How isn't it a cult?

What would you call this situation? A group that tells you that its leaders are infallible. They get their instructions from God who they have unique access to through the power of  their own intellect. If you criticize them you might be killed. They control you morning, noon, and night. It's for your own good. You are evil. If you are left alone, you will do bad things. All activities in life are prohibited except for an act of study that is really mental gymnastics and confusion. Even studying the Bible is a waste of time. You must always live in their enclave. You must not talk to anyone outside of it. The world is bad. All people are bad, except for those in the group, and even then you must only listen to the leader who had never worked a day in his life, who prides himself on his ignorance about the world. Inside you is the devil. The leaders are above this. You are not allowed to question them. If you do, bad things will happen to you. You hear the repetition? It's the theme. If you don't like this it only shows that the devil is controlling you. They keep you poor. They keep you sexually frustrated. They will tell you when you can have sex. When you finally are allowed to make a little money, you must give it to them. Your group is superior to the entire human race. The latter is not only inferior, it is nothing. It is bacteria. They have nothing to offer. 

This is the Manalist world, particularly in Eretz Yisroel. The Gemara doesn't say this stuff, but many contemporary rabbis do. But we don't study the parts of the Gemara that give a broader picture of things. I have a friend who spend 5 years in mainstream yeshivas. He said they covered total of 5 perakim of Gemara in all that time. When I was in yeshiva, we learned Baba Matzia, Kiddushin, and Beitzah. The young man near my house has studied Baba Matzia and Kiddushin. In Cheder they did Kiddushin and again in Yeshiva Katana. Now he's doing BM with the rest of the world. And they don't do the whole thing, just first and third chapters. With Kiddushin it's 1st and 2nd. Over and over again. Yes, there's a bikiyus shiur but only in those tractates and that's not what the bachurim review at night because the pressure is to learn the biyun. We only study certain parts, the most abstract and confusing parts. We skip over the parts that tell us about life. Yes, they skip over the aggadata or they put it in a separate shiur that nobody attends because they are drowning in work to get the biyun down. All you need to know about life is to study Torah, ie. the small part of the Gemara that we study for it's own sake, without any regard for the practical. 

Recently, I went to a yeshivish vort. It was such a depressing scene. Aggressive young men, stomping  around, not yielding any seats or moving an inch to accommodate anyone, looking like they are out to punch somebody, used plates all over the place that the caterer wasn't cleaning up, rabbis standing up to speak and failing to mention Hashem or building a solid home that serves Hashem, rather just praising the bachur for his hasmada in learning. 

In the times of the Tanach, there is much scolding from the prophets about idol worship but not about chilul Shabbos. The people were Shabbos observant, yet they worshiped idols. Remind you of anyone?