Cult of Fear

This was intended as a comment on a Truthout.org post about how politicians, especially Republicans, use fear to manipulate voters into supporting them. However, my argument got a little too complex for a simple comment, so its only appearance is here:

Marketing appeals to fear and sex to sell because human biology is programmed to respond to these emotions. Monotheistic religions capitalize on fear in two ways: (1) Religions justify fear by providing an object – women are a constant threat to the power of men; their sexuality is their most fearsome weapon and must be brought to heel and under the control of men. (2) A fearsome all powerful, all knowing being has all the answers. But those answers are too much for men’s small brains and most men can’t communicate with the big dude anyway. Only special people (kings, emperors, popes, and the like) get to translate for him.

In modern times, religion teaches believers to trust their church authority (most people don’t read primary religious texts) over what can be objectively measured (faith over science). When personal faith is imbued in the words of an authority figure, it’s easy to transfer that trust into other people who present similar absolute certainty (for example, Rush Limbaugh is never wrong). Enter right-wing media which gives self-aggrandizing braggarts enormous forums and infrastructure to in essence to form cults (like Fox News under Roger Ailes). As bad as Democrats are, they have not codified the ideological Cult of Fear that Republicans so effectively used to ensnare their followers. Republican followers are told to fear women for taking men’s jobs and dignity; fear immigrants for taking jobs; fear Muslims for terrorism; fear liberals for taking their guns (but not to fear guns); fear science/scientists for their ‘self-interested agendas’; fear President Obama for being a foreign born Muslim; fear black people for existing; fear Obamacare for insurance mandate; fear the poor for needing social services; fear veterans for using the VA… In the face of such terrifying scenarios, cultists are told Republican politicians know how to keep them safe from all these threats.

Fear is the defensive emotion to the unknown. That’s why Republicans fear science. Science is a system of knowledge that seeks to determine patterns capable of accurately predicting the future. In other words, science answers questions about the feared unknown. The question is how to stage a cult intervention on the scale of roughly half the U.S. population.

Update: Yes, evangelical cults exists and they can be difficult to escape from.