I’ve been a fan of "American Horror Story" since it first came out. The first two seasons were scary, but everything since then has just been somewhat unsettling. We’ve been on somewhat of a lame streak, but this current season — season 7 — has undoubtedly broken that streak. The season just came to a conclusion on Tuesday, November 14, 2017. American Horror Story: Cult is absolutely terrifying because it’s literally happening around us as you read this article. Quite literally, it takes place in my home state of Michigan this year. But that isn’t entirely what I mean.
The story centers around a gay couple — Ivy (Alison Pill) and Ally (Sarah Paulson) — and a local man, Kai Anderson (Evan Peters) in the months following the 2016 American election. After Trump’s election was announced, two groups in a smaller town began to form — (primarily) liberals, shaken by Trump’s election and more conservatives/radicals, welcoming Trump’s election. Ivy and Ally fall into the former group and Kai falls heavily into the latter category. As the season developed, Kai created and grew a cult centered around inciting fear in the hearts of the general public through a series of murders and raids by a band of creepy clowns.
This is what terrified me the most: after Kai had stirred up enough trouble in the town, he took to running for councilman to save the public from the discord that he had created. Sound familiar? There’s a good reason why.
In essence, this is the election of 2016 that led us to our present president, Donald J. Trump. Curiously enough, Kai even identified as a supporter of Trump and the season opens on his delight at the announcement that Trump was America’s new president-elect.
This season has been terrifyingly paralleled to what’s going on in America, even so much so that before airing one episode, they had to cut portions of it as a result of the mass shooting that happened just days before in Las Vegas.
It also had some striking parallelism going on in terms of Trump’s campaign. As soon as Donald Trump came into the public eye and started expressing some of his more judgmental opinions toward immigrants and other minority groups, a lot of hate groups started coming out of the woodwork to showcase their hatred as well. Like Kai, not all of the violence following his statements can be directly attributed to him, but it was even at Trump’s own rallies that things began going south. His own catchphrases were even being used in statements.
I know American Horror Story is supposed to be a work of fiction, but this season has hit a bit too close to home in terms of the political climate. AHS’s fear-inciting electee happened to be the leader of a cult. We’ve already elected a fear-inciting leader for ourselves. There’s no solid evidence that Trump is running a cult, certainly, and I’m not trying to imply that there is, but Kai Anderson was watching Trump and in the wake of his election, formed a cult. Who is to say there isn’t someone else is out here, in the real world, watching Trump in the very same way?
Signed,
A NASTY Woman
