Politics Is Always A Cult of Personality

According to Wikipedia a cult of personality "is the result of an effort which is made to create an idealized and heroic image of a glorious leader, often through unquestioning flattery and praise." I believe there is a mistake with this description. Specifically it talks about a cult of personality being the result of an effort. However, there's really no effort required in most cases because supporters of a politician elevate him or her to heroic levels all by themselves.

I'm going to use Donald Trump's recently created tariffs as an example. Most of his supporters with whom I've talked supported him largely because he promised to lower taxes. Tariffs are a tax. Since Trump has raised everybody's taxes significantly, his supporters must be criticizing him, right? Wrong. By and large, most of them are claiming his tariffs are a brilliant strategy that will usher manufacturing back to the United States. Before any Democrats get the idea that I'm on their side, let me point out that you all did the same damn thing with Obama. You were protesting the civil rights violations and wars instigated by George H. W. Bush and then supported Obama largely because he promised to reverse those civil rights violations and stop the wars. When he didn't do either, you cheered him anyways. So fuck you, too.

The benefit of not having a horse in any political race is that I get the benefit of seeing events as an outsider looking in. What I described about Donald Trump's and Barack Obama's supporters isn't unique or unusual. It's the norm. Joe Biden's supporters pretended his obvious signs of senility didn't exist, Kamala Harris' supporters convinced themselves that she wasn't dumber than a box of rocks, George H. W. Bush's supporters conveniently ignored the fact that he destroyed civil liberties, and Jeb Bush's supporters... never existed. The bottom line is that few voters hold a critical view of the politicians they support. They don't hold a critical view of politicians they oppose either. Instead their favored politicians are glorious and wonderful while their detested politicians are wicked and the source of all evil in the world.

This is yet another reason why nothing meaningful can be changed through political methods. If a politician's supporters aren't willing to hold him or her accountable, then nobody will. If nobody holds them accountable, they're free to do whatever they please and, like most humans, what they please to do is further empower themselves and their cronies.