On 2/15/2026 at 11:29 PM, spidermike007 said:

It's quite obvious that a lot of Trump supporters are unwilling to show any objectivity, nor are they willing to criticize Trump's policies no matter how bizarre, no matter how ridiculous, no matter how destructive, and no matter how colossal a failure they are.

Fortunately there are some supporters and some GOP members of the Congress and the Senate who are courageous enough to show dissent, and are starting to push back against some of his astonishing levels of ignorance.

Whenever a MAGA devotee has nothing to say, and no reasonable argument to put forth, they revert to criticism of Biden, Obama or Clinton.

The irony is that Clinton was a genius when it came to running the economy, and Trump is a total failure, with job losses, whipsaw tariff policy, wasteful pursuit of personal vendettas, failed trade deals, consistently getting outsmarted by American allies and adversaries both, price hikes, and the most expensive cars in history.

Trump has certainly encouraged the cult worship with his adoration of self, and his extreme levels of self aggrandizement.

After a year back in the White House, Mr. Trump’s efforts to promote himself as the singularly dominant figure in the world have become so commonplace that they no longer seem surprising. He regularly depicts himself in a heroic, almost godly fashion, as a king, as a Superman, as a Jedi knight, as a military hero, even as a pope in a white cassock.

While Mr. Trump has spent a lifetime promoting his personal brand, slapping his name on hotels, casinos, airplanes, even steaks, neckties and bottled water, what he is doing in his second term as president comes closer to building a cult of personality the likes of which has never been seen in American history. Other presidents sought to cultivate their reputations, but none went as far as Mr. Trump has to create a mythologized, superhuman and omnipresent persona leading to idolatry.

His picture has been splashed all over the White House, on multistory banners on the side of federal buildings, on annual passes to national parks and maybe even soon on a one-dollar coin. His name has been etched on the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, on the U.S. Institute of Peace, on federal investment accounts, special visas and a discount drug program and, if he has his way, on Washington Dulles International Airport and Penn Station in New York.

Cults of personality are traditionally associated with dictators and demagogues, not democrats. They are figures like Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Benito Mussolini and more recently the shirtless, horseback-riding Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. But Mr. Trump does not seem concerned that he might be heading down a dangerous path.

Indeed, last month at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, he suggested that authoritarianism was not necessarily something to eschew. “Usually they say, ‘He’s a horrible dictator-type person, I’m a dictator,’” he said after delivering a rambling speech. “But sometimes, you need a dictator.”

Personality-driven politics serve to bind followers of a movement to their leader more than to any particular policy prescription, making his success or failure their own. Veneration and loyalty are central and ideology secondary. The leader is presented as infallible, uniquely qualified, even divinely delivered for this moment in history.

Mr. Trump has played to these themes since taking the national political stage. “I alone can fix it,” he declared when running in 2016. “I was saved by God to make America great again,” he said on being inaugurated again last year.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/15/us/politics/trumps-american-cult-of-personality.html?smid=nytcore-android-share

How is any political party and its followers not a cult?

On 2/15/2026 at 11:46 PM, spidermike007 said:

His severe constipation seems to exist on multiple levels. I have some great laxatives I could recommend and it might ease some of his daily misery.

The Mad King has diarrhea of the mouth and constipation of the brain.