#the personality cult of trump

[tomorrowusa]

The Pledge of Obsequiousness to the MAGA flag.

It really is a cult. Seriously.

Congresswoman Jackie Speier, Jonestown Survivor: Trump Has “All the Trappings” of Being the Next Jim Jones

This is the sort of stuff that was typical of Stalin's USSR.

First the oceans, now the money…Republicans want to see Trump’s face on the $500 bill Arizona Representative Paul Gosar pushed treasury to start printing $500 bill again after 79 years

[deadpresidents]

"Mr. Trump's election demonstrates how American tolerance for the unacceptable is nearly infinite. There are hundreds of absolutely mind-boggling things I could point to from the past decade...But three election in a row, Mr. Trump has been a viable Presidential candidate and our democracy has few guardrails to protect the country from the clear and present danger he and his political appointees will continue to confer upon us. Clearly, Mr. Trump is successful because of his faults, not despite them, because we do not live in a just world...And now Republicans will control the executive branch, the Senate and the House of Representatives. There will be few checks and balances...

...Mr. Trump's voters are granted a level of care and coddling that defies credulity and that is afforded to no other voting bloc. Many of them believe the most ludicrous things: babies being aborted after birth and children going to school as one gender and returning home surgically altered as another gender even though these things simply do not happen. Time and again, we hear the wild lies these voters believe and we act as if they are sharing the same reality as ours, as if they are making informed decisions about legitimate issues. We act as if they get to dictate the terms of political engagement on a foundation of fevered mendacity.

We must refuse to participate in a mass delusion. We must refuse to accept that the ignorance on display is a congenital condition rather than a choice. All of us should refuse to pretend that any of this is normal and that these voters are just woefully misunderstood and that if only the Democrats addressed their economic anxiety, they might vote differently. While they are numerous, that does not make them right.

These are adults, so let us treat them like adults. Let us acknowledge that they want to believe nonsense and conjecture. They want to believe anything that affirms their worldview. They want to celebrate a leader who allows them to nurture their basest beliefs about others. The biggest challenge of our lifetime will be figuring out how to combat the American willingness to embrace flagrant misinformation and bigotry.

As Mr. Trump assembles his cabinet of loyalists and outlines the alarming policies he means to enact, it's hard not to imagine the worst, not out of paranoia but as a means of preparation. The incoming President has clearly articulated that he may dismantle the Department of Education and appears to be giving the wealthiest man in the world unfettered access to the Oval Office. He plans to begin mass deportations immediately and has announced his pick of a Fox News host as the defense secretary -- the list goes on, each promise more appalling than the last.

We would like to believe that many of the ideas on Mr. Trump's demented wish list won't actually come to fruition and that our democracy can once more withstand the new President and the people with whom he surrounds himself. But that is just desperate, wishful thinking. As of yet, there is nothing that will break the iron grip Mr. Trump has on his base, and Vice President-elect JD Vance is young enough to carry the mantle going forward for political cycles to come.

Absolutely anything is possible, and we must acknowledge this, not out of surrender, but as a means of readying ourselves for the impossible fights ahead."

-- Roxane Gay, "Enough", The New York Times, November 17, 2024.

This is one of the best, most spot-on pieces about where we are and what we must prepare ourselves for in the aftermath of Donald Trump's re-election to the Presidency. These gift links will allow you to bypass the NYT paywall and read the entire article, and I urge you to share these links with as many people as you'd like.

[tilbageidanmark]

[appalachiananarchist]

One of my college acquaintances is genuinely devastated that Trump is winning in Kentucky. I am just wondering how on earth she has lived her life in KY up to this point and still hasn't realized that there was never any other possible outcome. KY is always red. She keeps saying she's "holding out hope." Find a better home for your hope, my friend.

[cult-princess]

reblog if ur voting for kai anderson 🦅🇺🇸

ignore to cast one illegal vote for biden 😒

[andythecorsair]

This is me coming to you all again to ask that you please tag your posts about the US election. Literally most of the world has no input on the outcome. Many of us a bored of it. Those who aren't can search the tags.

Signed,

The Rest of the World.

P.S. I'd be more forgiving if you posted about policies, but it's all sofa-fucking, dementia, racism, and cult-of-personality stuff. It's the most mind-numbingly stupid 'political commentary' I've ever seen.

[third-doctor]

I feel like I'm going insane. That episode read to me as a lot more tragic than other people are reading it. Yeah they were racist and rich and spoiled and awful but they were just kids. They were all just kids. Lindy was absolutely terrified throughout the whole thing and clinging desperately to what she knew, which was terrible. They could've had the chance to learn and become better but they chose to go die and it's infuriating and tragic because nobody deserves that. Nobody deserves to be eaten by slugs or die of exposure in the woods. Nobody deserves to suffer like that. But they chose it rather than let the Doctor help them because they'd rather stay in their rich white supremacist bubble and he just wants to help and there's nothing he can do.

Maybe it's because one of my core beliefs is that nobody deserves death and suffering. Nobody. Even the worst person on earth can learn from their mistakes and come back and change and everyone deserves that chance. There's no such thing as too late. But they're never going to get that chance because they actively rejected it and to me that's still very, very sad.

[hooligananthony]

These dump supporters are already testing me and I’m worried I won’t survive the next 4 yrs without catching a case. Being called a “fag” 1st thing in the morning because Im standing with the basic human rights of women, the lgtbq+ and people of color then sure im the biggest fag there is! Hope them trying to feed their fragile male masculinity are worth catching some fucking hands

[isawthismeme]

[ohyeslawd]

Man look, ol boy is not well!

[tomorrowusa]

J.D. Vance has sold his soul to those "fringe lunatics".

JD Vance not long ago described conspiracy theories as the feverish imaginings produced by “fringe lunatics writing about all manner of idiocy.” That was before he became a rising star in Republican politics. The Ohio senator and GOP's vice presidential nominee has in recent years declared that the federal government deliberately allowed fentanyl into the United States to kill conservative and rural voters. He has praised Alex Jones, a well-known conspiracy theorist who claimed the deaths of 20 young children in the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting was a hoax. And he’s echoed — contrary to all evidence — former President Donald Trump's assertion that the 2020 election was unfairly won by Democrats and that those charged in the subsequent Capitol insurrection are “political prisoners.” More recently, he gave credence to the debunked idea that Haitian immigrants were abducting and devouring pets in Ohio. Longtime Republican strategists and academics say Vance's evolution on the conspiracy theories can be traced to the Ohio politician's desire to advance in Trump's Republican Party.

If you wish to be successful in the Republican Party these days, you need to join the Trump conspiracy cult. J.D. previously scorned the type pf conspiracy theories he now spews.

Vance, 40, found early success and fame as the writer of “Hillbilly Elegy,” his best-selling 2016 memoir that examined the plight of rural America. Besides labeling conspiracy theorists as “fringe lunatics” in the book, Vance wrote that their beliefs were popular, in part, because people had lost faith in the media. “With little trust in the press, there’s no check on the Internet conspiracy theories that rule the digital world.”

At the vice presidential debate a week from Wednesday, Tim Walz should ask J.D. if he really believes all those conspiracy theories or if he repeats them just to further his personal ambition.

[deadpresidents]

"Somehow disruption doesn't begin to cover it. Upheaval might be closer. Revolution maybe. In less than two weeks since being elected again, Donald J. Trump has embarked on a new campaign to shatter the institutions of Washington as no incoming President has in his lifetime.

He has rolled a giant grenade into the middle of the nation's capital and watched with mischievous glee to see who runs away and who throws themselves on it. Suffice it to say, so far there have been more of the former than the latter. Mr. Trump has said that 'real power' is the ability to engender fear, and he seems to have achieved that.

Mr. Trump's early transition moves amount to a generational stress test for the system. If Republicans bow to his demand to recess the Senate so that he can install appointees without confirmation, it would rewrite the balance of power established by the Founders more than two centuries ago. And if he gets his way on selections for some of the most important posts in government, he would put in place loyalists intent on blowing up the very departments they would lead.

He has chosen a bomb-throwing backbench congressman who has spent his career attacking fellow Republicans and fending off sex-and-drugs allegations to run the same Justice Department that investigated him, though it did not charge him, on suspicion of trafficking underage girls. He has chosen a conspiracy theorist with no medical training who disparages the foundations of conventional health care to run the Department of Health and Human Services.

He has chosen a weekend morning television host with a history of defending convicted war criminals while sporting a Christian Crusader tattoo that has been adopted as a symbol by the far right to run the most powerful armed forces in the history of the world. He has chosen a former congresswoman who has defended Middle East dictators and echoed positions favored by Russia to oversee the nation's intelligence agencies.

Nine years after Mr. Trump began upsetting political norms, it may be easy to underestimate just how extraordinary all of this is. In the past, none of those selections would have passed muster in Washington, where a failure to pay employment taxes for a nanny used to be enough to disqualify a cabinet nominee. Mr. Trump, by contrast, has bulled past the old red lines, opting for nominees who are so provocative that even fellow Republicans wondered whether he is trolling them.

The message to Washington is simple, according to Roger Stone, the longtime Trump friend who relishes his own reputation as a political dirty trickster. 'Things are going to be different,' he said by text."

-- Peter Baker, "Trump Signals a 'Seismic Shift,' Shocking the Washington Establishment,' The New York Times, November 17, 2024.

Here's another incisive article about President-elect Donald Trump's transition and his frightening Cabinet nominees, who are abnormal even for Trump and the personality cult that has been built around him since 2015. For the past quarter-century, Peter Baker has been one of the very best, most level-headed analysts of the contemporary American Presidency, and he seems be stunned by the direction the incoming Trump Administration is already heading. Once again, all of these links are gift links to bypass the New York Times paywall so that you may read and share these important pieces and remain alert to the very real consequences of the 2024 election which are already taking shape.

[captainpirateface]

I can't believe more than over half of the United States has willingly voted in a Facist Sociopath, Wannabe Dictator.

The Cult of 45 is truly disgusting.

This has to be the biggest CULT that has ever fuckin' existed in the history of mankind.

Fuck me runnin'

Look out, folks, they are coming for everyone. Even the dumb fuckers that voted this monstrosity into office.

I'm ready to defend myself and my family no matter what happens to me.

Wanna know why?

CUZ I'M A FUCKIN' PIRATE!!!!!

[fvneralth1rst]

Twump

[sumarmz]

I fucking hate performative activists because what the fuck do you mean you hope gaza becomes a parking lot and you're gonna stop boycotting just bc one Palestinian woman said don't support Kamala Harris

[werewolfsquadron]

also: all that nice stuff about being good and kind, yes, but I hope that piece of shit has a fucking heart attack. I'm not even religious but I'm praying he fucking dies.