“Cult”? What cult?
Follow the blue link right here to read a handwritten letter written and deliberately distributed as a public statement by eleven relatives of Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger, in response to his vote to impeach Donald Trump for inciting a violent attack against him, his colleagues, the coequal legislative branch as such, and Trump’s own vice president.
Highlights from this one-way family squabble:
“Oh my, what a disappointment you are to us and to God!”
“President Trump is not perfect, but neither are you or any of us for that matter. It is not for us to judge or be judged! But he is a Christian! (If God can forgive and use King David in the Bible, He can do the same with President Trump.) Franklin Graham, Robert Jeffress, to name just a few, of many Pastors [sic], who mentor Donald Trump, know that he is a believer!”
“When was the last time you proclaimed your faith, Adam. (Oh, we forgot you now belong to the ‘devil’s army’ [Democratic Party, to which Kinzinger does not belong]). You won’t convince us otherwise with your horrible, rude accusations of President Trump!” [Project much, folks?]
“You should be very proud that you have lost the respect of Lou Dobbs, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Greg Kelly, etc. and most importantly in our book, Mark Levin and Rush Limbaugh and us! [A sane man’s badge of honor is the Kinzinger family’s idea of a condemnation.]
“It is now most embarrassing to us that we are related to you. You have embarrassed the Kinzinger family name! We are not judging you. This letter is our opinion of you!” [Um….]
“P.S. For your information, many more family members feel the same way as we do. They just didn’t have the courage to sign the letter or write their own letter! Not us, we are thoroughly disgusted with you!! And, oh by the way, we are calling for your removal from office! I have received numerous calls concerning your actions and egregious behavior towards our President of the United States, Donald J. Trump!”
“President Trump has done more for the American people in four years, than you, the Rino’s [sic], and Democrates [sic] have done in years!!”
The lead author of this missive is one Karen Otto, Kinzinger’s cousin. In an interview, she explained that her purpose in writing and sending it to a wide range of Republicans in her state was that, “I wanted Adam to be shunned.”
I still get the occasional e-mail from readers asking, in all sincerity, where I see evidence of cultishness among Trump’s supporters. At this point, to state the matter plainly, I have given up looking for any evidence of non-cultishness among his supporters.
For the record, I neither know nor care much about Adam Kinzinger. He is an up-and-coming member of the United States Congress, which for me is roughly equivalent to saying he is a questionable, power-obsessed climber who either is now, or soon will be, corrupted beyond any pretenses of principle or proper representation.
But his family members — including the eleven who signed the letter and the “many more” who agree with it but lacked the “courage” to sign — are cultists of the first order. And they are far, sadly very far, from being rare or even unusual. How typical it is, and how fitting, that apart from Kinzinger himself, every single living human being named in that letter has proved himself, over the past several years (or longer in some cases), to be a greed-and-ego-driven fake of the first order. Every cult needs its useful idiot lieutenants.
I also get the occasional e-mail criticizing me for obsessing over the evils of Donald Trump. I am not obsessed with Trump at all. I am “obsessed,” i.e., focused with heavy heart, on tens of millions of human beings, a few of them former readers or even friends of mine, who might have been their once-great nation’s last hope for survival, but have instead lost their souls entirely to the most humiliating smallness in modern political history. The humiliation, to be precise, comes from their self-exposure as people weak-willed and miserable enough to succumb to such an obvious fraud.
