Singapore and the US both have a military, a police, and taxation. This seems much more clear-cut to me than “cults” do.
I think maybe one could treat “cult” more like a pronoun than like a theoretical object. Like when one is in the vicinity of one of the groups Ben Pace mentioned, it makes sense to have a short term to talk about the group, and “the cult” is useful for disambiguating the cult from other groups that might be present.
Singapore and the US both have a military, a police, and taxation. This seems much more clear-cut to me than “cults” do.
I think maybe one could treat “cult” more like a pronoun than like a theoretical object. Like when one is in the vicinity of one of the groups Ben Pace mentioned, it makes sense to have a short term to talk about the group, and “the cult” is useful for disambiguating the cult from other groups that might be present.