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Crisis Cult: the Trump Movement as a Degenerate Religion

It’s Worse Than You Think
Posted on Nov 11, 2016

By Chris Hedges

Quote:

Widespread social unrest will ignite when Donald Trump’s base realizes it has been betrayed. I do not know when this will happen. But that it will happen is certain. Investments in the stocks of the war industry, internal security and the prison-industrial complex have skyrocketed since Trump won the presidency. There is a lot of money to be made from a militarized police state.
...
Trump is emblematic of what anthropologists call “crisis cults.” A society in terminal decline often retreats into magical thinking. Reality is too much to bear. It places its faith in the fantastic and impossible promises of a demagogue or charlatan who promises the return of a lost golden age. The good jobs will come back. The nation will again be prosperous. The decrepit cities will be rebuilt. America will be great again. These promises, impossible to achieve, are no different from those peddled to Native Americans in the 1880s by the self-styled religious prophet Wovoka. He called on followers to carry out five-day dance ceremonies called the Ghost Dance. Native Americans donned shirts they were told protected them from bullets. They were assured that the buffalo herds would return, the dead warriors and chiefs would rise from the earth and the white men would disappear. None of his promises was realized. Many of his followers were gunned down like sheep by the U.S. army.

We face the most profound crisis in human history. Our response is to elect a man to the presidency who does not believe in climate change. Once societies unplug themselves from reality, those who speak truth become pariahs and enemies of the state. They are subject to severe state repression. Those lost in the reverie of the crisis cult applaud the elimination of these Cassandras. The appealing myths of magical thinking are pleasant opiates. But this narcotic, like all narcotics, leads to squalor and death.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/...think_20161111

Great, more good news.

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Quote:

Originally Posted by donquixote99 (Post 338288)

It’s Worse Than You Think
Posted on Nov 11, 2016

By Chris Hedges

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/...think_20161111

The gods gave Cassandra the power of prophesy but at the same time they laid a curse upon her. The curse was that no one would believe her.

My question is: who was it the gods cursed? Was it Cassandra or was it the rest of us?

Wake me in Nov 2020.

We may not get there if we go to sleep.

Let's not be religious bigots. Magical thinking is just as valid as many other religions.
And without it you'd have no yellow moons, green clovers, pink hearts, or orange stars in your breakfast cereal so.... there's that.

Quote:

Originally Posted by donquixote99 (Post 338288)

It’s Worse Than You Think
Posted on Nov 11, 2016

By Chris Hedges

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/...think_20161111

More hysteria.

I'm thinking Trump may have more than a bit of Andrew Jackson in him.

I'm thinking we are getting the same narcissistic petty tyrant that had that shitty selfserving propaganda show.

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