The Cult of The Big Lie Gets Another Member
– By Ed Kociela –
Cults have tarnished the human experience since we first walked upright, to be sure. And, modern-day cults have given us fresher perspectives and observations. We’ve seen Charlie Manson and his band of killers, Jim Jones and his People’s Temple bunch, David Koresh and the Branch Davidians who went down in a blaze in Waco, Texas. There were the Moonies, the Symbionese Liberation Army, the Heaven’s Gate bunch, and so many others. This doesn’t take into account the far-flung religious fanatics who create breakaway sects that rope in the mentally unstable and weak as they chase Jesus and seek their own special brand of salvation.
We must always remember that we are a part of living, breathing history, so as such if we pay more than just a little bit of attention to our times and circumstances, we can see the emergence of yet another aberration in our belief system: The Cult of The Big Lie.
Just turn on your television and tune in to one of the many news channels and they will give you a play-by-play account of what is happening.
The CliffsNotes version, for those too busy to do their own homework, goes like this:
- An unlikely charismatic leader emerges, lays down a rap about how they are “different,” how they are “not mainstream,” how everybody else is lying and manipulating our very existence from behind the scenes.
- This goes unchecked because those targeted for the message are gullible, naïve, weak, and powerless and are told that if they sign on the cult will give them a voice, will give them power.
- As the cult starts to take form, targets are necessary to deflect the so-called ills foisted upon those who are weak and powerless. Exaggerations are used to stir the growing mass. The exaggerations soon become far-fetched conspiracy theories that have no basis in fact. But, repeated enough, the followers believe the manufactured claims to be true, even though all evidence proves the opposite.
- The movement becomes even more of a cult of personality as the charismatic leader, who had not been taken all too seriously in the beginning, begins to emerge as a result of recruiting the weak and small and feeding them nonsensical “facts” manufactured to maximize the propaganda. Go ahead, I dare you. Ask any member of The Cult of The Big Lie to submit even one little bit of factual information that the election was rigged. You won’t get it because it simply does not exist.
- Observe the cultural change that occurs as the most bizarre bits and pieces of cult dogma are exploited and become a part of the natural discussion, not because of truth and substance, but because it becomes newsworthy when a flash of incredibly bad judgment and ignorance floods into the mainstream.
The result is not pretty.
As we saw with the Manson Family, Koresh, Jones, and others, the end comes hard and swift. That’s why we lament the hard landing that will soon spell the end of the Republican Party as we once knew it.
This business of MAGA influence kicking Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.) to the curb and replacing her with Rep. Elise Stefanik (N.Y.) as the third-ranking member of House Republican Leadership is simply the beginning. The shift has to be one of the oddest along The Beltway. Here we had Cheney, a staunch purveyor of traditional Republican ideology and philosophy, getting knocked out by Stefanik, who, until 2019, was what many in the GOP would term as a RINO – Republican in Name Only. Except, a funny thing happened along the way. She signed on to The Cult of The Big Lie and became one of Donald Trump’s biggest apologists. Rep. Kevin McCarthy (Calif.), House Minority Leader, is doing the hatchet work to give Cheney the boot. Why? Because there’s campaign money to be mined in the MAGA camp, of course. But it also has its risks as riding the Trump shirttail could backfire, especially if he becomes entangled in criminal and civil lawsuits. He could eventually end up in jail, severely censured, heavily fined, but, for the moment, the former president has a death grip on the cult that split from the Republican Party and he is pulling the strings behind the erratic behavior coming from the far, far-right in his role as pseudo-kingmaker.
He somehow has convinced his flock that he is a fighter, battling for the everyday American, that he alone has the answers to the future of a nation that was decimated by the COVID-19 pandemic, that he was cheated by a cabal of progressive socialists out to overturn the Constitution. None of this is true, of course, but try to get that through to the MAGA’s who have taken the bait.
It’s interesting how things change. The Republican Party, for decades, was fairly stable and orderly. The members toed the line and found a way to unity despite whatever difference they had while the Democrats scrapped about every nail hammered into its planks. They were petulant siblings, forever locked in battles large and small. But, all of that has changed as The Cult of The Big Lie, based on the idiocy of a stolen election, obfuscation of the facts, and selective elitism grinds the Grand Old Party into obscurity.
You see if the cult can brainwash Stefanik, a former Trump opponent who was once an advocate for traditional Republican values, imagine what it can do to others, who start out on the far side of reality.
We will see how it all plays out when the mid-terms come up next year.
Stefanik and McCarthy and others have already laid their cards down, going all-in on the MAGA cult.
We experienced cultism of this sort in fairly modern history when Sen. Joseph McCarthy, a Trumpian-like demagogue from Wisconsin, recklessly ruined the careers of many during the Army-McCarthy hearings in 1954 when he falsely accused many of being Communist sympathizers.
It did not end until Joseph Nye Welch, who was chief counsel of the United States Army, which McCarthy was investigating for alleged Communist activities, took him on.
McCarthy had been spewing his lies and contempt without reserve until an angry and exasperated Welch looked at him and snapped, “Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you no sense of decency?”
Applause erupted in the hearing room and McCarthy was done, consumed by alcoholism that took his life three years later.
Alas, we lack a leader with the courage of a Joseph Nye Welch who would be willing to ask of Trump, “Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you no sense of decency?”
I guess it doesn’t matter.
We already know the answer to that one.
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