of nazis and cults

“…The heart of the sons of men is full of evil, and madness is in their heart while they live…”
(Ecclesiastes 9.3)
 
Wherewith shall I come before the LORD,
and bow myself before the high God?
He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good;
and what doth the LORD require of thee,
but to do justly, and to love mercy,
and to walk humbly with thy God?
(Micah 6.6, 8)
​

america's mad state of rebellion:
​of nazis and cults

Hitler.
 
Nazi.
 
Today, and for a long time now, it has been deemed unacceptable to compare individuals to Hitler or organizations to Nazis. Now, it is true that no one or thing in 2022 America—not tRUMP, not DeathSantis, not Abbot, not the GOP, not any of their ilk—can be compared with Hitler or his brand of Nazism as found in Germany during the 1940s. However, it is accurate to say and ought to be acceptable to observe that the individuals and organizations mentioned above are showing similarities to Hitler and signs of Nazism as manifest in the late 1920’s and early to mid-1930’s. Could we not at least call them, “budding Nazis”? Maybe, “Nazis in embryo”?
 
Do not tell me, for example, that Hitler and his Nazi party would not have been thrilled by the new Texas law that directs the state’s Child Protective Services to “begin handling reports of gender-confirming care for kids as child abuse.” Don’t tell me that the secretive manner in which investigations into such “gender-confirming care” cases are handled is not right out of Hitler’s and the Nazi playbook. Do not tell me that the designation of such secretive investigations into “gender-confirming care” as “special assignments,” does not conjure up horrifying images from Nazi Germany’s activities aimed at ethnic cleansing.[1]
 
But, no, the GOP and their leading lights have not begun to actively murder millions of innocent people because they are different… yet—though the jury is still out on how many people have suffered and died because of the grievousness of the decrees they have written and the wickedness of so many of the laws that they have passed.
 
It is also true that tRUMP has not yet shot anyone “in the middle of Fifth Avenue.” Okay? His supporters have not yet been put to the test to see if he was correct when he boasted, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, okay, and I wouldn't lose any voters, okay?” Of course, the fact that his supporters are still with him after all his record-setting lies and unprecedented corruption—including his encouragement of and leadership in an insurrection against the United States government—might be taken as evidence that he was right and that his supports have failed the test of being freedom loving, patriotic, and moral Americans. Not to mention being just plain, decent human beings.
 
All of this leads us to the second noun in our title.
 
Cult.
 
This word is deemed to be inappropriate for polite society. So, though tRUMP looks very much like a cult leader and tRUMPism looks for all the world like a cult to me, we will for now avoid the designation. We will just call the movement, “religion,” and Trump, its prophet.
 
If questioned about this designation, I will offer up this interesting piece of evidence. I will ask the reader to consider, again, tRUMP’s apparently accurate assessment that “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, okay, and I wouldn't lose any voters, okay?” What he really means is that people will follow him even when he is wrong.
 
Now, consider the common Mormon religious position that one is to “follow the prophet” even if and when he is wrong. Sounds an awfully lot like tRUMP’s assertion to me. I suppose that the prophet could stand in temple square and shoot someone and still maintain many of his supporters. In fact, one suspects that the response to this crime would be much like the response of TRUMP’s supporters’ to his myriad of crimes: justify it by finding a way around calling it a crime. Argue that prophets, actually, can say and do no wrong. Whatever they say and do is, by definition, “right.” We learned that long ago from the first Mormon prophet, Joseph.
 
Nothing, it seems, is more important than standing by your man.
 
So, yes, with this single evidence among the many that we could innumerate, we are justified in calling tRUMPISM a religion. False and apostate, yes, but religious in nature nonetheless. This new “faith” increasingly shows strong indications of being a cult. With each passing day, its adherents display clearer and clearer signs of being willfully brainwashed. That which is insane is increasingly viewed as rational and sane. How much longer can it be before this apostate religion morphs into full-blown cult and then from budding Nazism to full-on Nazism? How long before its adherents metastasize from budding Nazis into full-on Nazis?
 
It isn’t inevitable, of course, that today’s budding cultists and Nazis become the real McCoy tomorrow. But no one who claims to still be rooted in reality and who loves goodness and virtue can afford to passively wait around to find out. The threat that the American right—inspired and empowered by the devil named, Trump—represents to all that is good and holy is not to be ignored. It must be exposed for the evil and danger that it is.
 
For me, the word of God is the first defense. It is more than a defensive shield. It can be and should be used, like a double-edged sword, as one of the most powerful offensive weapons against this unholy abomination.
 
“And now, as the preaching of the word had a great tendency to lead the people to do that which was just—yea, it had had more powerful effect upon the minds of the people than the sword, or anything else, which had happened unto them—therefore Alma thought it was expedient that they should try the virtue of the word of God.”[2]
 
If the “virtue of the word of God” fails to quell, defeat, and obliterate the American evil that tRUMP has brought to light and breathed new life into, then… well… as Jesus said to the “daughters of Jerusalem,
 
‘Weep not for me,
but weep for yourselves, and for your children.
For, behold, the days are coming, in the which they shall say,
“Blessed are the barren,
and the wombs that never bare,
and the paps which never gave suck.”
Then shall they begin to say to the mountains,
“Fall on us; and to the hills, Cover us.”
For if they do these things in a green tree,
what shall be done in the dry?’”[3]
 
May it not be so, Lord! But may repentance awake and forgiveness be granted.
 
Even so, com, Lord Jesus!
 

[1] “Caseworkers: Texas order on trans kids handled differently,” Paul J. Weber, AP News.
[2][2] Alma 31.5
[3] Luke 23.28-31