In addition to insults, members hurled shoes at each other in a school board meeting. A man was beaten in the Greenwood Waffle House after accusing another man’s girlfriend of wearing “Christmas pants” in July. People seemed uniquely primed to believe in plots and conspiracies, miracles and demons. When the outgoing police chief in Greenwood stood up to deliver his farewell speech, he had this to say about the mayor: “Antichrist, Beelzebub, deceiver, destructor, liar, seven heads and ten horns, oh, Satan, the devil himself—that’s the Carolyn McAdams I know.”
