What's With The Kool-Aid?

It has been pointed out to me that everyone may not understand the meaning behind the phrase 'drinking the Kool-Aid' that I use so often, especially younger readers.  Here's the origin of the phrase.

Jim Jones was an Indiana native born in 1931.  Apparently, he was a wierdo from early age, obsessed with religion and death.  He studied people like Stalin and Hitler, and joined the Communist Party USA in 1951 [side note - some of Obama's lifelong friends belong to the Communist Party USA].  He decided to infiltrate the church to try to spread his Marxism, and he floated from church to church for a while to find one he liked.  Frustrated, he eventually started his own church called the Peoples Temple Christian Church Full Gospel.  He gained notoriety when he moved the church to San Francisco, and he began rubbing shoulders with big-time politicians.  The increased fame also brought increased scrutiny, and he moved his church when a report came out about the physical, emotional, and sexual abuse going on in his 'church'.  They relocated to Jonestown, Guyana in 1977 to a settlement he had begun a few years earlier.  It was intended to be a socialist utopia where he could hide out and be a 'pure' communist, but it served nicely as a hideout from the media, too.

In 1978, Leo Ryan, a Congressman from San Francisco, led a fact-finding mission to investigate alleged human rights abuses in Jones' cult.  During the visit, one of the Temple members attacked Ryan with a knife, and though the attack was thwarted, it caused an abrupt end to the mission.  More Temple members followed the fact-finding crew to the airport and opened fire as they were boarding the plane.  Several people were killed, including Ryan, making him the only sitting Congressman ever to die in the line of duty.

Later that day, Jones persuaded his entire church to drink grape Kool-Aid (technically, it was Flavor Aid, but it just doesn't have the same ring) laced with arsenic and a sedative.  In all, 909 people died in one of the largest mass suicides ever, and the largest non-natural disaster civilian death event until the 9/11 attacks.  Of the dead, 276 were children.

From that point on, the phrase 'drinking the Kool-Aid' became the expression describing otherwise intelligent people willingly following a cult leader to their own death.

Just a little historical explanation there.  I'm sure we'll be using the phrase frequently over the next four years.

There's my two cents.