When you are inducted into a cult, a classic pattern is followed each time.
The initial appeal may appear harmless or reasonable. Fellowship. A sense of belonging. Opportunity to get ahead. Joining the winning team. Duty and commitment to service.
Next is immersion into a culture which pulls you away from reality and norms as most of us understand them. Those norms, it is revealed to you, are the instrument of evil Others who have secretly controlled you for your entire lifetime.
Then there comes that fateful moment when you must step beyond the point of no return. It is demanded that you take an action which will forever stop you from returning to normal life. An act so repugnant that it signals your irrevocable commitment to the cause and to its leader. Are you with us or are you with the evil Others?
In spy thrillers, it’s the scene where the agent is told to shoot the prisoner or the innocent bystander. In some cults, it’s a painful or disgusting physical ritual that no person would consider doing under any normal circumstances.
The goal is to get you to commit the literal or figurative act of biting the head off a live chicken at midnight, then using the resulting blood to daub your naked body with satanic symbols. At that point, you belong to them.
Cults are not limited to secretive groups in the shadows. The cult method described above has been used by political leaders throughout the centuries to bind their adherents.
For cult members who are public figures, the most common method to force their commitment is to demand the person make obviously false and defamatory statements. The more blatantly, screamingly false the statements, the better.
And here we find ourselves.
Next time you find yourself trying to understand an apparently senseless and damaging action by a member of the current administration, the cult model may be the single most useful visualization.
From the sad spectacle of Spicey and the inauguration crowd, to Chief of Staff Kelly weaving an elaborate and detailed lie about Rep Wilson, we have seen the pundits puzzle over the inexplicable.
“If we give him the benefit of the doubt, perhaps he really meant that the President really meant this other thing that he totally didn’t say. Discuss.”
Guys! Its a cult! You have just witnessed a ritual of initiation to the next circle.
Forcing the underlings to behave in this way isn’t a bug. It’s a feature.
It’s a sad thing when we see a person with a long and proud tradition of service to our country take that final, fateful step, and bite down on the chicken’s neck.
At first, Mr. Kelly probably thought he could make a difference. Add a small measure of stability to the mangled mess that’s the executive branch. Reduce the risk of war. Accepting the Chief of Staff position in the administration was probably a laudable and patriotic decision (whether or not you agree with his politics).
We’ll never know about the moments leading directly to Mr. Kelly being pushed out to the podium to defend the lies of his leader. Perhaps he knew this would be his point of no return. Or maybe the temperature of his personal frog pot has been going up slowly enough that he was not aware of the import of the moment, or able to deny it to himself.
The moment that he chose leader over country.
The cult, at its heart, is about the Leader. Nothing more.
Believers are not saying “Heil to the proposed supply-side tax policies which I believe will have a stimulative effect on our economy and increase job creation.”
It’s only about one thing — the leader, and their fealty.
Cults use these methods above to grow their membership. But creating a totally committed inner circle is also an important defensive move. When the ship starts to sink, which rats will stay? From Vanity Fair: www.vanityfair.com/...
In the sorriest days of the Watergate scandal, the iconoclastic journalist and 60 Minutes commentator Nicholas von Hoffman compared the Nixon presidency to “a dead mouse on the American family kitchen floor. The question is: who is going to pick it up by the tail and drop it in the trash?” It would be premature to write off the Trump presidency as a deceased rodent lying on the linoleum. In its nasty defensiveness, it is closer to a cornered rat. It still has plenty of ugly fight left.
For a cornered rat, what’s the most important thing? Naturally, a key goal is to have as many fellow cornered rats as possible. People who have nowhere they can possibly go if their leader goes down.
That leads to a prediction: As the Administration loses more and more credibility, the push for oaths of fealty will increase to a crescendo. Forget about majorities or legislation. The only goal will be to cement the loyalty of the hard core of the cult, to fight to the end for the king rat.
As for Mr. Kelly — I guess he knew what he signed up for.
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[Note: An anonymous source provided images and footage of Spicey’s midnight initiation, complete with chicken, which was held behind a tall hedge on the White House grounds on inauguration night. The material has been withheld in the interests of basic decency.]
[And Part II has now been posted! www.dailykos.com/...]
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James R. Wells is the author of The Great Symmetry, a science fiction adventure celebrating the freedom of ideas. The story is set 300 years in the future, but that future world appears to be arriving about 299 years sooner than expected.