Wait. Wait.
Hold that image.
I know what you’re thinking.
That’s the young counselor, the lone survivor, alone in a canoe at the end of the movie. That’s Camp Crystal Lake. Kevin Bacon and all the other counselors are dead, but she’s survived. She’s dazed, in shock, but she’s made it. She’s made it.
And then …
Chh, chh, chh … ah, ah, ahhh.
SlashFilm.com says Friday the 13th “remains one of the most shamelessly entertaining slasher franchises of all time,” but the 1980 B-movie original was arguably the best and a nice challenge to John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978). If we’re keeping score, Halloween now boasts 13 iterations, Friday the 13th 12, and their illegitimate lovechild, A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), nine. But Michael Myers was more discreet, a lone gunman so to shriek. Friday the 13th’s Jason and Elm Street’s Freddy actually faced off (pardon the weird pun) in Freddy vs. Jason (2003). In the end — but not the end of the original Friday the 13th — they all amounted to a lot of dumbness with gratuitous helpings of blood. Which is where we are today.
This Friday will mark the second Friday the 13th of the 2026 calendar year, which is interesting but also scary, especially since the last time a calendar year featured two Friday the 13ths in a row was 2015. To wit, 2015 was:
- the first year since the middle class developed that the majority of America was no longer part of it.
- the first year that gun deaths became as common as traffic deaths in the United States.
- the year that more Mexican immigrants were leaving the United States than entering it.
- the year when white supremacist Dylann Roof shot and killed nine members of Charleston’s historic Emanuel AME Church(including a senior pastor and a state senator) during a Bible study session because he couldn’t get laid. (A girl he was interested in fell for a Black guy.)
- when Sandra Bland died in jail after a Texas state trooper arrested her because she argued with him for giving her a traffic ticket for failing to signal a lane change.
- the year the Obama administration’s negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program produced a deal.
- the year the world finally achieved an agreement on addressing climate change.
- the year Donald J. Trump formally announced his candidacy for the 2016 presidential election at a campaign rally and speech after descending a golden escalator in the Big Apple’s Trump Tower.
By the end of Trump’s first presidency, rational, sane Americans resembled the lone survivor unmoored on Camp Crystal Lake — shocked, appalled, and dazed — but they made it.
Trump had further gutted the American middle class, was closer to aiding and abetting gun violence than eliminating it, reversed several environmental regulations, withdrew from the aforementioned climate change accord, and implemented an inhumane family-separation policy for migrants, even though more were leaving than arriving. He also appointed three conservative barf bags to the U.S. Supreme Court, and, when his reelection bid turfed in 2020, his batshit supporters perpetrated the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
The sane U.S. citizenry survived it — but only just. Trump’s most underrated achievement was actually helming the first presidency since Herbert Hoover when a sitting president was defeated and his party lost its majorities in both chambers of Congress.
Biden wasn’t great, but at least he managed to avoid being an international disgrace with pedophile files in his closet.
Today, as the second of three Friday the 13ths of 2026 approaches, our politics are a sad sequel of MAGA asininity, and Trump has doubled down on dumb and bloody. Plus, a large contingent of the ignorant cretins who voted for him is suddenly acting as surprised as any of the stupid characters who served themselves up on platters for Jason, Freddy, or Michael in all their ridiculous sequels.
MEMO TO TRUMP VOTERS: You didn’t cast ballots for nuanced drama, heady action, clever comedy, or an inspiring adventure narrative. You bought tickets for naked greed and shameless perfidy, a cast of bad actors and a budget devoid of meaning, conscience, and integrity. You wanted torture porn — and you got it.
Enjoy the climax.
It won’t be redacted. — E.R. Bills
Fort Worth native E.R. Bills is the author of seven nonfiction titles, including The 1910 Slocum Massacre. An Act of Genocide in East Texas and Tell-Tale Texas: Investigations in Infamous History.
This column reflects the opinions and fact-gathering of the author(s) and only the author(s) and not the Fort Worth Weekly. To submit a column, please email Editor Anthony Mariani at Anthony@FWWeekly.com. He will gently edit it for clarity and concision.
