There’s an ancient fear that always asks: Who did this? Who angered the gods? When storms crush fields or floods drown children at camp, our ancestors blamed Ba’al, Moloch, Ra — anything to put a face on chaos.

Modern Americans pretend we’ve outgrown this. We trust policy, science, data. But scratch the surface and the eclipse fear is still there, buried under hashtags and TED Talks. And the moment the river rises, the blame returns: “Trump did this.”

When a wall of water smashed Hill Country, the rational class didn’t just mourn or question zoning codes. They built the old altar: Trump cut the staff, Trump made the storm. The scapegoat logic never died; it just swapped robes. The “coastal priesthood” who mock faith became accidental sun worshipers — burning effigies, chanting curses, feeding dread into a single name.

The faithful have always spoken of a God-shaped hole — a quiet space in the heart for something larger. If you seal it up, it doesn’t vanish; it mutates. These modern apostles of reason filled that hollow with status and credentials but kept the animal dread. The hole stayed. And fear found its Trickster.

They made Trump into the Forrest Gump of their apocalypse — but reversed. Not the clueless bystander in every photo, but the hidden cause they see in every flood, every suicide, every riot. He’s the cosmic spoiler who ruins the final moral scene they rehearsed since their grandparents marched in Selma or liberated camps in Europe. They dream of being the vanguard who ends fascism forever — but the Golem of flyover country hijacked their Moonshot.

They hate him so much they keep the ritual alive. Giant baby blimps. Dart boards. Hashtags. The effigy burning never ends. But old magic knows: burn the doll long enough and you feed the thing you fear. Their constant dread turned a mortal buffoon into an accidental tulpa — a thoughtform, an egregore, fed by every “Trump did this.”

Meanwhile, the villagers who made him never saw him as a god. He’s a flawed champion — a clay battering ram to guard picket fences and potlucks while the coastal priesthood tries to finish the moral exorcism. He was never their savior. Just a stand-in while they hold on to their Groom, their faith, their leave-it-to-Beaver quiet.

In the end, it’s the so-called rational who keep the fire burning. They think they’re defeating a villain but they’re conjuring a Trickster sun named SOL — an orange eclipse they can’t look away from. What started in the head dripped down into the heart. They became accidental Jesus freaks for the very monster they swear they hate.

If it floods like a god, punishes like a god, devours like a god — it’s a god. Not for the villagers who built a clay champion, but for the ones who can’t stop worshiping the fear.

The Trump-shaped hole isn’t just in their heads anymore.

And they’ll keep the fire burning.

Amen.