This country increasingly feels like it’s in the grip of a giant cult, and the consequences are profound
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America’s rolling and intensifying nightmare can’t be fixed until we deal with the propensity of a large and growing minority to embrace cults and cult-like leaders.
Now, you may be thinking: Forget it; too difficult.
The most important things are often also the hardest. That’s why any attempt to focus on them typically gets short shrift as too challenging or overwhelming to grapple with, or lower priority for our attention than whatever seems most immediately urgent or “doable.”
One of the reasons I’m here is to look at the big picture and try to foster a serious discussion of things that cannot be solved overnight — that may, in fact, require years and years of a shared commitment.
Cult-like behavior is evident in many aspects of American life. It’s a big part of the national character — usually predicated upon a desire for a strong leader, an attraction to magical thinking, and a need to believe that someone else (and often someone new) has all the answers. And it’s often bound up with what the public intellectual Richard Hofstadter long ago termed “the paranoid style in American politics.”
Years ago, I did investigative reporting on several cults, including Scientology, the Unification Church (Moonies), and Opus Dei. When you study these entities, you find your antennae are forever primed to the constant parade of scams — and the vulnerability to hucksterism in all its manifestations.
Most recently, we see it in the enthusiasm for every get-rich-quick scheme (including crypto); we see it in the RFK Jr. anti-vax “alternative health” movement; and we see it perhaps most strikingly and successfully incarnated in the pro-Trump movement.
These movements, to compete with more mainstream worldviews, come up with their own “science” of sorts, their own experts, their own therapies.
Of course, and thankfully, all cults also have members who eventually break away and warn others. The MAGA forces, too, are producing their own apostates. Since January 6, a small but growing number have come forward to say they realize that their behavior in the mob that day was wrong, explaining it as a consequence of being subjected to all the disinformation out there — i.e., a kind of brainwashing.
Here are just a few:
Pam Hemphill, the grandmother from Idaho who stormed the Capitol, not only expressed profound regrets but actually refused her pardon. She explained:
It’s an insult to the Capitol Police, to the rule of law, and to the nation. If I accept a pardon, I’m continuing their propaganda, their gaslighting, and all their falsehoods they’re putting out there about Jan. 6.
She said she supported Trump so ardently because she was “brainwashed.” Since she made public her regrets, she has been viciously bullied by Trump supporters, who have even gone so far, allegedly, as to call her probation officer to try to get her “in trouble.”
Jason Riddle, who also rejected a pardon, said “Trump can shove his pardon up his ass” and referred to him as “a narcissistic bully.” More to the point is his insight into how he became a MAGA in the first place:
I spent a lot of time on social media… arguing with strangers about nothing. And it just became more or less my identity. The less I had a life, the louder I was about being a Trump supporter. And instead of trying to figure out what was causing these problems. … I blamed other people and politics. … I fit right into the MAGA circle.
Dana Jean Bell regrets ever having responded to Trump’s call. She now says she was “duped” by “President Donald Trump’s lies and manipulation. … [He] has used all of his followers including [my]self for his own gain.”
Klete Keller, olympic swimmer:
I think a lot of people were probably like me, staying up until 2 or 3 in the morning on Twitter, probably reading some questionable content from questionable accounts. … People just lost it. Speaking for myself, I regret losing it.
I think they did a great job of convincing people [of election misinformation]. I kind of sound like an idiot now saying it, but my faith was in him [Trump].
Willard Purkel: “I sincerely regret my actions.”
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But let me be clear: The cult is waxing, not waning. Not only is Trump’s approval rising, but the playbook (flood the zone; persecute the strong, like Milley; keep foot on gas, keep the car accelerating) is in full plumage. A few “apostates” and recovering rioters aren’t going to make much of a dent anytime soon, though the phenomenon is worth keeping an eye on for signs of expansion or even virality.
Critical Thinking
In the past, I wrote about the importance of critical thinking. While few disagreed with me, some said it was too late for that. Well, if it’s too late for that, then it’s too late for everything.
We have to speak up about this. It has to become a major part of the conversation. Why? Because it keeps getting worse.
The Trump White House plays almost entirely to a kind of cultic response to whatever it declares to be true, even when there is no evidence that it is true.
For example, as I was writing this, with the federal government in disarray, the White House Communications Office just sent out an email saying:
“The Golden Age of America Is Here”
This is the hyperbolic language of cults: From “American Carnage” to “Golden Age” just like that, with a magical snap of Trump’s fingers. It has zero connection with reality.
And this week, Trump falsely claimed that “we identified and stopped $50 million being sent to Gaza to buy condoms for Hamas” (and, soon after, his press secretary echoed his outrageous claim). His allies at Fox News and in the huge and growing “MAGA media” quickly spread this nonsense. (Trump appears to have confused this Gaza with a province of the same name in Mozambique, to which the Department of Health and Human Services gave condoms.)
OK, everyone is entitled to whatever belief system gets them over the bumps of life, but we aren’t seeing enough outrage as sheer fabrication, and the encouragement of anti-factual reasoning, become the norm.
Another manifestation is how religion is being invited into the classroom, seemingly everywhere we look. A few examples:
Oklahoma: The US Supreme Court is reviewing the Oklahoma Supreme Court’s ruling that rejected an effort by a Catholic online school to become the nation’s first religious charter school — fully funded by taxpayer dollars.
Ohio: For the first time, the public will be paying for the construction of private Christian schools. Faith-based schools financed by the government are exactly what Project 2025 calls for.
Texas: The state’s Board of Education approved an optional Bible-based curriculum in elementary schools — public elementary schools. (To hear a Texas state representative explain why it is actually unChristian to force one’s own religion down the throats of others, go here.)
Few dare speak up to challenge this kind of thing, except to say that organized religion has no place in a classroom. The truth, of course, is that nothing as inherently illogical, unproven, and unprovable as religious dogma belongs in a classroom.
The same can be said about the gun ownership issue. The irrationality of a country armed to the teeth, homes jammed with weapons, housewives going to Starbucks with pistols on their hips — we’re way past anything reasonable or logical. From NPR:
The US has the 28th-highest rate of deaths from gun violence in the world: 4.31 deaths per 100,000 people in 2021. That was more than seven times as high as the rate in Canada, which had 0.57 deaths per 100,000 people — and about 340 times higher than in the United Kingdom, which had 0.013 deaths per 100,000.
And, I’d add, another aspect is the excessive love affair with the military and law enforcement — in contrast to the diminishment of other government workers, teachers, social workers, and the like. This mandate to honor Sparta is on constant display at all major public events, especially sporting events.
This is how we got to RFK Jr, to Pete Hegseth, to a second President Trump. It’s all lunacy. And, tragically, the Democratic Party cannot bluntly draw attention to this. Even its own leaders must prove their military bona fides, their religiosity, their gun ownership. Anything less is presented as panty-waisted, unpatriotic, and, going forward, we suspect, subversive.
It will take the emergence of an entirely new and independent generation of straight talkers to shake this country out of its zombie-like march to a national, perhaps global, apocalypse.
