You know the crack addict who makes countless inane excuses about his damaging choices, while his loved ones gather around him during an intervention to save what’s left of his life?
Well, that’s as serene as a neighborhood meeting of the Book of the Month Club, compared to the shameful behavior, excuses, and rantings of what I call "Trump Cult."
Yes, pajama-clad Trump-bot No. 5, you are a member of a cult. Cussing me out on social media while misspelling half of your 140-character white trash manifesto only deepens the certainty.
This is not hyperbole. This is etymological certitude.
There were valid reasons back in 2015 that voters could have reasonably believed Trump was a movement worth considering as an alternative to standard GOP treachery. But that is a false choice times infinity by now.
Here are five ways you can know for sure that Trump 2016 isn’t a movement but a full-on, ‘sell your soul and leave the rest to us’ cult:
- Movements encourage critical thinking. In fact, they thrive on it and are the result of it. But cults abandon critical thinking for group think.
The current trajectory of general election polling is that Trump will almost certainly lose to Hillary Clinton, who before Trump came along had the honor of being the most damaged and negatively viewed presidential candidates in our lifetimes. But who cares about truth and stuff when the mob gets together and grows stronger in malice by assaulting detractors. Just as Brother Lewandowski did (allegedly).
No need to convince others of your legitimate standing in the arena of political reality. Just need to pummel your group simply because you're not in our group. For in a cult, every time you look around you need to see yourself. All the world must be a mirror, or else. That’s why name-calling is always Trump’s go-to card. It quickly establishes who the ‘other’ is.
- Movements leave room for contrarian thoughts and accountability, because they want to make sure they don’t lose sight of their mission or lose their integrity. But cults see contrarians as a disloyal threat to their existence once they start asking questions.
St. Peter preached that disciples of Jesus Christ should always have reasons for the hope that they have. Socrates taught that questioning empowers and validates truth. But Trump most definitely isn’t those guys.
And what was that you were saying about integrity? Because who needs that when somebody else always started it, according to Trump. Everything is always "unfair" to Trump. He isn’t a tough guy. He’s a whiner. He's a victim. And victims love cults -- just ask Louis Farrakhan. It's always somebody's fault, and when they catch you on video with your knickers down, just flat-out lie. That’s also why Trump never has to apologize or repent for anything. Humility is never demanded of the cult leader.
So Megyn Kelly is a bimbo for daring to question Trump on the issues. Heidi Cruz is a legitimate target of scorn because her husband stands in Trump’s way. Accountability is always for other people, and often especially when other people are actually more right than you. Which, as is usually the case, is just about everyone who isn’t in the cult - Movements determine membership by loyalty to principles and ideas. Cults determine membership by loyalty to the founder of the cause. Members of Trump Cult have it tattooed on their forehead that he “tells it like it is.” Turns out that is no less true or powerful for them if he flat-out lies, which Trump does as often as he breathes. There is no fact in the universe that Trump Cult can’t ignore past or scream over. For most worthy leaders, principles and ideas comprise their roadmap for navigating a complex world. They also serve as a check and balance on megalomania for those prone to always believing they are the smartest people in the room. By the way, have you heard that Trump’s No. 1 advisor is his own brain? That his secret to success is to “always be around unsuccessful people”? That he is the only person who can defeat ISIS? Or that conservatism to him is enshrining education and health care policy at the federal level? How’s that for telling it like it is, Trump Cult? Are you not entertained?
- Movements elevate your principles and values. Cults water down, redefine, or dumb them down in order to ensure conformity to the hive mind (group think).
There is almost no position or standard Trump has espoused at one time in the past that he has not reversed or lied about holding. One thing you have to give Trump some credit for: he figured out the political environment had moved beyond shame.
While principles are ultimately about confronting the hard times and how you get through them, cults are about insulating their members in an ethereal cloud of hazy platitudes so that the hard choices never really come along.
First rule of Trump Cult: if at first you don’t succeed, lower your standards.
- Movements leave room for the individual identities of members to be not only acknowledged, but their individual worth to be valued. But cults make individuality secondary at best, if they don’t abandon or annihilate it altogether.
Look at Trump spokeswoman Katrina Pearson, falsely labeled as an adulterer by a pro-Trump, sleazy tabloid. Yet she's still on camera, working hard to defend her tyrant-elect's latest indefensible despite his slut-shaming her. Then there's Sam Clovis, another Trump spokesman whom I supported for U.S. Senate when he ran in 2014. Back then, Clovis opposed the Ron Paul movement's inroads into the Iowa GOP because he found them to be unseemly and beneath the dignity of party leadership. But now he's on television defending pro-Trump rioting. Not even the most ardent Ron Paulers were rioting for him. Or how about the daughter of Mike Huckabee, now a senior advisor to the Trump campaign. CNN's Jake Tapper all but accused of her selling her soul for Trump in an interview this week. As she refused to come to grips with the lies and gossip spread by the Trump campaign in one of the most cringe-inducing interviews of this cycle.
Our constitutional republic is barely on life support after eight years of Obama Cult. So it's hard to see how it could endure another narcissistic scam artist. However, power is speeding ahead without truth. Cults are replacing character. And just as it has been all along, it’s up to the voters to sternly reject such nonsense and turn the tide.
As Gandalf once said, “It’s time to breathe the free air again.” Either that, or watch all the oxygen get sucked out of the room and choke to death.
https://www.conservativereview.com/commentary/2016/03/trump-2016-making-cults-great-again
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Abby @AbbyNuszky
@SteveDeaceShow Tue. Just a reminder that Idaho voted resoundingly against DT & for Cruz. We would like to lose the white trash label now.
Oh, how I wished Tennessee voted resoundingly against Trump but unfortunately Trump won every county in the state except Williamson County. Embarrassing!
