I’ve never observed that cults have a great deal of constructive influence on the body politic, on the Nation, on the planet.
Cults increasingly become in-grown, myopic, full of back-biting, prissy rigid narrowness, brittle, fractured, irrational and full of intense hostility toward ALL OUT-GROUP individuals regardless of how similar etc.
FR will either become LESS cult-like or MORE cult-like after this.
I wasn’t going to jump back in (now officially in moocher mode) but I believe you have hit the nail on the head. This site has become cult-like, and the only words you left out to complete that picture are “insufferably self-righteous.”
I have especially been struck by the recent Kim-Jong-Il-like events, where the Beloved Leader would begin a thread with a dramatic manifesto, outlining the underlying creed which all true believers were to imbibe and adhere to. This was not particularly chilling by itself, but what was chilling were the hundreds of posts of lockstep praise and allegiance that then came forth from the faithful. The implication that one had to get behind this or be considered apostate was palpable, and it struck me as very much a cult-like phenomenon: you must drink the Kool-aid or else. Many other points brought up here today serve to reinforce this as well.