What's Worse- the Cults or the Cucks?

I have been in a state of stupefied dumbfoundedness about the Republican Party for something close to eight years now and it’s important to qualify a couple of things up front. First, I was once someone who would occasionally over the years vote for Republican candidates. Second, “dumbfoundedness” isn’t even a word, but it perfectly describes my state-of-mind so I’m claiming it. Trying to untangle this mess is going to make this piece a bit long, so apologies in advance for that — I just need to spill my guts now and then, and on this subject I have a truckload. This is my best effort to explain the inexplicable by first sweeping away all of the chaos and constant distractions swirling around Donald Trump now and during his term in office to focus solely on one single Donald Trump “thing” —

his willingness, intent and attempt to overturn the 2020 election and remain in power against the will of voters - to literally stage a coup.

I zero-in on this one “thing” because there are no mysteries, no shades of gray, no alternative explanations — it is objective truth. But there was (and still is) a scheme — the BIG lie, a “rigged” election. The foundation of the scheme, that there was massive voter fraud (conveniently in the critical swing states) has been thoroughly debunked in courts of law and in repetitive vote counts and audits. Arizona spent millions to fund a partisan company, Cyber Ninjas, aching to find fraud in a totally unsupervised audit which violated every auditing norm along the way and still couldn’t produce anything substantive. We saw the speeches and the riot on January 6th, 2021 WITH OUR OWN EYES on TV, we heard the demands for Georgia’s election officials to falsify votes counts WITH OUR OWN EARS, we’ve seen the fake elector certificates we’ve heard sworn testimony from a herd of Republican witnesses. Trump’s attempt to overturn the election is absolute reality, plain as day, without ambiguity, incontestable.

So, I want to explore that reality from this starting point —

not a single person who understands, believes, values and enjoys the principles set forth in the Constitution of the United States of America should be willing in any way, small or large, to facilitate a second Donald Trump presidency.

And yet, here we are — almost one-half of U.S. voters are ready to sign up for another round, the “think tanks” are strategizing, evangelicals are praying, the “mainstream” media is treating Trump like a normal candidate, corporations are donating, and Republican legislators (state and federal) are all in for more Trump and happy as larks about the possibilities. How is this possible? How can so many individuals and institutions be so totally ambivalent about an attempted coup even when it was “their guy”?

For starters maybe some small portion (or is it small?) of the electorate simply favors an authoritarian government, thinking we have too many of these inconvenient “freedoms.” They must believe overturning democracy will be to their benefit. Maybe they’re willing to surrender their own freedoms just so some other group (blacks, gays, immigrants, women, liberals, etc.) can’t have them. Trump, therefore, would be the guy they’ve been waiting for. I’m also willing to stipulate that some percent of Trump supporters (and Biden supporters for that matter) are so thoroughly removed from current events and the concepts of our governing system as to be completely clueless about all of this. It stresses the imagination to see how that’s possible, but the 2020 Presidential election saw the highest voter turnout in 120 years and fully one-third of eligible voters didn’t participate. I won’t try to analyze these fractional cohorts. As for the rest of the passengers on the Trump train, the tens-of-millions who have freely chosen to ignore the reality of an election loss followed by an attempted coup, I have some thoughts about them and it’s difficult to avoid the word insane.

Cult - a misplaced or excessive admiration for a particular person or thing

THE TRUMP CULTS

As a scientist-at-heart I should be careful about straying unqualified into the psychological realm of cults, but I’m not sure there is any other way to describe the blind willfulness of a group of people to sacrifice so much — principle, honor, ethics, relationships, money, religious doctrine, our shared democratic republic — to align their own sense of reality in opposition to the objective reality of Donald Trump’s intent to fraudulently seize power after losing an election. And my observation is that dissembling the Cult of Trump is made infinitely more complex because it is, in many (maybe most) cases, a stratification of a number of sub-cults all layered one on the other like phyllo dough in a baklava recipe, but without the honey. Here’s my best shot at dissecting the groups.

Right-Wing Media Sensory Deprivation Chambers

The most sinister of the Trump sub-cults, in my humble opinion, is the cult of Fox News (and the even more extreme right-wing media options) consumers. Of course, it’s natural for individuals to find entertainment and news sources leaning toward their sensibilities. But over the years the proliferation of extreme right-wing media options has made it all-consuming. The reality is that many right-leaning individuals have been marinating in misinformation, disinformation, rage, and outright omission of factual information unfavorable to their “cause” for decades, long before Trump. Now, the foundational fantasy that the 2020 election was “rigged” or “stolen” lives on strong as ever within this media bubble, even after a $787.5 million civil defamation judgement against Fox News for its incessant claims that Dominion voting machines were compromised. Fox News viewers probably aren’t even aware of that case resolution. That “stolen election” propaganda on a never-ending loop sets the stage for imagining the jailed violent, police-assaulting rioters, chanting to hang Vice President Pence, are instead “hostages” and Donald Trump is a persecuted Robin Hood, more persecuted that anyone has ever been persecuted of course. The “Big Lie” paints credible media options as “fake news” and the press as an “enemy of the people” so fiction and fantasy rules the Right. Voters taking comfort in this extreme media cult are incapable of discerning objective truth. Worse, the alternative “reality (realities)” constantly label(s) those with other views as evil, conspirators, “wanting to destroy our country.” Nothing defines a cult better than total surrender of one’s brain, no more of that troublesome thinking required. Hypnotizing this cult has been a decades-long process, in my view, of depressing critical thought by fomenting an addiction to rage. Rage requires constant feeding and this is the buffet.

Religion

The broadest of the Trump sub-cults is Christianity, in specific white Christians. Spare me the debate about whether Christianity en masse meets some definition of a cult — if you claim to be a Christian and you aren’t standing against the violence and hatred seething out of Trump’s MAGA and your extreme evangelical wing but are, instead, waiting for November to cast your vote once again for this con man then welcome to the cult. White Christians “attending religious services monthly or more often” voted 71% for Trump in 2020 — white self-identified protestant evangelicals were 85% in the barrel for Trump. These Republicans may spend their evenings marinating in the media slop pot as well, but on the evangelical front in particular it is ministers and leaders and authors and traveling shows who set the fiction of a good vs evil battle against, of course, anyone who opposes turning over the keys to our democracy to their standards. And don’t forget that Trump and this group’s leaders were perfectly willing, even enthusiastic, about sacrificing followers to a deadly virus in order to perpetuate the cult’s fantasy that the evil government and “radical” liberals were itching to persecute Christians by including church services in “mass gatherings” restrictions during COVID. And their restrictions on abortion care shows they are quite willing to sacrifice others as well. This cult too has been simmering for decades, but coming ever closer to their goal of America as a theocracy has made threats of violence and actual violence a new addition to their strategy. To be clear, not all Christians agree with the extreme Nationalism, but a clear majority seem unwilling to vote against it this November — that is a cult.

The cults’ influence on COVID death rates - “Blue” states going for Clinton in 2016 had 6 states exceeding 350/100,000 COVID death rate. “Red” States" going for Trump had 21 states exceeding that death rate and 15 states exceeding 400/100,000. This is what “no masks” and “no vaccine” gets us in real life (or real death).

Pretend Soldiers

The Oath Keepers and Proud Boys got most of the attention from the January 6th riot, but the United States is home to a prodigious population of pretend soldiers. This group possibly represents the most dangerous sub-cult of the Trump cult mostly because they seem always to be anxiously looking for a fight, and they have the hardware to compete. Many of these groups lay claim to higher order purposes — constitutionalists, sovereign citizens, tax protests, libertarianism, individual rights, etc. It seems to me the connective tissue is white supremacy and hate of any “other,” always employing one or another conspiracy theory to support their grandiose causes or offering another opportunity to get violent. Of course, a number of these individuals played an out-sized role in Trump’s attempt to overturn the election by storming the Capitol and assaulting law enforcement officers and congressional employees. Many are now staying rent-free in the federal prison system……… but many are not. And the cult leader has promised to pardon the “hostages.”

Whackadoodles

A wide assortment of screwballs hideout in the skinfolds of the Trump cult like a jock itch that just won’t go away. There are conspiracies dealing directly with the vote count, running the gamut from ingenious thermostats and Italian satellites to a thoroughly dead Hugo Chavez. We can thank nut-jobs like Sydney Powell and Mr. Pillow for forcing these absurdities into the MAGA mind. There are conspiracies about the January 6th riot — Black Lives Matter, the FBI, the CIA, rioters as tourists. Some broaden the scope to the “deep state” or declare Trump is actually President now and having some sort of secret political relationship with JFK, Jr. (who died in July 1999). I tracked a local Jan. 6th participant who posted in late 2020 that Trump… will be sworn in as the 19th President of the U.S.A. on March 4, 2021, 19th because the actual U.S.A. has not been operational since 1872, but instead has been a corporation owned by the City of London…..oh boy! Lastly, the QAnon team has found a home with Team Trump to better root out the liberal “tradition” of keeping captive children handy to extract adrenochrome from their blood. This group sets the standard for predicting something that never happens (children held captive at Comet Pizza, etc.) only to drift merrily off to some other insanity without a second thought. And don’t forget the anti-vaccine/ anti-science crowd, who aren’t necessarily political except when an extra 250,000 of them choose to self-sacrifice during a deadly pandemic — those are the excess post-vaccine COVID deaths in “red” counties “proving” that vaccines don’t work.

In all fairness I have to acknowledge that January 6th and fuller details of Trump’s coup plotting all came after Republican voters logged their votes on November 3rd, 2020. It is uncertain whether the coup attempt was a final straw for some, and polling indicates that an actual criminal conviction before the 2024 election will be a bridge too far. But for now, a cult is, by and large, what Republican Party voters have become. And while each sub-cult may remain isolated within their own set of motivations and objectives, they share one thing in common — 70% or so are willfully impenetrable to the objective truth that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election and subsequently tried to overthrow your government. Many came pre-equipped for cult life, easily finding a comfortable spot on the Trump train.

A small sampling of enablers Donald Trump has (or soon will) “thrown under the bus.” L-R Mike Johnson, the U.S. Constitution, Jeff Sessions, Rona McDaniel, Rudy Giuliani, Reince Priebus, James Lankford, Mitch McConnell, Rupert Murdoch, U.S. military (suckers and losers), Jenna Ellis, Kevin McCarthy, Mike Pence and the Republican Party

The Cucks

To address this group, I first need to define the word “cuck” from my title, which tends to have sexual connotations these days (see Jerry Fallwell, Jr.) but for my purposes means the more general “a weak or servile man.” (servile- too eager to serve and please someone else in a way that shows you do not have much respect for yourself) Ironically, in the political arena the word is generally directed by the MAGA militia wing toward progressive men like me. Be that as it may, the word makes for a catchy title, and I think it’s going to fit my purpose because this is the group that actually knows with certainty the 2020 election was not rigged but chooses to pretend anyway for reasons they see as beneficial to themselves.

The Cucks differ from the Cults in that they would never see themselves as blind followers in a cult, but as leaders, smarter than the rest — using Trump and his popularity to benefit their own personal or philosophical objectives while believing they are brilliant enough to not be stained by the inconvenience of sedition and treason (we still don’t know where all those classified documents ended up). For knowingly and purposefully feeding false and inflammatory information to the cults, the cucks win the despicable award. — they provide the faux credibility the cults need to sustain their alternative reality about Trump’s record and his intentions in a second term.

Political Servants

Maybe the most disgusting group, to me at least, are the Republican lawmakers and candidates who choose to surrender their self-respect now, their future legacy and their political party solely for power or perceived relevance or a financial future. Republicans from the John McCain and Mitt Romney era absolutely know their Republican Party is gone forever, but they don’t seem to realize they are the ones who enabled the fatal shot. As a candidate for the Republican Presidential nomination in 2016 Lindsey Graham said, if we nominate Trump we will get destroyed….and we will deserve it. Marco Rubio called Donald Trump a “con man” who was “dangerous” and unqualified to control the nation's nuclear codes, and warned he would “fracture” the Republican Party if he was the nominee. But did they resist — hardly. Graham traveled to Georgia in 2020 to actively participate in the pressure campaign to “find votes.” Rubio provided an uber-early endorsement of Trump for 2024. My favorite, Republican Ron Johnson was caught on tape explaining how Trump’s 2020 loss in Wisconsin was obviously true, but publicly remains an “election denier.” Hundreds of Republican House members voted to challenge electoral counts AFTER THE INSURRECTION put their lives in jeopardy. Twenty-one Republican House members voted against awarding medals to the police officers who protected their very lives! McCarthy, Stephanik, Lee, Hawley, Scalise….election deniers. Thune, Barrasso, Cornyn, Cotton…endorsed Trump during the Republican primaries. Republican primary opponents committed to vote Trump even if he’s convicted on felony charges desperately trying to avoid the subject of Trump’s TRYING TO OVERTHROW THE VOTES of more than 81 million Biden voters. All seem indifferent to the threat Trump presents to the government which has kept them relevant, thinking the biggest cuck might not end up under the bus. This from the former party of virtues. Not surprisingly, Mitch McConnell endorses Trump for President this week (apparently doesn’t realize he’s already under the bus). My bet is that Nikki Haley, who just suspended her campaign as the final challenger to Trump, will too. Invertebrates every one. By the way, if any tell you they can control his worst instincts during a second term you may move them to the “cult” category where fantasies flourish.

Fox News (and friends)

One of the great ironies of the 2020 election is that the Fox News election team, using an advanced statistical system tested in the 2018 mid-terms, was the first media outlet to declare (correctly) Joe Biden the winner of an extremely close race in Arizona. The Fox News audience was so enraged (by reality) that the network immediately considered retracting the call and eventually fired their brilliant projectors who had correctly predicted every election over their 12- year employment and called all 50 states correctly in 2020. “We have to give our viewers what they want.” Fox News then, ingeniously (not a Cuck), went full bore on pushing election fraud of every variety for years, and was “rewarded” for their brilliance by having the opportunity to pay Dominion Voting Systems a $787.5 million-dollar civil judgement while retaining the rights to pay an even more exorbitant sum to Smartmatic in an ongoing lawsuit over the same issues. As satisfying as that is, Fox News and countless other media/ social media outlets continue shoveling garbage into the vacated minds of Republican voters without sufficient consequence except, of course, to our society. They sustain the fight/ flight white voter rage-fest, and the inevitable turn to violence if voters don’t give Fox News viewers what they want in the 2024 election. Shame, shame!!

Social Media

Statistics show that about one-half of American adults get their “news” from social media. I place “news” in quotations, of course, because on social media sites anyone can play journalist with virtually no commitment to accuracy or editorial oversight (including me, by the way). And while most social media sites would claim neutrality on political issues, every single one pumps cult-inducing garbage and rage into the MAGA-verse via their infamous algorithms and near complete immunity from accountability for content or for managing malicious users. So, while the owners of social media sites can comfortably pretend to have no role in Republican voters’ decent into fantasy with respect to the 2020 election lie, that claim is a convenient fantasy.

God’s Messengers

Another great irony of the extreme right is that white Protestants populated this country centuries ago searching for freedom from State-sponsored religion, which possibly frowned upon burning free-spirited women as witches in Great Britain. Now, a white- evangelical Christian theocracy is all the rage, and there’s actually a plan — the Seven Mountains Mandate. This under-the-radar evangelical Christian movement (also known as New Apostolic Reformation) aims to dominate our society in seven specific areas, including our government, and advocates see this as their divine right. Most troubling is their view that those who oppose a Christian theocracy for any reason, including that minor conflict with our constitution, are not simply people who disagree, but are actually evil, as in afflicted with demons. So, if you have wondered how Christians, once overwhelmed with the concept of “character,” have flocked to support Donald Trump in spite of his profound absence of character and that troublesome attempt to overthrow the government here’s your answer. Political and religious leaders feed the “spiritual battle” story, against evil liberals and “woke” culture, finding evidence of persecution at every turn. It’s not surprising — history is awash with violence and destruction disguised as a holy mission from God and anything it seems, including Donald Trump, justifies regaining the opportunity to burn witches without consequence. Overthrowing our multiethnic, multi-cultural government is step 1, and with the holy foot already in the door, in the Supreme Court and House of Representatives certainly, this movement is not going away quietly.

The Overlords

Conservatives have always laid claim to the intellectual realm of political thought — James Burnham, Hannah Arendt, Milton Friedman, Thomas Molnar, William F. Buckly, Walter Williams, Charles Krauthammer, Sarah Palin, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Paul Gossar, Thomas Massie, Donald Trump….whoa. If that looks like a trajectory right into the toilet that’s because it has been. We know how the Federalist Society has been working for decades to stack vacant judgeships with “conservative” originalists. Results, Roe v Wade overturned and Justices Thomas and Alito selling their services to billionaires. John Eastman, architect of Trump’s “fake electors” scheme and indicted as a co-conspirator in Georgia proudly serves on the Board of Directors and as a “scholar” at the Claremont Institute — Eastman was a key participant in the coup attempt! Not to be outdone, the Heritage Foundation has an actual plan — Project 2025 — which includes immediately firing as many as 50,000 federal workers, replacing them with Trump-aligned lackeys. They are literally taking applications expressly because Trump’s first administration wasn’t pre-prepared to take over government — this time they will. These are but a few of many once serious advocates for a slightly different “flavor” of representative democracy, conservatism, turned rotten to become just one more group of cucks looking to have their way, embracing a coup, regardless of the costs.

The Plutocrats

You might think that people with big money would be a bit cautious about pulling for an unstable and unpredictable dictator wannabe to take over our economy since it’s likely that the freedoms and rule-of-law we enjoy in our country facilitated their acquisition of said fortune in the first place. But that’s the thing about the cucks — they think they will actually be in charge. Personally, I would be thinking that a man who tried to overturn an election (and stole classified material to boot) may not be Mr. Dependable when it comes to protecting my stuff. But it seems the billionaires are all systems go.

A final word

The unrelenting, eight-years-long barrage of Trump’s manure spreading machine has had a distinctly negative, possibly permanent effect on what’s considered acceptable or normal behavior in our politics. One could even say the sudden shift over these past eight years, folding in a pandemic for good measure, has been traumatic. And we humans are hardwired to depress trauma, to hesitate in embracing unpleasant reality, to be desensitized to this once unthinkable assault on our heretofore enduring democracy. Some polls are suggesting that Biden’s support in 2024 is weakening within key demographic groups. Certainly, enthusiasm for politics in general is waning. I’m very concerned pro-democracy individuals and institutions aren’t “getting it.”

In fairness, as I mentioned earlier, we haven’t had Trump on the ballot since his coup attempt, and it’s worth noting that most of his endorsed “election denier” candidates in “off-year” elections, like Kari Lake in Arizona, lost. But the margin for Lake’s loss in the governor’s race was 0.6%!! So, if some of the cults and cucks have had enough of Trump that still leaves a huge contingent of voters living in this inexplicable fantasy world. And as best I can tell, the cucks are completely undeterred, even adding Elon Musk (Twitter/ X) to the mix in a dual role (Plutocrat and Social Media). It only takes a few tens-of-thousands of votes in a handful of states to tip us over the cliff.

Of course, nobody knows what will happen. Will women’s health issues continue to carry Democrats in 2024? Will Biden’s health hold strong? Will Trump’s? Will any of Trump’s felony cases get resolved before the election? Will enough Republicans be displeased enough to just stay home on election day? Which candidate will third-party voters hurt more? Will the “mainstream” press stop treating Trump, whose sycophantic Vice President just declined to endorse him, like a normal candidate? It’s hard to say. All in all, however, there is one certainty — should Biden win in 2024 they will try to overturn this election too.