The Kairos
Cthulhu for America (also called Cthulhu 2016) was a satirical presidential campaign in the 2016 election. The online campaign began as a way to mock the two party monopoly before widening it’s range of satire to encompass the candidates of the year. The genius of the campaign comes from Cthulhu being chosen as the candidate. For Cthulhu is a malevolent squid demigod creature who is seeking to wake from his millennia long slumber and destroy the world in the H.P. Lovecraft’s horror series the Cthullu Mythos.
The campaign creates kairos through the site’s various articles. Using satire the various articles on the site criticize Cthulhu’s “opponents” (Clinton and Trump) by showing flaws in their platforms and views, which in turn creates a sense of urgency. The urgency arises from the reader realizing that both of these candidates are pretty awful and that their policies are poorly thought through or not in the best interest of the public. The campaign also uses hyperbolic messages of doom to create a sense of urgency. These messages range from pointing to failing system to bringing attention to various problems that are unlikely to ever be solved by politicians from either the Democrats or Republicans. The campaign attempts to convey kairos by using logos and pathos appeals. Logos is used to discredit Clinton and Trump with some of the most noteworthy examples being blurbs included about Cthulhu’s opponents policies at the bottom of each of Cthulhu’s policy discussions. One of the more effective ones come at the end of Cthulhu’s economic plans in which Clinton is said to “make outrageous promises to curb the very system that engorges her campaign and her network of shell companies and “charity initiatives,” while Trump is said to “promise to curb the system he directly benefits from with the same old deregulation and tax break song and dance.” Pathos is included throughout the various articles on the site in an attempt to amuse and outrage the reader into agreeing with the campaign. Even though the campaign can be quite amusing, there are times when it goes overboard in the satire and Cthulhu theme which ends up diluting the message of the site. An example of this being Cthulhu’s view on illegal immigration which is that by “conquering the world… all humans will be Americans… and then they shall be eaten.” After browsing through the site, I can’t say that I am motivated by it’s message. The reason for this is that the campaign’s overindulgence in satire and simplistic message makes it hard to be motivated to act. If the campaign reduced it’s humor and focused more on analyzing the faults of the two political parties then it would have been far more effective.
