American psychosis

The extraordinary cult of the deified bowel movement

Peanuts. Charles Schulz

Over the past not that many years there's been a steady supply of personality cults, the creeps, weirdos and psychopaths who rule(d) them and the dupes and collaborators who populate(d) them.

David Koresh and Branch Davidian, Charles Manson, L. Ron Hubbard's Scientology, Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple, Brian Houston and Hillsong, the Exclusive Brethren and their “Elect Vessel" and the risible, amorphous collectives of various sovereign citizen/anti-vax cookers.

Then there's MAGA, the personality cult of the golden, effluviant god.

---

In 1994, according to North Korean state media Kim Jong-il the then dictator and Kim cult supremo shot a round of 11 holes-in-one, 38 under par at the Pyongyang championship golf course on his first ever game. More recently Donny Phat-Fuk boasted of never losing an event at any of his golf tournaments, once claiming to have won a club championship although he hadn't played the first round. And he has said he won an event at his Bedminster kitschtastic gauche course & wife cemetery by shooting a 67 on a course on which LIV Golf held a tournament and of the 144 rounds only six pros shot 67 or lower.

"For some reason, I am just a good golfer/athlete − I have won many Club Championships..." the athletic Grandpa Highpants, 2023

"Dear Leader" Kim compensated for his economical 160cms/5'3" stature with shoe lifts and a bouffant. "Dear Leader" Donny, Fat Bastard's orange body double, makes claims of a weight of 97 kilos/215lbs, trowels his face with a slurry of adobe and sports a bizarre comb-over of sparse, bleached, tortuously coiffed left-over strands from camel blanket swatches.

North Korean propaganda said Kim piloted jet fighters, penned operas and had a photographic memory. Umber One, the "very stable genius", talks up his own skillset - “Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV...I got a perfect mark. And the doctors were -- they said: Very few people can do that. Very few people get that...they said, that’s an unbelievable thing. Rarely does anybody do what you just did".

An unprepossessing Kim was short, slight and liver-spotted, an aficionado of beige and a comical sybarite who inherited his cult of personality from his dead dad Kim Il-sung. We could be forgiven for believing that a dynastic, repressive hermit kingdom is an easier place to maintain the facade of omnipotence than is an open, democratic United States. But, sans angry North Korean newsreader lady Ri Chun-hee, in the race to '1984' the Whitehouse spokesnazi Karoline Leavitt's up-is-down/down-is-up propaganda is fed to a curated press corps who brush over her comparative personality and credibility deficits and accept every bit of BS from that poisonous polyp. (As an aside, of the two I know which I'd rather share a naked Jacuzzi session with and it's not the blonde She-Goebbels.)

Trump is the broken-inside product of a dysfunctional family and subsequent vulgarisers, viz Roy Cohn and Mark Burnett.

In the immediate post-WW2 years a particularly louche lawyer, Cohn, was notorious as a rabidly homophobic gay man and chief counsel for Joe McCarthy's communist witch hunts. He later mentored a credulous Trump on how to exploit power and instil fear, how to "attack, counterattack and never apologise".

Trump's Atlantic City casino empire 'was in a shambles with multiple bankruptcies. His credit was shot and his brand was tarnished when Burnett rebuilt his image into that of a wealthy, influential Manhattan businessman*' on TV's The Apprentice. Despite the many and varied failures of the Trump brand the fabricated persona of billionaire tycoon has become incontrovertible MAGA doctrine.

*Paraphrased from a source I now cannot locate

Prototype Trump, the inchoate real estate mogul, was an inheritance-frittering wastrel hungry for acclaim and riches to compensate for his lack of self-worth. Cohn and Burnett shaped him into a suggestible narcissist too stupid to recognise that he was the beneficiary of happenstance that favoured his talent for the grift. Self-seekers snowballed around him like the Kardashian effect of being-famous-for-being-famous. It was B-grade celebrity; there was as yet no cult.

The cult arose from a brand recognition strategy for Trump's many g̶r̶i̶f̶t̶s̶ business ventures - his 2016 ferret-down-the-trousers GOP presidential nomination. To the surprise of many, including Trump, he won. The get richer quicker scheme segued into a cult. MAGA was born.

A charismatic leader?

How is it that an aesthetically unpleasant, inarticulate, shameless liar and vulgarian, a pervert, a needy, self-pitying whiner and delusional fantasist can deceive and manipulate a country that, until Trump, was capable of martialling its talents and resources to nurture science, technology and culture?

The US is a country suckered by its own mythologies. A country not known for introspection so much as for in-your-face, strident nationalism - the country of big screen John Waynes and those who think Snow White, Cinderella, Pinocchio and The Jungle Book are all Disney concepts. It is awash in hordes of rudimentary critical thinkers who prefer feelings to facts, to whom CCR's 'Fortunate Son' and Springsteen's 'Born In The USA' are celebrations of American exceptionalism. Patsies and marks adorned with MAGA caps and Trump merch. Cult fodder.

 "For so many years people have been saying that Elvis and I look alike." realdonaldtrump, Feb 2022

God, Guns & Trump - the cult's rallying cry

Americans are viewed as generally ingenuous. Some say gullible. All countries have their share of the gormless so why pick on Americans? Because they were presented with a demonstrably shady operator, sexual predator, fawning fan of despots, a grievance-driven would-be fascist, a truth allergic gobshite and a self-aggrandising fabulist as an option for exemplar of America's values - they looked at this personification of prairie dogging and said "yep, he's our guy!"

Cults - a worshipful attitude toward the group’s authoritarian leader, the leader is considered the Messiah, a special being, an avatar¹

Kim Jong-il is proof positive that "Dear Leader" status does not require a Greek god level of physical allure. Arbitrary executions and torture are effective alternatives for encouraging public displays of affection. His boy, Kim V3, had a very persuasive technique - executing some less than doting minions with an anti-aircraft gun. America's mercantile politics are more aligned to a marketing approach.

Twatman. Superman's Clark Kent cannot top Trump's fat suit disguise.

It takes a special type of stupid to look at Trump and see other than a be-moobed old man with a bad re-spray, invisible accordion hands and an Elaine Benes dance routine. Packaging Trump as a buffed fanny magnet takes chutzpah to another level but then the U.S. is the land of a capitalist, blonde, blue-eyed Jesus. These folks have their 'All American' Good Shepherd clocks on the wall and Trump NFTs where their pickup truck repayments should be. They are The Base.

Shitfer's short-comings are so obvious, so pervasive and so characteristic that many cultists cannot ignore them. But, his awfulness gives them permission to also be openly awful. Hateful bigots, proudly illetterato with a Pornhub subscription, gun collection, a love of monster trucks and WWE. That all marks them out as authentic and at one with the righteous group identity. They love him because he is a man of lascivious behaviours, of multipurpose grievances; they lap up his monosyllabic, boastful hyperbole and his flouting of decorum - big, loud, belligerent. What could be more American? In your face you woke, socialist, commie leftards!

A belief that the leader is right at all times

The Deep State,1.5 million people attended his first inauguration, "The election was stollen (sic)", "Mexico will pay for the wall", "No-one knows more about... <insert boast du jour>", "We've cut drug prices by 1200, 1300, 1400, 1500 percent", Covid "is going to disappear. It is disappearing (drink that Toilet Duck, stick that flashlight up your ass!)", windmill noise causes cancer, wet magnets don't work, "They're eating the dawgs!", unnamed foreign countries “released their insane asylum – the insane asylum population into our country” ... and so on.

Ohhhkay Grandpa...let me take those scissors.

Weaponising the cult

A pathetically needy Trump craves and revels in the adoration of the MAGA and he milks their credulity and their retirement savings with outlandish braggadocio and tawdry Trump merch but it was January 6 that proved the MAGAs' worth.

That attempted coup did not achieve its immediate aim - that's proving to be a longer term work in progress. It scared the shit out of, and servility into, the GOP, the media and government functionaries as evidenced by other cult characteristics¹ that have materialised.

Trumpism is a criminal cabal. MAGA is a cult that facilitates the criming.

---

Kim Jong-il was a womaniser who enjoyed ogling Russian dancing girls. Trump's perversions are well documented in taped conversations, video footage, media reports, court records and victim testimony. All of it excused or spun by the Trumposphere.

The animating belief of the cultists was the existence of a “deep-state” cover-up of the Clinton/Pelosi/Gates/Soros/et al cannibalistic paedophile, sex-trafficking ring and that Trump is the hero to expose it. His attempts at covering up #DeadPedoBestieGate and his prominence in it with his now pining-for-the-fjords pedo rape buddy may be the start of his end (“I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy,").

A likely pardon for Ghislaine Maxwell in exchange for perjured alibis may bring the whole odious MAGA ecosystem crashing down. The bursting of a deluded bubble. As per Ma Anand Sheela, personal assistant to Rajneeshee cult leader Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh:

"Tough titties."

---

Related reading

"He’s the Chosen One to Run America”: Inside the Cult of Trump. Vanity Fair, 18 June 2020

¹ Characteristics Associated with Cults. Janja Lalich, Ph.D., Professor Emerita of Sociology,

Roy Cohn: The mysterious US lawyer who helped Donald Trump rise to power. Caryn James, BBC

The ‘Shared Psychosis’ of Donald Trump and His Loyalists Forensic psychiatrist Bandy X. Lee

When Cults Collapse. Is MAGA acting like a cult in its end days? Mike Madrid, Jul 24, 2025. "Donald Trump's relationship with conspiracy theories follows a predictable arc that mirrors the behavior of cult leaders under pressure...The birther conspiracy served multiple purposes. It delegitimized the first Black president, fed racial resentment, and positioned Trump as someone willing to "ask the tough questions"..."

Trump's long history of lying about 9/11 and exploiting it for personal gain. SMH, 12 Sept 2018. "He saw a terrorist attack against America as an opportunity for self-aggrandisement and self-promotion....This is who Donald Trump is. It's who he's always been. And it's who he's always going to be."