~~~~~~~~~~𝐓𝐑𝐔𝐌𝐏'𝐒 𝐋𝐀𝐓𝐄𝐒𝐓 𝐂𝐎𝐍 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐖𝐇𝐘 𝐌𝐀𝐆𝐀 𝐖𝐈𝐋𝐋 𝐁𝐄𝐋𝐈𝐄𝐕𝐄 𝐄𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐘 𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐃 𝐎𝐅 𝐈𝐓

 

Just like the "Reverends" Jim Jones and Sun Yung Moon, just like Waco's David Koresh, Donald Trump is a con man. The real tragedy is the feeble mental state of MAGA, the true believers, who swallow each and every con like toddlers eating pablum.  

The latest, a link to which Trump left on Truth Social, claims Joe Biden was "executed in 2020," then "cloned into doubles, robotically engineered soulless entities."

It's silly to rank cons as most are simply preposterous; Haitian immigrants eating cats and dogs, the January 6 lie and, of course, birtherism.  A close friend, with typical good sense in most things, recently told me that Michelle Obama is a man, repeating another obvious stupidity with a straight face.

When did our country get so dumb, so gullible, so willing to be sucked in by obvious bull excrement?

The phrase "MAGA cultists" stings, but it's also ineffective.  It doesn't cause a person to recalculate,  but simply reinforces the belief system, the resolve to fight for the leader.

There are no talking points, no logic or reasoning, no anecdotal evidence powerful enough to penetrate the thinking of someone locked in a cult of personality.

Deprogramming, even with the aid of a mental health professional, can take years.

Donald Trump knew it back in 2015 and was brazen enough to actually say it: "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK? . . . It's, like, incredible."

Nothing fazed the MAGA crowd; not "Pussygate," not the obvious fraud of Trump University, Trump Charities or the Trump Organization, not the lies and misrepresentations spewing out of his mouth daily and certainly not the way he destroyed his 17 Republican challengers with childish insults.

While not a mental health professional, I've observed cults of personality in my 77 years of life; the Reverend Sun Myun Moon orchestrating every single aspect of the "Moonie's" lives, including their wedding day, the throng who followed Jim Jones to Guyana, eventually drinking the cyanide-laced Kool-Aid he served them to their death by mass suicide.

Cult identity is not rational, but emotional.  Oh, some initial convincing takes place to be sure and words are used and "evidence" is presented, but, at some point, GroupThink, peer pressure, commitment to a cause, takes over and obedience, adherence, loyalty becomes part of the psyche. 

Are some more susceptible than others to being influenced by cults?  What exactly is brainwashing? Intelligent, educated people followed Jim Jones of the People's Temple into Guyana, drank the cyanide-laced liquid to their death and, in some cases, to the demise of their offspring.  It matters little what bullshit they believed, just why they were so vulnerable to lies and so easily lead.