Escape From The Trump Cult
https://newrepublic.com/article/152638/escape-trump-cultOn December 20, 1954, some 62 years before Donald Trump would be sworn in as president of the United States, Dorothy Martin and dozens of her followers crowded into her home in Chicago to await the apocalypse. The group believed that Martin, a housewife, had received a message from a planet named Clarion that the world would end in a great flood beginning at midnight, and that they, the faithful, would be rescued by an alien spacecraft.
Unbeknownst to the other “Seekers,” three of their group—Leon Festinger, Henry Riecken, and Stanley Schachter—were not there to be saved, but to observe. Psychologists from elite institutions, they had infiltrated the pseudo-cult to study Festinger’s recently elaborated theory of “cognitive dissonance.” The theory predicted that when people with strongly held beliefs were presented with contrary evidence, rather than change their minds they would seek comfort and “cognitive consonance” by convincing others to support their erroneous views.
Festinger’s prediction was right. When neither the apocalypse nor the UFO arrived, the group began proselytizing about how God had rewarded the Earth with salvation because of their vigil. His subsequent book, When Prophecy Fails, became a standard sociology reference for examining cognitive dissonance, religious prophecy, and cult-like behavior. What the three researchers probably never predicted, though, was that over half a century later Festinger’s theory would be applicable to roughly 25 percent of the population of the United States and one of its two major political parties. Nor could they have foreseen that the country’s salvation might well depend on its ability to deprogram the Trump cult’s acolytes—an effort that would require a level of sympathetic engagement on the part of nonbelievers that they have yet to display.
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It's a waste of time & breath trying to appeal to his cult & disaffected republicans. The non-voter pool is much larger! We need to get all the new voters in 2018 back to the polls in 2020, & reach out to the rest of the non-voters.
From the 2016 presidential election:
Yes, we can isolate the Repugs by swamping-over their vote, but we're still a nation divided. Repugs have divided families, neighborhoods, communities, companies (large & small), our states and even our allies abroad. That's precisely what these fascists want.
These divisions make us highly vulnerable to a slow destruction of our society and culture, as the old fabric is ripped a thread at a time. That will not likely lead us to a takeover by a foreign power, but rather will turn us into a massive plutocracy caused by increasing economic inequality with an invisible group of oligarchs at the helm.
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