Friends… Where Did They Go?

What the F**k Happened to Our World: The New Reality From the Mountain

Old buildings make me wonder about their past and the history they represent. Sometimes I stop and I pull over onto the shoulder, avoiding sliding into the rain gully… and just look at it. This building and this land it’s on and imagining life 100, 200 years ago here. The past.

But this isn’t the past I’m writing about. It’s today, tomorrow, and it’s the future.

Change Before

Our world has changed. People have changed. Change is expected over time, typically a slow process over many years. So much so that change isn’t usually recognized until years down the road.

Then one day, the realization of some change that has taken place strikes, and the memories come flooding back. You remember. These are the normal changes we experience in life.

The vast emptiness that was reservation farmland with a 2-lane road is now a 10-lane highway and a multitude of retail centers representing millions of people that were never there. Change.

Yet over some fifty years all the people from back then, friends, never seemed to change. Until recently. We all change over time, but like that 2-lane road, it’s not something we notice… until we do.

Change Now

Over the past few years change now seems to have redoubled its efforts. Many people are discovering this has become extremely evident among people, old friends, from 40, 50, and 60 years ago, as well as family. In a period of just a few years, friendships have changed entirely. People have changed entirely.

Seeking answers where there maybe are none, I have begun to wonder and ask why? What would cause friends to suddenly walk away after say 50 years?

Trying to put this puzzle together one evening I looked at each person in my life who has suddenly changed, each instance, for a common denominator.

Common denominators:

• The changes with my friends and family all seem to have come about in just the past few years.
• And politics.

A close friend of mine angrily told me to lose his contact information. I have known him since 1972. I was stunned. This was the Fall of 2019. I have attempted to reach out since, with no success.

Politics? Really??

A Political … Cult?

So the question I ask here then is “What the fuck has happened to our world?” There are millions who now follow Trump’s every word. Millions who now believe in multiple conspiracy theories. When questioned they become angry, and hateful, and look to others who think as they do for support.

Are we now in the Crazy World of Arthur Brown? Maybe … more like the Crazy World of American Politics and Cults.

• We live in a world that considers a corporation an individual.
• Our government is dysfunctional. Two major parties accomplish little forgetting how to compromise for the better of the country.
• As a result, the general population has become disenfranchised and succumbed to allowing politicians to divide the public.
• People are purposefully attempting to tear down institutions, our government, and even the basis and heartbeat of our democracy… voting.

The keyword above is “disenfranchised”. Keep reading.

It’s A Cult

"That is the insidiousness of mind-manipulation,” Lisa Kohn, a cult survivor and author of the upcoming memoir To the Moon and Back, tells Bustle. “Nearly anyone can be manipulated by the promise of a better tomorrow or the answers to their questions or a sense of their inherent rightness (or sinfulness).”

“Cults prey on vulnerability … to facilitate their cause,” psychologist Dr. Michele Barton, director of Psychology Life Well, tells Bustle. “Cults seek out the disenfranchised and outcasts. People most in need of support are lured in by the prospect of belonging somewhere or to something meaningful.”

The above comment by Dr. Michele Barton holds the key to the answer I believe. Those who are disenfranchised, in need of support, lured by prospects of belonging somewhere or to something.

As this nation has grown, so too has the government. There are two political parties, yet the largest voting block is not aligned with a party. They are independent. Every year, every election, every decade those elected to serve this country have become more aloof, more self-serving, and prove this to the electorate every time they speak.

Yet there they are and here we are.

Over the years there has been a change that has borne and nurtured a feeling of disenfranchisement. This has been exacerbated the past couple of years by a pandemic. It has also been the agenda of a former President and his followers to play upon that disenchantment.

Income, education, none of this really matters. It’s about finding those who accept you and agree with you. The thinking of one becomes part of a crowd mentality. A cult.

The MAGA Cult

The far-right of the Republican Party, known as MAGA, is a cult. This is my opinion based on expert definitions and studies.

Cults are borne of lies. There’s an old adage “If you lie often enough, they’ll believe it.”

MAGA is a group that represents Trump. They consist of Americans that have become disenfranchised by the government. They are attracted to any conspiracy theory, any words, that gives them something to hold on to. They seek support in the company of others and a sense of belonging. Cults prey upon this vulnerability and are easily manipulated by the cult.

MAGA and the Republican Party think they will ride the wave of the MAGA Trump Train to a better future, a future they want for this nation. But there is a distinct difference between these two groups.

Group 1. Disenfranchised Americans are essentially pissed off citizens who believe there was nowhere else to turn for them, nothing for them to believe in. A government that has failed to solve problems that have been around for 50, 75, and 100 years or more is a basis for this disenfranchisement.

Group 2. The Republican Party is half the fault, half of the cause for the disenfranchisement of Americans. But they are not members of this cult. They are the ‘Corporate Board Members’ continually feeding lies to these cult members with the direct aim of manipulating them into a voting block that will help keep them in power and maintain the power.

And there is the former President Trump who planned, promoted, and built this bloc into a personal power base for himself to control the Republican Party and the country.

Trump’s endgame is to run the country as an authoritarian. He already attempted to turn the country’s assets (military, legal) into his own, for his personal use. What better way than as the head cult personality, with millions of worshiping supporters.

He began this movement based upon a fraudulent election claim, but farther back than most would know I will bet. And he has fed this fraud for 10 years.

From ABC News and an article by Terrance Smith:

On election night in 2012, when President Barack Obama was re-elected, Trump said that the election was a “total sham” and a “travesty,” while also making the claim that the United States is “not a democracy” after Obama secured his victory.

Trump even wrote on Twitter, “We can’t let this happen. We should march on Washington and stop this travesty. Our nation is totally divided!"

This is where it all began and when Trump himself started to divide the nation, to feed upon the disenfranchised.

And then from the Republican primaries in 2016, again… “When he ran to become the Republican Party nominee in 2016, he attempted to cast doubt on the election process. Trump said he did not lose the Iowa caucuses in 2016 to then-candidate Sen. Ted Cruz saying Cruz stole it.”

Again just prior to the 2016 election…

“In October 2016, just weeks before the general election, Trump wanted to cast doubt on the results by tweeting, ‘The election is absolutely being rigged by the dishonest and distorted media pushing Crooked Hillary — but also at many polling places — SAD’…”

Repeat a lie often enough, and people will believe it.

Trump and some Republicans follow the same playbook followed by every authoritarian head of a nation in recent history. Trump knew and has known from the start, what he was doing. Ten years later, he continues with the same mantra of lies and deceit.

Keep in mind, being considered a “loser” and called “stupid” are the worst things he can be called. He prepares in advance for losing by lying. He prepares excuses and establishes blame beforehand, just in case. Because he never loses. That’s impossible.

This is how one creates a cult. Lie. Question the process. Promise only he can fix everything. People who are already feeling disenfranchised, are easily misled and will feed on the lies and promises of a better tomorrow.

Once people are in the belief system of the cult, everything will be believed. Russia today is a perfect example. A mostly older populace of Russians have been lied to for so many years, some for decades, they will believe the lies from Putin over the truth told to them by their family members.

A Future of Freedom or Servitude

All of the facts above regarding a cult and cult members' mindsets explain what is happening with some of my own friends and family.

It’s a sad fact and a reality that this is where we are as a nation. There is only one way any of this changes. The citizens of this country. They need to educate themselves, be active in government, and they need to vote.

Americans must decide for themselves what kind of country they wish to live in. If there is ONE THING Americans have forgotten, it’s that your allegiance is NOT to a political party, NOT to an individual. Your allegiance is to the United States. Period.

Cults don’t last. They never have. But the question now is, will this cult outlast democracy? That’s up to you.