The Cult of Personality, Part II (My Apologies in Advance)

I recently brought up the cult of personality and how it has overtaken rational thought in the United States.

In 2008, we saw the “Obama zombies,” singing anthems to Barack Obama, as if the planet would actually be healed and the oceans would actually recede.

Yeah. None of that happened.

I mean, the “first black president” – a pinnacle achievement in race relations in this nation – still, somehow, managed to push race relations back 50 years, but no. No healed planets or receded oceans.

Imagine that. It’s like the hype has no bearing on actual results, and identity politics are what you turn to when you have no other accomplishments outside of voting “present” as a junior senator.

There’s nothing more obnoxious than to have a legitimate policy disagreement blocked by somebody throwing the race card in your face.

Lazy. Real lazy.

And let’s be frank. Had Hillary Clinton won in 2016, that card would have been replaced with the “sexism” card. We’ve already heard that she lost because of sexism, and not because she was the worst possible candidate Democrats could have offered up.

If you want to know how horrendous she really was: She lost to Donald Trump.

I know how saying these things from my perch on the right is taken as an irritant.

Mirrors are funny that way.

This last election was supposed to be the great awakening. It was our opportunity to get out from under Obama’s Marxist machinations and bring back free market conservatism, smaller federal involvement in our lives, and so very importantly, return to some level of sane, cult-free government.

It was a nice thought.

What the world saw was a nation so thoroughly corrupted on both sides of the aisle that the apparent thought process of the Republican voters was to prop up their own idol. It worked for 8 years for the Democrats, putting flash over substance. Now the shoe was on the other foot.

Republicans took it too far.

I get being upset with all that Obama wrought on our nation and our public discourse. I don’t get trying to double down on it with someone like Donald Trump.

Donald Trump is just an awful person.

If he were at least a good man, I could overlook his incompetence and would be willing to give him a chance.

He’s not. He’s vile and abusive and brings out the absolute worst in people.

He is repugnant to my faith, as a Christian, and to my principles as a conservative voter.

That being said, anyone who ever pointed out the mind-numbed insanity of the 2008 Obama zombies, but sees nothing out of the ordinary going on with Trump’s cult-like following are hypocrites.

I’ve actually gone over this so many times before. It is endlessly disappointing to see a Republican party fall under this man’s spell and evangelical voters risk their witness to the world, in favor of temporary political gains.

In the interest of fairness, since I railed against what I saw during the Obama years – everything from the borderline child-abuse kiddie choruses forced to sing praises to Obama’s name to Obama cologne, that smelled like a mix of feet, industrial bathroom cleaner, and hubris – I have to point out just how much in common Trump’s Republican party has with the Obama years.

First of all, those plain, red, $5 MAGA ball caps that you can get for $40 on Trump’s campaign site. The good news is, they’re in white now, too, so if you’ve got more money that commonsense, you’re in luck.

Have you got your Trumpy Bear, yet?

There’s a fiber-filled, plush nightmare, straight from some marketer’s fever dream.

And then, to prove that in a cult, there’s no such low as too low, we have this.

And I’m sorry.

I would like to tell you this is parody, meant to [rightly] mock those who allow themselves to become wrapped up in a personality over sound policy. I’d like to tell you we were beyond that.

I can’t. Somebody really thought this was clever and patriotic. For somebody, this is a sacrifice at the altar of MAGA.

And If you managed to make it through the first 20 seconds without the urge to put your head through a wall, I congratulate you on your nerves of steel.

Oh, sweet meteor of death, why do you tarry?