Trust and the American Way.

I was reading earlier about Trump inciting his supporters to engage in mass protests in the event of him being tried for the many aspects of skulduggery of which he is being accused. (I wonder whose side the National Guard will be on when the violence breaks out. Does the National Guard still exist? I’m curious.) Anyway, the point is that Trumpism is obviously a cult of sorts and Donald is their leader. And this brings up an interesting question.

It appears that cults are almost exclusively an American phenomenon, a fundamental feature of which is that followers implicitly believe everything the leader tells them. And isn’t the same true of Southern Baptists? Don’t their followers also implicitly believe everything the preacher tells them?

That being the case, it would appear that an aspect of American culture is that there are an awful lot of people over there prepared to unflinchingly engage with personalities in positions of power, and trust their pronouncements absolutely. This seems odd to us Europeans because most of us regard the implicit trusting of preachers and politicians as a sure sign of abject gullibility. We’re not very much inclined to tolerate cults, you see, and we know that lies, evasion, and obfuscation are routine elements of the politicians’ modus operandi. And as for preachers, well...

This is, to some extent, a generalisation and not intended to be a criticism of America per se. But it has me wondering whether I’m right, and I’ll be quite happy to be told that I’m wrong.