Episode 77: Wait, Are WE In a Cult?
Guest: Leslie Nuss - Singer/Songwriter, Disability Rights Advocate, and Former Candidate for Indiana State Senate
Full show notes at https://hoosleft.us/
Leslie’s Music on Bandcamp: https://leslienuss.bandcamp.com/
2024 Campaign Website: https://www.nussforus.com/
Welcome to the HoosLeft Podcast, a show about Indiana politics, history, and culture from the unapologetic perspective of the social democratic left. My name is Scott Aaron Rogers, and I’m recording from Bloomington.
I didn’t start this podcast intending to focus on thought control, social manipulation, cult dynamics, and myth-making, but these themes keep coming up again and again. Companies, politicians, and foreign governments alike are using technology and methodology to influence our thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors all around us, at all times. From Dr. Steven Hassan’s Influence Continuum,
“From the moment we are born, we are constantly being influenced by all kinds of people, ideas, and forces. Some of this influence is healthy, and promotes our ability to grow into independent, fulfilled, authentic adults.
Other forms of influence instill dependency and obedience, at times even indoctrinating people to harm themselves and others. There is a wide spectrum of healthy and unhealthy influence. Individual experiences vary within the same organization based on how the individual conforms to the norms of the group. For example, a lesbian teen in a homophobic church will be subject to a different degree of undue influence than a straight man who is married with children in the same church.”
We talk about folks on the political right being caught up in the cult of Trump, or being brainwashed by Fox News, but as we learned from Dr. Dustin Steinhagen several months ago, everybody is susceptible to thought control - and those most likely to fall prey to such manipulation are those who think it can’t happen to them. Humility is the key to maintaining sovereignty over your mind.
So, knowing that, and knowing this is going on all around us, I think it’s important to ask ourselves how we’ve been influenced - sometimes in healthy and constructive ways, and other times in unhealthy and destructive ways. Why do we believe what we believe, and value what we value?
My guest today is a return visitor to our show. Leslie Nuss is a singer-songwriter, disability rights advocate, and former candidate for Indiana State Senate, sadly losing to incumbent Republican Ed Charbonneau in November. She also introduced me to Dr. Steinhagen’s work, so I invited her to have this big conversation with us today.
In this discussion, we’ll look at the MAGA cult before talking about what shaped our beliefs and values, our own vulnerabilities, and whether leftists and liberals have our own cultic subcultures. We’ll examine the ways our thoughts about America, democracy, and capitalism have been shaped since our youth, and how some of our foundational values are based on myth. We’ll talk about free speech, authoritarianism, and the fluid meaning of words.
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Now, here is my conversation with Leslie Nuss.
Things We Talked About:
My Interview with Jen Senko: https://www.hoosleft.us/p/episode-63-the-brainwashing-of-our
My Interview with Dylan Noble: https://www.hoosleft.us/p/episode-62-saving-young-men-from
My Interview with Dustin Steinhagen: https://www.hoosleft.us/p/episode-70-defending-our-minds-from
Hassan’s BITE Model: https://freedomofmind.com/cult-mind-control/bite-model-pdf-download/
Indiana’s Arrogant Senator: https://fox59.com/indianapolitics/you-seem-like-a-clown-u-s-senator-jim-banks-tells-fired-federal-worker-he-probably-deserved-it/
The Cult of Trump: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Cult-of-Trump/Steven-Hassan/9781982127343
Trump’s 2020 State of the Union Speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xb1xHhGJjJk
Rollin’ Coal: https://www.mtpr.org/montana-news/2022-11-10/whats-the-deal-with-coal-rolling
Timothy Leary, “Think for Yourself”: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/559794-throughout-human-history-as-our-species-has-faced-the-frightening
Controlled Demolitions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7X7hWcctXLw
How Iran Contra Led Us Here: https://www.democracynow.org/2018/12/4/how_george_hw_bushs_pardons_for
The Fairness Doctrine: https://sisyphuslitmag.org/2018/07/the-fairness-doctrine-how-we-lost-it-and-why-we-need-it-back/
How Citizens United Killed Democracy: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/citizens-united-explained
Finland’s ‘Housing First’ Model: https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/look-finlands-housing-first-initiative
Deinstitutionalization and Homelessness: https://www.kqed.org/news/11209729/did-the-emptying-of-mental-hospitals-contribute-to-homelessness-here
People are Happier in Countries with Some Socialism: https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2020/the-nordic-exceptionalism-what-explains-why-the-nordic-countries-are-constantly-among-the-happiest-in-the-world/
The Cult of Reagan: https://www.amazon.com/Ronald-Donald-Reagan-Became-Trump/dp/1476690324
Breath of Fire Docuseries: https://www.hbo.com/breath-of-fire
Recent Wisconsin Supreme Court Election: https://apnews.com/article/wisconsin-supreme-court-elon-musk-trump-8fe006c7f8fa40b663eccd6751bada98
Dr. Bandy Lee Calls Trump a Sociopath: https://www.salon.com/2020/10/06/sociopathy-psychiatrist-says-trumps-behavior-meets-criteria-for-a-locked-psychiatric-facility/
Howard Lutnick Says Mother-on-Law “Wouldn’t Miss” Social Security Check: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/howard-lutnick-says-mother-law-104500599.html
COVID, Free Speech, and Social Media: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/10/09/social-media-content-moderation/
Some Countries Move to Make Lying in Politics Illegal: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jul/02/welsh-government-commits-to-making-lying-in-politics
Vance Whines About Fact-Checking: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/jd-vance-whines-fact-check-vp-debate-1235121255/
Old Black Witch Read-along: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVKf6SN69oI
Know Your Values, Sarah Kendzior: https://thecorrespondent.com/5696/were-heading-into-dark-times-this-is-how-to-be-your-own-light-in-the-age-of-trump/1611114266432-e23ea1a6
Once again, that was singer-songwriter, disability rights advocate, former state senate candidate, and my friend, Leslie Nuss.
At one point in our discussion, she mentioned Dr. Timothy Leary, the one-time Harvard psychologist and 1960’s psychedelics pioneer. Leary was a complicated figure, but he offered many valuable insights - including the following quote:
“Throughout human history, as our species has faced the frightening, terrorizing fact that we do not know who we are, or where we are going in this ocean of chaos, it has been the authorities, the political, the religious, the educational authorities who attempted to comfort us by giving us order, rules, regulations, informing, forming in our minds their view of reality. To think for yourself you must question authority and learn how to put yourself in a state of vulnerable, open-mindedness; chaotic, confused, vulnerability to inform yourself.”
And that’s where I want to begin my closing thoughts — because what Leslie and I talked about in this conversation isn’t just about MAGA, or Trump, or even modern-day conservatism. It’s about a deeper, longer deception. A national mythology so thick, so sticky, and so seductive, it’s been distorting reality for centuries.
We all know MAGA is a cult. But the harder truth? MAGA is just a fundamentalist breakaway sect of a much older movement — the Cult of American Exceptionalism. And yeah, that’s uncomfortable. But if we don’t face it, we stay stuck in it.
We pledged allegiance every morning. We sang anthem before every sporting event. We bowed our heads in silence for the troops, even as they were sent to die for oil and empire. We were taught that Columbus discovered a land already full of people, and that slavery was just a sad chapter instead of the economic foundation of our nation’s wealth.
That’s not education. That’s indoctrination.
The whitewashed history we were given climaxed with the Allied victory in WWII and the United States becoming the leader of the “free world” and enforcer of the “rules-based international order.” We were the undisputed good guy and those nasty Soviets were irredeemably evil. Yet, WE immediately absorbed former Nazis to head our weapons programs; WE helped overthrow democratically-elected governments on multiple continents; WE not only refuse to recognize the jurisdiction of international courts, we sanction them.
By the very standards WE set at Nuremberg, every US president since then has been a war criminal - including the liberals. WE made the rules, have broken them repeatedly, and rarely taken responsibility for our actions.
What does it say about a system when lawlessness by elites becomes routine, even expected? When criminal impunity is baked into the top of the pyramid? I’ll tell you what it says: it says this system is not worthy of worship. It may be worth fighting for. It may be worth repairing. But it’s not sacred. It’s not holy. And it sure as hell isn’t above critique.
So when we talk about cults, let’s be honest. A cult doesn’t have to be led by a man in gold robes. Sometimes it’s led by a myth. And sometimes the most dangerous cult is the one you don’t even realize you’re in.
America is vulnerable to demagogues, conspiracy theories, and authoritarian strongmen because we never healed our deepest wounds. Our enemies didn’t invent these fractures. They just exploited them. After the Civil War, Reconstruction was abandoned prematurely. The civil rights victories of the 1950’s and 60’s led to backlash, not resolution. The Southern Strategy, Nixon, Reagan — that wasn’t healing. That was a calculated retreat into white grievance and patriotic denial, like an apology unaccompanied by changed behavior. After the fall of apartheid in South Africa, the unity government set up a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to heal the country as it transitioned to a multiracial democracy. In the United States, we wanted reconciliation without truth. And when you skip the truth part? You get neither.
You can’t build a healthy culture on lies. You can’t stitch up wounds you won’t even admit are bleeding.
But we do something worse. We mythologize the pain. We turn the thieves into cowboys, the slavers into statesmen, the traitors into folk heroes. Americans don’t just tolerate the con — we admire it. From stealing Manhattan Island for a handful of beads to Bonnie & Clyde and Oceans 11, we love a good heist, don’t we?
Like the witch in Leslie’s story, we relate to the criminals because we have benefited from the exploitation of others, but now we’re confused and scared because they’re stealing from US.
Donald Trump and MAGA are not the disease, but a symptom of a larger cultural rot. We cannot rewind to 2015 and pick things back up from there, because where we are is the logical conclusion of where we’ve been.
But here’s the thing: it’s not all bad. It never was.
That pledge? That myth of freedom? It inspired some of us, in ways that can’t be undone. Some of us heard “justice for all” and believed it. And we built our lives trying to make it real. Even in the indoctrination, there were seeds of liberation.
The myth is poison, but from that venom we can manufacture the antidote.
In the gaps between the slogans and the truth — people like you, like me, like Leslie, found something better: the possibility of an America that’s not exceptional, but accountable. Not pure, but honest. Not perfect, but still worth saving.
There is good here. Not in the symbols, but in the struggle. Not in the anthem, but in the people still trying to finish the verse.
Leary told us to stay vulnerable. To get confused. To open ourselves to something beyond what we were taught. And yeah, that’s incredibly scary. But it’s also the beginning of real freedom. Because when the old stories fall apart, we can start telling better ones.
Maybe even true ones.
What do you think? Let us know. Reach out on social media - I’m on Facebook, Bluesky, YouTube and TikTok at hoosleft and on most other social media sites at scottrog78. You can also email me at scott@hoosleft.us.
Thanks again to our guest Leslie Nuss. Check out her music catalog on Bandcamp, where you can download her most recent album for a mere $7. After that purchase, if your budget allows and you value this work, how about a paid subscription over at HoosLeft.US, where you can also find my entire back catalog. Hit me up on social media with your feedback, tips, ideas, and concerns. Please forward the show to a friend and have them to forward it to another friend. Let’s keep building this project - and a truly democratic state - one conversation at a time. Until the next one, this has been the HoosLeft podcast. I’m Scott Aaron Rogers. Love each other, Indiana.
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