The Cult of Amurrica

I've been watching Leah Remini's documentary series about Scientology for the past few weeks. Her mission, plainly and boldly stated, is to expose this self-described "Church" as nothing more than a cult and amoral money-making machine disguised as a humanistic organization. I've always found Scientology kind of fascinating, not only because one of the first sci-fi writers I read with any regularity was the Church's founder, L. Ron Hubbard, but merely because the movement itself is from the outside so obviously batshit-crazy that it throws into relief how many of our other institutions -- religious, academic, and social -- are, at their roots, cult-like as well, only have been more normalized over time.

The more episodes of the show I watch, the more I start to think that our divided country has a large faction of it that operates much like a cult.

Let's compare: Scientology started with a forward-thinking leader (Mr. Hubbard) who looked at all the wonders of the Space Race/Atom Age and wondered whether any of it could help solve the dilemmas of the human psyche. The purity of the cycle of the scientific method (hypothesize, experiment, observe, analyze, theorize, refine) which had brought us amazing technological wonders, put us on the moon and cured polio, seemed like it might also be applied to solving our mental neuroses and cycles of abuse, if applied with the same rigor and objectivity. So it at least pretended to have a noble start. But from that logically sound beginning, things quickly started to go off the rails.

As time went on, both Hubbard's paranoia and grip on reality loosened. He first took to basing his organization on boats in international waters to evade various countries' laws. Then he coordinated the largest espionage attack on America ever perpetrated (Operation Snow White, a fascinating and frightening research topic). As time went on and he realized he had to follow through with completion of his bogus religious mythology, he created the increasingly expensive and ludicrous "revelations" one learns as they climb the Scientology bridge... this is where the great galactic lord Xenu comes into play, as well as the ever-more Earthly insanities laid bare in Ms. Remini's riveting series.

My point is this: even if Scientology may have started off with a noble premise, it was eventually led astray by its own fear, self-delusion and insularity. And when I look at what America is today, I can see much of the same thing happening. What Trump tapped into on that fateful day in November is often referred to as "Amurrica" by the rest of the population, and is the shadow-self of our nation. The utter poetry of the way it stands in direct contrast to what it thinks it stands for is pretty amazing, and I think a pretty good analog of what happened with the Church of Scientology.

Sit any elementary school student down and ask them what America is, what it *means*, what it stands for. What do we collectively tell ourselves makes America different from just about every other country? Well, the standard answer is it's our inclusiveness. Anyone from anywhere in the world can come here and make a better life for themselves. You can practice any religion you want in the manner you see fit, and everyone has an equal chance to work hard, study hard, and make the best use of their mind and body they can, all to build a stronger, unified country.

At least, that was the ideal set down on paper at the beginning. And there are still a lot of us (if you believe the numbers, a little over half) that still aspire to it. But we've recently heard loud and clear that there is a large faction of us that have turned the idea of "America" into a sort of cult, where nearly every single one of the Founding Fathers' original thoughts have been completely subverted and re-packaged as truth.

It's this new idea that's what "Amurrica" lives by. It's a place where "freedom" and "patriotism" means protecting ourselves against the constant threat of outsiders, people of different colors and religions, creeping in on all sides, threatening to change established modes of society that have been in place for as long as anyone cares to remember. The federal government is part of this too, a cabal of elites who live far away and know nothing of the reality of life, but wish to impose their will on common, salt-of-the-earth people, leaving "us" defenseless and dependent.

This is cult mentality writ large, indoctrinating a population that pays lip service to democracy and multi-culturalism, when what they secretly want is the exact opposite. They want to perpetuate the monoculture they've been born into, and which they can easily understand. They want one Voice of Authority, which can provide them with all the answers they desire. There's no room for dissent, no place for the Outsider except as an example to demonstrate our magnanimity and charity. But then the Outsider always has to go back outside.

"Amurrica" is a worldview that's filtered through an increasingly smaller number of legitimate-sounding news sources, and politicians who would rather voice their policies via Twitter than actual press conferences, where they could face follow-up questions and be asked to provide facts to back up their assertions.

The repetition of untrue doctrine until it becomes ingrained as fact, the intimidation and bullying tactics to keep the indoctrinated in line, the innate infallibility of leadership... these are things that all cults do well. They remove other options, instill fear, monopolize attention, and magnify the natural uncertainties of life. Then they offer an ironclad solution that you can attain, and all you have to do is follow without question. It's these tactics that both L. Ron Hubbard and our President-Elect have used to "help" people retreat from the new, connected, real world of the twenty-first century, all the while claiming to be reinforcing the very ideals they're undermining.

Oh, and there's one more crucial way these two men are similar: They've taken a great deal of money from hard-working people doing what they do.