(5 minute read)
Name du jour
In regard to cults there is a lot more to bring to the table than I can cover in a thousand words or less so just recognize that I realize that there is a lot more nuance to this issue than I’ll have time to go into.[1]
What prompted my thoughts to write about cults is that after Trump was called/defined as a narcissist people started calling other people narcissists all over the place. It was the name du jour for a while. In reality it’s a name that has a more limited application with regard to the general population. Yes, they’re there but not in the numbers name-calling would indicate.
Trump’s MAGA heads have been referred to as a cult for quite some time now, practically from the beginning. Then I watched a video of man at a traffic stop praying to Donald Trump to save him.[2] That led me to question whether or not the cult question deserved a little deeper thought.[3]
Does the shoe fit?
Flavored drink
Do you know of a cult that ended well for the people that belonged to it? I’m talking about real world cults not make-believe cults that have never been proven to exist.
I’m going to start off with mentioning how one infamous cult ended with the deaths of over 900 people in Guyana.[4] It’s where the expression ‘don’t drink the Kool-Aid’ incorrectly originated.[5] (I say incorrectly because Kool-Aid was not the flavored powder used to deliver the deadly beverage used in the mass murder/suicide orchestrated by the cult leader Jim Jones.)
I’m not going to provide any more historical lists of cults large or small in this country. People that are so inclined can look them up. I’m going to hazard a guess that most people have already thought of several. There are papers aplenty defining the characteristics of a cult.[6] What we have seen is that cults are dominated by a strong charismatic authoritarian personality who demands complete unquestioning loyalty to their cause.
Drink up.
Do cults end well?[7]
While the majority of cults don’t end well the tale of some cults is still being written.
I will classify the Rev. Sun Myung Moon of the Unification Church as being successful due to the fact that the cult he started has survived his death at the age of 92 in 2012. Among a lot of other controversial beliefs he espoused he called himself the Messiah. That tended to aggravate some religious people. His band of merry “Moonies” continues the work he started, led now by his wife Hak Ja Han and their children.
Sidebar. The Rev. Moon in 1982 was convicted of tax evasion in the United States and served 13 months in Federal prison. At the time prominent evangelists stood up for him as well as a notable like Eugene McCarthy. Yes, that one. Since then top Republicans like President George H. W. Bush in 1995 and President Trump in 2021 have addressed Unification church events. Did I mention that the Unification Church has an extreme right-wing ideology?
Moonies number in the millions worldwide. The wealth of their organization has bought them seats at the table with high level government officials in a variety of countries. While it’s arguable that Moonies at the individual level may not have fared well the cult has prospered.
Religious sects can easily drift into cult-like status but certainly not all religious sects are cults. What puts major faiths on the edge is the unwavering devotion shown to a particular dogma or leader. There are sects where the beliefs of a leader or head of the faith can change and the “beliefs” of their followers change accordingly and without question.
Even at the Jonestown massacre referenced earlier there were armed guards working at Jones’ direction that were to ensure that everyone present complied with the order to commit suicide. Prior to the mass suicide Jones had his armed guards murder a group of four people, including a Congressman, that were sent there to investigate what was happening at his compound. Guys with guns were willing and did carry out violence for their leader.
Guys with guns show up for Trump.
What's not to like!
MAGA Trump Republicans check a lot of the boxes when it comes to qualifying as being a cult. Trump, for them, is a charismatic quasi-religious leader that they identify with regardless of their economic status and not even qualifying as the type of people that he associates with other than at rallies and through one-way communications. He’s their pauper billionaire that they send their dollars to because he needs their money to support his lifestyle.
Jim Wright, Stonekettle Station[8], made the following comments that encapsulate what attributes MAGA heads like about their cult leader while commenting about why Trump-sponsored candidates lost during the midterms.
“Was it the racism? The misogyny? The homophobia? The goosestepping fascism? The gleeful cruelty? The seething hate? The weird obsession with drag queens? The violence and the endless threats of more violence? The proud sedition? The raging xenophobia? The insane unhinged conspiracy theories? The unbridled greed? The lust for power at the expense of all else? The Nazi salutes? The cavalier theft of classified material? The sneering contempt for the current generation and the world we're leaving them? The complete and total lack of anything even vaguely resembling any sort of actual plan or platform or any ideology beyond shallow chest-beating dick-waggling nationalism and a mean small desire to own the libs? The utter failure to advance any constructive legislation to improve the lives of Americans in any form? The endless obvious ridiculous STUPID goddamn lies?
It's a mystery. We may never know why America rejected Republicans.”
Wrights’ negatives are “qualities” that only a cult could love.
A MAGA Cult.
The call
On January 6, 2020, Trump’s MAGA cult followers were simply waiting for their leader to call them to arms. To show up. They had already beached our Capitol in sufficient numbers early on. All he had to do was tweet the command. Fortunately for us he lacked the capacity to do either.
Trump didn’t make the call.
[1] https://study.com/learn/lesson/cult-characteristics-types-behavior.html
[2] Save me Donald Trump: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAk8PjCsXQ8
[3] Please save us: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oarpqWcJkXw
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drinking_the_Kool-Aid
[6] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/freedom-mind/202106/understanding-cults-the-basics
[7] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cult
[8] https://www.stonekettle.com/