Felons, Fascists, and False Prophets

By Lola Renegade | June 16, 2025

As a child in the Jim and Jane Crow South, I grew up watching The Wizard of Oz every year. In the movie, the iconic chant—”lions and tigers and bears—oh my!”—is more than a child’s (Dorothy) fearful rhyme. It’s a lyrical lament whispered in a dark forest of uncertainty, a rising drumbeat of dread as Dorothy and her companions inch through the unknown. That moment, filled with imaginative terror and looming shadows, mirrors the emotional climate of America today. There’s the Tin Man in search of a heart so that he could have the capacity for love, compassion, and empathy. The scarecrow who wanted a brain to have intelligence, and the Lion was seeking courage. And Dorothy, she just wanted to go home. The forest is ours now—dense with hate of people of color, misinformation, domestic terrorists’ extremism, and institutional decay—and we, too, chant through clenched teeth: “Felons, fascists, and false prophets—oh my!”

Like Dorothy, we wander a fractured path, seeking wisdom, justice, and courage, only to find that the monsters we defy aren’t imagined—they’re elected, emboldened, and televised – the Southern Strategy on steroids. And the Cowardly Lion? He lives within too many of America’s citizens, paralyzed by fear of a degenerate president – Donald Trump – yet aching to act, hoping someone else will lead the charge toward truth. This isn’t Oz—it’s America. And the yellow brick road leads straight through a nation’s reckoning.

The American experiment is on life support, wheezing, coughing, and sputtering under the weight of moral rot, civic amnesia, and weaponized delusion. Once heralded as a beacon of democracy and the greatest country in the world, America now lurches forward like a drunkard sailor at a wake—disoriented, belligerent, and refusing to admit the death in the room – democracy. The stench? It’s not just decay. It’s felons, fascists, and false prophets—oh my.

We’ve entered an era where being indicted and incompetence are no longer disqualifying—it’s branding, a badge of honor, and a shoo-in for an election win. It’s beige (white) America’s own DEI – Demonic, Egregious, and Incompetent and WEI – White, Entitled, and Inept (Aswad Walker). White-collar criminals and political con men wear their mugshots like medals, fundraising off felony charges and calling themselves martyrs. The rule of law is now a revolving door for the powerful and a steel trap for the poor. America’s prisons overflow with Black and brown bodies—children of poverty, trauma, and systemic neglect—while high-ranking officials with rap sheets longer than confessionals run for re-election with full support of their party’s machinery, unlimited funding, and become president of the (un)United States of America as well as congresspeople.

This is not justice. This is sanctioned injustice. A nation that invests $217,517 annually to incarcerate one child in Georgia, but balks at paying its citizens, especially teachers a living wage, is not broken. It is working exactly as designed. God’s rejects of crude, rude, dangerous, and socially unacceptable beings elected Burt Jones to the post of Lt. Governor in Georgia – someone who was a criminal fake elector.

The fascists don’t wear red and white plaid shirts anymore—they wear flag pins and carry pocket Constitutions they’ve never read. The Confederate states are not known for literacy. They chant “freedom” while legislating repression. They claim to protect children while banning books, criminalizing truth, and whitewashing history. From statehouses to school boards, authoritarianism is on the march, wrapped in red, white, and blue and baptized in hate.

They traffic in coded language: “states’ rights,” “election integrity,” “traditional values.” But the translation is clear: racists, voter suppression, anti-Blackness and others of color, anti-LGBTQ+ bigotry, and fear-driven control. The very foundations of democracy—free press, peaceful protest, public education—are under siege, and far too many Americans are either cheering it on or scrolling past it with a want-to-be king – Donald Trump and his cult of assassins – killing everything positive at its helm. Please hold my hair back as I puke.

And then there are the false prophets—slick-haired, greasy, gold-ringed, Bible-toting, scripture-quoting hustlers peddling nationalism as gospel. They’ve traded Christ for Caesar, compassion for control, and truth for tithes. These prophets don’t feed the hungry or clothe the poor. They platform mentally incompetent presidents, bless billionaires, and call it holy. In their world, Jesus votes Republican, wears an AR-15, sanctions unjust wars, and supports tax cuts for the rich. It is clear they don’t believe in the Bible that they so often quote. Their scholarships to hell await them.

But let’s be clear: the Jesus who flipped tables in the temple would flip the entire political-industrial-evangelical complex on its head. These preachers are not defenders of faith—they are CEOs of manipulation, conmen in clerical drag, wolves howling “Hallelujah” with blood on their hands and the smell of Trump’s flabby ass on their breath.

We are not just living through a political crisis—we are in the grip of a moral collapse. Our institutions are cracking under cowardice. Our courts are bleeding justice. Our communities—especially those long trampled under racism, poverty, and systemic neglect—are being sacrificed on altars of power, profit, and piety.

But America cannot be healed by denial. It must be fully exorcised. This is the moment to name the demons: Felons. Fascists. False Prophets. And then we must fight—with truth, with courage, with solidarity, and with a memory longer than the news cycle.

History is watching. The whole world is watching. The ancestors are watching. And the children we claim to love are waiting to see what kind of country we leave behind as their inheritance.

Oh my, indeed.

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The Long Southern Strategy: How Chasing White Voters in the South Changed American Politics

The Southern Strategy was but one in a series of decisions the GOP made not just on race, but on feminism and religion as well, in what Angie Maxwell and Todd Shields call the “Long Southern Strategy.”

The Southern Strategy is traditionally understood as a Goldwater and Nixon-era effort by the Republican Party to win over disaffected white voters in the Democratic stronghold of the American South. To realign these voters with the GOP, the party abandoned its past support for civil rights and used racially coded language to capitalize on southern white racial angst. However, that decision was but one in a series of decisions the GOP made not just on race, but on feminism and religion as well, in what Angie Maxwell and Todd Shields call the “Long Southern Strategy.”

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