Comments by "wvu05" (@wvu05) on "The Moment Peter Navarro's Trump Defense Completely Falls Apart" video.

@Rudofaux Probably half a million before all is said and done.
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True, but most cults at least try to offer something positive to bring people in (e.g., People's Temple fed people and was the first integrated church in Indianapolis before moving to San Francisco, Scientology uses self-help), but I still can't figure out the positive thing that lured in the Trump cult.
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@MimiKeel True, but those aren't positive. I mean, I guess you could say that a powerful person is validating their hate, but most people who come out of cults and are honest about it will tell you what drew them in to start with. If you watch the thing about NXIVM, more than one said, "I didn't join to brand women. I didn't join so someone could have sex slaves."
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@steverickenbacher7110 Paul Haggis said that was what brought him in. I'm not saying that it is positive, I am saying that it is easier to understand the hook. The free auditing sessions then lead people to things that they see as improvement. The hatred of psychology and the Xenu story come much later. According to Leah Remini and her series, it costs tens of thousands of dollars to get to the level where you even hear it.
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@steverickenbacher7110 We are in agreement. Perhaps I am just expressing my exasperation that at least others could point to things that they were trying to do to make the world better. Those who went to People's Temple because they fed the poor I can understand and have some sympathy for, but it is much harder when people join something that is hateful from the beginning.
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@CK-jd7wo-test "It is far easier to fool a man than to convince a man that he has been fooled." Mark Twain I have known people who got taken in by a con artist, and they would defend that con artist even as they gave more and more money and it was obvious that the con was in place.
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@steverickenbacher7110 Well, that's different, because kids have no way of knowing any different.
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@marcjacobs5988 And the cult manifests itself.
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@steverickenbacher7110 By that logic, the word cult loses all meaning, because education would also be a cult, and I am fairly certain that you don't want people to never learn.
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@steverickenbacher7110 Any type of learning you do has some things that simply have to be accepted as true. For example, in order for math to be true, the 21 axioms have to be true. Words have to be spelled and pronounced a certain way. The periodic table has to be accurate. I'm not saying that critical thinking isn't important, because it clearly is. My only point is that some things do have to he accepted as fact.
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@steverickenbacher7110 My point was that some things do have to be accepted as fact in order to have any learning. The defining characteristic of a cult is not accepting things uncritically. The defining characteristics are manipulation, an infallible leader, and what happens when you try to leave. I don't know if you have kids, but "Don't touch that hot stove!" is a far better way for a child to learn than getting second degree burns.
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@steverickenbacher7110 But the brainwashing is the manipulation. If all families are cults, then you cheapen the definition of cults, just like how fundamentalists who say some culture war nonsense is religious persecution cheapens the fact that there is actual religious persecution going on all over the world.
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In all honesty, Woodward has always been about trying to woo the powerful for access. I don't think it's a coincidence that Deep Throat was J. Edgar Hoover's number two. The main difference is what he uses that access for.
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@ianmorris7485 Most cults are more sophisticated than this one. Most hide the bad stuff and suck people in with the positive, but this one didn't.
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