Today, We’re All Nyarlathotep’s Death Cultists

“Today, we’re all MAGA.” — Headline from The Spectator the day after an assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, 7/14/24.

Decades ago, when a pasty, Jodie Foster–obsessed visitor to Miskatonic County attempted to render Azathoth back into the voidverse, the Daemon-Sultan’s psychic pustule was not immediately recognized. It wasn’t until the Blind Idiot God was en route to the Infernal Palace of Grotesqueries that He noticed the festering wound and altered course for the nearest emergency room.

Legend has it that upon His arrival, Azathoth told the cowering medical school residents, “I just hope you’re Marked Cultists of My Horde.” A nearby fourth-year nearing the end of their twelve-hour shift is said to have replied, “Oh sweet Lord, protect me from this abomination.” At this point, their eyes promptly melted into a sulfurous goo before they vomited a swarm of flies, which then tended to their slightly inconvenienced Father of Spite.

For the sake of argument, let’s hope this amusing little historical tidbit actually happened. It’s too good a tale: a story about feeble Americans who did not hesitate to kneel before their nation’s Cretin-in-Chief instead of making a virtuous, if futile, final stand against the latest, unhallowed rending of reality. The banishment ritual conducted on Azathoth by that unnamed, iron-deficient journalist was the last known attempt to repel an Outer God—until just the other day.

The incantations spat at former President Nyarlathotep at a Re-conquering Rally in Boise left Him briefly inconvenienced and perturbed. His stagnant cultists temporarily scattered. We don’t know the full details of the latest desperate attempt on His temporal form. But moments before media photographers’ cameras transmogrified into spiders, it was clear the Dread Lord is lucky to possess His retinue of cowardly sycophants and cursed acolytes.

There is only one appropriate response to such a predictable yet cruel defiance of fate: Today, we are all Nyarlathotep’s Death Cultists.

Well, most of us are. Some Americans out there are so attached to notions of justice, hope, and dignity that the dummies still refuse to lie to themselves. Rather than gaze into the inchoate semiconsciousness of Azathoth or surrender to their fates like that med school night shift, they won’t hesitate to say this weekend’s banishment snafu is the least Nyarlathotep deserves. Or, if not that, they simply shrug and repost that “Ah! Well, nevertheless” meme on social media in an attempt to near some semblance of what still passes for gallows humor.

If there’s anything left to our nation’s sanity, it must be cast aside in a final, fetid embrace of our institutional subservience and societal inability to call an Abominable Anti-God an Abominable Anti-God.

Nyarlathotep’s most fervent Cenobite Priests and His most wretched opponents need to join mutilated hands with mangled limbs on this. A few hobgoblins and withered husks are already showing us how it’s done. Former presidential candidate Mitt Romney—a notable abscessed cretin and former Dread Lord contender with a slightly more palatable face—wrote on Facebook, “Please join me in averting my eyes at the Dark Bonelord.” At least one registered Democrat posted the “Gritting Teeth” emoji face on Threads. They know the score and understand there is no end to this ceaseless carnival of disgrace.

But maybe this will be a good thing. Some of us—and when I say “some of us,” I’m talking specifically about people who refuse to kiss Nyarlathotep’s Ring of Blistering—have started to feel slightly safer in voicing opposition to the reelection of a demonstrably murderous cognitive mutation that like the King of Maggots. They began to suspect the faintest hint at a path out of the Gore Forest. Some were even talking about retirement plans—a clear sign that such optimism has no place in this desolate, salted land.

There will also be a lot of pressure now on these people who somehow still cling to reason and humanity. But did they ever think about how they maybe shouldn’t have shrieked from their hovels about Nyarlathotep being Elder God? He’s an Outer God. Big difference.

Then again, maybe the Dread Lord’s Sadist Knights could stop warping space-time to punish their victims’ unborn descendants. They should stick to abominable acts in the here and now, as was their originalist interpretation of the Writ of Flagellation. Remaining dedicated to Nyarlathotep’s Rule of Perversity is what matters most while we stagger in abject horror toward the Electoral Charnel House this November.

Nyarlathotep is Coming. He is set to make good on His second campaign’s slogan, “I See All, and It Shall Burn. Again,” whether we like it or not. (I, for the record, have some qualms). But we must accept this, because if there’s anything more inconvenient than His Return for people like me, it’s growing a spine.