Almost exactly four years ago, I was accused of being a member of a cult and of blindly following Donald Trump. The Left gave the cult the name “Cult 45”, which I supposed is a play on “Colt 45”, which I suppose insinuated that everyone that supports Trump is a beer guzzling redneck.
I’m not a big believer in having a single person speak for everyone. For example, I seriously doubt that Al Sharpton speaks for all black people. It’s impossible to find a group of people who all have the exact same opinion about a topic.
Except, that is, those people who support Donald Trump.
So, as a Trump supporter, I feel comfortable speaking on behalf of Trump supporters everywhere when I tell you this:
We don’t blindly follow anyone.
Eyes Wide Open
We’re all aware of Trump’s shortcomings. How could we not be? For the past 10 years, the left and the mainstream media, which turns out to be the same thing, has been telling us all about Trump’s ill deeds. A couple of the things they said about him were even true.
So, we’re all aware of Trump’s shortcomings. And we don’t care. OK, that’s not technically correct, some people do care a bit. But any negatives Trump has is by far outweighed by what he brings to the table.
In fact, they’re outweighed more than anything has ever been outweighed before. They’re outweighed the likes of which the world has never seen. See? We know he has a tendency to exaggerate. And we don’t care.
Ask any Trump supporter why they support Trump, and they can give you a reason. Most of us will freely admit that Trump has issues, and most of us can name at least a handful. Maybe two. But none of that is important because Donald Trump has proven that he does what he says he’ll do. His campaign promises aren’t empty. He actually delivers on them.
In fact, Trump supporters are just about as far away from being a cult as you can get.
Not a Cult
In a cult, if someone tries to leave, they’re tracked down and brought back into the fold. If you want to become an ex-Trump-supporter…fine. Whatever floats your boat. We’ll be here if you change your mind. And we’ll even talk to you and treat you nicely, regardless of whether you come back to your senses or not.
Similarly, people who support Trump aren’t abused as they are in cults, we don’t believe that Trump is right all the time, and we don’t have zero tolerance for criticism or questions. In fact, questioning everything is sort of a requirement if you want to call yourself a Trump supporter.
Someone posted a comment on a thread the other day. I forgot what the topic was about. He said, “I’d rather have a question I can’t answer than an answer I can’t question.” Now, as comments go, that was a pretty good one. A lot of comments aren’t. We live in a time when simply giving a “like” is too much work for most people so thoughtful rhetoric isn’t something we see every day.
And, while Conservatives are usually much more eloquent than Liberals who believe that “you’re racist” is a witty retort, I thought it was a stretch that the guy making the comment had originally come up with those words.
So, I dug a little deeper.
I’m a Conservative, therefore I question…
The original quote comes from Richard Feynman, a renown theoretical physicist. If you watched The Big Bang Theory, you may recognize the name. After Einstein, Feynman was the second-most mentioned physicist on the show.
Feynman’s original quote is:
“I’d rather have questions that can’t be answered than answers that can’t be questioned.”
I’m confident saying that Feynman’s quote sums up how every single Trump supporter feels.
There is nobody who blindly follows Trump. We’re all aware he’s a flawed man. And we don’t care.
And yet here I am nearly four years after I was first accused of being in a Trump cult finding myself being accused of the exact same thing.
The people who support Trump do so not because they’re not allowed to question things, but because they have questioned things.
This is the point where I’m supposed to switch gears and point out how it’s Kamala’s supporters, and not Trump supporters who are showing the signs of being in a cult.
Except I can’t.
Also Not a Cult
The Democrats don’t belong to a cult. A cult would be a step up from where they actually are. At least people in a cult are there because they believe in something or someone.
But there is no charismatic leader the Democrats are following. Sure, there was Biden and now Kamala, but everyone knows that neither of them is in charge. The people supporting Kamala aren’t doing so because they believe in her message, because she doesn’t have one. No, they support Kamala because they’ve been trained to do so.
Well, technically, that’s not true. People support Kamala because they’ve been trained to hate Donald Trump.
It’s like Pavlov’s dogs.
I’m sure you’ve heard of Ivan Pavlov. He was a Russian/Soviet scientist who had a theory that dogs don’t learn to salivate, it’s just something they do when they anticipate getting fed. To prove his hypothesis, he did an experiment to see if he could get his dogs to drool whenever he wanted them to.
The way he accomplished this was to ring a bell every time he fed his dogs. After enough repetition, the dogs learned to associate the bell with food. After that, every time Pavlov rang the bell, his dogs would start drooling.
Eyes Wide Shut
The Democrats are a lot like Pavlov’s dogs. They’ve been conditioned to react with hatred and contempt whenever they hear the trigger word. And that trigger word is “Trump”. Mention the name “Donald Trump” to a Democrat and it will trigger an irrational and volatile emotional reaction.
At the Democratic National Convention, Donald Trump’s name was mentioned 147 times. On just the first night. By contrast, throughout the entirety of the Republican National Convention, Biden’s name was mentioned only twice.
Every time Democrats across the country heard the trigger word, they reacted with hate for a man most of them have never met, and hardly any of them ever will.
Some call it Trump Derangement Syndrome. I call it behavioral conditioning. Just like Pavlov’s dogs.
There is no “Cult of Trump”. Nobody blindly follows him. We see his flaws, and we don’t care. The tough questions have been asked and answered so we know there’s more upside than downside with him being President.
Pavlov’s dogs didn’t know why they were drooling. They just did. It’s their nature.
Similarly, people on the left don’t know why they’re so filled with hate. They just are. It’s their nature. They hate Trump not because there truly is anything to hate, but because they’ve been told to hate him, and are forbidden from questioning why.
