Fwd: The Art Of The Cult
Art Hunter
From: I Fucking Love Australia from I Fucking Love Australia <if...@substack.com>
Date: Sun, Jan 25, 2026, 06:32
Subject: The Art Of The Cult
To: <art....@gmail.com>
Alright, people keep asking, “How did anyone fall for the MAGA cult?” Like it’s some ancient mystery. Like we’re talking about lost civilizations, Atlantis, the pyramids, crop circles. It’s not a fucking mystery. It’s a process. It’s mechanics. It’s marketing. It’s repetition, emotion, and tribal identity, delivered through a firehose until your brain goes, “Fine, I guess reality is negotiable now.” And if you want the clearest, dumbest, most terrifying example of how it works, you don’t need a documentary. You don’t need a dissertation. You can watch it happening in real time, in 4K, measured in bankruptcy filings, suicide rates, and ships full of Brazilian soybeans sailing to China. American soybean farmers. This is the playbook. Step by step. And it’s been unfolding since 2018. Step 1: Say the outrageous thingNot a policy. Not a proposal. A headline grenade. “We’re putting tariffs on China. We’re going to win.” Forget that China buys 52% of all American soybean exports. Forget that soybeans are a $124 billion industry. Forget that farmers spent decades building these trade relationships. Tariffs. Trade war. We’re tough now. It’s deliberately reckless because recklessness has a superpower: it hijacks attention. The brain locks on. Media locks on. Everyone’s talking. He owns the room. And farmers? They fucking cheered. Because their guy was finally standing up to China. Step 2: Flood the zoneThen comes the noise. The distractions. Ten side scandals. A new outrage every day. While farmers are watching soybean prices crash $2 per bushel overnight, while exports to China fall 94% and then hit zero by November 2018, while they’re suddenly losing $100 on every acre they harvest... Trump’s tweeting about something else. The news cycle has moved on. There’s a new enemy, a new fight, a new headline. The point isn’t to win the argument. The point is to exhaust you so you stop tracking the damage. You can’t calculate your losses during a fucking stampede. Step 3: Give it a “serious” excuseThis is the most important part. They don’t defend it as “we accidentally destroyed your biggest market.” They rebrand it as patriotism. A China issue. An unfair trade issue. A national security issue. They take a catastrophic policy and put it in a suit. “China was ripping us off.” “We had to get tough.” “Short-term pain, long-term gain.” Now, instead of sounding like a president who just torched his own farmers, he’s “fighting for American workers.” That’s the sanewashing. The laundering. Never mind that China responded by investing $24 billion in Brazilian agricultural infrastructure. Never mind that Brazil’s share of Chinese soybean imports went from 46% to 70%. Never mind that those markets are never fucking coming back. The excuse sounds good. And that’s all that matters. Step 4: The bailout buys silenceHere’s where it gets clever. Trump sees the political problem. Can’t have your base going bankrupt before the election. So he authorizes $28 billion in bailout payments. Direct cash. Government handouts. Socialism, basically. The “free market” “small government” “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” crowd gets $28 billion in taxpayer money to cover damage caused by their own president’s policies. And here’s the beautiful part: the bailout doesn’t even fucking work properly. Top 10% of farms get more than half the money. Some large operations get nearly $1 million. Most family farmers get less than $5,000. Black farmers and small farmers get fucked. But it doesn’t matter. Because now Trump can say he “helped farmers.” He “had their back.” The bailout creates the appearance of caring, even if it doesn’t cover the losses. Band-Aid on a gunshot wound. But it’s a Band-Aid with a MAGA logo on it. Step 5: Promise a fictional victoryThen comes the deal. The Phase One trade deal. Trump announces China will buy $50 billion in American agricultural products per year. One problem: the U.S. has never exported more than $26 billion in agricultural products to China in any single year. Trump promised nearly double the historical maximum. Farmer Bob Kuylen from North Dakota said at the time: “I think it’s a lot of false promises again.” He was right. China never came close to that number. But it doesn’t matter. Because the headline said “DEAL.” The rally crowds cheered. Mission accomplished. The actual farmers? Still losing money. Still watching Brazil take their customers. Still attending funerals for neighbors who couldn’t handle the financial stress. But hey, we got tough on China. Step 6: The cult identity locks it inNow it’s not about soybeans. It’s about loyalty. If you question the tariffs, you’re “anti-American.” If you point out the losses, you “don’t understand the big picture.” If you mention that Brazil permanently stole your market, you’re “negative.” Here’s what one farmer told NPR: “His policies didn’t do us any good; his tariffs didn’t do us any good.” And then he voted for Trump anyway. Another farmer, watching his farm collapse, said: “I still think some of the stuff is maybe the right move for our country, but maybe not the way he’s doing it.” Maybe not the way he’s doing it. That’s as close to criticism as they can fucking get. Because admitting Trump is wrong means admitting they were conned. It means admitting their vote contributed to their own destruction. And that’s an identity-level admission they can’t make. So they blame the execution. They blame China. They blame Democrats. They blame anyone except the man whose name is on every policy destroying them. Reality becomes optional. Group membership becomes everything. Step 7: Repeat until they lose everythingAnd this is the punchline. The most dangerous part. In 2024, after all of it, after the market collapse, after the bankruptcies, after the suicides, after watching Brazil permanently steal their biggest customer, after bailouts that didn’t cover their losses... Farming-dependent counties voted for Trump by 78%. Not despite what he did to them. While watching him do it again. Because in 2025, it’s happening all over. China suspended soybean imports again. Prices are 40-50% below pre-2018 levels. Farmers are storing record volumes of unsold beans because there’s no one to buy them. And this time? Republican leaders are showing “little appetite for another bailout.” The USDA’s funds are running low. Oh, and while American farmers watch their markets disappear, the Trump administration approved a $20 billion currency-swap deal with Argentina. Fucking Argentina. One of the world’s largest soybean exporters. A direct competitor. One Kansas rancher called it “an absolute betrayal.” The head of the American Soybean Association, who voted for Trump three times, wrote a public letter: “We’ve had your back. We need you to have ours now.” They think it’s a relationship. They think loyalty will be reciprocated. They think if they just believe hard enough, support hard enough, vote hard enough, eventually he’ll actually help them. He won’t. He never will. Because he doesn’t need to. Their votes are already locked in. Their identity is fused with his. They can’t leave even when leaving would save their farms and their lives. That’s not a voter base. That’s a fucking hostage situation. So when people ask, “How did MAGA happen?” You can point at the soybean farmers and say: right there. That’s the machine. That’s the factory line. That’s the cult production process running at full capacity. Outrage. Noise. Rebranding. Bailout bribes. Fictional victories. Loyalty tests. Repeat. And the scariest part? A study found that during the first trade war, farmers in Trump-voting counties kept planting soybeans even though they knew their costs would rise and profits would fall. They made objectively worse business decisions because of their political beliefs. Farmers in Democratic-leaning counties shifted to corn and wheat. Made rational choices. Adapted to reality. The Trump voters? Planted soybeans anyway. Because political identity outweighed market logic. That’s not economics. That’s fucking religion. And religion doesn’t care about your profit margins. Religion cares about faith. So they’ll lose their farms. They’ll watch Brazil take their markets forever. They’ll attend funerals for neighbors who couldn’t take the financial stress anymore. Farmers have the highest suicide rate of any occupation in America, higher than veterans, and Trump’s trade war made it worse. And in 2028, if Trump could run again, they’d probably vote for him a fifth time. Because that’s what cults do. They don’t let go just because reality intrudes. They hold on tighter. They’d rather lose every fucking thing than admit they were wrong. And that, right there, is how MAGA happens. Not with one big lie. With a thousand little nudges, a few billion dollars in bribes, and the unshakeable human need to believe your guy is the good guy. Even when he’s the one holding the knife.
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