Red Hat Rising
Infection of the Mind Begins with Silence
One by one, the chants replaced their thoughts—until she asked the one question that changed everything.
No one remembered exactly when it started—just that the hats came first.
It was a Tuesday when Carol Jensen noticed the change. Old Bill from the hardware store, who once grumbled about politics only after his third beer, was suddenly standing on Main Street with a megaphone, wearing a bright red cap that said, *“Again Means Forever.”* He repeated it like it was scripture.
“Again Means Forever!”
“Again Means Forever!”
The phrase was nonsense, but the rhythm was addictive. Before long, others began to echo it. Church ladies. Teenagers. The postman. They chanted at school board meetings, diners, the grocery store parking lot. What began as an oddity spread like a prairie fire.
Carol had worn the hat once too, years ago. Back when things felt uncertain, and a voice on the screen offered answers wrapped in pride and pain. But something in her cracked the day her brother Mark turned up with that glassy look in his eyes, repeating headlines like gospel.
When she tried to talk sense into him, he just blinked and said, “There’s nothing to ask. We already know.”
That’s when she knew it wasn’t a virus of the body—it was of the mind.
She started noticing the pattern. The red hatters all watched the same news loops, doom-scrolling their feeds while mumbling pre-approved phrases. “Fake news.” “They hate freedom.” “Protect our way.” Their questions had disappeared, replaced by answers they never earned.
One night, Carol sat alone, reading old journals she’d kept during college. She found a line scribbled in the margin of a philosophy textbook:
“The moment you stop asking questions is the moment someone else starts answering for you.”
That night, she stopped sleeping. Not from fear—but from a new obsession. She began slipping questions onto sticky notes and leaving them around town.
"What if they’re wrong?"
"Who profits from your anger?"
"When did you last change your mind?"
At first, they were torn down, mocked. But one day, a note remained. Someone had written beneath it, in shaky handwriting: "I don’t remember."
That was the beginning.
She started speaking to small groups—never with answers, only with questions. They met in libraries, abandoned churches, and barns. One by one, people began to remove their red hats—not in shame, but in wonder, like someone waking from a dream.
It didn’t happen all at once. Some held onto the hats with white-knuckled desperation. Some never let go. But for others, the cure began quietly—with a single, terrifying, liberating thought:
"What if I’ve been wrong?"
And in that moment, the chant faded.
The red hats didn’t disappear. But they stopped rising.
The questions did instead.