Every time I write about MAGA as a cult, a certain kind of reader shows up in my comments like they were summoned by a ring light and a televangelist with a payment plan. They tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about. They tell me Donald Trump is a good man. Then, if I’m lucky, they offer to lay hands on me. I have been prayed for by more strangers on the internet than most megachurch pastors, and every one of them closes with some version of “Jesus loves you, Professor,” delivered with the warmth of a parking ticket. I appreciate the concern. But there’s something spectacular about grown adults telling a political psychologist he’s lost touch with reality while defending a president who stood before the White House press corps and wondered aloud whether disinfectant could be injected into the human body. At that point, I don’t need anybody laying hands on me. I need somebody to explain why the hell the Clorox aisle was briefly part of America’s pandemic response.
I’ve been studying cults and cultish movements for a long time, and whenever I see the symptoms beginning to germinate, I immediately take a step back. Unquestioning loyalty, punishment for dissent, escalating rationalizations, and the elevation of one person’s judgment above all available evidence are warning signs I take seriously. Cultish behavior rarely announces itself with matching robes and a complimentary glass of suspicious fruit punch. It develops gradually, until people find themselves defending conduct they would have condemned five years earlier.
I thought about that this week while watching Republicans pick through the wreckage of Tuesday night’s electoral ass-whipping. Everybody was pointing fingers, nobody wanted responsibility, and the man who helped create the catastrophe was busy explaining why everybody else had failed him. I’d seen this behavior before. Two spectacular organizational disasters came to mind: one involving a self-proclaimed spiritual genius who belonged in prison, and another involving corporate geniuses who couldn’t balance a checkbook without committing securities fraud.
Smallville was one of my favorite television shows of the 2000s. Allison Mack played Chloe Sullivan, Clark Kent’s best friend, for all ten seasons. Unfortunately, her offscreen life took a turn that even the show’s writers might have rejected as ridiculous. Mack spent twelve years involved with NXIVM, the Albany-based self-help organization run by Keith Raniere, a manipulative son of a bitch whose followers called him “Vanguard.” Vanguard! This asshole was named Keith. He sounded like somebody who should have been managing a RadioShack, but somehow convinced people he possessed extraordinary wisdom about human existence. Imagine meeting a middle-aged man named Keith and being told to address him like he’s the final boss in a Superman movie. Raniere built an organization around psychological manipulation, coercion, and sexual exploitation, eventually overseeing a secret group in which women were branded with his initials. After a 2017 exposé, the organization began unraveling. Raniere was arrested, convicted, and sentenced to 120 years in prison. That’s one hell of a performance review. Mack pleaded guilty to racketeering charges and served time herself.
In November 2025, Mack appeared on Inside of You, hosted by her former Smallville castmate Michael Rosenbaum, who played Lex Luthor. The irony of Chloe Sullivan discussing a manipulative egomaniac while sitting across from Lex Luthor was difficult to miss, although Rosenbaum had the good sense to leave his villainy on television. Mack helped recruit and abuse women, and her acknowledgment of wrongdoing doesn’t erase that damage. But her account illustrated how coercive groups operate. She explained that things didn’t become “really dysfunctional and illegal until the eighth or ninth year.” Departures were rationalized, and members continually reinforced one another’s beliefs. She described an “insidious little community” in which everybody reassured everybody else until the outside world barely mattered. After the organization collapsed, she said most of the people in her life stopped communicating with her. Her eventual assessment of Raniere was considerably less flattering than Vanguard: “He’s an evil man.”
That’s escalating commitment and social reinforcement. People invest their identities, reputations, and relationships in an organization. Every warning gets explained away. Every departure becomes evidence of insufficient loyalty. Admitting the truth means confronting years of decisions they’d rather forget. Raniere exploited those mechanisms to devastating effect. Now Vanguard has 120 years to contemplate his extraordinary wisdom from federal prison. I hope the Bureau of Prisons has a suggestion box where he can submit his next revolutionary theory about human potential.
Now consider Enron, the Houston energy company that presented itself as the smartest collection of financial minds ever assembled. These motherfuckers were so convinced of their brilliance that ordinary accounting became an inconvenience. Why report what your company actually earned when you could manufacture financial statements that looked like a billionaire’s fever dream? Executives concealed losses, misled investors, collected enormous compensation, and treated people questioning the numbers like idiots who couldn’t appreciate sophisticated business practices. Unfortunately, the Securities and Exchange Commission had questions of its own, and “trust us, we’re really smart” turned out to be a lousy legal defense.
In August 2001, Enron executive Sherron Watkins warned chairman Ken Lay that the company could “implode in a wave of accounting scandals.” You’d think that might inspire an emergency meeting, perhaps even somebody opening an accounting textbook. But Lay continued reassuring employees. According to the SEC, he suggested Enron stock could return to the $80 or $90 range while concealing that he’d sold more than $65 million of his own shares back to the company during 2001. Think about the audacity of that bullshit. He’s telling employees everything will be fine while reducing his exposure to the disaster. That’s like the captain of the Titanic announcing that the ship is perfectly safe while climbing into a lifeboat carrying a suitcase full of jewelry. By December, Enron was bankrupt. CFO Andrew Fastow eventually testified against his former bosses, Arthur Andersen was engulfed in scandal, and ordinary employees watched their retirement savings evaporate.
Recognize the pattern? A leader becomes too important to question. Lieutenants reward loyalty and punish dissent. Warning signs are dismissed until the consequences become unavoidable. Then the same people who couldn’t praise the leader loudly enough begin explaining how they were misled. NXIVM demonstrated the destructive power of psychological dependency. Enron demonstrated what happens when organizational arrogance and self-preservation become more important than reality. Different institutions, different victims, different crimes, but overlapping mechanisms.
And if you think American politics was immune to those dynamics, I have terrible news about the Republican Party.
