The Trumpist Cult of Ignorance

Trumpism is a cult. Many who voted for or otherwise support Trump are offended by this characterization, mainly because they don't know what a cult really is, or understand how a cult leader gets and keeps followers. 

I was in a cult for many years, been out for over twenty and have had the opportunity to reflect on my involvement and how the cult experience is applicable to today's politics. My series So, You Want To Join a Cult delves into the subject at some length. 

Trumpists get offended because they think a cult has to be people drinking the literal Kool-Aid, or are brainwashed, and have no free will. Cults are much more banal than all of that. One of the reasons people are taken in by cult leaders is ignorance. 

When I was involved in a religious cult, most people who joined had only a superficial understanding of the Bible, so the confident pronouncements of the cult leader sounded like they must be right. Of course there was little bit of truth - which was the bait. In my own specific cult, the leader, in his foundational instructional class spent a lot of time pointing out how what most Christians believed was not supported by the Bible itself. This wasn't to undermine faith in the Bible (he had spent hours hammering home the idea that the Bible was inerrant) but to undermine confidence in what he called "denominational Christianity". He then substituted a faith in his own teachings, which, if we had followed his own advice to "read what was written" and various other methods for vetting what we were taught, we would have realized were at least as unreliable as what the churches were selling. 

The cult leader started out by showing us how his doctrine lined up with the Bible, but quickly veered off into "trust me, I know what I'm talking about" territory. We were even encouraged to "hold in abeyance" any doubts or questioning, convinced that the problem was our own limited understanding rather than the doctrine itself. The ignorance that we brought into the cult was reinforced into a belief that we could never be as smart of educated in Biblical studies as our leader. 

The cult of Trump is similar. 

Although there was an emotional attraction, in particular the fear that many White people had about immigrants and the vast amorphous "others", there were a number of people who thought that Trump actually had solutions to their perceived problems. As with religious cult involvement, the pathway to thinking that Trump had the answers was ignorance. 

One of the most common rationales that I heard from people who supported Trump, apart from the rabid anti-immigration or anti-"woke" arguments, was that he was better for the economy. This, of course, is an argument based on a profound ignorance of how the economy works. While there are actions that president can take which will affect the economy, in general, it is something that government has little control over. The factors that led to global inflation 2021-2023 and enduring high prices can be traced, among other things, to increased demand following depressed purchasing during the pandemic, supply chains not ready to restart, increased wages, and corporate price gouging. Interestingly, gas prices shot up 2021-2023, but have since settled own to right around where they were pre-pandemic. 

Trumpists not only convinced themselves that the economy was robust because of Trump and that inflation was caused by Biden, but somehow Trump would wave his magic wand and bring prices back down to pre-Biden levels. Social media is full of Trumpers celebrating the soon to be lower prices after Trump is sworn in on January 20, 2025. These beliefs are based on ignorance of economics. Related to this is Trump's ignorance of how tariffs work. He has insisted that tariffs are paid by foreign suppliers, or even foreign governments, when in reality they are paid by the importer, who passes those costs on to the consumer. 

Trumpist ignorance is not limited to economics, but can be applied to any subject. This can be traced back to Trump's own ignorance, with his followers declining to fact check him. They simply take what he says at face value. Their "research" is more often than not other Trump cultists conforming their "facts" and conclusions to what Trump has already told them to believe. 

Naturally there are other aspects to Trumpism and the Cult of Trump, but it all starts with ignorance and snowballs from there.