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Bluebear Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jan-26-05 04:58 PM
Original message
Bushistas: Displaying CULT behavior?
Edited on Wed Jan-26-05 05:14 PM by Bluebear



How many of these cult characteristics pertain to Bush & his followers?

1. It uses psychological means to retain its members. Special privilege for the leader and "inner circle" because of the "chosen" status.

2. It forms an elitist totalitarian society. Exclusive membership and a "you’ll miss out if you don’t get involved" mentality. ("You're either with us or against us"?)

3. Its founder leader is self-appointed, dogmatic, messianic, not accountable and has charisma.

4. Divine instruction coming from a deity source, only given to that particular group usually through channeling or 'divine inspiration'.

5. It believes 'the end justifies the means' in order to solicit funds and recruit people.

6. Channeled or divinely inspired messages are always annouced as to save/help mankind.

7. Groups can change/stop future cataclysmic events or ascribe cataclysmic events to a lack of faith.

8. Repetitious appeals/prayers/incantations recited daily.

9. Group is usually grandly named such as Heavens Gate, Branch Davidians, The Core Council.

10. Initiates will receive protection from deities races if they maintain membership in the group and do as instructed by the leader.

11. Its wealth does not benefit its members or society. Its top wealth is reserved for its top "tier".

12. Due to the instinct for truth in human nature, absolute lies are not as effective as some people think. Therefore, half-truths and quarter-truths are used. You can then make people believe almost anything.




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RobertSeattle Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jan-26-05 04:59 PM
Response to Original message
1. 13. In capable of handling dissent
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Bluebear Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jan-26-05 09:28 PM
Response to Reply #1
10. .
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EstimatedProphet Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jan-26-05 05:02 PM
Response to Original message
2. So what's your point? :)
The Republicans are a cult? NO!!!

Yes, they are showing a lot of those tendencies, and they have been shown to be divorced from reality.

I wish I knew how to counter their programming...
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Bluebear Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jan-26-05 05:03 PM
Response to Reply #2
5. I've long said it's like Smirk has some kind of spell on them
I can't otherwise explain why the worse things get, the more the dig their heels in in adoration!
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skypilot Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jan-26-05 05:02 PM
Response to Original message
3. This is a point that truly needs to be driven home.
Edited on Wed Jan-26-05 05:03 PM by skypilot
It has been talked about on this board before but I don't think that it can ever be mentioned too much. That woman with her hands clasped together is the face of Bush's America. And of Jim Jones' koolaid drinkers, no doubt.
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Swamp Rat Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jan-26-05 05:02 PM
Response to Original message
4. Definately!
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Bluebear Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jan-26-05 05:14 PM
Response to Reply #4
8. Your art is always appropriately creepy! n/t
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anarchy1999 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jan-26-05 05:03 PM
Response to Original message
6. Just what can you say. The young woman clasping her hands is
plain damned frightening.
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uppityperson Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jan-26-05 05:06 PM
Response to Original message
7. Why do you hate America? n/t
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Bluebear Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jan-26-05 05:23 PM
Response to Reply #7
9. Reporting for programming n/t
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adigal Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jan-26-05 09:32 PM
Response to Original message
11. We need to deprogram them
I have two friends - one in the reserves, one with a son who just joined the ROTC at college. The man in the reserves is now against the war because he said the Iraqis are not willing to fight for themselves. The woman is now against the war, because she thinks we will still be involved in 4 years, when her son graduates college.

Both are being deprogrammed by me right now - I repeat Rice's lies, Bush's lies and Rumsfeld's insensitivity. I send him every email about soldiers being mistreated, or unhappy. I give her support and tell her we have to get Dems in to office in '06.

We can do this - one person at a time.
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NAO Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-27-05 12:53 AM
Response to Original message
12. Article "The Bush Cult" by Paul Levy
For the scoop on the Bush Cult, see the writings of Paul Levy.

The Bush Cult
http://www.awakeninthedream.com/bushcult.html

excerpt

It is a shattering experience to see through our imaginary projections and recognize that someone we thought was leading and protecting us does not have our best interest at heart. People who support Mr. George Bush resist and turn away from the irrefutable and readily available evidence that Bush is anything but a good leader, as if they are in denial with a capital D. Bush is saying one thing and doing totally the opposite, and many people are simply in denial of this and look away. It is truly as if people who support Bush are not only in denial, but are actually refusing to look and hence, blind to what to most of the world is very obvious. It is as if people who support Bush are under a hypnotic spell, and are suffering from a form of collective brainwashing. People who support Bush in his pathology are exhibiting nothing other than the groupthink of cultic behavior.

Followers of a cult unquestioningly give their power away to their leader’s version of reality. People in a cult have dis-connected from their discerning wisdom, which is the ability to discriminate between the opposites, between truth and lies, between good and evil. In a cult, any sort of reflection of the leader’s unconscious shadow is not only not allowed, but is severely punished. The cult leader is typically insulated from people who disagree with him, not even wanting to come in contact and have any connection with people who have a different point of view. People in a cult exhibit complete and total denial with regard to any evidence that contradicts the agreed upon belief of the cult. This perfectly describes people who are following Bush as their leader. People who follow Bush are completely in denial about his truly criminal behavior.

People who belong to a cult always get hooked through their unconscious fear and blind spot. The cult members’ relationship with each other is based on mutual unconsciousness, as they reciprocally reinforce each other’s denial and illusion. In a cult, there is always some form of mind-control, such as the Bush Administration’s control and manipulation of the media. “Staying on message” is the typical communication style within a cult. The cult leader plays with people’s fears so as to gain their trust and control them, which is a process that is not based on love but on power over others.

There are always aspects of a cult that are kept hidden and secret, which is the mechanism that keeps its hierarchical power in place. In a cult, this inequality of power ensures that a form of abuse always gets unconsciously acted out. In a cult, the members identify with only one side of an inherently two-sided polarity, projecting out the marginalized shadow. Hence, people who disagree with the cult are seen to have fallen under the spell of the Devil. Members of a cult are convinced of the rightness of their point of view, which they consider non-negotiable. Hence, there is no room for the open dialogue and debate which is at the core of a true democracy. Cults will even suppress and distort science to serve their ends, just like the Bush Administration is doing for partisan political ends. And the cult leader is (arche)typically either identified with God or feels he has a special relationship with God. Cult leaders and their followers see themselves as agents of apocalyptic, end-time scenarios, which is one of the more disturbing aspects of Bush and his supporters from the religious right.

full article at above link
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Bluebear Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-27-05 01:07 AM
Response to Reply #12
13. Thanks for that link, good read. n/t
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NAO Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-27-05 01:24 AM
Response to Reply #13
14. Another Great Article - Madness of George Bush & Our Collective Psychosis
THE MADNESS OF GEORGE W. BUSH: A REFLECTION OF OUR COLLECTIVE PSYCHOSIS
http://www.awakeninthedream.com/georgew.html

excerpt

George W. Bush is ill. He has a psycho-spiritual dis-ease of the soul, a sickness that is endemic to our culture and symptomatic of the times we live in. It’s an illness that has been with us since time immemorial. Because it’s an illness that's in the soul of all of humanity, it pervades the field and is in all of us in potential at any moment, which makes it especially hard to diagnose.

Bush, like all of us, is both a manifestation of this deeper field and simultaneously an agent effecting this field. He’s become so fully taken over by the disease, all the while not suspecting a thing, that he’s become a "carrier" for this deadly disease, thus infecting the field around him. He’s become a portal through which the field around him "warps" in such a way as to feed and support his pathogenic process. A non-local, reciprocally co-arising and interdependent field of unconscious denial and cover-up gets constellated around Bush to enable and protect his pathology. People who support Bush are actually complicit with and enabling Bush’s madness in a co-dependent, self-reinforcing feedback loop that is ‘closed,’ which is to say it is insular and not open to any feedback from the ‘real’ world.

By projecting the shadow, Bush is unwittingly being a conduit for the deepest, archetypal evil to possess him from behind, beneath his conscious awareness, and to act itself out through him. At the same time, ironically enough, he identifies with the light and imagines that he is divinely inspired. To quote Jung, a person in a position of power who has become dissociated like Bush “even runs the grave risk of believing he has a Messianic mission, and forces tyrannous doctrines upon his fellow-beings.” He then believes that any action he desires is justified in the name of God, as he can rationalize it as being God's will. Unable to self-reflect, he is convinced of the rightness of his viewpoint, which he considers non-negotiable. This is a very dangerous situation, as Bush has become unconsciously identified with and possessed by the hero, or savior archetype. This figure is religious in nature, as it derives from the transpersonal, archetypal dimension of the collective unconscious. Being inflated with the hero archetype, he (archetypically) wants to save the world from evil and to liberate the planet.

full article at above link


WHY DO BUSH SUPPORTERS DENY THE OBVIOUS?
http://www.awakeninthedream.com/bushsupporters.html

excerpt

...what we have- a criminal and traitor sitting in the White House pretending he is a patriot, wrapping himself in the flag.” The evidence of Bush and Company’s corruptness and duplicity is beyond overwhelming, and it is literally everywhere, staring us in the face. Why are so many people looking away and not noticing? I find myself no longer interested in trying to convince anyone of what a madman, criminal and traitor Bush is, though it’s not for lack of trying. What I find more fruitful is to contemplate why people who are supporting Bush are both unwilling and seemingly unable to see the evil that is playing out through him. People who follow Bush are in denial about something that to the overwhelming majority of the world could not be more obvious.

The denial of people who support Bush is a form of blindness. People who support Bush are refusing to look at what is right in front of their eyes, an evil that they themselves are complicit in and participating in by their denial. People who are following Bush are acting out of their unconscious. It is as if they have fallen asleep and are dreaming, entranced by their own projections. It is as if they are bewitched, having fallen under a spell. They are living in what John Kerry calls “a fantasy world of spin,” ignoring and oblivious to any facts that contradict their worldview. It is exactly like they are hypnotized, like they are brainwashed. People who follow Bush are behaving exactly like members of a cult who have blindly and unquestioningly given away their power to their leader. They have left behind their critical thinking, dis-connecting from their capacity to discern truth from fiction. Not to mention selling their soul in the bargain. People who support Bush are suffering from a collective psychosis. Why else would they be supporting a madman for President? It is shattering to look in the mirror and see that we, as a people, have gone temporarily mad.

There is a psychic epidemic manifesting in our country right now, and millions of people in our populace have fallen prey to it. There is no sense pretending otherwise. It is of the most profound importance that we notice and understand the psychological nature of the collective malady that we, as a people, are suffering from. Understanding the psychological nature of our illness gives us insight into how to treat it.

By looking away from what Bush is doing and naively supporting him, people are complicit in and feeding Bush’s malignant psychosis. There is something about the depth of depravity, though, that is enacting itself through the Axis of Evil represented by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, Rice, Rove and others that is so dark that it induces in some of us a tendency to pretend that it isn’t really happening. The malevolent energy that is playing itself out through Bush is very hard to look at. People look away, as it is too horrific. The intensity of the evil provokes people to rationalize it, to justify it, to explain it away. It triggers a tendency in people to fall asleep. We like to imagine that people couldn’t be THAT corrupt, THAT two-faced, THAT evil. It is truly shocking to see the depth of depravity a human being can fall into. It is doubly shocking when we realize that these criminally insane individuals control the most powerful nation on earth.

full article at above link
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Karenina Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-27-05 08:11 AM
Response to Reply #14
16. FAQ: What is WRONG with the Amis?
WTF has happened to them? :wtf:

"People who follow Bush are in denial about something that to the overwhelming majority of the world could not be more obvious."

See Swamp Rat's posts for the face *co presents as "American."
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oasis Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-27-05 01:54 AM
Response to Original message
15. Mien Fuhrer.
:dunce:x 59 million
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