What color is your kool-aid?
It is a quote from a friend today when we had heard some disturbing news and wondered why some folks are okay with nonsense. Unfortunately, I suppose, most nonsense is the type that slowly, ever so slowly, nearly non-detectably comes to a rolling boil and you find your sad little self in it.
Don’t understand the question? You don’t get the “kool-aid” reference?
The year: 1978
The man: Jim Jones, founder and leader
The place: Jamestown, Guyana
The beginning: 1950’s Indiana as Methodist student pastor, then his own church, which eventually became Peoples Temple Christian Church, Full Gospel.
The unforeseeable tragedy: 909 people died after drinking cyanide laced Kool-aid at the direction of their Pastor Jim Jones. 909 people.
Yes, they were way off base. Way off. Not even the same planet really. But they had followed a personality.
Here are some interesting things said and seen at the scene:
To encourage others to participate in the mass suicide after the Temple folks murdered a senator and his delegation at the airport one temple member states “the ones that they take captured, they’re gonna just let them grow up and be dummies.”
In the one photo of the dead bodies on the pavillion is a sign above Jim Jones’ chair it reads: “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Huh, really.
