On July 9, 2016–after Donald Trump had declared himself a candidate for the presidency but before it became obvious that New York playboy, real estate mogul, and reality TV clown had an ice cube’s chance in hell of actually winning that esteemed office–I wrote an article for this blog, which I titled “The Real Tragedy of Donald Trump.” To date, it has been my most-read article. In it, I said this, among other things:
“The fact that a crazy person thinks he should be president doesn’t really disturb me. Look at all the crazy people who have claimed to be Jesus! As I said at the beginning, Trump is not the cause; he’s the effect. Donald Trump would not be where he is without the 13,000,000 people who have so far voted for him. And therein lies the REAL tragedy! In the greatest and richest country on earth, 13,000,000 people feel so angry, so betrayed, so powerless, so disenfranchised, so cheated, and so dehumanized that the rantings of a crazy man are words of hope and promise! If I were drowning, I wouldn’t take time to vet the person who threw me a rope. I wouldn’t care how morally corrupt or mentally deranged the person might be; I’d grab that rope! The fact that 13,000,000 people have reached the level of desperation that a rope from Donald Trump looks like salvation is tragic.”
That was then. Now, almost a year into this sham “presidency,” I feel no compassion for those still riding the Trump Train. They’ve had as many opportunities to witness the deterioration of our democracy, to weep over the shaming of our nation on the world stage, and to recognize that they will suffer the greatest losses if Trump’s me-and-my-rich-friends-only agenda is implemented as the rest of us have had. Yet they continue to idolize him, fill his rallies, and pledge to vote for him again. How is it possible that citizens of the same country can witness the same debacle and one group call for impeachment while another group continues to cheer on their idol?
And that question brings us to the tragedy of Trump revisited. Eleven months in, the real tragedy is what Donald Trump has revealed about the state of our Union, and it’s not pretty. The real tragedy of this year-long nightmare is at least three-pronged.
Perhaps most disturbing is the reality that our “president” is in fact a cult leader. He is not recognized as a legitimate president by the sane majority. And he doesn’t care! He is content to be the president of his “base” so long as they feed his gargantuan ego with all of the adulation it requires, mock the “enemies” in the press along with him, agree with him that the Russia probe is a hoax and a witch hunt, and perpetuate the delusional belief that he is “making America great again.” The definition of narcissism–a word most Americans have learned to define and spell in the last year–is the belief that the narcissist is the only person on earth who matters and that other people gain relevance only as they serve the narcissist’s purposes. So long as Trump can retain a base large enough to ensure another electoral victory, the rest of us are just so much excess baggage. Never mind that the cult followers stand to be the greatest losers when the dreaded tax bill becomes a law and the ACA is so stripped that it no longer serves the millions of people whose lives have been saved by it. The rabid “Lock-her-up” chanters will chant on because that’s how cults work.
According to International Cultic Studies Association (ICSA), these are just a few of the characteristics of cult culture:
- 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.
- 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, and/or 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.
- 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.
This checklist will be published in the new book, Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships by Janja Lalich and Madeleine Tobias (Berkeley: Bay Tree Publishing, 2006). It was adapted from a checklist originally developed by Michael Langone.
Number 1: excessively zealous and unquestioning commitment to leader. Check. Never in our history has a person wielded such unquestioned influence over so many Americans, with their full cooperation. Seems the only true words DT has ever spoken are the boast that he could shoot people in the middle of Fifth Avenue and not lose followers.
Number 2: Questioning discouraged. Check. Not only does this rule apply to the many people who have been fired for refusing to cooperate with the “boss” but it also seems to be part of what keeps followers in line. Cults give powerless people a place to belong, to feel more powerful by association with the exalted leader. The prospect of losing that newfound status is enough to keep most cult members in line–all the way to the Kool-Aid/suicide line.
Number 3: Elitist. Check. Trump followers belong to an elite group; they’re the only ones who are important to the “president” of their country. Therefore, they have influence which most of them have never before known. While the rest of us scream and yell about the devastation being wreaked on our democracy, these elites smile smugly over the turn of events which has made them the ones who are now heard in the highest chambers. Their “god emperor” (yes, sickening as it sounds, some of them give him that title) is hearing and serving only them. That’s a pretty intoxicating feeling!
Number 4: Us-versus-them mentality. Check. Not much commentary needed here. Just look at the deep divisions in our society–probably the greatest since the Civil War. Look and weep.
Number 5: Leader not accountable. Check. Possibly the most frustrating aspect of all is the president’s lack of oversight and accountability. I recall my intense frustration during the first few months of this administration as it became increasingly clear how much power is invested in our chief executive and how little restraint can be exercised against that office. If we learn nothing else from this debacle, we must learn how incumbent it is on us, the voters, to choose a leader who has the knowledge, experience, and temperament to be trusted with that level of authority.
Number 6: Ends justify means. CHECK!!! The party-over-country mentality of the current Republican party has caused women to vote for and support a confessed p—y grabber, a child molester, and a few indicted felons, among others. It’s caused men and women to see injustice as justice when one person in a lewd tape–the one who listened and laughed along with the joke (yes, I know that’s bad, too)–to lose his job and the one actually making the lewd comments to get a job promotion. A big promotion! It’s caused lawmakers to swallow hard at the blatant racist, xenophobic, misogynistic actions of the “president” and his followers but then do nothing because they don’t want to lose their power and control. Their new mantras are “anyone but a Democrat!” and “anything to advance the agenda.” The conscience is the first thing to go!
Number 7: Fear of leaving group. Check. Those powerless people I described in my first article as feeling “so angry, so betrayed, so powerless, so disenfranchised, so cheated, and so dehumanized” have found power, enfranchisement, and humanity as part of a sort of inner circle. The tables have been turned: now those “liberal elites” are the ones beating our heads on our desks trying to figure out how we can “take our country back.” The Trump Cult is a place to belong, a place to feel loved and accepted–however deceiving those sentiments may be. That Kool-Aid is tasting pretty sweet. Right now.
According to Adrian Furnham, Ph.D., in a Psychology Today article, group membership offers several seductive benefits: friendship, connections, identity, an opportunity to make a contribution. I get that. However, I feel only disgust and disdain for a “leader” who is willing to destroy the whole world to feed his own ego and bank account and equal disgust and disdain for those who blindly follow and give him the power to wreak his destruction.
How often have you heard the word “tribalism” used to describe current relations among the citizens of our country? The state of discord, division, and outright hatred among Democrats, Republicans, and Independents or liberals, conservatives, and moderates is the second prong of the real tragedy of life with Donald Trump as “president.” “Tribe” has a positive meaning in modern parlance: it means our group of friends, our “peeps,” the folks we look to for friendship, social engagement, understanding, and support. And that usage has a great deal in common with the negative form of tribalism which so defines our modern political landscape.
Writer and editor Elisha Madison offers this definition:
“A common definition for a tribe is a group of people that all have common ancestry, or a common ancestor, a common culture, and live in their own enclosed society. Other names for a tribe are a clan [sic], which is used in some European countries, and family. The idea of a tribe goes back to ancient times when Rome would create divisions within society due to class, family, and money. These divisions were tribes.”
The tribal groups which exist in modern-day America don’t necessarily share common ancestry, but each one clearly shares a common culture and a tendency to live in its own enclosed society. The divisions among the various tribes have become such deep chasms and so impossible to bridge that any cooperation or coexistence among them has been rendered all but hopeless. I have come to detest false equivalencies: lying is okay because everyone does it, Democrats do the same thing, both parties are corrupt, etc. Hogwash! The modern Republican party is so off the charts, there is no equivalence in the Democrat party and perhaps none in American history. In this one aspect, however, that of demanding adherence to the tribe’s belief system, I’d have to say we are all guilty. A Republican who accepts abortion and a Democrat who questions it or thinks perhaps some restrictions should apply are equal candidates for censure and possible banishment.
Ms. Madison goes on to list core characteristics of a tribe. I’ve selected the ones which apply to this discussion.
The first is unity. Better a child molester than a Democrat is a perfect example. He may be a child molester, but he’s our child molester. He may be a genital grabber, but by god, he’s our genital grabber. As in the cult culture, repugnant values can become acceptable so long as those values serve to create and maintain unity within the tribe. Ancient tribes’ physical survival depended on unity, and modern tribes are no different, except that now we’re fighting for the survival of our agenda, our prejudices, our political dominance.
According to Ms. Madison, many tribes live in a specific territory. I think that sounds a lot like “red states” and “blue states.” President Obama tried to convince us to stop being red states and blue states and get on with being the United States, but lots of people didn’t buy that idea; so we remain red tribes and blue tribes.
A third characteristic is common language and culture; and although most of the people discussed here speak English, the tribes have clear differences in culture and in the language they use to encode their ideas, beliefs, and values. What one tribe calls political correctness, for example, another calls respect, equal treatment, and kindness.
This characteristic may be most significant of all:
“Another commonality is their belief systems. Most tribes will all worship the same god or gods, and follow the morality of the common religion. Another factor is internal government. Most tribes have their own political systems within their own people and usually do not recognize outside laws. They will vote for and appoint chiefs and leaders to help rule their communities. This means if someone breaks a law, they address it within the society . . . This is called tribal sovereignty.”
So how does a crotch grabber become “president” and a pedophile become a senator? They are held accountable only to the laws of their tribe, not to those of the broader culture or system of laws. They are judged and found innocent within the tribal unit, everyone else’s objections be damned. The common religion even allows the pedophile to keep preaching morality and asserting his moral superiority in the faces of his accusers. The opposing tribe members are held to far different standards than one’s own tribe members. Hence, the Democrats have lost a long-serving representative and a conscientious senator while the Republican “president” retains his office and a Republican pedophile prepares to step into the same august body that called for the expulsion of a Democrat who was careless and foolish, even though he expressed remorse and accepted responsibility for his actions. The only metric for judging these incidents is the internal law of the tribe; absolute moral standards do not exist.
Here’s Ms. Madison’s summary statement: “Ultimately, a tribe is a nation within a nation. They are people that have created their own societies and rules, and live by them.” Bingo! I think we know now what we’re dealing with.
Most tragic of all is the perversion of Christianity under the evangelical take-over of the Republican party. That problem may seem to be of no concern to mainstream Christians, non-Christians, and adherents to other religions; but make no mistake, we all have been affected by evangelicalism because without that group as a powerful voting bloc, we would have a different person sitting in the Oval Office today. And if we have any hope of restoring intelligent leadership to the executive branch of our government, we must–like it or not–confront this group.
Since white evangelicalism and republicanism are practically indistinguishable these days, it’s become imperative to recognize the stark reality that evangelicalism is as different from Christianity as ISIS is from Islam. Evangelicals can’t be allowed to peddle their deviant ideas as the will of God or as in any way a representation of Christian belief. The modern white evangelical movement is a political regime operating under the guise of a religious organization. The enemy here is not Christianity, religion, faith in God, or people trying to follow the example of Jesus. The enemy is extremism and the resultant hatred, bigotry, and injustice.
White evangelicals are a tribe, and their tribal laws supersede our national laws. Yet because they are in fact a political regime and a pseudo religion, they can’t be satisfied with simply living within their own tribal bubble. As supposed “ambassadors for God,” they must impose their superior laws on the larger culture, because that is the will of God, according to their cherry-picked passages from the Bible.
As a religion, evangelicalism is weak and pathetic. It’s a set of rules based on those cherry-picked Bible verses which in no way resemble the life of their namesake, Jesus Christ, and in no way lead adherents to follow Jesus’ example. Increasingly, evangelicalism is the polar opposite of Christian belief and conduct.
As a tribe, evangelicals have all of the core requirements: unity, strong “red” territories, their own culture and language, and tribal sovereignty. Leaders such as Franklin Graham, Jerry Falwell Junior, and James Dobson stand as the unquestioned dictators of both religious tenet and political philosophy. It’s hard to fathom the depth of hypocrisy in statements such as these:
“Never in my lifetime have we had a president willing to take a strong, outspoken stand for the Christian faith like President Donald J. Trump has. Whether you are Protestant, evangelical, Orthodox, Catholic–all Christians need to get behind him with our prayers.” Franklin Graham
“I think evangelicals have found their dream president.” Jerry Falwell Junior
“Only the Lord knows the condition of a person’s heart. I can only tell you what I’ve heard. First, Trump appears to be tender to things of the Spirit.” James Dobson
Not one of these spokespersons for hypocrisy can offer a coherent defense of his statement, because of course every statement is pure malarkey (my favorite Joe Biden-ism). What is it about sexual assault, cooperating with a foreign power, employing felons, probably being a felon, bigotry, misogyny, xenophobia, tweeting out insults, provoking wars, and you know the rest of the list–what part of that screams “I’m a Christian”? What part of endorsing an accused child molester says “I believe in Jesus and strive to follow his teachings” or “I’m tender to things of the Spirit”?
And that brings us to the real reason we all have to pay attention to these twisted people: they are a modern political juggernaut. They’re the reason Donald Trump was elected. They’re the reason current congressional leadership is what it is. They’re the reason Neil Gorsuch now occupies a seat on the Supreme Court. They’re the reason our education system is being dismantled by Betsy DeVos. They’re the reason people are leaving the church in droves, weakening a vital voice in establishing justice and equality for all.
Christians are as appalled by these imposters as non-Christians are, so the answer is not to tax all churches or quiet the voices of those who call for justice in the name of their faith. The answer is to identify evangelicals as charlatans and do our best to unseat them from their places of power and influence.
What then is the real tragedy of Donald Trump? The tragedy is that a morally bankrupt person occupies the highest office in our land and daily degrades that office and degrades our country’s standing in the world. The bigger tragedy is that millions of voters still don’t see what is unfolding before their eyes. Cultism, tribalism, and evangelicalism conspire to keep people blinded to the evil that is transpiring. Our cultural values are being turned upside down: wrong is right, immoral is moral, evil is good.
No one is quite sure who said it, but we’ve all heard the quotation, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” Martin Luther King Junior said, “Our lives begin to end the day we remain silent about things that matter.” Dr. King also said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
What can one person do in the face of such seemingly insurmountable obstacles? Show up, speak up, be the light, and be the love. And keep doing it all even when you see no results. Good is more powerful than evil, if enough good people have enough persistence and patience.