By Delilah McSwain
May 4, 2025
Some folks handle snakes to prove the power of God. Others do it to prove the power of cable television. I once worked on a series called Snake Salvation for National Geographic, and I’m not exaggerating when I say the show had more bite than budget. It followed Appalachian Pentecostals who danced with copperheads, diamondbacks, and their cousins — and I do mean the reptiles, although the congregation had a few two-legged vipers in the pews as well. They’d lift up the serpents in faith and quote the Book of Mark like it was Blue Cross Blue Shield: “They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them.”
An interesting takeaway I had from the show was how many people in those Pentecostal pews were recovering from opiate addiction — folks trading one kind of deliverance for another, trying to fill the hole without falling back into it.
I think about that sometimes when I look at what’s left of the Republican Party. What started as a political movement has turned into a full-blown snake-handling revival — except the snake is Donald Trump, and the venom is seeping into the Constitution. The difference is, nobody’s quoting scripture anymore. They’re quoting Truth Social.
We’ve let this man bite the body politic over and over again. And not just us — the whole damn world’s feeling it. Politico ran a piece this week on the global spread of Trumpism, calling it “an unholy fusion of conspiracy, charisma, and cultural contagion.” From Brazil to Hungary to your uncle’s Facebook feed, the man’s venom is everywhere.
And like any good poison, it builds up slowly until it hits a critical mass and all of a sudden you can’t feel your hands on the wheel anymore.
The symptoms are hard to miss. Election workers hounded out of their jobs by zealots who think ballot boxes are rigged by the ghost of Hugo Chávez. News anchors on NewsMAX and OAN speaking in tongues about deep states, Jewish space lasers, and gas prices as a sign that the Four Horsemen are riding Teslas. The QAnon faithful have split like spoiled communion wine — some clinging to Q+, others inventing new letters, and the rest backsliding to P, where JFK Jr. still lives in a secret condo beneath a Dallas Whataburger.
Then there’s the Epstein vortex, where no one went to prison, but somehow everyone’s still implicated. Where exactly are the tapes? Where’s the rest of the evidence? And while we’re asking: Diddy? Where are those receipts? I want the whole thing leaked like the Pam and Tommy tape, only with fewer drumming prosthetics and more subpoenas.
Add to that a Congress that now includes one man who believes wind turbines make whales explode and another who described January 6 as a “guided tour that got out of hand,” and you start to wonder if the venom hasn’t just reached the bloodstream — it’s hit our collective brain stem.
I’ve been watching The Last of Us — episode 2 of season 2 is must-see TV — and I do know this much: just because you’re still walking doesn’t mean you’re not infected.
Which brings us, in a sideways slither, to Tim Friede — a man in Wisconsin who has voluntarily let himself be bitten by venomous snakes over 200 times. Not for God. Not for TV ratings. For science.
According to The New York Times, Friede’s bloodstream may now be the secret ingredient in a universal antivenom. His immune system is like a war hero’s scrapbook: full of scars, but stronger for it.
Now I’m wondering: is that us?
Have we let Trump bite us so many times that we’re finally building antibodies — an instinctual resistance to the next strongman with a slogan and a smirk? Is Gen Z our Tim Friede, weathered and immune, blood rich with lessons we paid for in court dates and constitutional hemorrhaging?
Or are we just staggering toward the emergency room, too proud to call the ambulance?
Because faith alone doesn’t stop the venom. Not in Appalachia. Not in Washington. And not at Mar-a-Lago, where the only gospel being preached is “I alone can fix it.”
And just when you think the venom’s done spreading, you look up and see this headline at the top of Drudge Report:
“Trump allies plot to invoke Insurrection Act on Day One.”
Asked whether he would uphold the Constitution, Trump responded:
“We’ll look at that. We have to be treated fairly.”
He hasn’t even said he’ll obey the Constitution. That’s the crux of it, isn’t it? We’re watching a man campaign for the presidency while leaving open the possibility that he won’t uphold the foundational document he’s supposed to swear an oath to.
The snake isn’t coiled. It’s on the move.
The question now isn’t whether we’ve been bitten.
It’s whether we die on the way to the hospital —
or live long enough to develop antibodies.
Filed Sunday by Delilah McSwain, with a pocketknife, a bottle of antivenom, and a Motel 6 keycard somewhere outside Knoxville.
Links for Further Reckoning:
- 🐍 The Man Who Let Snakes Bite Him 200 Times – NYT
- 🙏 The Snake-Handling Churches of Appalachia – National Geographic
- 📺 Snake Salvation – National Geographic on Vimeo
- 📈 Trump’s Political Poison Goes Global – Politico
- 🧪 How Much Poison Can Democracy Withstand? – Gund Foundation
- ⚖️ Trump Allies Plan to Invoke the Insurrection Act – NBC News
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