October 29, 2020: How to Deprogram Members of the Trump Cult

 

10/29/20: Here, in Cincinnati, it’s raining steadily, as we catch the remnants of a tropical storm spawned by Hurricane Zeta.

 

That Category 2 hurricane, which churned ashore Wednesday and battered Louisiana, was the third of the year to strike our unlucky sister state. Two million people across the South are without power. Homes have lost roofs and walls. Businesses have been flooded. Cars have been smashed by falling trees.

 

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The hold of the Trump cult is strong.

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Climate scientists have said it again: We knew this was coming. We warned that hurricanes would be more common, that they would be more intense. That they would dump more rain as they passed.

 

President Trump has managed to convince the faithful in MAGA red that climate change is a fiction.

 

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MEANWHILE, the coronavirus kicks back up across the country and Team Trump fights to save the president’s reelection. According to the president we have “turned the corner” on COVID-19! People who deal in stocks, and economic realities, are so excited to hear the news of a corner turned that they send the Dow Jones down 943 points on Wednesday. This follows a “rally” Tuesday when the Dow dropped 650 points, as brokers sensed more Trump disease-fighting magic was coming.

 

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I’M SORRY to say this. But blogging about Trump, and fighting with conservative friends and relatives on Facebook, I have come to understand that the MAGA faithful will believe anything, no matter how absurd. It’s like those poor souls who still support Keith Raniere, founder of NXIVM, the abusive sex cult. Raniere was sentenced to spend the next 120 years in prison earlier this week, whereas most Americans can only hope that Donald J. Trump will be sentenced to live out his life as a “loser,” after he gets voted out of office on November 3.

 

But the hold of any cult is strong. Many Trump fans will keep believing, as their Orange God says, that new-fangled lightbulbs contain “dangerous gasses.” That masks don’t really work against the virus. Yet, injecting disinfectant does. They will keep believing Obama was born in Kenya because their prophet said he was. Then he admitted that Obama wasn’t, but they never noticed. They will believe NASA scientists lie about climate change, and health experts lie about how deadly the coronavirus is, but that their prophet tells the truth. Against all logic, in defiance of all math, they will argue that all patriotic Americans should cast ballots for Trump, because the president has been a mastermind when it comes to guiding the economy.

 

Let’s look at actual math and try not to cry.

 

Start by studying the “jobs boom” that predated the pandemic. What follows are facts that are easily verified, assuming you’re not a lazy slob, intellectually, like the president himself.

 

First, we know, because we can add on fingers and toes, that Trump added fewer jobs in his first 37 months in office than Obama did in his last 37.

 

 

Bureau of Labor Statistics Monthly Reports: Jobs Added or Lost

 

CHART OF JOBS ADDED…

 

Jobs added under Obama in his last 37 months:

 

2013:        69,000 (December)

2014:   3,004,000

2015:   2,720,000

2016:   2,345,000 

Total:  8,138,000, divided by 37 = 219,946 jobs per month. 

(For simplicity, we always skip January 2017, because that month was split between Obama and Trump.) 

 

Jobs added under Trump in his first 37 months: 

2017:   1,924,000 (February-December)

2018:   2,314,000

2019:   2,133,000

2020:      469,000 (January-February) 

Total:  6,840,000, divided by 37 = 184,685 jobs per month. 

That’s the math.

 

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WE ALSO KNOW that the Orange God likes to brag about – and members of his cult like to believe –  that the stock market has soared to stratospheric heights since he was elected.

 

If we look at actual numbers, we see that at this point in Obama’s first term, after 45 months in office, the Dow Jones was up:

 

63.7 percent.

 

After 45 months of Trump “magic,” we find the Dow is up:

 

33.5 percent.

 

Again, for those of us not ensnared in the MAGA cult, those numbers are what we call math.

 

The hold of the cult is powerful. The cult leader mesmerizes fans. He tells them the markets will crash if Joe Biden and the Democrats take charge. The people in MAGA robes throw up their hands and chant. “Oh, Orange God, Lock him up! Lock them all up!!”

 

They chant. They don’t check. They don’t know that during Obama’s two terms in office the Dow rose 148.3%. They don’t remember that under Bill Clinton the stock market rose 228.9%.

 

If you told them that under the last Republican president, George W. Bush, markets fell 26.5% –  and then Obama inherited a mess –  their eyes would glaze over. They would wave their totems in your face. “Q,” they would mumble, “Q,” protect us from this liberal math, this satanic curse.

 

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PERHAPS, WITH PROFESSIONAL HELP, you could deprogram members of your family who belong to the Trump Cult. A skilled deprogrammer might point out that when Obama was in office, Candidate Trump, Republicans in Congress, and perhaps the member of the cult, him- or herself, all shouted that they despised federal red ink. They could be reminded that Trump promised, if elected, that he and the high GOP priests would lower taxes (on billionaires and themselves), but so manage the economy as to make the federal deficit disappear in eight years.

 

Poof!

 

The member of the cult, as part of his or her therapy, could be made to count by billions, and trillions, adding, “Trump added this,” after each billion, in hopes a breakthrough might result. 

The deprogrammer could start with Fiscal Year 2018, since the Fiscal Year numbers for 2017 were mostly cooked into the books by the time the Orange God took charge. So, the cultist would chant, “One billion, Trump added this,” up to “779 billion, Trump added this,” for FY 2018. 

The chanting would continue on up through, “Three trillion, one hundred million, Trump added this,” for FY 2020.

 

FY 2018:  $779 billion

FY 2019:  $984 billion

FY 2020:  $3.1 trillion

FY 2021:  $2.1 trillion (estimate)      

 

 

The experts might also ask cult members to express their feelings, to respond to certain prompts.

 

For example, “How did you feel, when in Mr. Obama’s final days in office, the Orange God and his priest, Sean Hannity, insisted that unemployment numbers were ‘rigged,’ and that there was no way unemployment was really 4.7 percent in January 2017?”

 

“How did you feel when Trump insisted that 93 million Americans were out of work?”

 

“And how did you feel when Hannity added a couple of million to the gospel, and said that Obama’s ‘legacy’ would be 95 million Americans eliminated from the workforce during his eight years in office?”

 

The deprogrammer could ask: “What did you think when a very confused Orange God claimed, variously, that the unemployment rate when Obama stepped down was 18% or 35% or 28% or even 42%, not 4.7%?”

 

Did they feel confused?

 

Or did they believe any numbers that spilled from Trump’s lips?

 

Let them express their feelings – their rage – their love of country – their fears – even their latent racism, if any.

 

Let them confront the truth.

 

Next, the deprogrammer should make them put pencil to paper and figure out the math.

 

If, in March 2017, when the first jobs report under President Trump came out, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed 188,000 jobs had been added in February, and the unemployment rate fell to 4.6%, what happened to those 93 or 95 million Americans, out of work under Obama?

 

Where did they go?

Bureau of Labor Statistics - Jobs Added Monthly.

 

Poof?

 

Don’t let the member of the cult dodge the facts. Insist they keep doing the math with pencil and paper. If they resist, make them start counting down on their fingers. If 188,000 jobs were added in February 2017, and the Bureau said unemployment stood at 4.6%, how was that possible?

 

Did the Prophet and his priests lie?

 

Make the poor MAGA man or woman start at 93,000,000, and count down, “One job added, 92,999,999 Americans out of work remain.” Make them keep repeating the proper numbers until they reach, “188,000 jobs added, 92,812,000 Americans out of work still remaining.”

 

If they lose track, make them start again.

 

If the cult member resists, the deprogrammer should  try tactile experiments. The member of the cult could be asked to take off his or her MAGA hat and fill it with grains of rice. He or she should count them off, until they get to 6,840,000, the number of jobs added to the U.S. economy in President Trump’s first 37 months.

 

Then, if they still think all 93 million unemployed Americans are back at work, it might be necessary to force them to eat 86 million plus grains of dried rice.

 

Frankly, these poor folks are deserving of sympathy. They are in the grip of forces they do not comprehend and know not how to combat.

 

The pandemic hits. The Prophet tells them that coronavirus cases are “headed for zero” soon.

 

And they believe.

 

Yet, the virus does not go away. It explodes. The economy has to shut down to stop the spread. And in two months (March-April) 22,160,000 jobs are temporarily lost. COVID-19 doesn’t go away.

 

It spreads.

 

The Orange God tells them not to worry. The economy will come back like a “rocket ship.” May, June, July, August, and September – the Prophet’s “magic” returns!!! A total of 11,417,000 jobs are “added” to the U.S. economy. On the Fox News Business channel priests of the cult insist that Donald Trump is the greatest jobs creator in American history. If he is not chosen to lead the people in a second term, then socialists will block us from reaching the Promised Land.

 

Antifa devil worshippers will run amok in our streets!

 

Again, the members of the cult must be required to check their Prophet’s and priests’ math. These poor souls are going to be difficult to reach. The deprogrammer may have to resort to bringing in the cult member’s first grade teacher, to go over simple math. Worksheets with pictures might be beneficial. The cult member should have to practice cursive and write his or her name at the top of the paper. The first grade teacher can ask questions like, “Which number is larger, the 22,160,000 jobs lost early this year, or the 11,417,000 jobs regained since?”

 

The member of the MAGA cult should be forced to add the 6,840,000 jobs created in Trump’s first 37 months in office, and all the jobs added between May and September, and then subtract the jobs blown to bits in March and April. This is a harder question, so the answer can be multiple choice.

 

They might be asked, “Which statement is correct?”

 

A)    These jobs numbers show that people who believe in math secretly hate America.

B)     The Orange God has created 110 million jobs.

C)    The Orange God has created twice as many jobs as his predecessor and in only four years.

D)   Trump is nearly 4,000,000 jobs in the hole and will end his first term in office having created no jobs at all.

 

If the cultist gets the answer wrong, it may become necessary to resort to shock therapy, to help.

 

Make Math Great Again!