American Horror Story: Is Donald Trump a Cult Leader? Is America a Cult? Oh God, We’re a Cult, Aren’t We?

The recent revelation that Donald J. Trump paid just $750 in federal income taxes for two recent years, and zero for another ten might help Biden among Biden’s own followers, but odds are it won’t actually help Biden at all among the deeply loyal followers of the current occupant of the White House. Donald Trump has cultivated a base so loyal, so trusting of his word, so willing to imbibe whatever he tweets, that at last he may be right about one thing: he probably could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue and not lose any voters.

If you’ve watched the first six episodes of The Vow on HBO Max about the self help group NXIVM or followed the legal struggles of their embattled leader Keith Raniere and his most inner circle of followers which include actor Allison Mack, two Bronfmans, and a spattering of Hollywood B listers, you know how dangerous personality can be. It’s a cycle that seems to repeat itself over and over throughout history. Charismatic people, usually displaying extreme forms of telltale narcissism, are able to convince other people to follow them without question even in the face of concrete evidence of their fallibility. Like with most cults, detractors of NXIVM were ostracized and attacked — some are even thought to have ended up dead. Cults of…