Trump Is a Cult: That Explains Everything. How We Got There. How to Recover.

During his 2016 campaign, Donald Trump outrageously exclaimed on live television that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and nothing would happen to him. That would have instantly ended his campaign if we had an adequately educated and moral citizenry. The same goes for his live broadcast request to Russia to obtain Hillary Clinton’s emails (“Russia, if you’re listening…”). In his latest day of infamy, he decided to betray our essential ally in the fight against ISIS, the Syrian Kurds, minutes after a phone call with Turkey’s president who explained his intent to attack them, by withdrawing our troops which were keeping the peace from a crucial buffer zone on the Turkish/Syrian border. That shocking betrayal disgraces us as a nation, it undermines our credibility as an ally and threatens our national security. Furthermore, it led to many Kurdish deaths, injuries, and displacement of civilians, while endangering American troops. Trump absurdly justified his sudden abandonment of the Kurds by saying they did not help us in World War II in Normandy on D-Day, ignoring that they didn’t have their own nation at the time (they still don’t), and that the Turks didn’t help us either. The appearances strongly suggest Trump is putting his own finances ahead of the nation’s interest, that he has no truly patriotic feelings. He says he is for clean water and clean air, while eliminating environmental regulations. In spite of all the above which would sink any other politician, he retains his following among Republican politicians and those who voted for him.

A moral, intelligent, well-educated, patriotic Republican Party would have repudiated him during his campaign and during his presidency. The failure of the Republican Party and of his voters to repudiate him after his egregiously outrageous, often shameful and infamous misconduct as candidate and president, including acting as though he were a Russian agent, obstructing the Mueller investigation, claiming he is a very stable genius with incredible wisdom, and that he can do anything he wants as president, including pardoning himself (an indication of his own guilty feelings and autocratic nature), has only one logical explanation: he is a cult leader for many Americans and for the Republican Party. Notoriously, cult followers are dupes for con men, are often inadequately educated, have little or no commitment to moral principles, are confused, feel lost, and consequently seek a “strong” leader/savior regardless of that person’s deep flaws, even when macroscopic and constantly on view. Some of Trump’s followers may not be dupes but have cynically calculated that his tax cuts, appointment of very conservative judges and newfound, politically expedient opposition to abortion are worth the cost of having a con artist for president, even one who incites violence, constitutes a danger to national security, and is a moral disgrace. How did we end up here?

How did we end up with almost half our citizens with a low level of education, feeling lost, ignorant about the world and themselves, not caring about our nation’s honor and security, tolerating incompetent, openly dishonest, hypocritical politicians and political spinning, and easy dupes for a con artist? Very simply, due to a seriously deficient public school curriculum. We desperately need an enlightened high school curriculum which includes: 1) four years of psychology accompanied by “group therapy” and “good parenting” classes in every high school, with individual assistance for those in need; 2) logic/critical thinking; 3) ethics; 4) the history of human rights violations in conjunction with the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which is undersigned by all UN member nations; 5) a very detailed course in 20th century world history; 6) economics/investing (great attention given to analyzing the mistakes in economic policy and theory over the past 100 years, including not having QE-financed tax rebates as the standard economic stimulus policy, and not using QE financing for infrastructure investments and federal debt reduction. The failure to use QE-tax rebates was the cause of the agonizingly slow economic recovery from the 2008–09 financial crisis, which in turn led to a loss of confidence in “normal” politicians, creating the opening for a con-artist demagogue); 7) introductory law; 8) history of art/architecture/design; 9) history of music; 10) given the unending scourge of religious conflicts and discriminations, a course in comparative religion, in the history and causes of religious conflicts and human rights violations by religions; 11) of utmost importance, a senior year course on the major mistakes in economic, social, and foreign policy over the past 100 years, and on which would have been the correct policies. Such a curriculum would lead to greatly reduced poverty, racism, discrimination, violence of all sorts (including mass shootings), addiction, suicide, and depression; to a much more moral, rigorously principled, well-informed and logical citizenry on guard against unqualified political candidates, demagogues and con artists, capable of knowing what and whom to vote for; and to much greater economic and social prosperity.

Thanks to objectively unqualified and incompetent presidents, senators, and representatives of both parties, we have had enormous failures in economic, social, and foreign policy repeatedly, for decades. To single out a big failure in social policy which urgently needs to be rectified, Lyndon Johnson proclaimed the “War on Poverty” in 1965. Nothing has been done to reduce poverty since then, because none of our political leaders, Democrats and Republicans, have had the faintest notion of how to do it. Yet it’s not complicated. Poverty is the result of a low level of education, due to a very inadequate public school curriculum and to inadequate school discipline. As a volunteer for a year teaching a course in economics/investing to juniors and seniors in various “failing” New York City high schools, I saw the problems: 1) little class discipline, 2) no home work was done, 3) a ridiculously inadequate curriculum for the complex, highly competitive global economy, and 4) none of the students could work with fractions and percentages. They had learned practically nothing in all their years in public school! They were so far behind that they all needed individual tutoring and lots of study hall to catch up.

We must realize that the only way to avoid having dropouts and poorly educated citizens is to have mandatory study hall after normal school hours with individual assistance for all students with low grades. For a truly prosperous nation, it is essential that all our youths, without exception, get a truly excellent high school and college education, even those who want to go into manual trades. That should be a national interest priority. We cannot allow educational backwaters to exist. To have uniformly excellent education nationwide, adequate federal financing for public schools must be available, along with instituting an ambitious, enlightened national high school curriculum and a highly prestigious national high school graduation exam, with federal college scholarships linked to exam results and individual financial need. States would be free to add other courses to the national curriculum, but not to ignore it. The prestige and financial benefits of the national curriculum and high school graduation exam would overcome any states’ rights and private school objections.

It should be clear that if we want to avoid repeated failures in economic, social, and foreign policy in the future, we should require all our political candidates to demonstrate they are experts in economic, social, and foreign policy beforerunning for office, in part by showing they are capable of listing all the major mistakes in economic, social, and foreign policy over the past 100 years, and explaining what would have been the correct policies. Beyond that, having (after college) two years of mandatory civil service (e.g., as public school tutors for students having academic difficulty; as after-school arts and sports organizers in public schools; as members of an urban or rural beautification corps; as staffers of medical clinics in low-income neighborhoods) or military service would generate more patriotism and a much deeper sense of national unity which we certainly need.

© Edward Sonnino 2019

October 21, 2019