TRUMP: "CHOSEN ONE" OR CON MAN?
The January 24 Minneapolis shooting of Alex Pretti could have been prevented had half the nation not decided that Donald Trump had descended from the Almighty. After probing their own beliefs and Trump's bloviations, Maga would likely have seen him as another street-corner con artist. The acclaimed Boston College historian Heather Cox Ricardson has emphasized, "When people understand what the administration is doing and what it means for us, they oppose it overwhelmingly."
In the last decade, Trump has anointed himself using every print, personal, and electronic medium in reach. "I am the chosen one," he has proclaimed, promising salvation. Thus hallowed, nothing he says could be wrong. You don't argue with divinity.
How do I know? It happened to me years ago, when I was subsumed into a California cult. I understand how easily one can bow to a "holy man" who says, "I alone can fix it." You just believe. With eyes closed, it's easy.
Pretti, an ICU nurse working for the Veterans Administration, might have been considered an unlikely bad guy. Carrying a legally registered handgun with a permit to carry, he had been demonstrating against ICE forces performing warrantless arrests and detentions of U.S. citizens. But apparently the decision to shoot had already been made. ICE troops first took his gun, then shot him in the back.
The county medical examiner has ruled the shooting a homicide. But the orders had come from on high. Under a self-canonized Trump, no dispute was possible.
Some legitimate religious leaders have seen through the president's big lie. Rev. Monte Norwood, of Bible Ways Ministries in Atlanta, has said, "Trump has demeaned and debased just about anybody he could, from immigrants to minorities to women to those who are disabled." David P. Gushee, a professor of Christian ethics, has seen Trump as "Lacking any inner spiritual or moral compass."
But Trump has persuaded Maga he is sacred. Mussolini was "always right," and Trump has never admitted wrong.Covering Trump's throng, the NYT's Ezra Klein has written, "There is a sense there is something in Trump... that exists beyond argumentation."
In his 1984, George Orwell termed such mind freeze "doublethink": "the ability to believe that black is white..., to know that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary." From my cult years, I can tell you that doublethink is real; one becomes turned. We discount what our eyes tell us. Instead, we believe. Psychology Today has posted, --anything can become a sacred value if a community is willing to defend it unconditionally."
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