Living with a delusional cult

Here’s a statement the head of the Ohio GOP Ken Blackwell (you may remember him as the state’s AG during the 2004 election):

Most people have no clue how much danger Tulsi Gabbard is in right now.

She’s not playing politics. She’s putting her life on the line by taking on the Deep State directly. She’s naming names. She’s exposing the rot. And she’s not backing down.

She called out Barack Obama.
Not just as a failed president, but as the architect of a system that has lied to the American people, weaponized federal power, and targeted anyone who dared to get in the way.

Obama used the FBI, CIA, IRS, and DOJ as tools to protect himself and crush his enemies. He gave the green light to spy on Trump. He backed the Russia hoax. He sat at the top while this country was divided, corrupted, and manipulated.

And while the media protects him, Tulsi Gabbard stood up and said what no one else would.

That takes real courage. The kind that comes with a cost.

She knows what she’s up against. The threats aren’t theoretical. They’re real. Political power like this doesn’t go quietly. People who expose it don’t walk away unscathed.

So we pray for her safety. Seriously. Not just thoughts and words, but real prayer. For protection. For strength. For clarity.

Because she is putting everything on the line for the truth. And that makes her a threat to the people who built this broken system. They’ll try to silence her. They’ll try to destroy her reputation. And if that doesn’t work, they’ll try worse.

This is what a real patriot looks like. Not someone reading safe lines off a teleprompter. Not someone raising money off empty slogans. Tulsi Gabbard is out there in the fire, alone, facing down a political machine that has ruined lives and toppled governments.

And she’s doing it with her head held high.

We need more voices like hers. But we also need to protect the few we’ve got.

God bless you, Tulsi.
God guide you.
And God protect you.

This is basically QANON-style lunacy, but it’s also GOP orthodoxy, which are two facts that together don’t fit well into the “we have two legitimate political parties in this country” media model. That model can’t operate under conditions in which one of the parties is recognized to be a delusional cult, so the model survives by ignoring that fact or lying about it, or being in deep denial about it.

This is related to something I’ve been wondering about lately, which is why are so many of Trump’s most devoted followers so attracted to his “honesty” and “authenticity?” The easy answer is that they’re in a delusional cult, which is true, but also somewhat of a circular explanation. Going a bit deeper, a lot of them are evangelical Christians, so they have a good deal of familiarity with delusional cults, and being devoted to depraved and dishonest authority figures, who present themselves as purveyors of righteous and esoteric knowledge. (“I preach Christ crucified, folly to the Greeks.”).

Some other reasons that Trump’s base think he’s honest and authentic include:

(1) These people are fucking idiots. The have irrational beliefs about a lot of things (see above).

(2) A demagogic narcissist is someone who has literally no concern with the difference between truth and falsehood, and will therefore make countless outrageously false statements with an air of complete confidence. Lots of people in the fucking idiot category referenced above are prone to confuse those sorts of statements with a blunt honesty that tells it like it is, that the Establishment won’t acknowledge because the Truth is Politically Incorrect.

(3) A lot of them also actually like the lying, at the same time they celebrate it as bluntness and honesty (One of the liberating things about being an irrational moron is that intellectual consistency goes right out the window. It’s tennis with the net down or maybe chess when all the pieces can do anything at any time). David Corn a couple of days before November’s election:

His wild assertions, narcissistic boasts, and offensive insults need not be factual. Trump’s ability to say whatever the hell he wants is not for his cultish followers only telling it like it is. It is a sign of strength. It’s his way of giving the finger to them. Trump is demonstrating that he does not play by the rules of the establishment that these people perceive (for an assortment of reasons) as the enemy. That’s the same reason they are not put off by—or even embrace—his crudeness, mean-spiritedness, bigotry, misogyny, and racism.

Trump’s lying and indecency are evidence to them that he will do whatever it takes to be their hero. And some Trumpers probably envy his ability to say whatever he wishes and escape the usual consequences. Trump can pull all this off because millions want him to be able to pull it off. His lies are not merely a personal flaw. His manifold deceits and their acceptance by tens of millions are a sign that our politics, maybe our nation, is broken. How broken will be determined by what happens on Tuesday and in the days and weeks afterward.

We probably need more anthropologists and sociologists to analyze how and why American society is sufficiently depraved to find this shambolic parody of a demagogue attractive, but it does. How do you live in a country where half of the people are either frankly insane, or perfectly OK with the insanity if it entertains them or cuts their taxes or makes the right people mad?

I don’t know.