2020: The Cult of Trump

Is it bad that I feel that one or both of the people in this picture -- the only political ticket that has the best chance of handing the Cult of Trump a defeat -- will be killed in 2020 by a member of the Cult of Trump?

For when the Cult of Trump is threatened with the possibility of dissolution via the electoral process, what do you think the individual cult members will do to keep the Cult of Trump a viable sustained entity? When Donald Trump knows that prison is his only likely outcome if he loses the Presidency in 2020, why wouldn't you expect that he would do anything to keep the Cult of Trump alive? After all, what did Jim Jones do when the forces of reality closed in on Jonestown?

First off, I'm using "Cult of Trump" based on Michael Langone's work on the defining characteristics of cults, and there's no shortage of valid and reliable evidence to illustrate that what we're currently experience is rule by the Cult of Trump. In no particular order, those characteristics are as follows:

• The group displays excessively zealous and unquestioning commitment to its leader and (whether he is alive or dead) regards his belief system, ideology, and practices as the Truth, as law.
• Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished.
• Mind-altering practices (such as meditation, chanting, speaking in tongues, denunciation sessions, and debilitating work routines) are used in excess and serve to suppress doubts about the group and its leader(s).
• The leadership dictates, sometimes in great detail, how members should think, act, and feel (for example, members must get permission to date, change jobs, marry, etc.; in addition, leaders prescribe what types of clothes to wear, where to live, whether or not to have children, how to discipline children, and so forth).
• The group is elitist, claiming a special, exalted status for itself, its leader(s) and members (for example, the leader is considered the Messiah, a special being, an avatar, with the group and/or the leader is on a special mission to save humanity).
• The group has a polarized us-versus-them mentality, which may cause conflict with the wider society.
• The leader is not accountable to any authorities (unlike, for example, teachers, military commanders or ministers, priests, monks, and rabbis of mainstream religious denominations).
• The group teaches or implies that its supposedly exalted ends justify whatever means it deems necessary. This may result in members' participating in behaviors or activities they would have considered reprehensible or unethical before joining the group (for example, lying to family or friends, or collecting money for bogus charities).
• The leadership induces feelings of shame and/or guilt in order to influence and/or control members. Often, this is done through peer pressure and subtle forms of persuasion.
• Subservience to the leader or group requires members to cut ties with family and friends, and radically alter the personal goals and activities they had before joining the group.
• The group is preoccupied with bringing in new members.
• The group is preoccupied with making money.
• Members are expected to devote inordinate amounts of time to the group and group-related activities.
• Members are encouraged or required to live and/or socialize only with other group members.
• The most loyal members (the "true believers") feel there can be no life outside the context of the group. They believe there is no other way to be, and often fear reprisals to themselves or others if they leave (or even consider leaving) the group.

That last domain -- belief -- is the most problematic and pernicious effect of the symbiotic and deleterious interweaving of politics and religion, as most recently exemplified by the alliance between the "Moral Majority" and the Republican Party in the '70s and '80s. On the one hand, the Republican influence on Christianity is best seen in the explosion of morally abhorrent "Prosperity Gospel" mega-churches that operate outside of taxation and basic religious tenants. And on the other hand, the Christian influence on Republicans is most obviously a rejection of scientific fact based on ignorance and fear, a refutation that catalyses when those rational data sets come up against the highly charged emotions of zealous belief.

Some examples are easily laughed off, such as the belief in a flat earth, but even the most ridiculous instances illuminate the foundation of a profoundly problematic worldview. However, the more insidious proclamations, such as the florid hosannas equating Trump to Lincoln or Jesus himself, strike at the basic heart of American democratic principles (and, one could argue, fundamental reality itself). But again, those are the basic mechanisms of cults, amplified and exaggerated through the channels of public discourse and translated to this particular age. It's horrifying to watch because one knows how Jonestown ended, with spasms of violence and death, followed by silence. Aside from sheer scale, how can the Cult of Trump end any differently?

One always wants to be living in interesting times, at inflection points in history. For example, I first started working in record stores in October 1991, just after Metallica's self-titled "black album" and just before Nirvana's Nevermind, two of the biggest influences on rock music in the '90s and beyond. But at the time, they were just records that sold a shit-ton of copies. I just hope that after the coming year, I'll still have a recognizable society to live in where I can talk about the cultural impact of those two records while the desiccated remains of the Cult of Trump are wiped away by the warmer and wetter Michigan weather, off to never-never land, tender age in bloom.