What Did We Expect From a Right Wing Personality Cult?

 The Guardian: Grief, Fury, Conspiracy Inside Turning Point USA After Charlie Kirk's Killing

It was a movement built on pushing for what they defined and called "traditional values of womanhood" that turned into a political movement to provide a stage for its founder to debate political liberals.  I use the term "debate" generally, since an actual debate implies that fairness is applied to both sides and facts must be used.  Kirk was a distorter of facts, and most of the debates in which he engaged were conducted under his ground rules, making sure those who disagreed with him were at a distinct disadvantage.  

Turning Point USA had a strong connection to the more extreme right wing side of Evangelicalism, the political element more aligned with its Charismatic/Pentecostal side.  It had a set of values that it claimed, but because Kirk's primary objective was to have Trump's back, and protect him from any kind of criticism as a result of his gross moral bankruptcy and the mounting evidence of his sex and political crimes, Turning Point USA could not actually stand on its values all of the time.  And that made it hypocritical.  

A personality cult is identified as a group which demonstrates excessive public admiration for or devotion to a famous person or a political leader.  The article I posted from The Guardian is lengthy, gives a rundown of the history of Turning Point USA and Kirk's leadership, and then gives examples of how it was nothing more than a personality cult by showing what appears to be a rapid decline in interest and participation since Kirk's death.  His funeral was apparently the high point of the organization's existence.  It's been downhill since then.  

A Very Typical Pattern for Evangelical Para-Church and Political Organizations

American Evangelical Christianity is full of personality cults.  The values and principles that they preach, and claim to be promoting, derived from their own interpretation of the Bible and of what they think defines the "Christian gospel" are basically the same.  It's a very legalistic system of doctrinal conformity based on a literal interpretation of the Biblical text that ignores two thousand years of Christian history, tradition, and especially the cultural and linguistic nuances and influences on the writing of the text itself.  

American Evangelicalism's growth over the past fifty years has depended on a small cluster of personalities who turn themselves into religious celebrities with the following they gather from their media outreach.  That more or less reached a peak with Billy Graham, whose radio and then television preaching made him the single most recognizable American Evangelical in the world. Most of the others who have come along afterward, in the current megachurch movement, are imitators of his success.  

They observed that he built a media empire around his crusade meetings, and that he made a lot of money. They observed that he had the potential to use his influence with politicians, and to move his followers in a direction that potentially gave him political power.  They also observed that when he stepped down, his son used the name Graham to build his own multi-million dollar evangelistic ministry off of his father's reputation, and turned the emphasis on evangelistic ministry into right wing political influence.  Franklin Graham lost the ability to be an evangelistic influence, but he has expanded his wealth and has used his name to become a major Christian nationalist influence in the Republican party. 

Almost all of the large, Evangelical media ministries have para-church organizations they've set up to use their influence in extremist right wing politics.  There's Falwell and the Moral Majority, Pat Robertson and the Christian Coalition, along with his "700 Club" that looks like a legitimate news provider.  Turning Point USA was just another one of those same kind of Evangelical religious-political organizations built, not on promoting truth, or even preaching an evangelistic Christian message, but around the personality of its founder.  

And now that its founder is gone, the organization is fracturing, fragmenting, and falling apart, because there was nothing beyond Charlie Kirk's personality to hold it together.  It's impossible to reconcile any core values claimed to be based on the Christian gospel with unqualified and unquestioned support for Donald Trump.  

And that's the hard reality Turning Point USA must now face.