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Which is devastating for obvious reasons, particularly right now considering his numbers are horrible in every context, even from conservative polling from places like Fox News.

Speaking of cults - Take It From a Former Moonie: Trump Is a Cult Leader Steven Hassan On the afternoon of Nov. 18, 1978, Jim Jones called his followers to the central pavilion of Jonestown, a sprawling outpost in the jungles of Guyana, and ordered them to drink a lethal mixture of cyanide and fruit punch. Over 900 people perished that day, more than a third of them children. As he lay dying of a bullet wound to the head—a less painful way to go than cyanide and one that he probably orchestrated—Jones told his followers that it was “all the media’s fault. Don’t believe them.” Those words, uttered so long ago, sound disturbingly familiar as we approach the 41st anniversary of Jonestown. We have a president who regularly disparages and blames the media, calling it “fake,” “false,” and “phony,” and who calls journalists “enemies of the people”—epithets that seem especially frenzied in the wake of the whistleblower complaint and the launching of the House impeachment inquiry. It might seem an outrageous proposition to compare Donald Trump to a murderous cult leader. And yet there are alarming parallels. Like Jones and other cult leaders, Trump exhibits features of what psychologist Erich Fromm called “malignant narcissism”—bombastic grandiosity, a bottomless need for praise, lack of empathy, pathological lying, apparent sadism, and paranoia. In short, he fits the stereotypical psychological profile of a cult leader. I have seen that profile up close. Over 40 years ago, while a junior in college, I was recruited into a destructive mind control cult, the Unification Church, popularly known as the Moonies after its leader, Sun Myung Moon. I rose rapidly through the ranks and was invited to attend meetings with Moon and his top aides, where we knelt and bowed to our leader Moon. Two years later, after three days straight of leading a fundraising team—selling flowers on street corners—I fell asleep at the wheel and woke up as I plowed into the back of an 18 wheeler. Fortunately, I survived. My family hired deprogrammers and, after five days, I realized I had been brainwashed. Since then, I have devoted myself to studying mind control cults and helping families rescue loved ones from their clutches. I have learned that mind control is not a vague, mystical process but, instead, is the result of a concrete and specific and systematic set of methods and techniques. Cult leaders may seem crazy, but they are cunning masters of manipulation, employing an arsenal of these techniques to render their followers dependent and obedient. It’s what I call the cult leader’s playbook. Jim Watson/Getty As I argue in my upcoming book, The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How The President Uses Mind Control (Simon & Schuster), Trump has gotten where he is today in large part because he has exploited tactics straight out of that playbook. These include his grandiose claims, his practice of sowing confusion, his demand for absolute loyalty, his tendency to lie and create alternative “facts” and realities, his shunning and belittling of critics and ex-believers, and his cultivating of an “us versus them” mindset. These are the same methods used by Moon, Jones, and other cult leaders such as L. Ron Hubbard (Scientology), David Koresh (Branch Davidians), Lyndon LaRouche (LaRouche PAC), and, most recently, convicted trafficking felon Keith Raniere (NXVIM). Of all these tactics, the “us versus them” mindset is probably one of the most effective. From the moment you are recruited into a cult, you are made to feel special, part of an “inside” group in opposition to unenlightened, unbelieving, dangerous “outsiders.” Playing on ancient human tribal tendencies, cult leaders extend this “us versus them” mindset outwards to an almost cosmic struggle. Many campaigns—political, military, athletic—pivot around the idea of conflict between parties. Even in literature there is a hero and a villain. But cults take this human habit of viewing the world in binary terms and infuse it with a kind of all consuming passion, which they reinforce in the minds of followers using cliches, platitudes, lies, and endless repetitions. You come to believe that you are superior to the rest of the world. In fact, everyone who is not in the group is, at some level, in the words of the eminent psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, dispensable. The most effective tactics of all are those that play upon followers’ emotions. For this reason, cult leaders often begin by making new recruits feel special, part of an “inside” group in opposition to unenlightened, unbelieving, dangerous “outsiders.” Playing on ancient human tribal tendencies, cult leaders encourage a kind of dualistic “us versus them” mindset, which they then extend outwards to an almost cosmic struggle. In the Moonies, we were told that we were heavenly soldiers engaged in a great struggle to take the world back from the forces of Satan, which included godless Communism and human-centered Western democracy. Our ultimate goal was to replace these godless human-centered forms of government with a god-centered theocracy, under Moon’s leadership. Jones, a self-professed Marxist, told his followers—who were often poor, black, and disenfranchised—that the enemy was racism, capitalism, and the American government. He took his followers to the wilds of Guyana to escape the clutches of the U.S. government, which was evil and out to get him. For Hubbard, the enemy was psychiatrists and governments, and also non-Scientologists. He used a racist term to describe the latter—wogs—and essentially argued that they were inferior to true believers. For LaRouche, it was a global conspiracy consisting of the Queen of England, Wall Street, Jews, and various intelligence agencies, such as the CIA. He and his followers wanted to defeat this evil cabal that was destroying the world, which only LaRouche could save. Trump paints his enemies with a much broader brush. At rallies, he bounds on stage and tell his audiences how special they are—“I love you Indiana”—but it soon becomes clear that he has no “love” for anyone but Trump supporters. During his 2016 campaign, he would single out members of the audience—and even journalists—who he perceived as hostile and eject them, often to deafening cheers from his supporters. Shunning, humiliation, and ostracism are common methods for demonstrating who counts as “us,” and what needs to be done about “them.” As did LaRouche, Moon, and Jones, Trump sees a world teeming with enemies: the “deep state,” globalists, radical left-wing Democrats, socialists, Hollywood actors, the liberal media. And, of course, Muslims, Mexicans, and migrant caravans. He depicts all of them as wanting to destroy America—and him. Inspiring or creating fear of real or imagined threats overrides people's sense of agency. It makes them susceptible to the confident father figure, Trump, who promises to keep them safe—“Only I can fix it”—and makes them more compliant and potentially obedient. Some followers of Trump have gone so far as to believe that liberal Democrats, George Soros, and the CIA are involved in an international sex trafficking ring run out of the basement of a Washington, D.C., pizza parlor. One such follower actually brought an AR-15-style rifle into the pizza parlor and fired three shots. Fortunately, no one was injured. When I was in the Moonies, I was so indoctrinated that I was prepared to take up arms and die for the cause. I wasn’t alone. My fear is that Trump might order his followers to take their weapons to the streets if he is not re-elected. In a recent tweet, he quoted his Christian Right ally, Robert Jeffress, that his removal from office “will cause a Civil War like fracture in this Nation from which our Country will never heal.” Worse still is the possibility that, if feeling sufficiently threatened, Trump might, like Jones, try to take others everyone with him, using his access to the nuclear codes. It’s a dark scenario, but not entirely outlandish. The good news is, I woke up and got out of a cult, as have millions of people. What I have learned in working with cult members, as I describe in my book, is that attacking their beliefs is doomed to fail. To help them recover their critical faculties, it is essential to develop a warm and positive relationship before teaching them about how mind control works. I often do that by showing how it operates in other groups, like the Jonestown cult or Scientology. We might use the same approach to heal the “us versus them” mindset of Trump’s followers—and also of some of their more rabid opponents. Ultimately, the goal is to educate and inspire people to regain their capacity for critical thinking, and to free their own minds. I have seen people throw off the mental and emotional shackles of many years—even a lifetime—of destructive conditioning. I believe that love is stronger than fear and that truth is stronger than mind control. But I also believe that the dangers of mind control are greater now than ever due to the digital world we are so plugged into. We ignore the lessons of history—of Jonestown and other destructive groups—at our own peril. https://news.yahoo.com/former-moonie-trump-cult-leader-091128723.html https://www.thedailybeast.com/take-it-from-a-former-moonie-trump-is-a-cult-leader?source=articles&via=rss

What does that have to do with gay conversion therapy?

Does a bear shit in the woods?

Who would have thought...

I wonder how many showed up...?

Little boys and their temper tantrums - Heightened security in Boston for 'pro-straight parade' Boston (AFP) - Police in Boston were gearing up for possible clashes Saturday between "Straight Pride Parade" demonstrators supportive of President Donald Trump and counter-protesters who accuse them of being homophobic and extremist. A group calling itself Super Happy Fun America has organized the controversial parade in response to the hugely popular gay pride parades that take place in US cities every year. Critics say organizers are white-supremacists whose intent is to bait members of the LGBT community in one of America's most liberal cities, and have arranged demonstrations to oppose it. "There are no racists in our group. You have to come to one of our meetings: it's like the United Nations," president John Hugo told AFP, defending the parade. The demonstrations come as tensions simmer between leftists and white nationalists in the United States. Enrique Tarrio (L), a member of the all-male 'Proud Boys' organization, which has been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, is due to attend (AFP Photo/John Rudoff) Two weeks ago, a far-right rally and counter-demonstration by anti-fascist protestors in the city of Portland passed with no major incident amid a heavy police presence. Super Happy Fun America's website says Saturday's march is to "spread awareness of issues impacting straights," describing heterosexuals as "an oppressed majority" in Massachusetts, the first US state to legalize same-sex marriage. But the parade will have a clear political slant too, with participants due to walk alongside pro-Trump floats. The group's website displays a doctored photo of Trump holding a sign saying #GreatToBeStraight. Prominent members of America's far-right movement, known as the "alt-right," are scheduled to speak, including former Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos, who has been banned from several social media sites. Enrique Tarrio, a member of the all-male "Proud Boys" organization, which has been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, is also due to attend. Some 1,200 people are planning to join the parade, which starts at noon (1600 GMT) in Copley Square and ends at Boston City Hall around a mile and a half (2.4 kilometers) away, according to a Facebook group. Police will cordon off the area and have said they will deploy uniformed and undercover officers along the route. Several anti-Trump organizations and gay rights supporters have said they will try to block the parade. At least two counter-protests are planned, the first starting at 9:00 am. "We are certainly not going to start any violence but we will defend ourselves if we have to," said Hugo, 56. A "Straight Pride" held last Saturday in Modesto, California attracted only a few dozen people and about 250 counter-protesters, according to local newspaper The Modesto Bee. https://news.yahoo.com/heightened-security-boston-pro-straight-parade-062515220.html

Thermal detonators (Star Wars "grenades").

Bingo. I'm no fan of the PC shit, but it's easy to see that a majority of these 'free speech' rants are really about a big portion of society that's having a tantrum that they can't get away with these sorts of old derogatory sentiments like they used to. Ironically, it's the actual exercise of free speech that gets them into the hot seat in the first place.

And the ignoramuses in the comments afterward...

NEVER underestimate the insanity of American Christianity, especially at its most fundamentalist roots.

Horrific. Enraging. Depressing. And the only place it seems to be talked about is social media. Good god.

Some airlines still do.

You nailed it. They absolutely are sociopaths (some even psychopaths). When you study a bit into what each entails, and the little differences between them (Sociopaths are made, Psychopaths are born), and you look at the core of the extreme right-wing/Trumpian/inflame 'the libs' side of the sociopolitical spectrum, there is a lot of sociopathy, at the very least. To derive such pleasure from manipulating and inflaming for their own gain, and to do so by sinking to the lowest levels, and showing absolutely no shred of remorse or empathy... Trump is that exactly, and he's validated it in these types of people.