As more independent-press journalists reveal the widening rifts among Trump administration staff, MAGA voters, Christian Nationalists, and Republican party leaders, I grow more hopeful that MAGA permanently splinters and the Republican party deceases. The Republican party had already hit its moral and ethical bottom when it decided in 2016 and again in 2024 to fully endorse and support Donald J Trump. Although I and millions of others are saving fireworks and balloons for the day that the demented old rapist slips this mortal veil, we are aware that our nation’s nightmare does not end until the Republican party is rent in unmendable multiple factions. We are now seeing their masks drop, their veils fail, their power slip.
The American Prospect in Harold Meyerson’s article “Which Trumpies’ Heads Will Roll Next?” is today’s piece to which I refer. These articles that show the final stages of our nation’s MAGA and Christian Nationalist cancer have inspired me to think about this: What triggers a cultist’s dissent? Who among loyal tribalists is most likely to act on their doubts? What signals that a cult or the leaders of an organization are splintering? Where does the splintering begin? Who joins the schisms?
I spent the first decade of my young adult life – from age twenty to age thirty – a loyal and enthusiastic member of a religious cult. The cult germinated in one man’s ego, and within a few years, he had gathered a few hundred deluded young believers to help him fulfill his fantasies. His message and style attracted us, but the gradual isolation from our families and former friends and pressure to please him attached us. We became True Believers. I’ve written a great deal about those experiences; I’ve had several decades to heal the hurt and shame while trying to understand how I and others fell into that trap. So, when I ask these questions that relate to the MAGA cult and Trump’s True Believers, I can answer them with confidence and clarity.
Trigger #1: Regularly engaging with people who differ from yourself.
A person with cult mindset typically has limited experiences and education. We learn more about ourselves and others when we build relationships outside our closest circles of families and friends. But Americans have increasingly since the 1980s isolated themselves from The Others. Americans use personal bias when researching topics, reading the news, listening to news analysts, and seeking advice. Americans choose neighborhoods, churches, and clubs based on their personal beliefs. Americans have increasingly eschewed a liberal arts education, and conservatives have increasingly mocked it. Newspapers, television news, and radio news programming have increasingly sold themselves to fewer corporations who bend toward their billionaire owners’ political biases…giving Americans less access to objective analyses and professional journalism.
Therefore, if a cultist (or any person whose ideas have been narrowly and superficially shaped) has the courage to listen to unfamiliar ideas and engage in rational argumentation with others, that person is likely to question their leaders’ ideas and behaviors. Their chance of breaking with the cult significantly increases.
The courage to question one’s leaders and reconsider one’s own beliefs unfolds slowly. The barriers are huge: strong relationships among peers, strong feelings akin to worship for the leaders, fear of being isolated or shamed, confession of wrongdoing and erroneous thinking, fear of what comes next, etc. This process requires time, and outsiders need to do two things with patience and regularity: be honest without malice, show a moral and ethical center.
Trigger #2: Realizing that the leaders do not deserve unquestioning loyalty.
Cult leaders, religious and political, are inherently egotistical, corrupt, and cruel. Outsiders who hope to reach some of the cult’s True Believers convincingly must present themselves in ways that starkly exhibit their differences from the cult leaders. Be the exemplars of honesty and integrity.
Cult leaders like Donald J Trump and others in MAGA are not adept at hiding their immorality and corrupt behaviors but, they are good at gaslighting the gullible and using media to manipulate the masses. They’ve perfected using multiple propaganda sources, sanewashing the stories, and exploiting people’s personal fears. When voters and followers chose to overlook Trump’s imbecility, sexual predation, corrupt business behaviors, they did so because he appealed strongly to their beliefs in authoritarianism, white supremacy, conservative Christianity, and misogyny.
Now that Trump and Republican leadership are openly and actively attacking all women, including MAGA’s beloved women, who question them, those loyal women whose cult mindset seemed impenetrable are cracking.
The trigger works a bit differently when the rebel is in a strong religious cult. Religious leaders try hard to hide their corruption and immorality from the followers. They rely heavily on their followers’ donations and submissiveness. Therefore, when courageous followers openly reveal a leader’s crimes, the organization easily splinters.
Religion does have a moral foundation, but it is a fragile and porous one. It’s important that outsiders understand this about a group of religious folks who seem to worship their leader – any man or woman who touts themselves as owning The Truth or being The Chosen One is innately an apathetic, sociopathic narcissist; the leader is in a tenuous position and their followers are capable of burning him at the stake. That type of leader is unable to hold onto loyalists without extreme methods of manipulation. The potential rebels can be reached by appealing to their moral values and empathy.
Part II will be answers to more questions.