This past weekend, I went to one of the Tesla Takedown protests. It was a sunny Saturday afternoon, and the protest drew a diverse crowd. There were people of all ages and races in attendance, including families with young kids. I’d estimate about 70 people showed up.

It wasn’t just a diverse crowd of people, but a diversity of ideas on display. Nearly all of the anti-Tesla protesters brought signs and posters, all of them handmade, and every one of them expressing its own creative message. There were signs about standing up for science, preserving the national parks, protecting Social Security, defending the rights of immigrants and transgender people, and lots more. Two of my favorites were the person with a sign that read “Let’s Send Elon Musk to Mars”, and another with a Tesla logo turned upside down so it looked like a KKK hood.

We ranged along the sidewalk, across the street from the Tesla dealership we were there to protest. We chanted, played protest songs and waved our signs for two hours, garnering lots of supportive honks and thumbs-up from passing drivers.

Several of the Tesla customers came outside to stare at us. Judging by the absolute bafflement on their expressions, we might as well have been aliens from outer space.

On the other side of the street, there was a pro-Trump counterprotest. It was smaller, and unsurprisingly, it fit a narrower demographic: all white, mostly older. In contrast to our array of handmade signs, they universally signaled their allegiance with things they bought: Trump flags, signs, shirts and hats. It’s telling that they couldn’t think of any way to express themselves, other than by handing over yet more money to the felon-in-chief and subsuming themselves in his branding.

They even had an inflatable figure of Trump grinning cartoonishly and giving a thumbs-up. It looked so ugly, tasteless and garish, it was hard for me to believe they brought it in the sincere belief that it made them look good. I felt embarrassed on their behalf just looking at them clustered around it. If I spent my hard-earned money on something so hideous, I’d do my utmost to keep anyone else from finding out about it.

Lack of taste aside, there was something else I noticed about the counterprotest that’s deeper and more telling. It’s this: no one in that crowd had a sign that expressed any coherent message.

There were no real ideas to be seen among them. No policies, no opinions, no arguments. To the extent that they had any message at all, it was “Trump”.

Their political ideology begins and ends there: not with a philosophy, not with an ethic, not even a complete sentence. It’s a single man’s name, and they worship him with the fervor of pagans bowing down to a golden calf. They loudly cheer whatever he tells them to believe or whatever random impulse strikes him on any given day. You couldn’t ask for a better illustration of what it looks like to surrender your sense of self and identity to a con man.

This must be what cults look like in their early days. It’s characteristic of a cult – religious or otherwise – to annihilate its devotees’ personalities and replace them with loyalty to the group. Even so, most cults have some kind of ideology backing up and explaining why they believe what they believe. This is pure blind adherence, without even a skeleton of reasoning behind it.