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The Trump Cult is at its Most Dangerous
Trumpism is not just a political movement, with populist tendencies. It is also a cult, with some of the chief characteristics of one. This is a cult with unquestioning of the leader, and increasingly us v them way of looking at the world. There is orthodoxy in the belief system and it is increasingly isolating its members, even as the administration comes to an end. Let's be clear about cults. They rely on a leader, a strong man if you will, who gives them a sense of their future, their present, and their past. We have understood this since at least the Second World War, and the writing of a classic, The True Believer by Eric Hoffer. We are dealing with true believers in our midst, as well as a cynical leader who knows the future of the movement depends on the past. In fact, that past is a great place, where things were better.
There is plenty of psychology written on this. One of the common things in cults is what is called personality fusion, where people subsume their person to that of the leader. This is not limited to Donald Trump. It can happen with any cult. Right now we are experiencing the dissonance that comes when reality intrudes. This is also why senior Republicans are coddling the president. They fear his base, which they coddled and enabled for the last four years. There is a continuum of cultish behavior in my view. It ranges from the cynics manipulating…