for his return. From their perspective, he was undoubtedly the victim of a government witch hunt – but he’s back in business now and the money is rolling in again.
Today’s most obvious Kool-Aid Drinkers are those who believe in the gospel of George W. Bush. They are constantly turning to page 666 of the “Christians for Bush” handbook for reassurance each time their “Jim Jonesian” President makes another request for them to stay the course, and hunker down, and trust him (do you prefer cherry or grape?). In a recent CBS poll of the President's job approval, only 37% of Americans approved of how he was doing his job. This is quite understandable given the long series of blunders, malfeasance and corruption this administration is responsible for. Yet, 79% of Republicans
approved of the way the President was doing his job (and this was after Katrina!).
It’s startling sometimes to realize just how much self-delusion is necessary to make it possible to believe in someone as inept as George W. Bush. The successes of the Bush administration are in galvanizing their base, not in accomplishments - normally the measure of a Presidential administration. The support this administration receives from the religious right is not based on Bush’s deeds, but on the fact that the religious right has a build in insulation from the truths and realities of the secular world.
The cult who found new meaning in the passage of the Hale Bop comet, and those that accepted the ranting dogma of David Koresh in Waco were able to shut their eyes and stop their ears to the facts that intruded upon the fatal beliefs that controlled their destiny. They metaphorically drank the Kool-Aid just as the true-believers literally did in Jonestown.
To the extent that people strive to impose a fact-proof screen between their faith and the realities of the world, those people will be inclined to look at events like the Iraq war and not conclude that it was (at the very least) prosecuted incompetently, and based on a faulty (ever changing) rationale. Those people, we say, have drunk the Kool-Aid.
And when people who can look at George W. Bush sitting in that classroom with “My Pet Goat” opened in front of him after just being told that “The Nation is Under Attack”, and conclude that was the proper thing to do – Those people have drunk the Kool-Aid as well.
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