Microdosing MAGA at the midnight movie

Crash Course subscribers can join the conversation. Tap the speech bubble icon at the top of this email to leave a comment or click the heart to like this post.

The news, in brief …

• Amy McGrath isn’t sorry for trying again

  McGrath tells Salon "no one got rich" off her last Senate campaign, but that she could step aside for someone else. Read more.

• Crews demolish White House facade to make way for Trump ballroom

  Work began on the proposed $250 million White House expansion on Monday. Read more.

• Judges OK Trump deploying National Guard to Portland

  In a 2-1 ruling, the 9th Circuit Court overturned a lower court's restraining order on the Trump administration. Read more.

• “Using satire to make a point”: Johnson defends Trump’s “No Kings” dump video

  Johnson praised the bizarre video as Kenny Loggins demanded his music be "scrubbed" from the clip. Read more.

• FBI investigating “suspicious” hunting stand near Air Force One landing zone

  The agency said the stand had a "sight line" of Air Force One's landing area. Read more.

Make me smarter …

Massive “No Kings” protests short-circuit MAGA’s mockery

MAGA reacts to “No Kings” by immediately proving protesters right. Read more.

Such sights to show you …

Outside the world of “Hellraiser,” you’re unlikely to find a better perpetual misery machine than the app once known as Twitter.

The tweaked algorithm of Elon Musk’s X seems to incentivize conservative outrage and gloating, feeding all users a steady stream of right-wing vitriol and gleeful sadism. Anonoymous blue-checks yell into the void that they don’t care about racist Young Republicans because, somewhere in America, a non-white person committed a crime. Roman statue accounts scream about the decline of civility while celebrating suicide rates among transgender teenagers. Away from the botted fringes and reliable Musk reposts, Republican politicians revel in videos of ICE agents tearing people from their screaming families and citizens being tear-gassed by police.

Like any addict, I find myself scrolling through this endless feed of anguish every morning without realizing it, frequently before I’ve even sat up in bed. The cortisol boost from bad-faith takes functions like a shot of too-strong espresso, getting me up and moving but leaving a queasy feeling in my empty stomach. Now that we’re in October, I end the day with something of a mirrored routine: watching slasher idols dole out ceaseless suffering on unsuspecting teenagers in my personal month-long marathon of horror flicks.

Marveling at the blood splatter from a particularly gruesome kill, or groaning while a potential victim clumsily stumbles through the woods lets me, for a few moments, try on the joy of the MAGA superfans clogging up my For You page. For two hours (although it’s usually more like 90 minutes), John Carpenter or Sam Raimi can offer an instant dose of conservatism, painting the world in black, white and red.

In a classic slasher movie, the Christian hell is real, if only as a temporary holding facility for monsters like Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger. These devils are reliably set loose on Earth by an excess of sin, typically because teenage kids do drugs and have sex. Then the films hand-holds the audience through a series of grisly deaths, assuring us that these children deserve it for having too much fun, or just for shouting “Hello?” in a haunted house.

The gravest sin any character can commit in a horror film is being born a woman. Carol Clover’s landmark study, “Men, Women & Chainsaws,” found that on-screen gorefests dedicated tons of celluloid to punishing women, their slow, detailed deaths standing in stark constrast to the quick or even off-screen deaths of men. Killers like Norman Bates of “Psycho” or Buffalo Bill in “Silence of the Lambs” are telegraphed as abnormal via their adoption of feminine characteristics. The surviving “Final Girl” – a Clover coinage – survives largely by taking on masculine characteristics to fight the genderless menace.

Final Girls make it to the credits by being stronger and smarter than everyone else, flattering conservatives’ bootstrapping belief in meritocracy. It certainly doesn’t hurt that the bog-standard climax of a slasher flick features the protagonist finding a weapon and standing their ground rather than running in terror like their recently deceased friends. I won’t claim that I’m above cheering them on, briefly caught up in the primal simplicity of it all.

Unlike the Casey Beckers and Marion Cranes of the world, though, I’m still around when the sun comes up. As in the coda to one of the five (five?!) ”Purge” movies, my lizard-brain holiday comes to an end, and I’m stuck back in a mind that can’t help caring about real people getting really hurt.

What do you think? Is there any use to be found in temporarilty shutting off the empathetic part of your brain? Is horror still a fairly conservative genre or have recent creatives turned the tables? Sound off in the comments.

Before you go …

Mike Johnson exploits the shutdown to hide the Epstein files

The backlash to #MeToo was always about silencing victims. Read more.

ALSO FROM SALON

In partnership with

Trusted by millions. Actually enjoyed by them too.

Most business news feels like homework. Morning Brew feels like a cheat sheet. Quick hits on business, tech, and finance—sharp enough to make sense, snappy enough to make you smile.

Try the newsletter for free and see why it’s the go-to for over 4 million professionals every morning.

Check it out