Today is the anniversary of the first time a sociopathic charismatic leader charmed and coerced his followers into mass suicide by getting them to drink poisoned Kool-Aid, even as they watched those who drank before them dying and saw their friends’ and fellows’ dead bodies piled higher and higher. Jim Jones, leader of the Christian cult, the Peoples’ Temple, led the Jonestown Massacre in Jonestown, Guyana, on Nov. 18, 1978, after Temple members murdered Congressman Leo Ryan.
“909 Temple members died in Jonestown, all but two from apparent cyanide poisoning, in an event termed “revolutionary suicide” by Jones and some members on an audio tape of the event and in prior discussions. The poisonings in Jonestown followed the murder of five others by Temple members at a nearby Port Kaituma airstrip. The victims included Congressman Leo Ryan, the first and only Congressman murdered in the line of duty in the history of the United States. Four other Temple members died in Georgetown at Jones’ command.”
I do think the analogy between Obama and Jim Jones is a fair one. Obama also has charmed and coerced his followers into giving him cult-like adoration and total obedience and electing him president. Those of us who did not drink the Kool-Aid have a lot of work to do to keep Nov. 4, 2008, from being the anniversary of America’s suicide as a capitalist democratic republic and the land of opportunity.
Today also is the first day that Obama’s approval rating has fallen below 50 percent in Quinnipiac University’s polling of registered voters — it fell to 48 percent who approve, while 42 percent disapprove. It appears that the Kool-Aid is wearing off for the independent voters who gave Obama his margin of victory last year. Ed Morrissey at Hot Air has the analysis.
P.S.
Real Kool-Aid is wonderful stuff. When my father was a Boy Scout leader, and then an Explorer Post leader, in the 1960’s, he took my late younger brother, Eric, and the rest of Troop 937 on ambitious hikes through the Smokey Mountains, on the Appalachian Trail and over 100 miles through Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico. The symptoms of dehydration are insidious because you just start to lose it without realizing what is happening to you. To get the boys to drink enough water to stay properly hydrated, he gave them packets of Kool-Aid to put in the water in their canteens. It worked like a charm.
A year ago, I was studing in depth what happened in Jonestown. Words still fail me to express what I felt.
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That image frightens and confuses me.
It wasn’t even Kool-Aid (TM). It was Flavr-Aid.
And that’s what happens when we “drink the Kool-Aid”. We get a cheap imitation of the thing we wanted. Not to mention dead.