They clearly aren’t bound by anything they say. Their positions on everything from climate to religion, the economy, immigration, social theory, and certainly any topic with moral implications, are always a facade delivered in bad faith and in service of an explicitly immoral outcome.

Those who repeat their positions, the rank and file “believer,” might feel strongly about them, strongly enough to rage about them online or inflict them upon those they once loved, but never enough to remember an inkling of that fervor the very next day when they are handed a contradiction by one of their trusted outlets, be they pundits or preachers.

Among those lost to RWA, the feelings themselves are the only tenants of their new religion which remain consistent, whatever topic they are currently led to obsess over, and those feelings can be named: fear, anger, and hate.

Fear, anger, and hate becomes the crux of their entire belief system, whatever religion or sociopolitical ideal they profess. Little else of who they once were exists after those feelings germinate and mature. Fear, anger, and hate replaces nearly all of them until it is basically all that remains.

There must be some glimmer of humanity left inside their withered hearts and darkened minds, otherwise we wouldn’t have anecdotes of individuals who escape the cult, who look back and no longer recognize themselves. But the longer they remain inside, the weaker that glimmer becomes and harder it is to see.