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Recently I’ve been thinking about James Herbert’s 1975 book The Fog, which I read when it was first published (I’ve been a horror fan since childhood; as a kid there wasn’t a horror film or book I didn’t voraciously consume). The novel tells of a (spoiler alert) fog that warps the mind of all who breathe it. Cities go insane; normal people become homicidal or suicidal. The book contains striking imagery: an entire village marching into the ocean to drown, fans at a rainy soccer stadium gripping exposed cables to electrocute themselves.

The Fog is from a horror subgenre I call “normies go nuts.” Many movies have explored that terrain, perhaps the earliest being 1967’s Quatermass and the Pit (psychic energy from unearthed remains of ancient aliens causes bystanders to revert to prehistoric ape-man violence…think 2001: A Space Odyssey, but the monolith makes civilized humans into cavemen instead of vice versa).

Every “normies go nuts” film has a unique catalyst. The Crazies (bioweapon), Impulse (chemical spill), Shivers (parasites), The Sadness (virus), Trancers and Messiah of Evil (cult leader), Stephen King’s Cell and the far superior The Signal (cell phones), The Happening (trees), Pontypool (a glitch in the English language), Sidney Sheldon’s Need to Know (a dude travels to the Far East and learns the meaning of life, which drives all who hear it insane).

The common question posed by entries in the genre is, can you fight the madness once it’s in you? Herbert ends on an optimistic note; you can fight the fog through sheer will. Conversely, The Sadness (the best Covid-era horror film, bar none) ends bleakly. Once the crazy’s in you, you’re lost for good.

The right is currently in the grip of an insanity fog. And yes, I know what you’re thinking: “But Dave, the left’s crazy too!”

Sure, given. And irrelevant. Leftists desire not to build but to tear down (science, families, cities, nations), and crazy works to that end. A caveman can’t create something beautiful, but he sure can smash it. Rightist craziness is of far greater significance because at a time when the nation desperately needs sane opposition to leftist lunacy, rightists picked the worst possible moment to go off the deep end.

Trannyism is a fog, best opposed by simply saying, “It’s nutty and it causes harm” (i.e., oppose the fog without imposing new fog).

“A significant number of humans are born in the wrong body. Alone among the creatures of the earth, human children require the surgical removal of healthy organs and the blocking of natural chemical processes in order to be normal” is best countered with “No, that’s not true, and it harms children.”

Instead, we get Matt Walsh’s “impregnate 16-year-old girls because feminism’s killed more people than communism.”

“The best way to reduce crime is to remove penalties for committing crime” is best countered with “No, that’s not true, and it causes harm.”

Instead, we get Hitler fetishists, “national divorce,” and Vivek Swamibalmy wailing that “riot is the language of the oppressed!” like he’s Al Sharpton.

Today’s rightists insist on fighting fog with fog.

One look at MAGA Twitter proves that the activist base is mentally gone. Every event MAGAs don’t like is a false flag, from the entire 2020 election to last year’s midterms to stories of lesser import.

The Lahaina fire was caused by Biden’s “direct energy weapons.” Hundreds of self-identified MAGAs tweeted that. Because, you see, not every house burned. Proof of “DEWs”! Of course, in reality a fire isn’t a flood; it doesn’t straight-line march forward as an all-enveloping force. Blazes spread via wind and embers, hence why forest fires often shift direction, which floods can’t do unless channeled. If 5,000 structures are burned, it’s just the odds that the embers will miss a few. But many MAGAs prefer irrational escapist fantasy to run-of-the-mill reality.

Remember that Boomer psycho in Utah a few weeks ago who posted on Facebook “I’m gonna assassinate Joe Biden when he comes here and if any FBI tries to stop me I’ll shoot them too,” and who had a history of threatening people with guns, and who was killed when the feds came to visit (as they were required to do)? Turns out that entire incident was a false flag by the Biden Crime Family to take out a PATRIOT! MAGAs have declared the maniac a martyr.

In fact, the Utah crackpot case is as straightforward as possible. A violent crank posts “I’ll assassinate the president with this here rifle that I’ll also use on any feds who try to stop me,” the feds try to stop him, he draws on them, he gets shot. No mystery there. But as I’ve written in previous columns, the right’s lousy with “sleuths” who mystify the explicable, either because they’re fogged themselves or because they’re exploiting the fogged.

If the right has lost focus at exactly the moment it needs focus, it’s because imbeciles and imbecile-exploiters turn every “story of the week” into an X-Files episode. The Paul Pelosi attack? The Hindu who crashed the White House gates? The Nazi Mexican mass shooter? False flags all. Even the drug cartel assassination of an Ecuadorean presidential candidate was a false flag engineered by the BIDEN CRIME FAMILY (you know, that international syndicate headed by a senile old man and a crackhead, who are indeed grifters but somehow also control all world events) to distract from Hunter’s plea deal!

Meanwhile, thanks to Vivek Swarthyvishnu, high-profile rightists like Candace Owens are embracing 9/11 “trutherism.” At a time when the only thing rightists need to do to win is oppose leftist lunacy, fog-filled retards would rather relitigate September 2001. Because that’s what the public really wants!

The fog’s always existed, infesting the minds of Unz readers and Alex Jonesians and (pre-internet) Willis Carto fans on the right and Mae “Charles Manson did Chappaquiddick for the CIA” Brussell fans on the left. The core tenet of the fog can be summed up by this line from Living Colour: “Everything is possible and nothing is real.” Once that becomes your mantra, the fog’s inside you. Reality no longer matters.

The fog is the anti-Occam. Occam dictates that the Utah shooter story was obvious enough on its face that the first reaction should’ve been “seems legit unless additional info calls it into question.” But if everything is possible and nothing is real, then the would-be assassin’s Facebook posts and criminal history can be dismissed (“nothing is real”) and the notion of Biden framing and executing an innocent old man just to send a message to MAGAs to keep quiet about his corruption (yeah, that’s a thing) can be embraced (“everything is possible”).

I’m writing this a few hours after a white Zoomer with a swastika-covered rifle killed three blacks in a Jacksonville Dollar General, and already the false flaggots are at it, with hundreds of MAGAs tweeting that DeSanctimonious engineered the “shooting” to distract from Trump’s winning campaign! Whereas Occam might advise, “Maybe there’s a correlation between the growing number of Zoomers who fanatically follow Nazi Nick Fuentes and the uptick in Zoomers embracing Nazism,” the foggy-minded reject any such suggestion.

Too Occam, too logical.

As I said, the fog’s always been here, in the haunted heads of low-IQ failures who find in the discovery of “secret knowledge” and “hidden truths” an ego boost real life doesn’t afford them. “I dun never had no job or gurlfrent, but I founded out who controls the planet. Me smaaaahrt!” But more and more, the fog seems to be taking people who aren’t low-IQ incel types. And that makes me worry.

And when the fog envelopes the entire activist base of the GOP during primary season, that makes me really worry.

I pin the fog’s expansion squarely on Trump. What he brought to the table—and I think this is key to understanding why we’re seeing the fog dominate the right—is twofold: First, to embrace Trump, he insists that you accept his slate of massive improbabilities. You must accept that the entire 2020 election was a false flag (Trump won by a landslide and millions of votes were “stollen”), the midterms were also a false flag (somehow ballots were altered to rob Kari Lake of her landslide, yet down-ballot Republicans still won), and January 6 was a false flag conducted by feds to frame MAGAs.

Like children who, even if only subconsciously, adopt the beliefs of their parents, MAGAs hear Papa Trump spin a yarn and they willingly allow his fog to enter their minds (this is the “cult leader catalyst” scenario from Trancers and Messiah of Evil).

After all, if you can accept Trump’s core premise—that two national elections and a riot comprising 10,000 people were phony—you can accept anything. A false-flag Dollar General mass shooting? Piece of cake for the masterminds who can send 2,000 feds dressed as MAGAs into the Capitol and fake a presidential election and a midterm.

Funny thing is, if the CIA ever brought back MKUltra, the new iteration would center on sowing fear of the old one. The weak-minded in 1950s America were defined by blind trust in the government. But the weak-minded of 2023 are defined by blind paranoia and mistrust, so the best way to manipulate those folks would be to stoke fears that they’re being manipulated. A 2023 MKUltra would focus on telling MAGAs, “Watch out, you’re being MKUltra’d!”

The second thing Trump brought to the table is a new and highly popular reason for embracing the fog: spite. When I talk to individual MAGA fogheads, I find that laying out facts is of little use, because eventually the argument shifts to “Okay, you know what? Maybe I HAVE become paranoid and reality-detached, but leftists made me this way! The media made me this way! Biden made me this way! Them bastards and their lies drove me to doubt everything I read or see. And now I’m their worst nightmare!”

This is essentially saying, “I threw away my sanity to teach the left a lesson.”

“Ha, I sure showed you! You lied to me so much I went batshit crazy. Take that! Bet yer sorry now! Go cry liberal tears!”

The notion that your reality detachment means you’ve “owned” the left, that they’re upset that you’ve gone mad, that they’re weeping “Oh NO, we drove @MAGAPATRIOT1488 to dementia; what’s become of us that we’ve harmed such a good man?” is beyond laughable.

Here’s a tip, MAGAs: Leftists want you crazy and ineffective. You ain’t spiting them by acquiescing.

The scene in Herbert’s Fog of a village walking into the sea in a mass suicide was unsettling.

Seeing it happen in real life, very likely at the cost of a vital election, is beyond unsettling. Worse than anything I’ve read in a book or seen in a film in 55 years of horror fandom (my birthday’s Saturday; BUY ME A BEER).

Next week, in Part II: fighting the fog.