EP #57: Culling the Herd

This month is the 100th anniversary of a historically seminal event that took place in Appalachian East Tennessee in 1925: The Scopes Monkey Trial. This event occurred before the advent of television and was the first time in history a newsworthy trial was broadcast nationwide over the radio. The “trial became a symbol of the larger social anxieties associated with the cultural changes and modernization that characterized the decade of the 1920’s in the United States.” Currently, our nation is dealing with the shock and anxieties associated with the cultural changes brought on by Trump and his MAGA acolytes, accompanied by the rise of homegrown fascism. Mama B. feels a straight line can be drawn from the Scopes Monkey trial, where the theory of evolution was pitted against fundamentalist evangelical Biblical teachings that have not changed one iota since 1925, to the brilliantly red MAGA controlled state Tennessee has become, through to the national level ecosystem of MAGA Republican politics where religion and money determine the “survival of the fittest” and who gets culled from the human herd.