"Alexander" is a young man in middle America with a broad view of the current craziness...
Trump is the figurehead of a doomsday cult.
That might be a bold assertion to some. An slanderous accusation even. Yet every day that passes I cannot think of any other way to describe his following.
I have been watching his political career since he entered the Republican primary. I, like many, thought he had little chance of becoming the Republican candidate, let alone President. Like so many others, I sat there slack-jawed on election night as he was declared President-elect.
Foolish, in retrospect. I should have considered that my distaste for the Democratic party in general and Hilary Clinton in particular was not unique to me.
At the time though I turned to certain internet commentators with my questions. Their claims were myriad and ever-changing: his dress style, his charisma, his refusal to engage in debate, 5D-thinking that could outwit his opponent at every turn. Meanwhile pundits and preachers farther to the right than my sources were providing an altogether different explanation:
The will of God.
That was nothing new, of course. I remember President Bush having similar religious cheerleading. So I didn't pay much attention to the religious aspect of Trump's political bloc.
Over the next 3 years I would drift away from the conservative sources I once trusted to inform me, a story for another time. However, as I shifted to more left-leaning commentators I noticed something...odd, about Trump's core supporters.
So much of their public support of Trump came with openly religious overtones.
Baptist preachers were singing his praises in the middle of sermons. Televangelists with congregations numbering in the hundreds of thousands were leading their followers in prayer to strengthen his reign.
It was from these churches that the prophecy flowed like water.
Trump would make abortion a crime. Trump would overturn gay marriage. Trump would put mandatory prayer back in schools. Trump would take the liberal media off the air. If a right-wing Christian had a political wet dream there was a preacher on their shoulder to promise them that Trump was days away from providing it.
The result was a swirling torrent of religious fervor backing Trump's presidency, one that his underlings quickly capitalized on. Over the course of his four years in office Trump leaned more and more on his religious following, culminating in that deeply ironic photo shoot in front of a church, after protesters had been chased off its lawn with tear gas.
However, it is not for this reason that I claim Trump is the figurehead of a cult.
That fault lies with Qanon.
I don't have time to go over Qanon in all its horrifying degenerate splendor here, I think that's best saved for its own post, but here is what's important for this article.
Qanon is an online movement named after the username Q. Q claims to be a government employee with 'Q clearance', a top secret government clearance associated with the U.S. Department of Energy. Q also claims that this clearance gives him access to the highest level of government secrets, as well as the secrets of a underground shadow government called the Deep State.
The movement is primarily driven by incredibly vague posts left by Q, which are decoded by the community. The posts are so vague, and the decoders are mostly veteran conspiracy theorists. This means the conspiracy itself is too complicated and ever shifting to fully comprehend, but here are some key points.
1. There is an evil shadow government known only as 'the Cabal' comprised of powerful individuals, mostly from the Democratic party.
2. The Cabal is doing outrageously evil things usually involving murdering children and devouring their corpses in satanic rituals (yes, really.)
3.Trump and a few other high-level Republicans are working to expose the Cabal.
4. Any day now Trump will reveal his master plan, and all members of the Cabal, Democrats, and liberals in general will be rounded up and executed.
This movement, as you might have gathered from context, is completely nuts.
That in no way hindered it from melding into the widespread religious exaltation of Trump. Soon every loyal right-wing Christian had their own theory on how Trump was going to wipe America clean of sinners.
One might notice that this sounds an awful lot like a Doomsday prophecy, because it is. An oddly secular Doomsday prophecy, granted, as it would be carried out with guns and death camps as opposed to divine wrath, but the hallmarks are still there.
It was through this lens that Trump completed his transformation in the eyes of the hardcore right-wing Christian from political figure to eminent savior.
From there the movement quickly infected the Republican party.
I am unsure to what extent its adherents hold sway over the party, only that few Republican officials are willing to contradict them, which implies a staggering hold.
Indeed, any perceived insult against Trump's honor is a political death sentence for a Republican at the moment, as exemplified by Mike Pence.
With this as context the events of the January 6th insurrection seem more in line with The Great Disappointment than a standard political uprising.
That is to say that Trump leaving office was not a part of the Great Plan the true Trump believers were sold.
So, just as with the Great Disappointment the preachers of Trump's good word set a new date for the End Times. This new era is being led by Michael Lindell at the moment, though there is no telling how the wind will shift. He is predicting that Trump's imminent return to power, as well as the subsequent purges, will happen sometime in August.
I can only hope they won't be successful.
