Trump's Followers Are Members Of A Terrifying Cult

(Cartoon image is by Nikola Listes at cagle.com.)

Cult members are people who have abandoned rational thinking. For them, only their cult's leader speaks the truth. Everyone else is lying. That's what their leader tells them, and they believe it.

Doesn't this sound familiar? Isn't that a valid description of the people who follow Donald Trump? Haven't they abandoned rational political thought to buy into the lies of their leader? And finally, doesn't that make them members of a new cult -- the cult of Trump? I think so.

The inimitable John Pavlovitz (pictured) also thinks so. Here is some of what he had to say about this in his own excellent blog:

America is in a cultic crisis, and Trumpism is the cult. There is no other way to approach these days.

When you believe one man above Science, above our Intelligence agencies, above former CIA directors and retired generals and revered journalists—when you believe that one man above even your own eyes and ears—you are fully indoctrinated.
This hasn’t happened by accident, but by sickening design. Cult leaders prey upon emotionally vulnerable people, leveraging their loneliness, their disenfranchisement, their disconnection. They bombard their targets with a steady stream of misinformation, incendiary rhetoric, and chaotic prophecy—and into the swirling confusion created inside their heads, they come promising safety and security, while having no concern for them at all. They start a fire—and rush in with a bucket of water.

Donald Trump has mastered the art of emergency manufacturing and danger generation. We saw this during the near month-long Government shutdown. He convinced his followers that violent, drug-carrying immigrants were streaming across the border to duct tape and rape women, he then feigned courage by boldly and publicly vowing to protect them by shutting down the Government. He then did so, and after weeks of complete inactivity and not a single change, stood in the White House Rose Garden, claiming victory against a fictional adversary by stopping an unnecessary crisis that he alone created.

Every day he designs a false threat, steps in to the nonexistent battlefield, and declares himself victorious to a group of now emotionally dependent human beings, whose internal story and well-being depends on him winning. That’s the only way their world makes sense anymore, it is the only outcome they can conceive of.

People who’ve tried to rescue their loved ones from such inculcation will tell you how incredibly difficult it is to deprogram them after such repeated deception, such prolonged lying, such protracted fear. They will detail the excruciating efforts to reach parents and best friends and adult children, through the haze of their addiction to the connection they have come to feel with someone who is predatory toward them.And many will describe the long and bloody battles they’ve fought for the people they love—battles they  sometimes ultimately lost to the cult. . . .

No one willingly joins a cult. They are lured and tricked and coerced all the up to the precipice of emotional and intellectual surrender—and then they fall in. Once there, it is nearly impossible for them to leave voluntarily. They can’t see that they are fighting against their own self-interest by aligning with the one holding them hostage.