No. of Recommendations: 3
It is good to remember the wisdom of Benjamin Franklin that “we must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”
My faith is different than the cult of Trumpism.
Funny - I sort of look at Trump's political movement as the fulfilment of Franklin's maxim. Not its antithesis.
Trump's message to the GOP on most things - and the message of leaders who invite total capitulation from their supporters - is that if everyone in the party always does what the leader says with little to no dissent, everyone will get a government that much more closely resembles what they want than the alternative. Even though it's true that they will get a number of actions/policies/rules they detest, on the whole the government will be better (in their eyes) than if they dissented.
By his personal political power over the GOP base, Trump has managed to replace the role that used to be filled by political parties, which has long since been crippled by changes in the law, technology, and fundraising: enforcer. Someone to enforce party unity. Since this power is personal to him, not institutional to a party, it's different in many key respects than the party system used to be. But the key similarity is to enforce that "we all hang together or we'll hang separately" mentality.
