With a MAGA speaker advocating for ‘hand-to-hand combat’ against mermaids, will theaters be safe when ‘The Little Mermaid’ premieres?

Alright, folks, let’s unpack this one.

The other day, Amanda Grace, the founder of Ark of Grace Ministries (which, frankly, I don’t have the gumption to learn about at the moment), spoke at ReAwaken America, a far-right Christian nationalist event held at Miami’s Trump National Doral hotel, and we’ve never seen a call to action that weaves neuroticism and confidence quite like this one.

During her episode, Grace touched on a variety of problems plaguing her imagination, including the “seductive, seducing spirits” (yes, “seductive” and “seducing” were said one after the other) and all of their “wickedness” and “perversion,” pointing to technologically advanced mermaids and the divide in the kingdom of darkness as proof that Americans need to act now.

And how should Americans act against the mermaids? Hand-to-hand combat, obviously.

As much as I don’t want to entertain the idea that this might get taken seriously, the timing is awfully atrocious; who’s to say that this won’t lead to screenings of The Little Mermaid getting filled with some violent bad-faith players seeking to put an end to the dark kingdom’s encroaching form?

Well, if Grace’s words have moved you to even consider waging war against the mermaids, it’s about time I rained on your parade: Hand-to-hand combat isn’t going to cut it. As a mermaid myself, I’m legally obligated to inform you that physical contact with any member of our species will turn you into a homosexual, and I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that if you’re the type to buy into Grace’s speech, that’s a tidbit that will scare you.

And if, God forbid, you prefer to show off your maladjusted patriotism with a bullet or two, I’m sorry to say that that won’t help either; puncturing a mermaid’s skin will release our fish scales into the air, thereby turning our homosexual pathogen into an airborne phenomenon — that kingdom of darkness is starting to look pretty good now, huh?

The moral of the story is that I don’t know how to explain to anyone what the world is coming to if these are the sorts of people that are being given even a shred of a platform, and so scaring off far-right idealists with equally-deranged counter-nonsense seems as good a response as any. Indeed, we’ve laughed at them, we’ve calmly debunked their claims, and we’ve tried letting these people tucker themselves out. Maybe the next step is fighting imagination with imagination.

The Little Mermaid is due in theaters on May 26.