Dear Donald, You Remind Me Of My Cult Leader

Dear Donald,

You remind me of the cult leaders I used to work for and I must credit you with at least one thing--you are an expert at exploiting the fear of being wrong. It's brilliantly evil. You are unaware of this, but you have empowered scary people that hide in a sparkly house tucked neatly away in a perfectly groomed neighborhood with a religious following and a million bucks in their bank account.

I recently escaped working for the born again Christian cult disguised as a business, led by a husband and wife operating out of their cheaply-made McMansion and you, Donald, were like a God to them. The wife would speak in tongues in the office, chanting to rid the room of evil spirits. Anytime your name was mentioned, her response would often be “Trump is doing God’s work. You’ll see.” I would bury my head in my work trying not to get sucked into the lunacy—theirs and yours.

Like you, the leaders had a sick obsession with playing the victim. Conveniently for them, it meant they never had to be in the wrong. The religious couple would blame a spiritual attack for their $6,000 oven breaking on Christmas day. There’s that word—“attack.” It’s one of your favorites.

"It's so hard to find good people," they would say to me. Perhaps the reason people kept resigning was because the leaders were threatening spiritual and legal backlash if their subordinates didn’t comply with their commands.

Sound familiar, Donald? You couldn't possibly do anything wrong as long as you are the one under attack. It’s fascinating, but not surprising, that people listen to you. I wonder if you appeal to so many people because humans tend to ache to make sense of the trauma in their own lives and subscribe to the belief that they too are under some kind of attack. What a comfort it is to be a victim if it provides some kind of identity for those that are discontent with their miserable lives and refuse to take responsibility for themselves. Wake up, Mr. President. I’m talking to you. You are creating victims on both sides, whether people agree with you or not, you are disempowering them nonetheless. Shame on you and shame on us for letting it happen.

I am not discounting pain and anguish. Everyone has been victimized by something. But victimhood can be a detrimental mentality, I believe one that plagues pretty much everyone on some level. It allows you to rarely have to be responsible for your choices because you are always portraying yourself as an innocent bystander in your own life. Donald, I worry about the example you set for little boys and girls growing up in close-minded towns and maybe even in cults. You are influencing the consciousness of your people by messaging that it’s okay to give into childlike urges to throw temper tantrums to feel like we are in the right and pacify our egos. You could be dumbing down the personal development of your people as individuals and as a country. That terrifies me. A land infested with too many people afraid to admit when they’ve made mistakes is a very dangerous place to be.

I'm not sure how I missed the bright red "Make America Great Again" hat in my ex-boss' office on the day I interviewed. I'm sure things would have been different if I had seen it tucked next to the photos of his miserable and deprived teenagers "smiling" for the camera. I wouldn’t take back the experience though because it taught me so much about how fragile the human ego can be. Donald, you are transparent. I wonder what would happen if you stepped outside of yourself and really looked in the mirror with honesty. I’d pay good money to be there for that.