*KEY SIGNS YOU ARE IN A CULT*
1️⃣ An inability to criticize the cult or its leader.
2️⃣ An inability to assess the relative importance of issues inside the cult and outside of it.
3️⃣ An ethical code defined by fealty to the cult.
We have already lost untold Americans to Trumpism.
1️⃣ An inability to criticize the cult or its leader.
2️⃣ An inability to assess the relative importance of issues inside the cult and outside of it.
3️⃣ An ethical code defined by fealty to the cult.
We have already lost untold Americans to Trumpism.
1/ I'm not messing around. I increasingly encounter people online who are incapable of issuing any criticism of Trump, no matter what he does. We're already seeing this tendency creep into Congress, where actions that betray the country are at *most* described as "inappropriate."
2/ We're seeing Americans who years ago were perhaps occasionally rude or insensitive viewing rudeness and insensitivity and much worse, like highly aggressive bullying, as lifelong *persistent* strategies for dealing with people. People's ethical codes are changing dramatically.
3/ Trump isn't simply brash. He's been repeatedly accused of sexual assault. He's been repeatedly accused of criminal fraud and theft. He's an unindicted co-conspirator in federal court. He's lied to America over 16,000 times. Yet the cult today is livid *a lady ripped a paper*.
4/ As in a cult, he daily humiliates the people whose lives he's taken over, even as he convinces them his power is outwardly rather than inwardly directed. Thus, the idea of "Trump Derangement Syndrome." Oh, it's *real*. It created his cult. But they think it's *everyone else*.
5/ Take, for instance, Sen. Collins (R-ME). This is one of the most powerful politicians in the United States, which is itself one of the most powerful nations on Earth. And hours after she said her cult leader had learned a lesson, he slapped her in the face by saying he hadn't.
6/ He brutalizes his own cultists by deranging their senses and their values in a way that's *very much* a syndrome the way Stockholm Syndrome is. They convince themselves that being agro and hateful is the way they always wanted to be and makes them happy. But it exhausts them.
7/ I've seen cult members up close, and it's one of the most tragic things you can encounter, as you know that it takes years to exit a cult, and it takes a strength of will and a sort of courage that not just many cult members don't have but frankly many human beings don't have.
8/ A significant part of America is lost to the rest of the world for a long time. They're lost to people who knew them and lost to themselves, inasmuch as they are no longer the people they were. And it's not an accident. Ivana Trump swears Trump kept Mein Kampf next to the bed.
9/ I'm not saying Trump is a nazi, as I don't think he is. I think his anti-Semitism and racism is the basic anti-Semitism and racism of a sh*tty person in the 1950s. I don't think he really believes in anything but being a cult leader and accruing to himself power and attention.
10/ If those who suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome by way of being Trump cultists were a family member of any one of us, we'd work to exfiltrate them from the cult. But as a nation we just don't have that sort of time. We can't waste time trying to sway cult members in deep.
11/ My sincere advice, and I struggle myself to take it daily, is to not engage whatsoever with those who have Trump Derangement Syndrome by way of being Trump cultists. You cannot understand what they are going through, and they cannot hear what you are saying. *Do not engage*.
12/ But it's also vital to understand what they're trying to do when they interact with you. They are trying to normalize their behavior by getting you to mirror it. They're trying to project their own derangement by accusing *you* of suffering from "Trump Derangement Syndrome."
13/ They're also getting a kick out of slipping into their conversation with you words, phrases, and even emojis that have meaning in their cult but very little meaning or even basic socialization outside of the cult. Performing in this way is for them like wearing school colors.
14/ But, and I say this from experience, the hardest thing about these interactions is your basic humanity and grace and empathy will cause you to believe, entirely wrongly, that you can help exfiltrate this person from the cult. You cannot. That requires professional assistance.
15/ The only thing we can try to do is minimize the harm done by these cultists and try to ensure they do not infiltrate the places power is exercised. To me the scariest part of the impeachment trial was seeing how many senators are either in the cult or are being indoctrinated.
16/ So if your inclination today had been to argue with a Trumpist who's equalizing a pathological liar and serial sexual assailant and career criminal and traitor to his country with someone who ripped up a paper, you must save your breath...as you *cannot* save your countryman.
TYPO/ It's "aggro," of course, not "agro."
