The Death Cult of the State

In the first part of this series we reviewed the idolatrous nature of loyalty and obedience to the government. We did this first by defining what the terms idol and idolatry mean and then applied those ideas to service and obedience to the government. We discovered that no matter how you dress it up -as patriotism, nationalism, constitutionalism, tradition, etc.- it all amounted to idolatry which, in its more brutal forms, Apostle Boyd K. Packer compared to worshipping the idolatrous god Molech.

Here in Part 2 we will further our study of the idolatrous nature of the State by evaluating how the government functions exactly like a large scale cult- and a death cult at that. First we will determine what a cult is and by what characteristics it is defined. Then we will apply those characteristics to the government itself. Our model will be the United States in that it is the one I am most familiar with, but I believe you will see how the characteristics explored apply to every nation on the planet whether you have a King, Queen, Prime Minister, President, Premier, or Chancellor. Finally we will conclude what we should do about this dangerous death cult in light of Gospel imperatives to love God and serve Him only.

What Is A Cult?

This is harder to define than you might imagine. In the academic sense the term cult essentially means a new, small, religious movement with new teachings that are considered out of the norm and is led by a charismatic leader. It isn’t necessarily a negative term and referring to something in that sense isn’t necessarily an attack on it. In this sense almost all religious movements -from Judaism to Buddhism- start off as cults. But this isn’t what is generally meant when we label something a cult. Today when most people call something else a cult they generally mean it in an insulting or derogatory sense. “That group isn’t like my group, so it is a cult!” But that just begs the question of what a cult is or is not- if everything I don’t like can be a cult then nothing is a cult. This is why the work of Dr. Janja Lalich, former Professor of Sociology at CSU Chico, is valuable. Having been a victim of a political cult herself, the Marxist-Leninist Democratic Worker’s Party, she has dedicated her life’s work towards exploring and exposing how cults work and helping people to escape them.

As part of her work, Dr. Lalich has come up with a set of general characteristics of cults that can be used as an analytical tool to see if you or your loved one is potentially mixed up in a cult. It is this tool that we are going to use to analyze the cultic nature of the political system. Below I will briefly summarize each characteristic and further in the article we will apply each characteristic to the government-citizen relationship to analyze the way governments encourage and expect people to act in regards to their governments, and ultimately demonstrate the dangerous cultic nature of the State. As we will have to go through each of the points in detail this article will be much longer than most articles, but it will be worth the read as we go through point by point and demonstrate the cult-nature of the government.

The Characteristics of a Cult

The below characteristics are just the main ones and there is a whole subset of other characteristics that may or may not apply which are extremely telling in terms of the government-citizen relationship but which we unfortunately don’t have space for here. We may go into the in the future but for now these main characteristics will more than do to prove the overall point.

1. The group displays excessively zealous and unquestioning commitment to its leader, and (whether he is alive or dead) regards his belief system, ideology, and practices as the Truth, as law.
2. Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished.
3. Mind-altering practices (such as meditation, chanting, speaking in tongues, denunciation sessions, or debilitating work routines) are used in excess and serve to suppress doubts about the group and its leader(s).
4. The leadership dictates, sometimes in great detail, how members should think, act, and feel (e.g., members must get permission to date, change jobs, or marry—or leaders prescribe what to wear, where to live, whether to have children, how to discipline children, and so forth).
5. The group is elitist, claiming a special, exalted status for itself, its leader(s), and its members (e.g., the leader is considered the Messiah, a special being, an avatar—or the group and/or the leader is on a special mission to save humanity).
6. The group has a polarized, us-versus-them mentality, which may cause conflict with the wider society.
7. The leader is not accountable to any authorities (unlike, for example, teachers, military commanders, or ministers, priests, monks, and rabbis of mainstream religious denominations).
8. The group teaches or implies that its supposedly exalted ends justify whatever means it deems necessary. This may result in members participating in behaviors or activities they would have considered reprehensible or unethical before joining the group (e.g., lying to family or friends, or collecting money for bogus charities).
9. The leadership induces feelings of shame and/or guilt in order to influence and control members. Often this is done through peer pressure and subtle forms of persuasion.
10. Subservience to the leader or group requires members to cut ties with family and friends, and radically alter the personal goals and activities they had before joining the group.
11. The group is preoccupied with bringing in new members.
12. The group is preoccupied with making money.
13. Members are expected to devote inordinate amounts of time to the group and group-related activities.
14. Members are encouraged or required to live and/or socialize only with other group members.
15. The most loyal members (the “true believers”) feel there can be no life outside the context of the group. They believe there is no other way to be, and often fear reprisals to themselves or others if they leave—or even consider leaving—the group.

Applying The Characteristics

1. There are all kinds of examples of the zealous, unquestioning dedication of people to politicians. You can look at it in the ways that political party members will condemn the opposing leadership for some grievous evil while supporting their own party leaders despite him or her committing the same evils. Multiple women have accused Donald Trump of everything from sexual harassment to outright rape, of both adult women and children. Yet his followers, who claim to be the Moral Majority, still unwaveringly support him. Likewise, Joe Biden has been accused of everything from sexual harassment to rape, of adult women and children. Yet, his followers, who claim to #BelieveSurvivors, have all lined up to support him. Then there is the way we are expected to respect and obey the President for his position if not because of who he is or what he does.

2. Questioning the way that the American government in either its structure, purpose, or function will get you labeled “petulant,” “crazy,” “freakshow,” “idiots” by all those who adore it. Republicans are “insane” to Democrats for not holding Democratic political positions, Democrats are “evil” to Republicans for not holding Republican political positions. Question the Party or those in power, reveal that they have done any wrong in any way, and you will be attacked and punished. Just look at how Bush, Obama, and Trump all have used the Espionage Act to attack Americans whose crimes were revealing the ways the government itself was lying to the public, violating the law, and amassing untold powers or look at how Democratic and Republican politicians who question any part of the party line are denounced as enemies not only of the party but of the nation itself. You are not allowed to question or dissent from the partisan political system or the government itself. You can even lose your job for having political opinions other than what the majority supports.

3. The government has mind altering chants down to a polished, beloved tradition. Every morning, millions of children stand, place their right hands over their hearts, and recite a memorized chant in unison in which they promise to give their obedience, love, and life itself to the government of the United States. Every day, for 13 years of their lives- roughly from 5 to 18, children pledge their subservience to the state in the Pledge of Allegiance and those who don’t are often actively shamed and persecuted by their schools. Black’s Law Dictionary notes that allegiance means, “the obligation of fidelity and obedience which the individual owes to the government under which he lives, or to his sovereign in return for the protection he receives.” One may argue that children don’t understand this and it doesn’t work. I might agree except so many of those children end up doing just what Black’s describes, giving complete fidelity and obedience to the government and submission to its laws.

Even mass protest movements about government evils don’t actually challenge the government as much as ask that it slightly change its operating procedures- just look at how “defund the police” apparently doesn’t actually mean defunding the police, though it should. Then of course there is the way we are supposed to bow and scrape for the national anthem. In every country when their anthem is played the etiquette is similar- people are expected to stand, face the flag, and stand in silent adoration or sing along. The next article in this series will go into the overt religious tones to these actions, for now we will merely note that this also displays the cultic characteristic of mass chanting that is supposed to alter the mind and feelings of those taking part by generating a powerful emotional response of loyalty and love for the nation within them.

4. Is there anything in your life that isn’t regulated by the law in some way? The law dictates when and where you can travel, who you can and cannot meet, interact with, buy from, sell to, and/or hire for a job, what you can and cannot eat, drink, grow, or sell, what clothes you can and cannot wear as well as what they can or cannot be made of or say on them, where and how you can or cannot live and build a home, who you can work for, what you get paid, and when you can or cannot work -so essentially regulating your body and saying what you can or cannot do with it, controls who and dictates the terms under which you can or cannot be married including paying the government for the permission to do so, steal ownership of your property by forcing you to pay rent to the state for its use or face having it seized by violent force from you and you be imprisoned, and more. I could keep going, but these examples alone show that the government claims the authority to regulate every aspect of your life and to severely punish you for not complying -including taking everything you own, sundering your family and denying you connections with other people through imprisonment, and even killing you if you resist.

5. The government is completely elitist. It claims special powers and authority no one else has and a special exalted position in society that protects its members from being held accountable for crimes committed in its name. As Dr. Akhil Amar, Professor of Law at Yale University, explains (and goes on and on in trying to justify) that according to the Supreme Court of the United States the President of the United States cannot be arrested, imprisoned, or be prosecuted for any crimes they commit by any court of the United States- that if a President does it then it isn’t illegal. What other person in the entire nation has such authority as to be untouchable by the law, to be beyond the authority of the courts, to be exalted to such a high status beyond all other individuals in the nation as to be essential incapable of crime, especially if the President’s party is in power? Nobody. And why does the President have such power? To quote from Dr. Amar, it is because “In the presidency is embodied the continuity and indestructibility of the state.” In other words, the entire state and the millions of people it represents is summed up in the personage of the President. Echoing French monarch Louis XIV, the President can claim “Létat, c’est moi,” and thereby be free of the persecution for any crimes as the avatar of, the living embodiment of, the people themselves. This kind of secular Messiahship given to the President specifically and to a lesser degree politicians generally, as if merely having the government do something can fix all of society’s ills, is a terrifying aspect of the cult of the state.

6. American politics is ever increasingly polarized with an us-vs-them mentality that causes larger social conflicts in our communities and even families. Just read how Scientific American describes it:

U.S. politics increasingly looks like a savage battle between left and right. Consistent with closing ranks in a battle, Americans are expressing policy opinions that align more and more with their political groups. Of all conflicts between groups in America, partisanship is one of the most divisive, with 86% of Americans seeing strong conflicts between Republicans and Democrats. …U.S. liberals and conservatives not only disagree on policy issues: they are also increasingly unwilling to live near each other, be friends, or get married to members of the other group.

7. We have already seen how the President is effectively above the law in number 5. But this also true of most of the political party leaders. When was the last time a Hillary Clinton or Mitch McConnell was held accountable for the lying, law breaking, and warmongering they’ve engaged in over the decades? The rarity of such persecution, if indeed it has happened at all, demonstrates the way the leaders of the political cult position themselves as being above the laws and above the people they claim to represent.

8. The US government certainly claims that its unethical means justify its supposed ends. In the name of “national security,” US political leaders have purposefully murdered American children, have carried and continue to carry out the mass murdering of foreign civilians (90% of people killed by drone strikes were civilians), has blown up hospitals, has blown up multiple weddings, continues murdering children, has and continues to carry out the assassination/murder of foreign leaders, continues the spying, tracking, and recording American citizens, carried out war crimes and protected those who committed war crimes, has tortured people and wants to continue torturing people, imprison Americans and others indefinitely without trial or even accusation of a crime- making them simply “disappear” as if into a Soviet gulag, and more. I could keep going. But hopefully everyone here can agree that spying on, torturing, and wantonly murdering innocent men, women, and children in the name of anything is “unethical.” And what punishment do these people face? The worst is they lose an election and go home with a lifelong pension ($139,200 for Congress and $207,800 for the President). Evil has its worldly rewards, indeed.

9. Shame is a key component of the political system. For example, public shaming is used to compel people to vote, which has the side effect of using shame to compel people to align with the two large parties. This in turn gives the Democrats and Republicans a greater aura of authority and power as they claim to “represent the people of America.” Shame thereby becomes a key component in manufacturing the consent and subservience of the public. Then there is the way that supporters of one politician face massive shaming by supporters of another politician. Political parties thrive on using shame to prevent people from leaving the party’s ranks, resulting in the us-vs-them mentality mentioned in Number 6. These degrade all community organizations, even to the point that there are different Christian denominations based solely on political beliefs -of course each side sees themselves as the right one and the other as corrupt or evil. (I have written here about how we cannot allow a similar poison infect the Restored Gospel.) This destructive shame also degrades the family, as we will go into into in more detail below.

10. Politics destroys family connections. As The Atlantic reports, 35% of Republicans and 45% of Democrats report that they would be livid if their children married someone of the opposite political party and growing amounts of people see political differences less as goodwill differences and more as if people of the opposing parties are terrifying enemies out to destroy everything the person in question believes in. The memes about how divisive politics are for families are both hilarious and endless.

Like most humor though such memes reveal a salient truth: Not only are politics destroying our families and encouraging us to destroy relationships decades old, but politics makes us feel righteous for placing loyalty to the Dear Leader and the Party over our families. This of course says nothing about the demand that one be willing to kill their family members for the government if they end up on the other side of some war the government’s leaders have either instigated or leapt into.

11. There is endless recruiting for the two largest sects of the American Death Cult of the State. Just google “voter registration” and look at the endless missionary efforts to recruit you involved in the cult generally and to specifically join of its partisan sects at the costs of tens of millions of dollars (on the low end of the estimates.) And of course if you refuse to take part they will shame you and blame you for the results of their choices as if it is your fault they’re participating in a corrupt system and supporting evil people.

12. Does anyone doubt that money is the main goal of the US government? Aside from the fact that the government demands the power to seize your money from you at its own will according to how much it arbitrarily decides you do or do not need, there is also the fact that through the Federal Reserve System the US government literally creates its own paper money on demand (today the US dollar is what is known as a fiat currency) which devalues and destroys the value of the dollar in the long run. The results of this is an economic boom for those in power and the politically connected corporate elites, but it is a disaster for the middle class and the poor.

13. The US government expects you to spend all your time doing things that support it. When you work you support it by generating wealth it can seize and use for its own ends. When you take part in its system it claims that legitimizes its domination of you and your conditioned subservience. Just as it attempts to control everything you do or own in some way, everything you do is supposed to support it. When you do something that questions the actions of those in power at a serious level, you will be labeled a supporter of the nation’s enemies –say Russia– and, even when said support is entirely fictitious, will be labeled a “traitor.” At the very least this results in mass shaming as a way to try and force you back into the range of politically accepted thought and action. At worse you’re convicted of “treason” and murdered as a human sacrifice made for the preservation of the idol State.

14. You cannot socialize with anyone your government doesn’t want you to meet, or at least it tries very hard to make sure you never do. The Internet has done a lot to help people interact with others in foreign countries, but to this day the nations of the world still attempt to strictly control who enters and leaves their boundaries. In doing so they limit who you can and cannot meet mostly to people within the nation itself, the same people the governments have molded through the education system to be “good citizens”- which invariably means obeying the government, giving it your money, and signing up to become a paid murderer to preserve its power as a solder. In doing so obedience and submission becomes a feedback loop that society doesn’t just willingly engage in but which becomes so normalized that most people can’t even see it. Through immigration, visa, and tourist laws the government strictly regulates who you can or cannot meet.

15. The State/government and its advocates certainly want us to believe that all of society and human civilization would collapse without the State and that we would be incapable of doing anything to care for ourselves, society would be chaos, and if we weren’t all murdered then we would all get sick and die from rampant disease and dangerous medication. That this is all nonsense and the very opposite is true doesn’t deter them in the least because it is their dogma, their holy creed, that declares the need for their government idol, not reality. Then of course there are these people:

And if you act against the government in any capacity, if it feels like you threaten it in any way, it will accuse you of “treason” and beat you, cage you, and attempt to destroy your entire life before killing you. So you can’t leave the group in any way without forfeiting everything you’ve known, everyone you’ve loved, and all your property and moving to an entirely different part of the planet. Even then they might kill you anyway.

The Death Cult of the State

I believe at this point that I’ve demonstrated the true nature of the US government and the US political system- really the true nature of all modern political systems with America simply being my example because it is most familiar to me. The question then becomes what kind of idolatrous cult the Cult of the State is and that answer is equally obvious once you tear away the years of conditioning- the Cult of the State is a death cult. I use that term very specifically. I do not mean it as shorthand to stand for something I think is really bad or evil. I mean it literally. A death cult, by its most basic definition, is a “religious group that glorifies or is obsessed with death.” And the government is most certainly obsessed with the glorification of death. Its authority comes from the barrel of a gun- disobey and you can be beaten, cage, or killed with ease. Just ask Eric Garner or Philando Castile. You either worship at its altar or you die.

Then there is the way the death cult expects you to go out and murder for it whenever it demands you do so. Just read what the Supreme Court decided about the draft in 1918:

Compelled military service is neither repugnant to a free government nor in conflict with the constitutional guaranties of individual liberty. Indeed, it may not be doubted that the very conception of a just government and its duty to the citizen includes the duty of the citizen to render military service in case of need, and the right of the government to compel it.

So, a free government has the authority to force you to join its armed forces, to train to be a killer, to make you then go out and kill men, women, and children on command, to force you to die on its behalf in order to preserve its power and authority and ensure its continued rule, and to imprison or even kill you if you resist or refuse to comply (they call it “desertion” as if deserting being made into a slave and murderer is bad)? Worse, they force you to send your children to murder and die on its behalf, and many are taught to glorify this as a great sacrifice for “the country.” After you or your children are dead, having died as a human sacrifice to preserve the power of the government, you/they are sanctified as an object of veneration, as a “sacrifice who died for our freedoms.” This worship disgustingly extends even to comparing soldiers to the Son of God Himself:

What else do we call something which owes its continued existence to its power to murder those who challenge it, that compels innocent people to become slaves in its army and murder in its name, and which then glorifies and blasphemously exalts its human sacrifices as equal to Jesus Christ; what do we call that thing that exists by and venerates death so thoroughly other than a death cult? The State/the government glorifies both its power to kill you and those who have killed and been killed in its name, using their deaths as a justification for its continued existence and the subservience of the masses in what amounts to a massive, sick and perverted Sunken Cost Fallacy.

Conclusions

I know this has gone on for a long time. This is the last part, I promise. Just stick with me here. Having going through point by point I have demonstrated how the political system is a cult. Further, I have argued that because of its veneration of both its power to kill and those who have died in its name, even to the point of having multiple holy-days (aka holidays) -i.e. Memorial Day and Veterans Day- that encourage public veneration of those who have murdered and died in its name, the State isn’t just an idol worshipping cult, but that it is a death cult specifically. This Death Cult of The State is the very antithesis of the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ in every way. With its worship of slaughter, veneration and worship of humans, insistence on human sacrifice, and promotion of corruption and evil it is not that hard to argue that the State itself is anti-Christ. This is unsurprising as the scriptures declare Satan to be “the god of this world” and therefore we should be unsurprised to discover that the nations of the world promote the ideas of the god they serve. But we are to be the Saints of God, the Servants of Christ. We have One Lord and One Master. To Him alone to we give our love, life, wealth, and service. It is impossible to serve the nations of the world, and their wicked god, and serve the Kingdom and the One True God. If you would serve Him you cannot serve them- you must renounce the Death Cult in word and deed and embrace the Gospel of the Living God and the Prince of Peace and serve them alone. Until then the world will know no peace and once we do so in that place we do so there will be nothing but Peace.