My regular column was missing last Saturday because the metastatic cancer that has taken up residence in my lower back got in the way of my writing. Now, on a new regimen of infusion of radioactive isotopes designed to target my unwelcome cancer visitors and with round-the-clock home care, I have enough occasional capacity to think, compose and write for short bursts of time. I have an active mind in a deteriorating infrastructure.

Dennis Covington has written that “There are moments when you stand on the brink of a new experience and understand that you have no choice about it. Either you walk into the experience or you turn away from it, but you know that no matter what you choose, you will have altered your life in a permanent way. Either way, there will be consequences.”

It is a time that comes to us all. I am accompanying myself into this inevitable exploration of an unmapped wilderness journey. Beyond some long-forgotten memories of my past 88 years, including personal and poignant goodbyes as well as goodbyes I deeply regret, I cannot stop trying to comprehend what in the world it is that has spawned this huge MAGA army of irrational Americans.

Historian Heather Cox Richardson has provided some helpful context in her recounting of similar anti-democratic and authoritarian movements in earlier American history.

But those equally unsettling chapters in American democracy occurred before the advent of the internet, the use of which by corporate, political, and foreign entities has succeeded in warping truth.

Trust is the single most important asset any government has; it is truly what makes a nation viable. Putin and Xi daily try to destroy Americans’ trust in each other with an army of bots and trolls running social media campaigns supporting racist domestic terrorists, medical crackpots, and violent racists.

Unable to in any way comprehend how MAGA “believers” are obsessed by Trump mania, I recalled my time at NPR in 1981 when Deborah Amos and Noah Adams made a chilling audio documentary about the People’s Temple cult called “Father Cares.” I have the cassettes in my basement. In the documentary more than 900 people died in the jungles of Guyana. Most of them were willingly and unwillingly participating in a “revolutionary suicide” ordered by the charismatic leader of the People’s Temple, Jim Jones.

Members of Jones’ flock had fled with him to Guyana a year earlier to escape investigation about abuses at the congregation.

The following recorded statement by Jones is eerily and depressingly similar to what we are hearing in America in 2024. “I don’t want you to worship me. I want you to be like I am,” Jones said. “I want you to become what I am. I want you to enjoy the fearlessness that I have, the courage that I have, the compassion that I have, the love that I have, the all-encompassing mercy that I am. I want you to be what I am and something greater. I want you to give you more ...”

That hundreds of people seeking what? could find solace and support in this deranged man remains a mystery to me. That MAGA believers looking for what? can find solace and support in Donald Trump remains a mystery to me.

This fall’s election may be our last chance to put and keep people worthy of our trust in office and thus save our republic.

John Bos lives in Greenfield. Comments and questions are welcome at john01370@gmail.com.