Today's GOP: A new cult for the 21st century

[prolesunited]

In another post, someone said the GOP was a cult. I looked up the characteristics of a cult and look what I found. Amazing and frightening how many apply.

The group is focused on a living leader to whom members seem to display excessively zealous, unquestioning commitment.

The group is preoccupied with bringing in new members.

The group is preoccupied with making money.

Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished.

The leadership dictates sometimes in great detail how members should think, act, and feel (for example: members must get permission from leaders to date, change jobs, get married; leaders may prescribe what types of clothes to wear, where to live, how to discipline children, and so forth).

The group is elitist, claiming a special, exalted status for itself, its leader(s), and members (for example: the leader is considered the Messiah or an avatar; the group and/or the leader has a special mission to save humanity).

The group has a polarized us- versus-them mentality, which causes conflict with the wider society.

The group's leader is not accountable to any authorities (as are, for example, military commanders and ministers, priests, monks, and rabbis of mainstream denominations).

The group teaches or implies that its supposedly exalted ends justify means that members would have considered unethical before joining the group (for example: collecting money for bogus charities).

The leadership induces guilt feelings in members in order to control them.

http://www.csj.org/infoserv_cult101/checklis.htm

[Paradise]

1. WOW! n/t

[prolesunited]

4. I know

That's why I had to post it. Perhaps Kerry can appoint a deprogramming czar.

[LiberalEsto]

2. If only....

If only they would switch to shaving their heads and singing "Hare Krishna" or peddling flowers and candy instead of peddling fascism!

Scary thought: perhaps Rev. Moon is secretly running the rethug party!

[tom_paine]

3. Of course they are a cult, these Kidner and Genlter Nazis

Further, they are capable of as much evil as any cult that ever existed. We are simply in the Early Stages.

[Batgirl]

5. I find this to be morbidly fascinating

And posted about it a few weeks ago. When you start looking up information on cults it's amazing how many characteristics are displayed by the unquestioning idolizers of GWB.

Apparently cults are like extended families who suffer at the hands of an abusive father figure. Sounds familiar for some reason.


This checklist of questions -- to ask before joining any group -- strikes me as scary when asked with the current admin in mind:

1. Who is the leader? What are his/her background and qualifications?
(too obvious to comment on)

2.Are there exclusive claims made to wisdom, knowledge, love, and truth?
(God told him to invade Iraq. Only he can keep us safe--if we elect a new leader we're literally doomed.)

3.Is total submission and obedience required?
(loyalty oaths anyone?)

4.Does he/ she have a criminal record, a legacy of allegations against him/her or a history of misconduct?
(ha!)

5.Does the leader demonstrate psychological problems and awareness of their existence?
(Gee I wonder.)

6.Are questions and doubts permitted within the organization?
(Ask Richard Clarke/Christie Whitman/Powell/O'Neill.)

7.Is the organization open or closed? Are there secrets? Is there real financial accountability? If a group says that you can look at its accounting records, does it actually provide access?
(Accountibility? What's that?)

8.What structural checks and balances exist within the organization to prevent abuse of power? Is there an independent "ethics" committee to challenge and the group?
(Do they mean independent whitewash committee.)

[prolesunited]

7. I must have missed that

Do you have a link so I could read what was said there?

[Batgirl]

9. I posted a couple of times

on pre-existing threads and it's not worth going back to look for them, since I was basically saying the same thing you are. I was happy to see the title of your thread since this has become a pet theory of mine.

Because every time another sloppy, smelly Bush turd hits the fan....nothing happens. From no WMD to being AWOL, to being asleep at the wheel on 9/11. His followers aren't even sufficiently in touch with reality to be apologists -- rather they are absolutely impervious to any and all damning evidence.

I just don't understand what could explain this except some form of cult worship of a divine leader.

If these Bush fanatics aren't cultists, they sure do exhibit a lot of the same characteristics. The mind control aspect, on such a vast scale, has been made possible by the ever-compliant and complicit media whores, of course.

Look how much energy is devoted, not to righting their wrongs, but to simply silencing those who criticize or even question.

"In society there are numerous elaborate attempts to influence attitudes and modify behavior. However, thought reform programs can be distinguished from other social influence efforts because of their totalistic scope and their sequenced phases aimed at destabilizing participants' sense of self, sense of reality, and values. Thought reform programs rely on organized peer pressure, the development of bonds between the leader or trainer and the followers, the control of communication, and the use of a variety of influence techniques. The aim of all this is to promote conformity, compliance, and the adoption of specific attitudes and behaviors desired by the group.  Such a program is further characterized by the manipulation of the person's total social environment to stabilize and reinforce the modified behavior and attitude changes. (8,9,10)"

http://www.factnet.org/Thought_Reform_Exists.htm

[prolesunited]

10. Well, not a very far stretch

Poppy was head of the CIA. Look how many governments we helped overthrow with a velvet glove. Why would be so sure that some same tactics aren't being used on us?

[KlatooBNikto]

8. Something struck me after reading your post and proleU's post.

Even if someone exposes the leader of a cult to be a fraud, the faithful fall all over themselves to defend him and, in fact, think there is a conspiracy against him concocting the stories.This is why the TANG, favoritism,AWOl, cocaine use, DUI convictions, lies about WMD's, possible lies about 9/11, all evoke a wild outcry of disbelief.

[proud patriot]

6. So how does one go about Deprograming Cult members ?

:shrug:

[progdonkey]

11. elect Kerry

:-)

In all seriousness, though, deprogramming cult members is a horribly lengthy process because the cult member's entire concept of reality is tied up in their cult indentity. It would be like trying to convince a member of al-Qaeda that the Jews are God's chosen people....

It is possible, though, since the person's pre-cult identity is not destroyed but merely supressed by a new "cult-self." The deprogrammer, therefore, needs to concentrate on drawing out the pre-cult self; that is, the patient needs to re-learn how to think and how to live without cult guidance. It's a process that requires years of therapy; and that's if it's even successful.

[smirkymonkey]

12. When faced with their certian demise, a lot of cult members

choose suicide.

http://www.fact-index.com/c/cu/cult_suicide.html