Funerals, Fake Science, and the Five Stages of Grift
A day in America where death became merchandise, medicine became improv comedy, and satire felt like the only honest diagnosis.
I wandered through the Substack wilds this week, and everywhere I stopped the same play was on repeat: Trump treating medicine like cosplay, grief being hawked like merch, and authoritarianism selling itself as free speech. I left comments in the margins, and together they read like one crooked sermon. URLs left naked.
Fake Science
Trump’s vaccine panel is what you get when you swap out immunologists for YouTubers who think colloidal silver cures shingles. It’s not “advisory,” it’s cosplay medicine. They don’t even understand their own votes, yet they’re rewriting the playbook that keeps kids from dying of measles. Meanwhile, he’s strangling the pipeline of actual doctors with the H-1B crackdown. Red states are about to find out that “owning the libs” doesn’t help when you can’t find a resident to cover the ICU. This isn’t health policy. It’s a death cult audition tape, wrapped in a lab coat two sizes too small.
Grief for Sale
You went to a funeral and left with a tote bag, a flag, and a recruitment form. Perfect. They turned grief into a halftime show and called it patriotism. Poof. Mourning became merchandise. When the eulogy reads like a campaign ad and the fog machines get more blessings than the sermon, the cult has already won. Call it what it was: a political rally cloaked in hymnals, a pep rally for vengeance dressed as revival. That is not religion. That is branding with a prayer book.
Abuser-in-Chief
Trump isn’t giving speeches—he’s replaying the cycle of domination every survivor already knows in their bones. That memorial wasn’t a service. It was a WWE hate rally with pyrotechnics, merch tables, and a president auditioning for the role of Abuser-in-Chief. He didn’t honor Kirk. He flexed his cruelty and the crowd fist-pumped like it was communion. The danger isn’t just him. It’s the roar of the audience telling him their emptiness is for sale.
The Five Stages of Grift
MAGA rewrote the stages of grief into the Five Stages of Grift: Deny science, Anger at immigrants, Bargain with God for ratings, Depression when the fog machine breaks, Acceptance that the checks cleared. Basically Weekend at Charlie’s—prop him up, slap a cross behind him, and see if the crowd remembers the words to “God Bless America” before the beer runs out.
NyQuil Science Fair
Trump’s “science” briefings sound like Mad Libs written by a bottle of expired NyQuil. Tylenol causes autism. Amish blood cures it. Cuba’s lack of Advil is a medical miracle. By the end he was wrestling with the word “acetaminophen” like it was the Beast of Revelation. And RFK Jr. was nodding along like a bobblehead at a conspiracy swap meet, calling suppressed Facebook groups “studies.” This isn’t policy. It’s improv comedy performed in a morgue.
Disney Discovers the First Amendment
“Thoughtful conversations with Jimmy” sounded like the corporate version of “we sent him to live on a farm upstate.” What really happened: Disney heard the stampede of canceled subs galloping toward their gates, saw $4 billion evaporate like pixie dust, and suddenly discovered the First Amendment was good for business again.
Free Speech Buffet
Trump’s buffet of “free speech” has locked sneeze guards—you can only reach the parts that flatter him. Everyone else gets handed a “shut up” sandwich. That’s why Jimmy’s return matters. Jokes are democracy’s pressure valve. If a punchline can topple your empire, maybe the empire was built out of papier-mâché and stolen MAGA merch. Humor is free speech. And free speech without humor is just C-SPAN.
America the CVS Receipt
A study confirmed what every American liver already knew: Trump’s presidency turned the nation into a walking CVS receipt. Tylenol sales up 9,000 percent, alcohol through the roof, and crack back in vogue like it’s Studio 54. The real breakthrough? Surviving four years without mixing all three.
Closets and Crosses
Charlie Kirk’s memorial spiked gay dating apps. You put that many repressed culture warriors in one place and suddenly Grindr’s servers looked like January 6th—overloaded, confused, and full of dudes in the wrong costumes. Meanwhile Trump celebrated Kimmel’s return by inhaling McDonald’s like it was the Eucharist of Idiocracy. Stephen Miller’s speech was so Nazi-adjacent that German museums are already looping it in the “Never Again” room.
Protect the Children™
MAGA doesn’t want to protect kids. They want to turn them into a Chick-fil-A combo meal. Nuggets of obedience. Fries of conformity. A milkshake of shame. Fighting back means raising kids who spot a grift faster than a televangelist can say “seed money.” Give them banned books. Teach them to laugh at the sermon when the sermon is bad stand-up. Because nothing short-circuits an authoritarian faster than a child who can say, with a straight face, “That’s not God, that’s gaslighting.”
Rapture on a Tuesday
The Rapture was scheduled for Tuesday. Convenient—right between school drop-off and PTA. Heaven’s logistics team clearly works retail hours. If the sky opens and the faithful pop like corks, capitalism will be ready with robe sales and glowstick halos. Heathen afterparty? Devil’s food cupcakes, Bluetooth speakers, and sermons for kindling.
So that was the day. Fake doctors in cosplay coats, funerals moonlighting as merch tables, kids served up as combo meals, and a Rapture scheduled like an oil change. If this is America’s liturgy, it’s less “Amazing Grace” and more “Oops, All Grift.” But the thing about absurdity is that it’s fragile. Point at it, laugh at it, and suddenly the fog machine sputters, the hymnals fall flat, and the emperor’s MAGA pants are around his ankles. That’s why we keep writing, roasting, and naming it. Because silence isn’t neutral—it’s complicity dressed as manners.
Benediction:
Blessed are the ones who still tell jokes at the funeral. Blessed are the children who smuggle banned books under their pillows. Blessed are the livers that survived four years of CVS receipts. And blessed are you, reader, for remembering that the kingdom of satire is at hand, and the punchline will not be mocked.
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"emptiness is for sale" - true and nice turn of phrase
We got so used to dodgy science in 2020. Fake immunologists and bizarre death recommendations for healthy people..on our shores…
Incase we didnt already notice
those same people
had been using ‘science’
the same way
they use ‘christianity ‘
the same way they use ‘climate change’ ..
a big orange man, or an old blue man ( whitish blue)
circling the same vacuum
Heresy I think
can be afforded on all these fronts.