"No one wakes up in the morning, and after a shower and that first cup of coffee, decides that they’re going to join a cult. No one approached by someone with an engaging smile and an encyclopedic knowledge of the bible thinks “Cool! A cult! Just what I’ve been looking for!” Yet, every day in America, people join up with groups that are labelled cults."
So, You Want To Join a Cult - Part I- Aes Duir Blog
But it's not just religions that spawn cults. The most insidious cult in America right now is the MAGA Cult, the cult of the man I call "Losin' Don", Donald J. Trump - former President of the United States.
It didn't start out as a cult - they never do. I don't think it even started out as a serious run for the presidency. 2015 seems like a lifetime ago, but Trump's announcement that he was running for the Republican Party presidential nomination seemed like a big joke. There was no shortage of respectable, experienced, serious contenders among the crowd of Republican governors and senators. But Trump stood out from that crowd. Not because he had any new and exciting ideas, or had a proven track record of leadership, but because he was brash, loud and Americans love a spectacle.
American politics is seldom about who is best qualified. In a crowded primary field there is a feedback loop of polls and money. Those with name recognition have an early advantage - in polls conducted before any voting takes place typically no one receives anywhere near a majority, but the ones that lead the pack are viewed as "winners" and receive the lion's share of funding, enabling them to run ads to increase their name recognition. News organizations stop paying attention to those with low poll numbers, reinforcing the name recognition of the leaders. Voters, if they're thinking at all, start considering "electability". They figure that if Candidate "A" is polling so low and isn't attracting much in donations, he or she can't win in the general election, so they slowly (or not so slowly) fade away and have to drop out. Trump benefitted from all of this. As people began to drop out it became a contest between Trump and various "not-Trumps".
Even after he secured the Republican nomination, I'm not sure if it was a cult yet. There were still plenty of Never Trumpers in the Republican Party who wished he would just go away, but once a nominee is chosen, the parties typically close ranks around their candidate. In the general election the irrational hatred that many people had for Hillary Clinton made the difference. Many voters who would have voted for Senator Sanders or Vice President Biden held their noses and voted for Trump. "How bad could it be?" many Republicans thought, "We'll keep him in line".
It was once Trump was elected that the vast army of his voters transitioned from an amorphous mob into a cult. It was when he had the power of the presidency that he began to wield his power as a cult leader.
The Way, the cult that I was a member of, started out as just another rural small town church. From the mid fifties to the mid sixties its leader was just a guy who travelled around teaching his Bible class and holding services at his family's farmstead. It wasn't until the sixties were almost over when he convinced a bunch of hippies that he had "The Truth" that he was able to turn his small potatoes operation into a worldwide movement with him as the virtually infallible head of it all.
Something that all cult leaders love is persecution. It allows them to present themselves as fighting against the evil system. I used to hear how when we were being attacked it showed how the Devil was worried and was trying to stop us. This soon became the line that Trump and his followers took. According to them, everything that Trump did was godly and patriotic, therefore anyone who opposed him was satanic and un-American. Any reporting that pointed out his corruption, or even his policy mistakes, was fake news. News organizations were "the enemy of the people". Other politicians were "treasonous" or "traitors" and should be "locked up".
One of the characteristics of cults that is often overlooked is the fear of looking stupid. I don't subscribe to the idea that cult members are brainwashed (at least in most cases), but that they have so much time and energy invested that they can't bring themselves to admit that they may have been wrong. (I wrote some blog posts about this concept Brainwashing, Deprogramming). Trump's followers have made MAGA such a part of their identity that any suggestion that Trump was a bad president, or indeed any criticism at all of him, becomes a personal attack. They support positions that Trump holds that are in direct opposition to their own long-held beliefs and do so without any awareness of the contradiction inherent therein. Two examples illustrate this phenomenon:
At one time mainstream Republicans were the party of moral uprightness (or so they claimed). To them the Democrats were the party of hedonism, licentiousness, and ungodliness. In the nineties they viewed the Clintons as prime examples of this. Much of the conservative opposition to Clinton was ostensibly due to his sexual escapades with an intern in his White House office. They prized religious piety as a characteristic to which politicians should aspire. (We'll ignore for now their dislike for Carter, the most visibly Christian of all recent presidents) Yet with Trump, who has cheated on all his wives, has a history of behaving unethically in his business dealings, and is seemingly ignorant of even the basics of Christianity is viewed as a messiah figure, sent by God to save the nation and its Christian citizens. This isn't hyperbole. Many Christians compare Trump to Cyrus, a Persian monarch who according to the Bible, freed the Jews and allowed them to return to Israel and rebuild their temple. And is called "messiah" in the Bible. This is not something that is believed by a tiny fringe, but is a widespread belief among Trump followers.
The other example is more recent. Trump followers tend to be Second Amendment absolutists. They made Kyle Rittenhouse, who killed two people and seriously wounded a third during a protest in Kenosha Wisconsin, into a hero. Kyle was all-in with MAGA world and even had a personal meeting with Trump. Trump people loved him and defended him in social media, viewing his actions as perfect examples of self defense, and why gun ownership is a sacred right. Kyle reciprocated with unqualified support of Trump. Trump, however, isn't a Second Amendment absolutist, he changes his positions when it's convenient - if he even has core beliefs other than securing a payday for himself. Last week Rittenhouse posted on X that he thought Trump was weak on the Second Amendment and could no longer support him or vote for him in November. The reaction from the MAGAverse was swift and vicious. The thousands of Trump acolytes, instead of considering that Murderin' Kyle might have a point and having an open debate about Trump's Second Amendment bona fides, decried Rittenhouse's words as lack of loyalty. The previously holy Second Amendment took second place to their holy avatar, Donald Trump.
One might ascribe the obstinacy of Trump voters to a simple desire to see conservative politics overcome liberalism. And in a general election where Democrats are demonized as socialists, communists and pedophiles, that may be part of it, but what about their fealty to him even against other Republicans? Trump has convinced his faithful that politicians whose conservative credentials are unimpeachable, like Mitt Romney, Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz and former Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse are Republicans In Name Only (RINOs). Republicans who could have been much more efficient at advancing a conservative agenda have been lumped in with far left lawmakers and as equally worthy of MAGA scorn. They had a chance to nominate someone else this time around. Ron DeSantis, as unlikeable as he is, has proved as governor of Florida that he knows how to implement the MAGA agenda, but he is efficient - he knows how to get things done (as much as I dislike those "things"). Nikki Haley, as much as she toed the right wing line, was actually a fairly moderate governor. Nonetheless, Trump got at least 50% of the vote in all but one primary.
Not everybody who votes for Trump is in his cult. Some people just hold their noses and vote against the Democratic candidate, because they dislike the Democrats' policies. Even among the cultified, there's a continuum. There's the full-blown nut jobs who fly giant Trump flags, wear their red MAGA hats wherever they go and will tell anyone within earshot how God saved him that day in Pennsylvania and that "he alone" can save our country. These are usually the same people who still believe that Hillary Clinton was running a pedophile ring in the basement of a pizza restaurant that didn't have a basement. There's the people who perhaps don't view Trump in religious terms but rationalize the January 6th riots at The Capitol as just another group of tourists and think that California legalized "abortion" after birth. There's the people who are convinced that Trump loves our country and is a godly man. He has convinced people that it's a good thing to be friendly with Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-Un but to antagonize and insult our allies. He has convinced his minions that the 2020 election was stolen and has people calling him "the rightful president", and is priming them to believe it again if he loses this year.
Most Trump supporters will say that they don't agree with everything Trump does and don't put him on a pedestal, but won't admit to anything that they really disagree with and excuse and rationalize any behavior that they would abhor in anyone else. If that's not a cult, I don't know what is.
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