This post is a response to a question posed on Quora in its complete format: “Whats is it called when Democrats are saying things just to get something from the other people, Like saying maggots or it’s a cult or playing rubbery glue but they never ever have valid arguments and just defend the wrongness they represent?”
Please note the Addendum at the end for an explanation of why I chose to expand its publishing venues beyond its original venue on Quora.

Saying “something to get something from someone else” is pretty broad. In your case, with your question, you at least defined “the other people” as Democrats, which is already a tacit admission of being an ideologue with an “anti-Democrat” bias. It could mean you’re a somewhat moderate Republican, but confidence levels in that conclusion dramatically drop because ideologues are not moderates. It’s extremist thinking, which indicates a high likelihood of being a MAGA Republican or a right-wing extremist who is further right than “staunch Republican.”

Since these categories are not part of popular discourse and are somewhat subjectively supported by my bias, I’ll explain how these work.

From this Canuck’s biased perspective, a “moderate Republican is someone like Hillary Clinton, who has essentially embraced the Neo-Liberal version of Conservativism, which endorses the view that industry is the priority in establishing economic strategy, which then leads to social development.

(To be clear, I’m not “picking on” Hillary; I’m just using her as an example because she and her politics are well known. I would consider both Joe Biden and Barack Obama as milder versions of Neo-Liberal, which is what I facetiously refer to as “Conservativism in drag.” For comparison, I would describe Bernie Sanders as slightly left of center because he also endorses, to some extent, the central role of industry in social development. These are also not entirely “my views,” or views I’ve concocted on my own in a vacuum. These are positions that can be found on the Political Compass website, which is considered an authoritative source for political orientation along a spectrum defined by political science theories developed by Herbert Kitschelt. The website address is: The Political Compass, so that you can see for yourself.

John McCain was someone I would describe as a “staunch Republican” (he was a generally decent human being with a conscience who would have been a better Republican president than every Republican president since Eisenhower). He would have acknowledged the value of human life during his presidency more than any President after Eisenhower. It’s quite possible that he would have implemented Romneycare without it being subjected to perpetual attacks by Republicans over the last few decades, like was the case with Obama (and sadly, because of reasons ALL Americans should be embarrassed by).

I write these provocative words precisely to trigger the MAGAts in the crowd who might read this, including the querent. I also am using this as a setup for identifying what is meant by a right-wing extremist Conservative Republican, or a (fascist) MAGAt. I see no point in delving deeply into defining a MAGAt because this constitutes a group of highly entrenched ideologues who put their tribal identity over and above the peaceful process of social development for what is now ironically named the “United” States OF America. (MAGAts have endlessly blamed their divisiveness on Democrats, and particularly Obama, because they know that national divisiveness is harmful and considered “bad.”)

These are all characteristics of a cult mentality. Here is a comprehensive summary of a cult mentality.

Here are a few articles that elaborate on the AI summary above:

What Makes a Cult, and How Do Cult Leaders Control Their Followers?

What Is a Cult? 10 Warning Signs

Signs You’re In A Cult: Understanding the Psychology of Undue Influence — The Truism Center

Understanding The Manipulative Tactics Of Cults — Davenport Psychology

Understanding Cults: The Basics

https://study.com/learn/lesson/cult-characteristics-types-behavior.html

Reverend Jim Jones and the People’s Temple

Part of the problem in dealing with the cult mentality is what it implies to those who are cult members. They can instinctively understand that it’s bad, or acknowledge how a cult mentality suggests a loss of agency, and possibly even know how they may have lost touch with their own identity. This last one may be the most difficult to grasp because they still hold a series of memories in which they see themselves at the centre of the images that come to mind when they recall.

Being indoctrinated into a cult mentality is made especially more difficult to break from because their old identity has been reshaped into a new one built around their tribal affiliation. Being surrounded by people who validate one’s feelings is a powerful motivator, like slipping into a warm, welcoming bath. The freedom to “be oneself” or indulge in self-serving views that disparage others is a far easier path than introspection. Instead of being confronted by tears, one is free to indulge in rage-fueled dopamine highs.

The most significant reason for rejecting the notion that one has been indoctrinated into a cult has been permanently stamped onto our collective social consciousness through the extreme consequences of cult behaviour. Cults have been associated with extremist behaviour for good reason, because the most horrifying of human behaviours have been common to cult outcomes.

Charles Manson’s smallish cult of personality resulted in the nation’s most horrifying serial murders to that date. Reverend Jim Jones’ Peoples’ Temple took that cult/horror association to another and more extreme level through the Jonestown Massacre in 1978. The photos from that era are stark and unforgettable. One cannot see these photos and not see a cult as a “bad thing,” no matter how entrenched they may be in their tribal association. No one wants to believe they could be convinced into committing mass murder and suicide on the suggestion of a powerful personality, yet that’s what we have in Donald Trump.

This statement that Donald Trump made on January 23, 2016, should have ended his campaign, as many other egregious behaviours should have long before. Instead, his outrageous behaviours became fuel for motivating his supporters.

Instead of becoming a limit to egregiousness to restrain his future behaviour, it became a bar for a shock jock to surpass, and surpass it he did. His entire political career has been an escalation of atrocious behaviour from scandalous to heinous, as his supporters have taken every grotesque step along with him while cheering his validation of their basest emotions.

Trump has been playing his base like a fiddle, or a puppet master, or a cult leader, and he took that role to an extreme when he set himself up as a fraudulent near-martyr to secure his second term.

It was bad enough that he managed to incite an insurrection by making an obvious accusation of a stolen election. The wholly fraudulent B-grade movie nature of his staged assassination attempt should have ended his political career. Instead, it further cemented the naive loyalty of his base in ways that made their cult nature impossible for the rest of the world to ignore.

As easy as it can be for a psychologically healthy human being to be horrified by the scope of the Jonestown massacre, a total of only 918 people died.

Donald J Trump well exceeded that total during his first term, with 1,228,289 confirmed deaths due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Although he cannot be held accountable for all those deaths, a significant proportion of that number was due entirely to his dismissive reaction to the severity of the crisis, and his parasitically opportunistic prioritization of profiting from a catastrophic event over the survival needs of the population.

A report published by The Lancet, a leading medical journal that was founded in England in 1823, determined in an independent study that about 40% of those deaths are directly attributable to Trump’s hostile responses to medical authorities during the crisis. Those deaths of Trump’s first massive death toll, exceeding well over 400,000 victims that would still be alive today, have gone almost entirely ignored by the media and most especially by his base, who essentially believe the pandemic was a hoax, according to his wholly ignorant disregard for human life.

Making matters horrifically worse is that this death toll has been merely the beginning of a final total that is already expected to exceed 14 million when combined with the 600,000 and growing number of deaths of mostly children due to the cancellation of the USAID program. By 2030, Donald J. Trump’s death toll will be in the ballpark of Hitler’s 17 million dead.

His supporters not only ignore the surreal horrors occurring entirely due to his actions, but they also justify it as happening to people who are not “of their tribe.”

As much as they and this querent may wish to dismiss the gravity of a phenomenon that sane people cannot ignore as a cult of personality, that is entirely how history will record this travesty in our period. This is assuming we survive an escalation where we can contain his rampant destruction as he concocts new and creative ways to engage in hostilities through war crimes and interventions into the sovereignty of nations outside U.S. boundaries.

In retrospect, all the signs are impossible to ignore; however, never in my life did I ever consider how the United States would become the enemy of the world’s people. I had always envisioned, even as a child, while considering superstitiously concocted scenarios (cuz I was a naive, ignorant, and easily fooled child given to fantasies such as Nostradamus’ predictions), that the U.S. always wore the white hats and would come to the world’s rescue in any future worldwide aggressions by megalomaniacal dictators.

Never did I imagine, within the worst of scenarios, while practicing our duck and cover drills in school, to protect ourselves from fallout by a potential nuclear holocaust, that the U.S. would be wearing the black hats. This shows me how effective the propaganda has been while we have all been fooled by the oligarchs who have repeatedly pushed humanity to the brink of extinction.

I had always feared the leader of the fascist army. I should instead have been far more concerned about the wholly conditioned footsoldiers who pollute public discourse with toxic and hypocritical presumptions and disingenuous deflections of responsibility for their evil behaviour, such as evidenced by this querent’s expression.

ADDENDUM:

This answer was originally posted to the group “Done With the Bullshit” on Quora. I submitted this answer for approval and went to bed. I discovered, when I awoke this morning, that it had been accepted by the group and made public. I then checked to see if it was posted and found it had been deleted, not by a moderator in the group, but by Quora’s moderation team.

This indicated to me that the original querent reacted strongly enough to my answer to report it on Quora, and Quora’s algorithm responded accordingly, without any human judgment.

Link to MAGAt Profile to Block: Kyle Jacobs

I have enjoyed the content on “Done With the Bullshit,” and I have had the good fortune to have a few of my answers reach a broad audience and receive a lot of support through upvotes, comments, and, most of all, fulfilling dialogues that my content has encouraged.

This entire process of social media content production is, after all, a means of encouraging public dialogue on issues that would otherwise go unaddressed, allowing problems to metastasize and grow into malignant forces in society.

The rapidity of the response by “Kyle Jacobs” (likely not this person’s real name) to have this answer removed indicates to me that this has been a very effective answer in addressing a severe condition of widespread dysphoria affecting society.

As you can see, I’ve reposted this answer at the top level of Quora’s question hierarchy, where it will be less visible due to the numerous other answers. There are over 200 answers to this troll question; almost all of them are challenges to the fundamentally flawed character of a question intended more to smear an enemy than to seek knowledge or insight into a subject of interest. Quora is rife with such questions by trolls attempting to shift focus away from their corrupt states of mind and onto their ideological enemies.

The deflection character of the “question,” and the aggressive removal of information deemed offensive to the MAGAt sensibility, is a large part of the reason why the cult mentality is so resistant to the requisite introspection they must all undergo to cure ourselves of this scourge before it escalates to such a degree that we experience catastrophic losses far beyond what we have already been forced to endure as a consequence of this mental health pandemic.

I am encouraged by the efficacy of my answer and will make it available to a broader audience beyond Quora. I will also publish it on several social media platforms through my Medium account and on my WordPress blog at kree8r.com.

I want to thank you, “Kyle Jacobs,” for your swift response, because I would otherwise have likely let this answer languish in relative obscurity, where it would remain just another of my well over 22 thousand answers.

I hope you have an excellent New Year’s celebration, and I hope this is enough encouragement for you and your fellow MAGAts to take to heart just how severe your mental health condition is. Please, for the sake of those you care for in your lives, if such people exist, get some help from a professional because the trajectory you have put us all on may not be recoverable. I doubt many of you wish to be responsible for contributing to the end of human civilization.

Please take some time to consider your loved ones and ask yourself if all the hatred consuming you is worth losing everything.

Temet Nosce