Welcome back to Bad Sandwich Chronicles Beyond Thunderdome. If you’re a VIP subscriber you’ll get all of this and MORE each week! If you’re just checking it out, thanks for coming. Consider throwing a few bucks into this here endeavor. For less than the price of one fancy Wendy’s cheeseburger a month, you can read the WHOLE THING! How dope is that, I ask you? Millions of satisfied customers can’t be wrong. Join the party!

Share

Hi everybody! Thanks for stopping by. Today’s topic: the world. The world, if you haven’t noticed, is fuuuuucking scary these days. As a result, people have been getting really into panicking. It’s definitely all the rage right now. Weirdly, I have always been a panicker. I traditionally panic about everything, with a strong concentration on the absolutely ridiculous.

In my mind I’ve had every possible deadly disease, I used to harbor a suspicion that I was profoundly mentally disabled and my mother paid everyone around me to pretend I was normal (I’m not joking. I stayed up at night convinced this was true). I have even been laying in bed and started panicking that the ceiling fan or picture hung above my bed was gonna fall on me and harm/kill me. I guess what I’m saying is that I was into panic before it was cool. 

But the weird thing is, now that EVERYONE is panicking about EVERYTHING, my panic is gone. I don’t know how it correlates, but it seems to me like something about that thing Verbal Kint says in the Usual Suspects is relevant here (or maybe it was the detective who said it...I don’t remember and I don’t care enough to look it up), which was something to the effect of “you get five guys on a murder charge, the one that falls asleep in the cell is the killer, because he knows he’s caught so he can finally let his guard down and get some sleep.” This makes sense to me (whether it’s actually true in the world of true crime or not). 

Now, Im no big city murderer, but it DOES feel like since everything is completely shot to shit right now between the impending authoritarian regime takeover, this disease, endless wars, a national reputation that’s so bad that the only reason we’re not having another 9-11 is because even suicide bombers feel like it would be crazy to fly here, the lionization of a murdering dipshit as some sort of folk hero, the demonization of all that’s good and pure and supposedly the cornerstone of what makes this country great, the entire west coast on fire, this terrible woman seemingly being installed in the Supreme Court and the impending massive economic collapse that’s going to occur the second it dips below 50 degrees in most places, the idea of worrying about the ceiling fan falling on me in my sleep has become kinda quaint. It’s taken a complete and total assfucking of every single social contract bubble that I grew up with, but I can finally sleep through the night. Thanks, Obama. 

But for real though, panic can be devastating, so today I’m gonna start a round up of some popular widespread panics (jesus fucking christ), some old, some new. We’ll start with my favorite one, which is so long, it’s likely gonna be the only one in this entry:

Satanic

This is, hands down, the best panic. For those of you who don’t know, back in the 80’s, a certain swath of America got it in their heads that satan was some real deal shit and was causing kids to kill themselves, kill other people, host blood orgies, sacrifice goats, and everyone was just absolutely convinced that it was some kind of plot to dismantle our christian society (I guess...I actually don’t think the panic ever stated a comprehensive endgame that the satanists supposedly had, probably because the entire idea is fucking loopier than being worried about Cap’n Crunch’s armada taking over the waters surrounding Guam, but anyway...). 

This panic came to the public eye when some kids somewhere (I could research this but it really doesn’t matter) killed themselves. They were metalheads, and by all accounts disturbed, but somehow, and this boggles my mind to consider someone making this leap, the powers that be determined that the reason they killed themselves is because they listened to the Judas Priest song “Better By You, Better Than Me” backwards, and heard the words “do it,” and that was all it took. Never mind that there was already a very popular, completely ubiquitous “Just Do It” slogan plastered onto every single surface of the earth and moon in the service of selling overpriced shoes to kids at the time (and that shit wasn’t even backwards!), somehow it seemed obvious that by going through the byzantine lengths that it would take to play a 33rpm LP backwards on a turntable that just doesn’t do that, and hearing what amounts to essentially some whale sounds that vaguely sound like “do it” was enough to make these kids kill themselves. This is, I hope goes without saying, fucking stupid. 

Judas Priest even faced charges for this in a legitimate court of law and a young Brendan Kelly watched this on the news, enraptured by this absolute bullshit. Obviously, things must have gone all right for Judas Priest because they’re still out there, but this was the beginning of a thing that would go from creepy scapegoating to hilarious theater very quickly, but not before some really bad shit went down. 

Four years later, some metalheads in Arkansas were scooped up by the cops as suspects in the murder of three young boys. Somehow, it was determined that it was all part of a satanic blood sacrifice ritual and these three crazy looking weirdos were the obvious culprits. The West Memphis Three, as they were known, were rounded up by the cops, demonized by the press, given a really bullshit kangaroo court trial and thrown in jail forever, though they’ve recently been freed due to the fact that, well, they didn’t do anything.

So here’s where I have to admit that, while I’m on the side of justice and these three ABSOLUTELY deserved to have their names cleared, I’ve always found this very specific cause a little hard to reckon with, personally. I do NOT think the West Memphis Three should have been put in jail simply because of the way they look. However, that has been a problem for a LOT of people who get thrown in jails in this country for a very long time. When I’d been approached to do WM3 benefits during their incarceration, (and this is so sketchy to even talk about without risking sounding like a horrific asshole, so I’m just gonna try to be as pure here as I can and hope the true intentionality shines through) I always said no. 

To me, the idea that because it was three white kids, that they would have a celebrity cause du jour while literally thousands of similarly innocent people were housed in those same jails for being wrongfully convicted of being POCs in the wrong place at the wrong time with no one really giving a shit always rubbed me the wrong way. Again, the WM3 were railroaded and the whole thing is complete bullshit and I harbor them no ill will at all. I hope that’s clear. It’s not them I took issue with, it was the apparatus surrounding the movement to free them EVEN THOUGH IT’S A RIGHTEOUS MOVEMENT AT ITS CORE, if that makes sense.

It just made me feel uneasy. “These three people have ALL this star power behind them? Weird. What is it that makes them different from everyone else on death row?” is a thing I’d ask people who were offering me these opportunities to lend my voice to the cause. And yo, motherfuckers would get SO furious at this question that it made me even more skeptical of the whole thing. 

Now, that’s not to say that I don’t care or that I’m trying to be one of those shitty “if you can’t do everything, you’re doing nothing” hypocrite detectors that are the absolute poison of the radical left. I just...I don’t know why, and honestly, I’m so glad they’ve been vindicated and yo,  they’re at least tangentially part of the scene I associate myself with (the ‘burnouts trying to huff propane outside the 711 scene), and I have literally nothing but love for these poor three people whose lives were stolen, but the pageantry around it really seemed like something that was more about aligning with the celeb involvement than in caring about changing anything institutionally or at all. 

I guess, and i’m really just talking through this even with myself for the first time ever, so I’m sorry if this is clumsy, but the way it read to me was always “Wait! There’s WHITE PEOPLE on death row for capricious reasons?! We’ve gotta make some t shirts! Then let’s fire up the bat signal and get Henry Rollins out here for a meet and greet immediately!!!!” or “I’ll rehab my image by aligning with this, the only cause I’ve ever heard of!” Also, Michaele Graves was a big supporter and he’s a dork, but whatever. 

I don’t mean to belittle the suffering of the incarcerated nor the struggle of the dogged warriors for justice who did the absolute right thing and yelled until this shit couldn’t be ignored. I just guess I felt like if I was gonna lend my voice to something, it didn’t need to be one that already had so many voices and tchotchkes attached to it already. I hope this doesn’t sound like some SJW bullshit. I’m so happy they’re free. Truly. I’ve just always felt that it was such an easy thing to grab onto in order to seem like you’re doing something while really doing very little. 

That being said, all these causes are worth fighting for. The West Memphis Three is no exception. I’d just be a complete hypocrite asshole if I didn’t acknowledge that I’ve time and time again turned down doing benefits for them. This is my attempt to explain why I did (I also DID do one in LA, but it was retagged as a WM3 benefit after we were signed on and I’m not upset we did it...I’m glad we did it, even if Michaele Graves was there). Jesus. Too much talking, this was supposed to be fun. I’m sorry. Back to the satanic panic.

So anyway, after the general unpleasantness of a couple of people getting completely motherfucked by a fear of a spooky antichrist that no one even believes in, dorks started pointing at folks like the WM3 as evidence that there really WAS a satanic hold over vast swaths of society, which, um, there was not. The result was a straight up panic and a desire by the squares to really start policing the actions of anyone involved in anything remotely countercultural. 

Well, since there actually IS no satan, the results were not only awesome, but very instructive with regards to how our world in Trump times is today. Essentially, the more people hemmed and hawed about how metal or punk or goth music or whatever was satanic, the more the people in those scenes kinda leaned into it in order to seem as depraved as humanly possible just purely in the name of freaking everyone the fuck out for fun. 

Since, again, there’s no satan, there is no skin in the game when it comes to upping the ante in terms of outraging people you hate. You think Judas Priest is satanic? Well, wait til you get a load of Slayer, whose logo is literally a pentagram made out of bloody swords. Oh, that’s really riling you up? Great. Here’s Deicide. This dude has an upside down cross tattooed on his fucking forehead. The main goal was to just piss off everyone who wasn’t cool enough to realize the whole thing was theater, and the resultant outrage of the dorks was literally just as important and cool, output wise, as the music. 

I suppose at this point I should acknowledge that there were a couple of mentally ill people in Norway who took this whole thing too far and definitely burned churches (totally historically irresponsible but kinda funny!) and murdered people (very bad!), but they were fucking weirdo outliers, and such pretentious dipshits that I don’t even want to dignify their whole thing by calling them by name). Anyway, that’s not what the satanic panic backlash was about at all. To conflate the actions of these marginalized weirdos with the scene(s) at large would be like saying tight ends in the NFL are all murderers or murder sympathisers because Aaron Hernandez happened to be a tight end, and so forth.

Anyway, this was the panic: loser moms would clutch their petticoats, the people they were upset at would love it, and encouraged by their reactions, the satanists would ramp up the satanism even more. The more outraged people got, the more outrageous the provocateurs got ad infinitum. 

Does this remind you of anything? 

Okay, let’s say you’re some asshole with nothing really going on and you end up latching onto a fairly marginalized interest sphere that kinda speaks to you. It doesn’t define you, necessarily, but it’s interesting enough for you to kinda dig it and maybe wear an item that represents it every once in a while. It could be a Megadeth shirt, or it could be, oh, I don’t know, a MAGA hat. Let’s say this absolutely pisses off your mom/that lame ass lady in your office/the nerds at the ice cream place, whatever. You feel literally no fear, because this particular interest is only a hobby to you. It’s not actually dangerous, but the exact kinds of people you HATE absolutely recoil at you and you can tell it ruins their whole day. What are you gonna do? 

You’re gonna ramp that shit up, son! You’re gonna find yourself seeking out more and more distilled injections of said interest (we can just straight up call it Trumpism now, as the metaphor is obvious to everyone, yes?) and start wearing shirts that say “Grab Her By The Pussy” and you’re gonna get even bigger reactions. You’re gonna start finding other people who love hating on the people who hate what you’re up to, and you’re gonna share wacky ideas on the internet. You’re gonna spam dorks with memes that you perceive to be hilarious. None of it even has to be truly ideological. It’s like the satanic panic...to a person who isn’t endemically freaked out by what’s going on, the whole endgame is simply to offend and terrify. 

Next thing you know, you’re on TV saying that they should really build the wall or whatever. And this may even be something that feeds into your casual racism or homophobia/transphobia or whatever (which you quite possibly harbor in your soul since you’ve already proven your tribalism just by aligning with something specifically to alienate [and it’s important to note that a LOT of satanic metal was also racist and homophobic as hell]), and next thing you know, you’re a full on walking member of a subculture, although in this case it’s the dominant subculture. 

Obviously, heavy metal isn’t important at all, while the future of our nation is, but to someone who is a devout christian, the encroachment of a bunch of satanists into mainstream society, even if they’re obviously just fucking around, is the exact same thing: it’s the end of the world as we know it. Tucker Carlson is just Kerry King in a suit. It’s the same shit. It’s entertainment based in stoking outrage.

Of course, there’s also a vast swath of people who go all Trump, not to offend, but because they’re just super afraid of how crazy the left seems, which is the very next panic I’m gonna get to here. So let’s go: 

The Left, um...They Crazy

Remember when the Trump team put out exactly 88 Facebook memes and one of them employed some obscure Reich imagery in the form of being an upside down red triangle that was used as a badge to identify political dissidents in Nazi Germany? For those of you not in the know, here’s what the deal is: 88 represents HH (as H is the 8th letter in the alphabet) and therefore 88 is a fairly common dogwhistle among skinheads and other white supremacists, as to them it represents the phrase “Heil Hitler.” The specific post with the triangle literally targeted Antifa, who are, ya know, political dissenters. This is pretty fucked up, but the reason the Trump team did it was very, very smart. 

A while ago, I heard about this guy who wrote a book called something along the lines of “I Broke the Media and Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Ever Listen to Those People Again” or something (this is impossible to Google, by the way, since that’s just the gist of what the book was called, not at all the actual name), and according to him, he was hired to increase right leaning sentiment on college campuses so he put up a bunch of signs that said “It’s okay to be white” on said campuses. Googling this seems to indicate that this concept was concocted on 4chan, which makes sense. Maybe dude was a 4chan guy, or maybe I got the wrong story, but the way he explained why he did that makes a lot of sense.

Essentially, “it’s okay to be white” at its core, is a benign statement, but of COURSE it’s the kind of thing that’s gonna piss people off, especially newly awakened college kids. There’s an unspoken and plausibly deniable insidiousness to it, to say the very least. Anyway, this dude’s idea was that he’d put up these signs, people on the campuses would go apeshit about it, and then regular people who don’t really care about politics of any kind, be they racial or municipal or whatever, the ‘white normies’ I guess, would be like “wait, are all these leftists saying it’s not okay to be white? I think that’s pretty fucked up” and they’d inch slightly towards the right, as they’d been alienated by the seemingly crazy people on the left who were, in their minds, shaming them for simply existing. Smart and fucked up, right? 

So, when they put out the 88 posts with the obscure nazi imagery in it, it was the same thing. You tell your suburban mom that 88 stands for HH and that the triangle is further evidence of nazi sympathizing and see what it gets you. She’ll be like “oh, nobody knows that. You sound like a crazy conspiracy theorist!” and here’s the fucked up thing: she’d be right! 

That’s the idea. You do something that’s juuuuuust fucked up enough that the most in-the-know political minds of the opposition recognize it, but still seems kind of benign, and sit back and watch them all bend over backwards trying not to seem crazy. It’s extremely fucked up, but it’s 100% what’s going on. 

The panic that has engulfed the country surrounding the left: that Antifa are terrorists and that the cops are being victimized is just the logical extension of this. When people say “defund the police” (and I’m one of those people) it’s easy to read it as sounding insane if it comes from the mouth of someone that you already think is insane, just like when someone in your crew that’s constantly full of shit actually does something huge and awesome it’s impossible to believe that it’s true even when it is. “You hear Kevin say he’s been fucking Britney Spears?” you may say to your squad. “No fucking way that’s happening.” Then boom! Shit goes Popozao all over ya.

But I digress…

Anyway, that’s the thing. That’s why your aunt is scared of Antifa, because of carefully placed stuff specifically engineered to make you lose your goddamn mind and therefore look crazy. It’s like gaslighting on an instantaneous level. Crazy, man. 

Share

Welp, this is long enough. Thought we’d get to more than 2 of these, but whatever. It’s enough already. I’m gonna be going into a lot of other good panics coming up here in the next issue, including COVID, AIDS, They’re Gonna Take My Guns, Bernie, the Knockout Game and more. Meanwhile, please consider subscribing or sharing this with anyone you think would like it. I like you, and I’m sure I’ll like them too. 

Thanks for hangin out xoxoxoxo