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Fools%u2019 Journey552certainly imagine civil discourse breaking down even further than it already had.%u2022%u2022%u2022%u2022%u2022One day, Lynn said to me, %u201cI just don%u2019t understand it. Why do so many people like Donald Trump?%u201d It was a fair question, one that people a lot smarter than me had difficulty answering. While I knew her question was rhetorical, I saw a book mentioned online that might provide some answers, and was able to borrow a copy from our library. It was titled, The Cult of Trump, and was written by Steven Hassan who had once been a member of a religious cult (the Moonies). The book was a few years old, and wasn%u2019t the best thing we%u2019d ever read, but the insights were quite compelling. By the time we finished it, we realized how parts of it resonated with our own lives.Hassan described several different types of cults (religious, political, educational, commercial) as well as cults of personality, a list of traits defining cult leaders, and techniques they used to maintain their hold on followers. He noted that most cult leaders are narcissists with a grandiose self-centered opinion of themselves. For example, the head of the Unification Church (Moonies), Sun Myung Moon, said he was %u201cten times greater than Jesus,%u201d and %u201cOut of all the saints sent by God, I think I am the most successful one already.%u201d Donald Trump repeatedly made the statement, %u201cNobody knows more about _____ than I do,%u201d and filled in the blank with %u201cbusiness,%u201d %u201ctax laws,%u201d %u201cbuilding walls,%u201d %u201cthe military,%u201d and a wide variety of other subjects. He even said %u201cNobody is better on humility than me.%u201dHassen said that cult leaders also tend to have self-glorifying fantasies of themselves. L. Ron Hubbard, founder of the Church of Scientology, claimed to be a nuclear physicist, even though he flunked a course in atomic physics. Keith Rainere, who created NXIVM (which provided seminars about human potential, but was actually a front for criminal activity) claimed to have an IQ of 240, a hundred points above a genius. Trump routinely bragged about his intelligence, sexual prowess, good looks, and wealth, with state-