Quality of movie aside - and spoilers I guess - the central premise of the movie came to mind this last week after a particularly discordant series of Facebook posts from the diehard Trump followers among my friends and family. The movie is about a Stephen King-styled immensely popular author who writes modern Lovecraftian horror who disappeared before his latest promised book was due to be published. Sam Neill plays the hardboiled skeptical insurance investigator who is sent to find him, all the while believing it is a publicity stunt by the publisher. Instead, the author has become a Lovecraftian godlike conduit between the horrors he has written about and the material world. How? Because, as he puts it to Sam Neill, more people believed in his stories than believe the Bible. This belief becomes for him a supernatural power that the horrors that had been speaking to him use to manifest as he writes them into existence. Sam Neill goes mad as the reality he knew existed is taken over by the world being written into reality by this author. It ends with him laughing maniacally while in an empty movie theater showing the movie the viewer just watched. Like I said, the movie isn't great. But the concept is now on full display as the reality we inhabit collectively is one where the claims of a stolen election have been grafted onto decades of claims liberals are outright evil (baby murders, sloth sponsors, freedom haters, power mad villains) such that the reality we live in is not created out of facts but beliefs so far fetched and in conflict with the evidence it feels Lovecraftian. It's always been this way in that we have always lived in world created from beliefs about facts, but it's taken a serious turn for the potentially disastrous as those beliefs from a critical mass of individuals have strayed into horror.
The challenge here is that the disastrous beliefs are what need replaced to reverse their manifesting reality, but we can only argue facts which are not as effective as we like to think they are in changing belief patterns. So what is? I argue it requires challenging one emotionally. Jan. 6 had some effect because it sparked fear in some, shock in others, and disgust in even more still. To see an attack on our Capitol had a visceral effect on people who otherwise were fine believing the lies being sold that the election was stolen, the courts were dismissing cases for procedural reasons rather based on the lack of actual evidence, and overall would have been ok if Trump had succeeded in overturning the general election. Now, with emotional distance, the facts haven't changed but the beliefs that made Jan 6th possible are regrouping, stronger than ever. The partisan machine is spitting out piece after piece reasserting the same narratives that feed - and feed on - the hate that gave rise to Jan. 6th.
I suggest checking out the odds on Trump being the Republican nominee and winner in 2024 right now if anyone thinks otherwise:
https://www.oddschecker.com/politics/us ... 024/winner
The fact he's getting 6:1 to 10:1, right behind Biden at 5:1 and Harris at 4:1 after what happened less than a month ago?
Ivanka is getting odds favoring her election over almost every other potential Republican challenger as well. While not reality it does tell us about the emotional state and beliefs of the Republican party at the moment.
