In some ways, the Mueller testimony was disappointing. In other ways, it was very damning for Trump, though in a completely undramatic way. Then, I got to thinking: what could Mueller have said or done to change the minds of Trump’s supporters?
I really can’t think of anything. He could have said, for instance, “Well, Trump came to me and said that he thought the American public were stupid and it was his right to fool them because they were so stupid they deserve to be fooled. Of course, I got help from Russian! How the hell else could I have been elected. But you ain’t see nothing yet. I’m going to win in a landslide next time. You guys are losers! I’m a winner and I’m going to be dictator!”
Trump’s supporters would simply say that Mueller was lying; that Trump never said that.
Suppose Mueller said, “Well, actually there were 5000 witnesses to the meeting. Here are their names and phone numbers.”
Those people would immediately be decried as part of the effort to “get Trump.” In fact, at least one person on Fox News would suggest they were being paid to say that by George Soros and that they would be better off dead. They would all be seen as part of a vast conspiracy.
Amazingly, though people across the earth cannot address global climate change in order to survive, they can all get together in a multi-billion person conspiracy to oust Donald Trump.
Does that sound too ridiculous? It is ridiculous, but many of the base already think that global warming and its attendant increase in flooding, drought, climate-related deaths, species extinction, sea level rising, worse forest fires, etc. — is a conspiracy — a conspiracy which require millions of people to be “on board” with faking data, photos, eye witness accounts, etc.
These are not just random people either. In tens of thousands of cases, these are scientists for whom truth is the highest value. They have dedicated their lives to finding the truth and yet, somehow, they’ve been corrupted in a single stroke.
So, I’m forced to conclude that Trumpism has gone beyond a religion to replace Christianity. It is indeed a cult. To me, the distinction is not in the sheer numbers of people, but the extent to which their belief is impervious to feedback from the real world.
There are many people who hold traditional faiths very much in reverence, whether it is Christianity or something else. But these religions focus on things that are spiritual in nature. The mainstream of such religions do not ask their adherents to believe things that are provably wrong about the physical world. The Catholic church, for instance, does not insist that the Earth is the center of the Universe just because they once believed it. They are very conservative, but they are not impervious to facts — not in the long run.
Here are links to some popular articles about religious cults. It would seem that Nazi Germany under Hitler was also something of a giant cult. Anyway, I wonder whether anyone is aware of first hand accounts of people from Germany who initially welcomed Hitler and Nazism and later realized the horrible and horrendous error of their ways.
https://allthatsinteresting.com/insane-cults
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/understanding-jonestown_b_8282188
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/what-is-a-cult_b_11729868
If video is more your style.
petersironwood 
A well written analysis. I think you’re right. I find the Trump cult really disturbing. As you point out there is nothing anyone can say or do that will make them see what Trump really is and I wonder what will happen with this large group of people if Trump is eventually ousted from power.
Well, all I can say is that I support President Trump and while he is far from perfect, it is nice to see a president who actually loves the USA and who doesn’t convene a focus group before he opens his mouth to make sure he says the right thing. As far as climate change… the climate has been changing since the beginning of time and will continue to do so. How do we know ( or who are we to say?) what the optimum climate is? As far as your army of scientists, is it possible that they know that they continue to get funded only if their results support the folks with the checkbook? Climate change isn’t about saving the earth, it’s about controlling the people. Yesterday’s televised disaster showed exactly why Trump was elected and why he will win again in 2020… he is a disrupter to those who believe that they are smarter than the rest of us. Cults? I think not.
Thanks for reading and commenting, Ray. I’d be interested to find out why you think Trump “loves the USA.” He says he does, but that describes just about every US politician of every party that I can think of. Once, long, long ago in college, I went to a meeting and there was an actual communist there (I mean an older guy paid by Russia, not just a college kid flirting with communism. *He* really didn’t like America and said so. But he wasn’t even running for office. But every Presidential candidate since Eisenhower claimed to love America.
I agree that climate has changed in the past and sometimes dramatically so. Civilization is over-optimized and therefore very fragile to climate change. We have a huge proportion of the population living in areas that could go under water. It isn’t necessarily more extreme than what happened before, but it’s more disruptive. It isn’t *just* that the cities along the coasts are at risk. All sorts of supply chains for people inside the country run through those cities. Most people don’t know how to “live off the land” any more and there are way too many to support in a hunter-gatherer mode. If we *were* all hunters and gathers and somehow we had this kind of global warming, we would probably just migrate on foot the way people did thousands of years ago.
As for scientists — I don’t know how many you know personally, but I know hundreds. Of course, they vary in their motivations, but by and large they are far less motivated by money than the average manager or sales person or CEO. That said, it is important that many scientists be funded by universities and government. If all of them were funded solely by corporations — whether coal, oil, solar power, nuclear, or whatever — they would be slightly biased — and eventually, if that continued, science would become an empty propaganda exercise for the highest bidder. That is NOT the way it is now, however. The same could be said of scientists in bio-tech. If they were *all* paid for by giant pharma companies, it would eventually ruin the science. But by having part of that community be funded by university and government, it tends to keep the entire field more honest and open to feedback. What possible outcome or testimony by Mueller would have caused you to say, “You know what? Trump did things that are beyond the pale. I’m not going to vote for him in 2020?” Or, if you like, what action could Trump take that would cause you to lose your support? Would you do it if he started using ICE, say, to round up legal immigrants and shipping them out? IDK. You tell me. If Epstein survives in prison long enough to testify and he credibly fingered Trump (and Clinton) for being involved in child trafficking, would you stop supporting him? Or, would your reaction be…”That’s impossible. It’s fake news. Someone “got” to Epstein and made him testify against Trump.”? Or, would a stock market crash down to 20,000 or 15,000 make you lose faith? What if Trump and Putin and Kim announced a new “Axis of Evil” to rule the world? Of course, I am not saying any of that will happen, but I just can’t think of a single thing that would change many Trump supporters. I would have thought that encouraging Russia to interfere again and making light of it and refusing to pass legislation or take action to prevent or at least minimize interference would be a heavy enough straw to break the camel’s back, but obviously, it isn’t. So…what would be?
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