Zeitgeist Trends: May 26, 2022

Burning man and Dark MAGA

“What fresh hell is this?” —Dorothy Parker

NOT LONG AFTER the term Dark MAGA wormed its way into pop-political parlance, a homeless man in Chicago was set on fire while sleeping near a loading dock under Trump Tower.

While listening to the news yesterday, I froze in my kitchen to parse the details of the story. The broadcast’s sequence of reports was off-putting. Just moments before the burning man story, someone was opinionating about closeted manchild Madison Cawthorn’s publicized hex (after his scandal-laden primary loss).

In a histrionic Instagram post, Cawthorn announced that the Trump base was revving its engines to go “Dark MAGA” on everyone’s ass. The term, borrowed from a Twitter hashtag, is in reference to a punished, more unhinged version of Donald Trump running for reelection in 2024.

Dark MAGA first appeared on a social media post in mid-March of this year. The tweet’s hashtag (the account is now suspended) was accompanied by a photograph of a gorgeous but ominous-looking black and gold tower (actually a shot of the Bryant Park Hotel in New York). Reminiscent of an image you might’ve seen in a Harry Potter movie. Picture the Tarot’s Tower card repurposed by a QAnon imbecile.

Dreaming Astrology

I pay more attention to alarming peripheral events like the burning man tragedy than attempting to maneuver the labyrinth of transits to world-affair astrological charts. I’ve learned that attempts to unravel specifics (and predictions) by following mundane astrology’s traditional rules is a lesson in frustration.