When Fascism Comes to America, It Will Grope the Flag and Hold a Bible Upside Down

     It's an enduring mystery why they keep supporting that fool and we keep circling around to the word "cult".

     There are plenty of reasons for it. There are several red flags that distinguish a cult from a movement or fan base. First off, don't criticize the leader.

     Secondly, nothing the leader does is bad and, even when it is, it's still beyond reproach and, besides, the other guy did it.

     Thirdly, everything the leader does is in some way glorious and works to the betterment of... somebody.

     Fourthly, Oh shut up and take my money!

     And so forth and so on...

     And if Trump ever lurched to a podium after dancing for a few seconds like an overloaded washer and applauded himself then told them to slit their wrists, it's not a stretch to imagine that more than a few would do just that or end their life in some other, more spectacular, way because he told them to (and sometimes, he doesn't even have to do that). Because a cult depends entirely on unquestioning obedience.

     The thing about all cults is that they don't ask for much and, if they do, like everlasting life, they're promised much yet are still happy to receive so little or nothing for their sacrifice. You can go on and on as to what the real benefit is in belonging to a cult. A sense of community, little to no chance of being challenged, validation.

     But none of these things describe the Trump cult in totality.

     This is a cult that was, for years, fueled by QAnon conspiracy theories, one that kept idiots camped out on Dealey Plaza in Dallas waiting for the rotting corpses of JFK and JFK, Jr. to drive past them. That is, until their leader got himself killed in the most hillbilly accident you can imagine short of an exploding moonshine still or meth lab.

     But what all cults have in common is that what you would think would be the most objective, unassailable truth turns out to be a spitball that bounces off their heads.

 

     However, thick layers of QAnon seemed to have been peeled off the Trump mystique, yet the cult remains active, even if the donations have slowed to a trickle or a quiet burble. True, the QAnon Shaman is still making appearances at right wing events minus the gravitas of Bobby "Boris" Becker at one Halloween convention or another, even if it's mainly just to get mauled and groped Boebert-style by aging comedienne-cum professional bleacher bum Roseanne.

     So, what is still keeping Trump so relevant to tens of millions of mouth breathers? How can he still singlehandedly keep the truth from penetrating those thick skulls? Why are they so ready to vote for this idiot for a third time?

     Well, it can be said that Trump perverted identity politics, something that one can plausibly posit was pioneered by Hitler, who tapped into German disaffection and insecurity over WWI and the bad state of the Weimar Republic's shaky economy.

     But Trump doesn't have a shaky economy to exploit for fascist brownie points nor were we ever on the losing end of a world war. Besides, the last one ended the year before Trump was born. There's no Treaty of Versailles that limits our military might. All Trump has is a general, vague sense of disaffection into which he taps, largely inflamed by a mostly fictional border crisis. In other words, Trump has none of Hitler's advantages.

     Yet, he continually mouths old Nazi talking points and his supporters eat up his words even though Trump never comes right out and says who exactly, is "poisoning the blood of our country". It's just enough for them to feel as if this is their country and that they are the "our" in Trump's sloppy reprise of his campaign announcement of June 2015.

     Facts don't matter to these people, obviously, and Trump's greatest accomplishment in this, his fifth run for the presidency, is in succeeding in making these goobers believe that necessary legal comeuppance for his increasingly obvious crime spree is "election interference" and political persecution. They celebrate his criminality because they see it as Trump sticking it to the libs. And it never, maddeningly, seems to dawn on these barely functional idiots that everything Trump ever did was geared to helping one person and one person only: Donald Trump.

     And anyone who supports him, he, in true sociopathic fashion, looks at as mere human counter-measures. Otherwise. Trump would've pardoned the J6 defendants, at least those who were arrested before he left office on January 20, 2021.

     But we've since entered the post-truth era, at least as far as 74,000,000 voters are concerned. We now live in an age in which someone like Trump can take a stage (albeit ones considerably smaller than in 2015-16) and that his very physical presence and weary voice can change mathematics, history and even reality itself.