Kool Aid

 

Kool Aid

 

Remember those hot summer days as a child when there was need for shade and a cold drink to refresh? As a child I relished those times when my mother ripped open a package of Kool Aid, and poured it into a pitcher filled with ice. Just the bright color of flavored sugar set my taste buds astir. A cooling refreshment at its best.

 

Kool Aid was invented by a man named Edwin Perkins in his mother’s kitchen in Hastings, Nebraska in 1927. First called Fruit Smack it became an instant hit as the perfect summer drink for kids. To this day that city has an annual Kool-Aid  Days celebration in August.

 

This  popular summer drink took a turn for the worse back in late 1978 when cult leader Jim Jones laced grape Kool Aid with cyanide poison. The whole commune of  918 people, 304 of them children, were tricked into drinking it. All died a horrible death. Since then, Kool Aid fell out of popularity.

 

In our day “drinking the Kool Aid” has taken on the connotation of being suckered into an idea, a cause, or a particular point of view that distorts the truth. Unwittingly persuaded to join the crowd, enticed by the persuasion of a personality, a cause, promise of a better life or just the sweet taste on something new.

 

I believe there are many Kool Aid stands run by politicians, government officials and social media who are selling sugar laced lies and distortions to entice our nation into anarchy. This past week is a good example. What actually happened and what we were told happened was laced with poisonous distortions.

 

Caveat Emptor (let the drinker beware). We are being encouraged to sip the Kool-Aid that is destroying our nation!