CULTS?
This post is about my own confusion and can hardly be useful to anyone else. But if I am going to write daily posts I have to write about things that are on my mind and this issue has been on my mind for a long time. Writing about it can help me sort out my own confusion.
I read an opinion piece by Jennifer Rubin in the New York Times in which she argues that the media has been misguided in their analysis of the MAGA movement and the allegiance of much of the Republican Party to Donald Trump in spite of his obvious lies, his sexual immorality, and so many wacko theories. He is obviously unfit to be president, but a large number of people adore him.
One early reason given for MAGA resentment and Trump’s popularity was the globalization of manufacturing and the loss of American jobs to countries overseas. But she says studies show this is not the basic MAGA motivation. The basic one she says is racial prejudice and the feeling that America is disintegrating. She says the Republican Party is no longer a political party with specific policy positions such as the insistence on small government and freedom from regulation and lower taxes. Instead it is a cult led by Donald Trump and motivated by resentment and personal pique.
I’ve been wondering about this and the more I think about it the more I feel she is right. A cult is bound together by a devotion to its leader who is going to lead them to the promised land. A cult insists on devotion to the leader and punishes anyone who questions him. In order to be fully believed in whatever the leader says must be true, even it contradicts what people can see with their own eyes such as the size of an inauguration crowd. Whoever the leader attacks or threatens is one of the enemy, even if this contradicts what people have felt about the person, such as Liz Cheney. What the cult gives people is a sense of belonging and identity and direction and even celebration and joy. But to be a cult member you have to give up your former self and blind yourself to anything but the words of your leader. You have to devote yourself to him.
All of this is my interpretation of a cult and may have flaws. But a greater problem than whether I am right or not is that when I try to separate a cult from other groups that people dedicate themselves to, I have trouble making a clear distinction. For example, people who are dedicated to a sports team and are delighted when it wins and crushed when it loses regardless of how loosely it is connected either with a city or an academic institution seem almost to be a cult. Political parties give people an identity and draw them along, dictating the issues that they most care about and questioning people’s loyalty if they don’t agree to party orthodoxy. And even the church that I go to is a community of people who believe in a God that no one has seen and is guided by a book that was written long ago. Are these cults?
I’m not claiming they are cults, I am just claiming that they all seem very alike which confuses me so that I end this post as confused as I started.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 