People ask me all the time how 40 percent of our country could still support a man who has so badly botched a pandemic,  wreaked havoc with families and schools,  built up the greatest deficit in the country’s history, undermines or ignores our most basic protections and traditions, filled the swamp with corrupt cronies, politicizes every part of the government, calls veterans disgusting names, lies almost constantly and is cruel and divisive daily?

And yes, don’t forget the freaky thing on his orange head big enough for a raccoon to live in.

If I had one of those on my head, there are people in my town who would shoot it right off, perhaps mistaking it for the game. Those very same people worship our President and have no limits to their love for him, perhaps the only politician in their lives or ours of whom that is true.

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The answer to the question the whole world has been asking for four years has been out there all the time, but most of us prefer cursing the darkness to creating some light:

Here goes.

First off, I needed to accept that we are a broken country, our government has lost faith with its people. Restoring that faith is the central challenge to any new government.

Trumpism is a cult, not another political party or social movement.

Donald Trump is the Cult Leader.

In an earlier column, I challenged the idea that Trumpism was a cult, and it is, of course, more than that. But I got hold of some research and studies that changed my mind.

I hope I will always be strong enough to change my mind.

This explains not only why he does what he does – even Mary Trump missed this part – but also why so many people follow him so obsessively and completely.

They are the cult. He is the leader.

In peaceful and prosperous countries, half the population is not looking or needing a cult. Something is very wrong in the United States.

Since Donald Trump was elected in 2016, I’ve been fascinated by the challenge of understanding why, rather than just arguing or complaining about it.

I suppose I’ve always seen Donald Trump as an infected wound, revealing the broken soul of a wonderful country. It has to heal in its own time.

I do believe that time has come, although so many of my readers are now what the pols call “bed-wetters.”

They have “2016 syndrome,” they cannot permit themselves to feel hope and see change, and thus, be a part of that change rather than a fearful observer.

Whenever they drive by a bunch of Trump sides, they sink into despair and can’t see the remarkable shifts and changes in the country. For me, this is a time for good people to be strong and do something.

Reading about these cults and leaders reminds me not to worry so much about this election, – democracy is taking care of itself – but to think more about why almost half of the country would go down this path, and what it is they need.

Some great man said you either are lunch or are eating lunch. I don’t wish to be lunch.

What I have come to understand about Donald Trump is this:

In a greedy, money-centered, increasingly amoral and a spiritual country of aggrieved and left behind people – women, Blacks, uneducated and unemployed rural whites, gay and trans, immigrants and refugees – Trump was inevitable.

How could the land of the one percent, once the land of the brave and the free,  be happy and at peace?

Everyone who wants to deal with this and bring about change is in a movement, everyone else is in the cult.

In our country of aggrieved people and victims, who, exactly, is proud to be happy?

Trump is a symptom, not a cause.

Without leaders to admire, work that is satisfying, nature to connect with, family to support us, health care we can afford, disappearing jobs for workers,  media to inform us rather than frighten us, security in our old age, we created the perfect storm for cults, and we see many springing up all over the place, from Donald Trump to militias across the spectrum.

First, the Cult Leader.

Essentially, Donald Trump, like many pathologically narcissistic people before him, has created the biggest and potentially the most powerful cult in American History.

People are quite right to be concerned about it, although it diminishes his chances for re-election, it doesn’t enhance them as people think. He longer sees or hears anyone outside of his cult.

There are just not enough of them.

Cult followers ride around in big trucks with big flags and big boats with even bigger flags, it is their way of celebrating their leader.

They ask no questions, make no demands, follow every command.

This is not a sign of popularity so much as submission, if you read the cult study books, as I have.

In American political history, there has never been the parading around of so much heavy machinery and giant flags. The only thing missing are tanks.

It just isn’t something most people feel is necessary for most of their politicians – this display of slavish devotion.  The idea in Trump World is to have the biggest trucks, the biggest boats, the brightest hats, the angriest T-shirt, the biggest crowds, the most raucous chants.

Consider the signs of a cult leader – what stands out about them – as outlined by Joe Navarro, M.A., who has studied cults all of his careers, in a piece written in Psychology Today in 2012, four years before Donald Trump was elected president:

First, cult leaders are all narcissists. They all have a fierce belief that they are special, that they and they alone had the answers to problems.

They all insisted on being revered, says Navarro. They demand perfect loyalty from followers, they overvalue themselves and undervalue those around them.

They are pathologically and furiously intolerant of criticism, and above all, they cannot be questioned or challenged.

They treat others with contempt and arrogance. Grandiosity and the need to be controlling is an integral part of a cult leader’s personality.

They can be superficially charming and habitually cruel and dismissive of other people as inferior: only he is superior.

Navarro and others (this is all before 2016) say cult leaders need to be the center of attention and do things to distract others to ensure that no one else is being noticed or praised.

Cult leaders are constantly assessing people to determine who is a threat and who is reverential. Everyone outside the circle of devotion is an “other,” a danger. One warning sign of a cult leader is that he (or she) only loves people who love them.

They do this by being continuously controversial, wearing exotic or expensive clothing, are overdramatic in their speech, and make theatrical entrances and appearances.

Cult leaders said numerous psychologists, cannot bear to be embarrassed or corrected or seen as failing publicly. When that happens, they act out with rage.

A cult leader, says Psychology Today, never takes responsibility for problems, only successes, doesn’t seem to feel guilty for any mistakes, and never apologizes for his actions.

Janja Lalich, a cult researcher and academic at California State University, says in an interview with Live Science that cult leaders are intuitive.

“They’re able to read people,” she says, “They thrive on chaos. They’ll create crisis situations. When they walk into a room, you never know if they’re going to be good and kind-hearted or be mean and call someone out or create some kind of dangerous situation.”

Cult leaders prey on weak, angry, or aggrieved people, say researchers.

In a prosperous, happy, and stable country, there are very few large cults. The size and depth and range of the Trump cult tell us we need to be concerned about our country and its many insecurities and divisions.

It’s also apparent to me in my reading that cult leaders are not managers, they are manipulators. They have no strategic skills and are loathe to change.

Despite these traits that even most of his followers agree are characteristic of Donald Trump, he has had little trouble finding people more than willing to overlook those features.

In a democracy, we are not supposed to worship our leaders, but to challenge them and question them and protest against them if at all possible.  We are taught to watch them and keep them in check.

The Trump cult is just the opposite. Nothing is too cruel, irresponsible, or dishonest for them to protest or even grasp.

Worshipping leaders is dangerous in a democracy as Trump and the Republican Party show us why every day. A cult produces tyrants and demagogues, not leaders.

Cult leaders cannot listen. They cannot negotiate. They cannot compromise. Anyone who challenges or disagrees with them is treasonous, treacherous, criminal.

Then, The Followers

Psychologists say the very act of “leader worship” transforms the follower in an unhealthy way.

Cult followers often become angry and disconnected from their families and communities. They are only safe and comfortable within the cult, everyone else becomes an enemy. They reject institutions like government and religion, they only need their leader.

They lose their perspective and become angry and defensive if their leader is criticized in any way. The leader projects his need for absolute loyalty onto his followers, they require everyone else to be just as loyal as they are, and resent anyone who is not.

They form a symbiotic relationship that is ultimately unhealthy and destructive to both because cult leaders can’t lead, they can only rule.

Cult Leaders, says Lalich, typically make tantalizing promises – “to change the world, change you, make you rich, make you beautiful.” It is really critical, she says, for people to be savvy and skeptical about the cults they join.

I’ve been following the mostly angry and sneering messages I get from Trump followers, and I’ve spoken with a great number of Trump followers in my own community and my own substantial digital interactions. Early one, it was easier to speak with them.

As the country becomes more polarized and intolerant (both sides) it is much more difficult to have any kind of dialogue. You are either in, or you are out.

I find many of them to now be angry, tense, and rigid in their discussions about Trump and Trumpism.  This isn’t all their fault, the opposition is just as shrill.

The psychiatrists I’ve been reading say it’s no fun being in a cult – the absolute loyalty it demands and the chaos cult leaders propagate are just as hard for members to take like the rest of us.

This is where a cult leader like Trump possesses some genius. In insisting on absolute devotion, he creates it. One feeds the other, and eventually neither can see outside the circle.

The rest of us just see it on the news. Say what you want about Joe Biden, there is no cult of Bidenites roaming the country, trolling the unbelievers.

When Donald Trump says he could shoot a child on Fifth Avenue and get away with it, he is, for once telling the truth.

But what he didn’t grasp and his followers didn’t grasp is that this not the normal or healthy response of a supposedly democratic citizen to a dangerously irresponsible leader.

It is the response of a member of a cult, caught in the fever of worship that cult leaders require. But cults are not governing bodies, they are fever that inevitably breaks.

A healthy leader would have been embarrassed to make that boast, a cult leader wouldn’t think twice about it. Can you imagine running for public office and speaking proudly of shooting a child in public?

It should have been a warning. To many, it was.

America is a troubled country, but it is also a diverse and vibrant country. It is rooted in freedom and not tyranny.

We may have gone mad for a while but we all haven’t completely lost our minds.

The bed-wetting progressives have got it all wrong, and so has Donald Trump.

The people for him to fear are not the people who ride around in big boats or drive around in big trucks.

They are the people who don’t, the ordinary Americans and their families who would never think of riding around in huge gun-toting caravan or risking their families lives in a boat caravan in a storm with flags the size of man-o-wars.