Call Trumpism what it is: a cult
Trump Cult
Hmm. There is something to that. I wrote to my-brother-the-klansman that Trump has a “Svengali-like hold” on his bums—like my brother. Olivia Nuzzi back in 2016:
Olivia Nuzzi@OliviaNuzzi
The problem with a lot of Trump writing is it fundamentally misunderstands his supporters
Olivia Nuzzi@OliviaNuzzi
They largely do not care about his various policy positions to the degree that he even has policy positions. That's not what it's about.
Olivia Nuzzi@OliviaNuzzi
They do not care about planned parenthood or what he said last week about common core vs. what he said this week. They don't care!
Olivia Nuzzi@OliviaNuzzi
They care about him. They trust him as a leader who won't allow them to be fucked over, because he himself has never been fucked over.
So, when you don’t care about anything other than Him, what do you have?
The two Trump supporters who waylaid the Senator from Canada in Indiana. “What do you like about Donald Trump?” “Everything.” “Anything that he says, I’m for.”
Michael Cohen called Trump supporters cultists, Lev Parnas calls them cultists. Former Tennessee Republican Senator Bob Shorter called Trumpism it cult-like.
Back to LAT:
What demands analysis is less the arrogant 73-year-old mediocrity in the Oval Office, but the worshipful attitude so many Americans have toward him.
Oh Lord, what have I been saying since the Catastrophe? What are we going to do with 63,000,000
bums?
LAT:
But at no time in history have so many Americans been drawn to what’s looking increasingly like a cult. I don’t use the term recklessly.
...
The discourse around cults partakes of some woolly theories. “Mind control” and “brainwashing” are shibboleths from the 1950s...The implicit suggestion is that unsavory ideas and ideologies can only win adherents using extreme and witchy measures.
All that put me off the notion of Trumpism as a cult. But then in August, Trump looked heavenward and called himself “the chosen one.”
Suddenly, among evangelicals, it wasn’t enough to make comparisons with Cyrus or even King David. He had to be the savior himself. The far-right radio host Wayne Allyn Root called Trump “the second coming of God.” Then former Energy Secretary Rick Perry straight up affirmed Trump’s craziness, telling him, “You are here in this time because God ordained you.”
As 2019 drew to a close, my doubts about Trumpism as a cult dissolved. And I’m not alone.
Republican lawyer George Conway reportedly described his wife, Trump’s presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway, as a member of a cult. Former GOP strategist John Weaver has used the term. Anthony Scaramucci, Trump’s onetime communications director, concurs. Also news vet Dan Rather, conservative political scientist Norman Ornstein, science journalist Steve Silberman, pastor John Pavlovitz and academic and journalist Jared Yates Sexton.
What the cult diagnosis may lack in scholarly rigor,
“Scholarly rigor”? A “diagnosis”? You can go to a doctor and get diagnosed as a cultist? No, you cannot. The term “cult” or “cultist” is used based upon just what we have here, former members and outside observers. You say “brainwashing” is an unsavory “wooly theory from the 1950’s,” what else do you call Russia’s social media bot campaign? My son sent us this
just last night with the caption, “ Bots have completely overrun social media. The top response to each of trumps recent tweets have a follow up response that are identical. How nobody sees this is astounding“
...it makes up for in explanatory power. When polled, far too many Republicans come across as having abandoned their commitment to libertarianism, family values or simple logic in favor of Trump worship. They’re lost to paranoia and factually unmoored talking points, just the way Hassan was lost to Sun Myung Moon.
It can be heartbreaking when loved ones succumb to Trumpism.
Huh?
Journalists Luke O’Neil and Edwin Lyngar, as well as Jen Senko in “The Brainwashing of My Dad,” have compiled stories of Americans who have gone over. O’Neil summarized the transformation this way: “A loved one … sat down in front of Fox News, found some kind of deep, addictive comfort in the anger and paranoia, and became a different person.”
Huh?
Journalists Luke O’Neil and Edwin Lyngar, as well as Jen Senko in “The Brainwashing of My Dad,” have compiled stories of Americans who have gone over. O’Neil summarized the transformation this way: “A loved one … sat down in front of Fox News, found some kind of deep, addictive comfort in the anger and paranoia, and became a different person.”
Sounds about right.
Yeah! Sure does!
Hassan — who remembers during his Moonie days, shouting, “I don’t care if Moon is like Hitler. I’ve chosen to follow him, and I’ll follow him to the end” — broke free, and became an expert on cults and how to leave them. He has spent his career proving it’s possible.
Holy hell.
Instead, the cult framework should relieve the pressure many of us feel to call Trumpites back to themselves, to keep arguing with them. They are stuck in a bad relationship with a controlling figure.
Okay look: before you go completely like SoCal on is here and the eyes start rolling back in your head, yes, we should relieve ourselves of calling Trumpites back to themselves, yes, yes; we should not argue with them, quite. Okay? Now an excellent, truly excellent, mechanism to relieve this pressure we feel to call the cultist loved ones back to themselves is to recall that they were previously a Ku Klux Klansman and a most efficacious memory trick to avoid further, fruitless arguing is to recall the argument you previously had with your bum relative into the wee hours where he defended the proposition, “Black people are genetically inferior intellectually to white people” and you argued that he was a prissy Nazi racist lowlife and then employing that mechanism and that technique to take the “heartbreaking” step to break off the relationship that you have with the cultist and refuse to talk to them! That works (also blocking technology is great)!
Understanding Trump is a fool’s errand. He’s sui generis, and far too erratic and finally insubstantial to reward close attention. Trump zealots are another matter...We need to stay focused on how so many Americans came to this pass and took this destructive course.
Sister, come back from La-La Land, we love you! We are not going to do that wooly, retrograde historical analysis at this precise moment in the rent fabric of space time because, you see, we know how and why they became Trump cultists. They’re bums, mental defectives with a plate in their heads that Trump relays messages from Putin by sending electrical signals over his Twitter machine. Remember?
The Trump cult will define American politics for decades to come, even after its dear leader is gone.
Yes, Virginia, there is a Trump cult. It has 63,000,000 adherents and it is going to define American politics and America for a while, not decades after its Dear Leader passes but rather while he is Putin’s man in DC. Now Virginia, beloved Californians, friends and Trumpists alike, get this through your heads: Donald Trump is going to WIN reelection in 2020. Full stop. Okay? Take some smelling salts because I’m almost done but not quite. Donald Trump will stay in power beyond 2024. That’s right, that’s what I said. Putin is going to become Leader of the Soviet Union beyond 2024 and he will have his hand-picked Leader of his American oblast riding along with him into the sunset whenever they decide jointly that that’s the sun and it’s setting, in other words as long as their fucking hearts content.
The question, Virginia, F’s and E’s is are the plurality of us going to prevent it. I don’t think we will. I don’t think we have the stomach for civil war, I don’t see the mechanism or technique or willpower to do what must needs be done with the 63,000,000: to lovingly identify them, disarm them, send them on their own ride off into the real sunset on a Trail of Beers (Busch is an excellent brand of enticement to them) to Alaska, from which you can see Mother Russia as they all know where they will be promptly and humanely enfenced and given the most efficacious anti-psychotic medication as well as sedatives slipped into their Busch bottles and cans with families given leave to visit upon death and guided tours by secure monorail for interested visitors who wish to practice paintball shooting accuracy.
The Trump cult will define American politics for decades to come, even after its dear leader is gone.
Yes, Virginia, there is a Trump cult. It has 63,000,000 adherents and it is going to define American politics and America for a while, not decades after its Dear Leader passes but rather while he is Putin’s man in DC. Now Virginia, beloved Californians, friends and Trumpists alike, get this through your heads: Donald Trump is going to WIN reelection in 2020. Full stop. Okay? Take some smelling salts because I’m almost done but not quite. Donald Trump will stay in power beyond 2024. That’s right, that’s what I said. Putin is going to become Leader of the Soviet Union beyond 2024 and he will have his hand-picked Leader of his American oblast riding along with him into the sunset whenever they decide jointly that that’s the sun and it’s setting, in other words as long as their fucking hearts content.
The question, Virginia, F’s and E’s is are the plurality of us going to prevent it. I don’t think we will. I don’t think we have the stomach for civil war, I don’t see the mechanism or technique or willpower to do what must needs be done with the 63,000,000: to lovingly identify them, disarm them, send them on their own ride off into the real sunset on a Trail of Beers (Busch is an excellent brand of enticement to them) to Alaska, from which you can see Mother Russia as they all know where they will be promptly and humanely enfenced and given the most efficacious anti-psychotic medication as well as sedatives slipped into their Busch bottles and cans with families given leave to visit upon death and guided tours by secure monorail for interested visitors who wish to practice paintball shooting accuracy.
