The GOP has shamelessly manipulated Americans' emotions regarding the 9/11 attack to inflame public opinion and hijack policy. The most obvious example is the disgusting manner in which GOP leaders conflated the terrorists who attacked us with Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi people. They have purposefully kept America afraid and insecure to prey upon those fears for reelection and policy advantage. They have manipulated the acceptable range of emotional and intellectual expression to keep America geared for war and in a state of embattled panic. Worse. they have made many believe that critical thinking and problem solving is dangerous and could cause even greater attacks on America; people have been encouraged to believe that only by submitting unthinkingly to the policies and plans of the GOP can they be safe. And God-forbid anyone should leave the GOP - there can be no legitimate reason to leave - witness the bile poured out upon Senator Jeffords just a few years ago when he defected from the party.

I have come to suspect that the GOP's modus operandi is to manipulate followers using those techniques of social and mental control used by cults which are practical to use on a mass scale. These same techniques, at a greater level of intensity, are often used in fraudulent financial organizations, such as Amway and others, and to an even greater degree in religious cults such as the Moonies, and some totalizing religious sects of evangelical churches. Given these far-right organizations use many of the same well-documented techniques for social control, share their membership, and support each another with endorsements, cooperation, and extensive funding, is it really surprising to find they share the same goal of turning America into a theocratic state by means of a Constitutional coup? Is it any surprise then, that our best weapon against the extreme right might be a guide to cult deprogramming, not a list of talking points?

Anther similarity between cultic organizations like the Moonies and Amway and the neo-con GOP is that all are organized so as to enrich and empower a few elite members at the expense, and often the ruin, of nearly everyone else, while inspiring fanatical devotion from their victims through the use of information control, propaganda and social control of some degree. Each is an elaborately justified and well-concealed scheme to defraud billions from their memberships, congregations, and constituencies. Amway, Enron, WorldCom and their ilk are examples of the 'confidence capitalism' that the cultic leaders have created to enrich themselves and the movement. The GOP has raised these hucksters up as an example for the world, and the confidence capitalists have reciprocated with their overwhelming and nearly exclusive support for the neo-con GOP.