Reza Aslan: "The dangerous cult of Donald Trump":

[JHB]

13. My only quibble is calling it the cult of Trump...

The cult existed long before Trump, cultivated for decades by conservatives. Reagan blew their dog whistles. Pat Buchanan courted them in 1992, culminating in a speech tha Molly Ivins famously observed “probably sounded better in the original German.”

The cult got used to believing self-serving myths, demonizing scapegoats of those myths, and nursing extravagant grudges against the designated villains in those myths in the wake of Vietnam (“the press and liberals stabbed us in the back,” Dan Rather, John Kerry, hating “hippies”, with ever-expanding definition of same). Conservative “think tanks” provided intellectual cover, Newt Gingrich and his allies within and outside of government pointed the cultist’s bile at “the enemy of normal Americans” and normalized an endless witch-hunt in order to bring down their Avatars of Ultimate Evil Du Jour, Bill and Hillary Clinton. But for all the effort, Newt couldn’t deliver the head of Bill the Clinton to the Salome Caucus.

In 2008 was he cult’s supposed leaders failed to beat the new AoUEDJ, the Chicago black guy with the weird Muslim name. In 2012 they cast about for a new leader, “anybody but Mitt”, but couldn’t settle on one and lost again.

In 2016, up against unexpectedly and mind-bogglingly weak establishment opposition, Trump merely positioned himself as the messiah the cult had been craving for a generation.

It’s not the cult of Trump. It’s the Cult of Jingoism, th cult of “America, Fuck Yeah!”, the cult of “more patriotic than thou, you stinking traitor”. The cult that will swallow horseshit like it’s chocolate as long as it despises the right people.

The Cult of Despising, those who aren’t happy unless they’re despising the people they like to despise.