America’s Little Shop of Horrors

In 2016, there was a plant that was starting to grow in the United States.

This plant was something completely different. It could talk. It was also very desirable to certain belief systems. It was larger than life. It didn’t play well with the rest of the garden though and it poisoned everyone that touched it.

It made people sick inside. The plant would listen to what people wanted to hear and then like a genie in a bottle promise to grant wishes. Despite the fact that the plant was dangerous and poisonous, it was a very profitable attraction and there was a high demand for it. People loved to hear that their wishes, however unreasonable they were, would be granted. However, the plant had a high price tag, and the payment was in the sacrifice of logic, reason, and human souls.

News and media outlets began to report on the phenomenon of this plant. People that hardly paid attention to the news were watching the stories every day. Capturing the public attention, the plant propagated and grew. By Spring, the seeds had been spread all over the United States. People were planting these seeds in their own backyard.

Over the next four years, the plant took over. The plant grew and grew and little seedlings formed all over the country. People tried to stop it, but they were told to stand down, because every plant in this country deserves to grow, and all plants, even the poisonous ones, deserve space in the garden.

Farmers seeking profit in areas where they had not seen opportunities like this in years took out all the other plants and just grew this one. It has spread everywhere now and worse, we have recently discovered this week it will kill you.

At the end of the musical Little Shop of Horrors, the players realize the plant has grown too strong. The man-eating plant is seeking world domination. The shopkeeper tries to kill the plant from the inside but he is quickly eaten.

A few weeks ago before Christmas, I was driving through rural Wyoming and I turned on the radio. The only station available was a conservative media radio host talking about our recent election and how it was illegal, fake, and that “patriots” should be coming together and hounding their representatives to get it overturned.

I stopped into a hotel where the MAGA and the police flag were in the back of the store flying instead of the American flag. There was a strange-looking plant growing there.