OMG. That's another thing. Glad you brought that up.
In Chicago, Oboma and Ayrs were deep into the public school system. They'd go into the schools and use something called covert hypnoses to get the kids to show up for class. Covert hypnoses uses words that are agreeable to open up the mind. They open the analytical mind enough so other words, words the listener may not quite agree with, can be shoved into the subconscious mind before the analytical mind has a chance to stop it.
I bought a book on it when Oboma was running in 2008. It was written by the guy who taught Oboma how to do it.
You don't have to call the Obama administration a cult to compare how it works with a cult. For them, it's all about persuasion, especially how to persuade people to do something against their own self interest.
People will actually be more reluctant to reverse a decision that caused them suffering than one that caused them no pain (depends on context.)
Once you get someone to do that once, you've set up a condition where if they say 'no' later, they experience cognitive dissonance because people need to justify former decisions - people are more concerned with being 'right' and justified than they are about making rational choices. This presidency is psych 201, chapter on persuasion and cognitive dissonance.
For people not susceptible to hypnosis (i've tried really really hard!) - which I bet includes a high percentage here - a strong analytical interface between the outside and inside world ... we just can't empathize with how it works, so we're unable to really spot it because we can't identify with it.
But you can spot it subtly by how people relate to Obama - it's not a rational relationship - rather, its a relationship that suddenly dulls the mind of even really smart people, as soon as the subject comes up. There are many levels of hypnosis - most aren't the kind where you can tell a man he's a chicken and he'll go lay an egg. It's insidious precisely because it's subtle.
It's a state less characterized by the presence of fantasy than by a reduction of the rational interface. That's the opening for suggestion.