The world was shocked when more than 900 Americans who followed “People’s Temple” preacher Jim Jones to the wilderness of Guyana committed suicide or were murdered at his command in 1978 after swallowing fruit drinks laced with cyanide.

Millions wondered how something so ghastly could happen. Far from a mystery, it was another example, albeit an extreme one, of how a charismatic cult leader makes his followers forsake all else — even their own lives.

Many dictatorships and millions of wartime deaths have owed to such evil genius. The United States is up next.

Donald Trump has transformed virtually the entire Republican Party into a personality cult, rather than the responsible instrument of principles and policy that it once was.

Only he matters. He jokes about being a dictator if he’s elected again “but only on Day One.”

Trump has not only survived, but prospered from a torrent of personal, commercial and political scandals, any one of which would have destroyed anyone else’s political career. It’s a damning indictment of America.

Having tried to overthrow the 2020 election, Trump will not commit to accepting the outcome on Nov. 5.

His cascade of lies, indictments and moral outrages seems to have strengthened his hold over the cult.

The vast majority of Republican officeholders, who should set a better example, worship him outright or cower in silence.

Sen. Rick Scott went to Trump’s trial last week in a show of loyalty, but long before that, he and a dozen Florida House Republicans voted against certifying Biden’s election. (In an editorial at the time, we called them “the Sunshine State seditionists.”)

Even now, Rep. Byron Donalds of Naples, said to be on Trump’s vice presidential short list, is among those who will not commit to respecting the outcome if Trump loses fairly again.

So it’s significant when someone breaks away from the MAGA pack, as Georgia’s former Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan did.

Writing in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Duncan said he would vote for Biden and that other Republicans should, too.

“I’m voting for a decent person I disagree with on policy over a criminal defendant without a moral compass,” Duncan wrote.

He said it’s “dead wrong” for Republicans to believe they’re obligated to support the party ticket, no matter what.

“Yes, serious questions linger about President Biden’s ability to serve until the age of 86,” he wrote. “But the GOP will never rebuild until we move on from the Trump era, leaving conservative (but not angry) Republicans like me have no choice but to pull the lever for Biden.”

Trump, he said, “has shown us who he is. We should believe him.”

Other Republicans who recognize integrity as the one indispensable quality of a president should follow Duncan’s advice, rather than symbolically waste their votes, as ex-House Speaker Paul Ryan says he will do by writing in another Republican.

Ryan said Trump lacks “the kind of character” a president should have, which is certainly true, if grossly understated.

To vote for anyone else, whether a Republican or an independent like the conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., or to not vote at all, is to concede that either Biden or Trump will be the next president.

The Electoral College makes it impossible for any independent candidate to be more than a spoiler, as Ralph Nader did in 2000 when he effectively handed the election to George W. Bush after the Florida recount with Al Gore.

If Ryan thinks Trump lacks the character to be president, he should help elect Biden — and hope, as Duncan does, for a Republican Congress to keep him in check.

He should remember what retired Gen. John Kelly, one of Trump’s former chiefs of staff, said of him: “The depth of his dishonesty is just astounding to me. … He is the most flawed person I have ever met in my life.”

Long before that terrible day in Jonestown, Jim Jones had cult members rehearse how they would drink a poisoned beverage to commit what he called “revolutionary suicide,” a term he didn’t invent.

It is no exaggeration to say that America could commit revolutionary suicide on Nov. 5. Geoff Duncan has told us how to avoid it.

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The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writer Martin Dyckman and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson. Editorials are the opinion of the Board and written by one of its members or a designee.

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