Racism cult, mask cult, transgender cult, climate cult, personality cults... we're devolving into a weird new form of government, the cultocracy. Only cult leaders have much control over governance, and not all of the power deployed against us comes from the State. https://twitter.com/jessesingal/status/1296530939431059456

Maybe it's an inevitable consequence of centralizing power. The only way to capture the attention of the Leviathan State is to join a disciplined voting bloc that loudly and constantly demands attention for a narrow range of issues. Collectivism, ironically, breeds tribalism.

The rise of the cultocracy was driven by the realization that focused and energetic groups can do more than just hold the attention of politicians. They can use their muscle to control society with power outside the government. Coercion and intimidation can be freelanced.

Combine this with the search for meaning, spirituality, and identity in a society where the traditional sources of such have been hollowed out or destroyed. The need to BELONG is incredibly strong in the past few generations. They're hungry for faith and redemption.

So we ended up with politics-as-religion, cults driven by political issues (and manipulated by shrewd political operators) that have all the sizzle of traditional religions, but none of the steak. The bar for entry is low: just declare that you CARE SO MUCH about the issue.

All the other elements of religious faith are present and accounted for. All of these political cults have doctrines of original sin, redemption narratives, and blasphemy laws. All sneer at the rights of infidels to disagree, much less resist. All turn with fury on heretics.

What really seals the deal with our ruling political cults is that all of them have core devotional narratives that cannot be falsified. It's most obvious with the climate cult and its pretensions to "science," but the others learned from it. Their beliefs are all SCIENCE too.

Presenting the real statistics on police violence to an Abolish the Police cultist is as useless as showing historical climate data to a climate cultist, or asking a racism cultist how reparations would actually work, in detail. They don't want to hear it.

That's because during the past couple of generations, probably due to the global warming crusade in the 80s, people got the idea that "science" is about absolute convictions, not theories and questions. That's so important to today's political cults.

They all think they've been "proven right." Science means absolute truth has been established and questions should be shouted down. Only "science deniers" (infidels) would ask questions about "settled" truth (cult doctrine.) All that remains is to subdue the infidels.

That's EVERY political cult now, not just the junk science junkies. They ALL think they're sitting on absolute truth and the only question is how to force everyone to accept their absolutely noble goals. Anything that challenges their faith MUST be scientifically "false."

And that's how you have to play if you want to sit at the table of power in a cultocracy. Only absolute conviction will do. You need followers who rampage through the online battlefield like jihadis, treating disagreement with The Cause like a crime they're empowered to punish.

We're reaching the point where actual government power and voting are afterthoughts. The cultocracy settles everything with street brawls and social media swarms. By the time elected representatives pass legislation, they're just acknowledging "laws" the cults already imposed.

That might seem ironic in the shadow of a multi-trillion-dollar centralized micromanaging government, but it's a natural result of mixing constitutional democracy with collectivism. Every political cult complains about democracy as an obstacle and works to get around it.

Every one of these cults has a narrative about how it's a shame that hateful infidels are allowed to cast selfish votes - "selfishness" and "hate" are always their cardinal sins - so the cult must find ways to bypass or override democracy to Save the World. And they did. /end