Towards the end of his life, L Ron Hubbard, the creator of the cult Church of Scientology, was seen hooking himself up to a so called e-meter, a bogus device used by followers of his church to check their mental health. While it's obvious to anyone not in the Scientology cult that Hubbard was a charlatan who founded the religion as a money making scheme, it appears that he eventually started believing his own lies. There is a certain perfect symmetry to this; if you're a charismatic con artist who gets a large group of people to believe in what your saying, eventually you're going to start believing it too. Like Hubbard, if you surround yourself only with people who repeat the things you say back to you, the brainwasher can find himself joining the brainwashed.
Which brings us to the most prominent cult leader in American today, soon to be former President Donald Trump. Despite the Electoral College vote yesterday that confirmed Joe Biden's win, not to mention the dismissal by the Supreme Court, of a Texan lead attempt to overturn the vote counts in four states, Trump maintains that somehow he will still find a way to turn the election. This leads to an interesting question: is Trump just using his attempt to overturn his loss as a way to fire up his followers, or does he really think that somehow millions of votes were fraudulently counted?
On the one hand, Trump has been using his legal challenges to the election as a fundraising cash cow. Emails begging his supporters for money have raised tens of millions of dollars so far. And, as many members of the media have pointed out, while the top of the email says that the money will go to his legal team, in the fine print at the bottom is the announcement that most of the money is going to his new political action committee. In other words, his legal fund is just another con from a man whose life has been filled with them. Also, his point man on the legal charges against the election has been Rudy Giuliani, who's fee has been estimated to be around twenty thousand dollars a day. On top of that, it's been reported that he may want a presidential pardon from Trump. So of course Giuliani is going to push every legal case that he can, he wants to make money and impress the president. Most people are willing to tell lies for twenty grand a day! And all the other Trump people publicly defending his attempts to overturn the election are just doing it to impress him, or perhaps land a lucrative job in right wing media. It would appear to be a cynical cash in all around.
On the other hand, people around the president are saying that he often really seems to believe that this election was somehow stolen, and that someday soon the truth will appear and he will remain in the White House. In other words, he may not be a cynical con man, he may be straight up delusional. The fact that he surrounds himself with sycophants and immerses himself in right wing media that continually (and absurdly) claims that he actually won, combined with his narcissistic nature and constant need to be seen as winner, may skew is entire sense of reality itself. He may be a cult leader drinking his own kool aid.
This dichotomy between cynical con man and true believer is echoed in his devoted followers, who say in polls that they believe that the election was stolen, but then admit in interviews that they aren't sure. It would appear that the rallies being held by his supporters recently are as much about anger at the outcome of the election than they are a genuine belief that it was stolen. (Either way, they are becoming violent, and Trump is irresponsibly doing nothing to quell that violence).
The sad thing about cults is that it's very hard to get someone out of one once they've joined. A cult can bring a sense of order and unity to someone's life, and provides like minded friends that you can bond with. The problem is their sincere beliefs are combined with a hostility towards outsiders. And people who try to leave the cult are often hated the most of all. For an example of this, just look at the death threats being aimed by Trumpists at Republican leaders who haven't supported Trump's legal efforts. And there is no easy way for the country to get over Trumpism, which is sure to follow him even as he reluctantly leaves power. The beliefs of his followers are just too strong to disappear even when he is no longer president. The effects of Trump's degradation of both the office of the presidency and the Republican party will be felt for years to come, even if he himself fades away.
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