A while back, demonstrators were a regular fixture on a bridge over Highway 1 in North Vancouver. They continued to show up even after the Supreme Court issued an order prohibiting the group from gathering on the Mountain Highway overpass. The individuals were complaining about a variety of subjects, including vaccines, public health measures, inclusivity in schools, sexual orientation and gender identity, and other perceived ills in society.
Recently, folks were back at the overpass waving flags and signs. That and a CTV W5 report about “Queen of Canada” Romana Didulo and her followers got me thinking about cults. I wondered what causes members to embrace concepts rejected by those of us whose behaviour is conventional.
Then I listened to one of my favourite podcasts: Under the Influence with Terry O’Reilly. The former advertising man described the production of a yogurt commercial requiring a monkey to take a banana but use it to scoop and eat the dairy product the ad agency’s client was promoting.
One might expect that smart monkeys were needed to achieve the desired result. Not so.
O’Reilly’s report may offer a clue explaining who cult leaders recruit. The following is from the episode Seeing is Believing: The Power of Demonstration Commercials – Part 2
Ad-man Paul Levo marveled at how smart the monkeys were. Actually, said the monkey handler, these are the dumbest monkeys I could find.
The handler went on to explain that just like people, there are smart monkeys and not so smart monkeys. A smarter older monkey could be taught to do everything the commercial required in just a few hours as opposed to the weeks it took to train the less intelligent monkeys.
But the handler knew there would be multiple takes required… The smart monkey would get bored… The dumb one would just sit there and repeat the actions over and over again.
Demonstrating that a low IQ can be very appealing.
Categories: Prejudice
in-sights.ca 
Perhaps another example of low IQ (Maga) but certainly other characteristics sorrily missing also with reference to Trumps response to Biden’s SOTU address.
“Writing in The Atlantic, John Hendrickson, who has described himself as a lifelong stutterer, noted,” “More than Trump’s ugly taunt, one thing stands out to me about these moments: the sound of Trump’s supporters laughing right along with him. This is a building block of Trumpism. The man at the top gives his followers permission to be the worst version of themselves.”
If they (Maga) are aware of being used to determine the boundaries of what Trump is exploring to determine what he can say, then that is one thing. However if they are not aware, then hmmmm. IQ?
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So tempting to use this reasoning to explain how T has been able to get the republican crowd to be so loyal to him. He is clearly a cult leader.
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Trump is a very skilled grifter and corporal “bone spurs”, was able to keep on grifting due to money and privilege.He inflated his assets on paper and got loans from the banks, for his many business ventures, yet he has had six corporate bankruptcies. What has kept him going is an very closed old-boys network of like grifters, all afraid that their entire business empires will topple.Age has hit him with a vengeance. Trump is certainly suffering from dementia (notice how purse his lips when he speaks as my dad did the same, as it is motor reflex issue trying to pronounce words) and it is overtaking him at a fast speed. Hate and vileness also is sure sign of dementia as the brain cannot self censor thoughts.He means what he says, folks.
Trumps acolytes are simply a combination of extremely poorly educated people (Jewish space lasers anyone?) and the cunning cabal who want to overthrow the USA in a structural coup etat (the American evangelical Christians who want everyone else to be evangelical Christians).
We saw this in 1933, then a Austrian corporal swayed an entire nation into a massive death march. The only problem as I see it, the American Evangelical Christians would not have any qualms using nukes!
We are entering scary times and there is a 50/50 chance of another revolution war in the excited states, with a president want to be king, with far more powers than the king they overthrew in 1776.
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