The Cult of America

            America has often been deemed the land of the free, and the idea of chasing the American Dream is an idea that has been implanted into all of our heads at a young age. If a person comes to America or is born here, their possibilities are endless. Anyone can achieve anything, and if you do not achieve it, you must work harder. Jane Borden, author of Cults Like Us, argues that these ideas, and many others have indoctrinated us into the cult of America, and that the foundation of the U.S has been based on cult-like ideology.

            When I hear the word cult, my initial thoughts go towards devil worship and scary movies, and although devil worshippers may fall into the category of a cult, cults expand much further than this. Borden’s definition of cult involves multiple characteristics, but to summarize, she says that the leader will have unchecked power, exploit its members, and will manipulate its members beliefs and thoughts (Borden, 4). Cults can go beyond religious groups as well. This can also come in the form of businesses, like pyramid schemes, and it can also come in the form of technology, where companies are shaping the information people view and interact with.

            These cult-like ideas start back with the Puritans, one of the first groups of people to come over. The Puritans were a group of Christians, but they were more radical than their peers back in England, and this led their leaders to have more power. They implemented harsh rules, for example, interrupting the pastor could lead to a person being charged with a crime (Borden, 16). Rules like these make leaders unreproachful, and it leads to power being unchecked, when a person’s decision making cannot be questioned without reprimand. At one point, holidays were also expunged from the calendar, and the only days off were the Sabbath (13). Clearly, this is not the idea of a laborer, it is the idea of a person in charge to “limit the chance of sin”, but it just also happens to increase productivity and help the pockets of those in charge.

            The idea of an economic cult is not limited to just the Puritan times, it is something that has persisted, and it has increased more since the Industrial Revolution, when income inequality started to form a larger gap. There was an increase in low level laborers making menial wages. This is partly where the cult of America comes in, and the idea that if the person just continues to work harder they can become rich and powerful (Borden, 165). It can be heard in political rhetoric, especially when it comes to discussions of welfare and unemployment benefits, those people put themselves in that situation, so why should they be helped, they should have just worked harder, but this is an unfair way of thinking.

            This is also where the cult of Multi-Level Marking comes into play. These are pyramid schemes that have people buy into their system because they are promised great riches, but they end up having their money taken, and then once their money is all gone, they have to move on to something else. Again, the failure is blamed on the people who fall into this trap, not that the system is rigged against them.

It does not help that although pyramid schemes are illegal, some of these “business” are able to sneak through, because they have the support of the government (Borden, 175). The businesses that are sucking money in from their less fortunate employees are donating massive amounts of money to the government, and this, of course, allows them to continue to function with the blessing of politicians. It truly hits all the hallmarks of a cult. There is a leader, who is making grand promises of (monetary) salvation to people that need it, and they business leader is able to bend their thoughts to make them think that they just need to work harder and not that the system is stacked against them.

            From the outside, it can be very easy to say, how did they end up in a cult, how did they not see that coming. The problem is that these are people in pain looking for salvation. It could be they are in poverty, and the leader is offering to release them from these struggles, or maybe they have had traumatic life events, and they are being promised happiness and community. Cults prey upon the vulnerable.

            The people are looking so hard for salvation, even when the prophecy fails and must be rewritten, they still stick around (Border, 55). Doomsday cults are the main culprits of this. They also use fear to garner their followers, if you do not follow me, then you will not receive salvation, and the end is coming soon. Of course, every time a cult has promised the imminent end of the world, it has not happened (yet). Some of these apocalypses are not even acts of god. One group prayed that bombs would fall and kill billions (31). Others believed that UFOs would come and cause a massive loss of life (37), but every time a prophecy like this failed, they just pushed the date a little further, sometimes rescheduling the apocalypse three or four times. Once a group of people is under the leader’s spell, even failures make it hard to realize they are not messianic after all.

            Maybe the most interesting of all was the story of a man, Andrew Profaci, who started messaging a woman, Amy Carlson, who claimed to be mother god, and he went and visited her (Border, 223). Even after arriving and realizing that she was undoubtedly not God, he stuck around and joined Love Has Won. It was basically one constant party, but eventually the fun ran out, and Profaci eventually left, but despite trying, he was not able to get Carlson to leave. So odd that a person would join a cult even though he knew that she was not who she said she was, but this speaks to another quality that gets people involved in these groups, loneliness.

            Loneliness is an epidemic that is affecting America, and it can largely be attributed to the growth in technology. People interact with each other less and less, and this leaves people craving interactions with others. Although this was not a self-help book, and it criticized self help book culture, it ending up feeling that way. The Final chapter felt like a pep talk. She was trying to say that we are not all doomed, despite everything that we constantly read, if people worked together and interacted with one another, then maybe we can fix the rash of contemporary problems. She did say that algorithms also trap us. Social media sees what we like, and then they just continually pump it into our feeds. It creates a cult of one. Some feeds can be more destructive than others. For example, my algorithm just feeds me dog videos, and there is nothing wrong with worshipping pups.

Works Cited:

Borden, Jane. Cults like Us. Simon and Schuster, 25 Mar. 2025.