“I’m a messenger of God. You’re doomed if you stay here!” The famous line from the 1980 movie Friday the 13th, uttered by Crazy Ralph, warns the characters not to stay at Camp Crystal Lake. Forty-plus year spoiler, they didn’t listen.
But maybe we should.
Not about Camp Crystal Lake of course but about our current political environment.
While I might be the only person who tries to make a connection between horror movies and politics, I don’t think one could argue that our politics have not become quite scary.
And two horror movies, or movie franchises, are strikingly similar to how our political parties operate in society today: the aforementioned Friday the 13th and Final Destination.
Slasher Horror
Jason Voorhees is the iconic character and main antagonist of the Friday the 13th franchise.
He first officially appears as the killer in the sequel and is a huge, terrifying menace that kills and destroys everything in his path.
Not to spoil how these eleven movies go, twelve if you include the remake, but Jason goes on a scorched earth campaign.
He is the sole villain the characters are fighting against and kills all of them.
He destroys everything in his path to achieve this, and, try as they might, the main characters can never destroy him.
Sound familiar?
Donald Trump and the Republican party are the political embodiment of this. One giant monster who is the face of the movie or, in this case, the party.
A monster that is the known enemy and will stop at nothing to destroy the opposition. And try as they might, the Democrats and others just can’t destroy his political career.
They can throw an Access Hollywood tape at him, try to bury him with the countless offensive and ignorant things he’s said, point out terrible policy decisions he made, and even try to hold him accountable for breaking the law. And it only makes him stronger.
Now, I’m not implying that the Democrats are the protagonists in all of this. I’ll get to them in a minute. However, I am implying that this is politically horrifying.
Because Donald Trump is politically infallible, not only is he immune to all criticism, but he is also above society’s standards and the law.
He could realistically break any law at this point.
Anything he does or will do goes away in any circumstance by him and the Republicans saying the law is being weaponized against him.
They say if they can do it to him, they can do it to the rest of us. When it should be the opposite, if they can do it to us, they can do it to him.
I don’t know about you, but if I get pulled over for speeding, I can’t get out of it by saying the Democrats are setting me up and weaponizing the police force because I’m an independent.
But Donald Trump can speed all he wants, and that’s scary. Like Jason Voorhees, he can’t be destroyed.
This is the current state of the political right and the Republican party. In the words of Crazy Ralph, if we stay here, we’re doomed.
But this raises an interesting question: what created this political Jason Vorhees? How did a political creature that seems immortal come about? For that, we need to watch Final Destination.
Survival Horror
If you haven’t seen Final Destination or the sequels, they all follow the same plot.
The main character has a vision of everyone dying in an accident, only to awaken from the vision to realize that the accident is about to happen.
The main character and some others survive because of the warning, but they are all eventually killed anyway because they are being stalked by Death manifested.
An immaterial force with a grand design that is everywhere, can’t be seen, and will eventually come for everyone, no matter how aware or vigilant they are.
Remind you of anything else?
Political correctness or woke culture operates just this way.
It, unlike Donald Trump and the right, doesn’t have a face. And as much as the Republicans want to turn this into the Freddy vs. Jason spin-off, with Joe Biden as their Freddy Kruger, wokeness and Democratic politics don’t really function that way.
They are this all-encompassing force with this all-encompassing design that can bring you down anytime if you are not always perfect. And at some point, no matter who you are, it will come for you in some form, just like Death in Final Destination.
The characters in Final Destination are constantly paranoid and highly vigilant about being the next one to die. They try their best to do everything perfectly to avoid Death. The character Clear Rivers even commits herself to a room made of foam walls in the psychiatric ward for protection in Final Destination 2.
And that’s how it feels with the woke culture the Democrats have created. You must be perfect all the time, no matter who you are.
You have to say the right thing, do the right thing, be the right thing, and have the same uniform ideas all the time. Any break in the design will result in being called out or potentially canceled.
In many cases, this is a positive thing, like holding intolerant and bigoted people accountable.
But as the Democrats seem to do way too often, they take it too far.
They are turning it into a form of perfectionism that people just can’t achieve.
Everyone has flaws, nobody is perfect, and we are all politically mortal.
But in an environment of perfectionism, having flaws and being mortal will eventually lead to that all-encompassing force coming for you.
Unless you create a creature Death can’t destroy: the political Jason Voorhees, Donald Trump.
The Democratic party created Donald Trump by taking policies too far and creating an environment of perfectionism, and people who supported them otherwise looked the other way.
Moderates wanted something different, and Republicans needed a new ideology, and this became Donald Trump.
Donald Trump was the only person that many people felt could fight against this culture created by the Democrats.
While many of them didn’t like him and still don’t very much like him, they voted for him, and he became the Jason Voorhees of the Republican Party.
Unstoppable Force vs. Immoveable Object
So, I feel we are living in a weird Final Destination spin-off.
One where Jason Voorhees has the vision and is fighting Death.
But the problem is that Death can’t destroy him, and since Death is just a force, Jason can’t destroy it.
Donald Trump can’t stop the Democratic culture, and the Democratic culture has seemingly no effect on Trump.
So where do we go?
I think it is time for us to switch genres.
When the genre changes, the story changes, and we make the genre and the story of our movie in politics.
I don’t want a political Romcom, but I would like a well-thought-out Drama. One with intelligent, open-minded characters who may have different ideologies but work to make the movie great.
Because the movie that is the United States should be great, and you can only get a great movie with great in-depth characters.
Fortunately for us, we pick the characters. And in future elections, we need to choose characters that will change the genre of our country.
But what do you think? Is America in the horror movie genre?
Is that good or bad? And, if so, how do you think we should go about changing our story and genre?
