A Strange and Shrinking World: Inside the Increasingly Isolated, Paranoid, and Sad Alternate Reality of the American Right
On Thursday night, President of the United States Donald Trump engaged in one of his favorite pastimes: calling into the television show Hannity in order to ramble like a pundit who’d lost his fastball and receive a modicum of praise from his most-treasured lapdog, Sean Hannity. The interview was…sad. While Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham have ramped up their efforts to spread the twin-toxins of white supremacy and fascism at a fevered pace, Trump and Hannity had all the energy of a couple of old and tired friends meeting on a street corner, shrugging their shoulders, and then shuffling off into oblivion.
Topics included Trump halfheartedly lying about his disastrous pandemic response, bragging inexplicably about his “acing” a cognitive test administered at Walter Reed to check him for signs of mental decline, and the two of them lamenting happenings in New York City, with Trump saying “everyone’s leaving” and Hannity, bizarrely, hilariously, commenting that he is “the only idiot who stays here” and that he needs to “get my contract changed so I can get the hell out of here myself, to be honest.”
This is the sad-sack reality of the Republican Party, an organization that began as a righteous anti-slavery political body and has degenerated into a white supremacist death cult. Decades’ worth of game-theory fueled political decisions, conspiracy theories as diversionary tactics, and general, frightening decline have brought us here.
Just two, wealthy, white showbiz men complaining about kids-these-days and planning on moving to Florida.
Truthfully, Trump and Hannity should be elated. The system of economic inequality and white supremacy, both having overridden any facsimile of a meritocracy, has rewarded them both with personal fortunes and the type of societal influence most could only dream of. Having failed spectacularly at everything he’s ever tried, Trump is somehow the most powerful man in the world. Hannity, despite a total lack of talent, enjoys a primetime showcase in front of millions. And yet, they’re still unhappy, as if all of the money and influence and power in the world could never fill whatever hole vexes them.
That hole is what has come to define the American Right. While white privilege has gifted incredible benefits to people like Trump and Hannity, they have yet to find a semblance of personal satisfaction. This is the tragic truth of the matter. All of the money and power in the world can’t solve the personal deficits of these people, and any success is simply insufficient, leaving them to wonder why they have never reached the level they deserve. The level they need.
This “failure” can only be the result of a conspiracy. The American Right has long been infected by conspiratorial beliefs, with evidence from the Red Summer, the Red Scare, the Civil Rights Movement, the New World Order conspiracy theory, and now this Era of Trumpism, where there’s always a shadowy cabal to blame for their own personal unhappiness. This is how Lou Dobbs, another wealthy, white man who has spent his recent professional career spreading virulent prejudice, came to react to a Supreme Court decision requiring Trump to divulge his taxes, a decision that included two of Trump’s very own justices ruling against him, by declaring “The Deep State extends, obviously, to the Supreme Court.”
For those keeping track, the “Deep State” - a revamped Protocols of the Elders of Zion and an updated New World Order conspiracy theory - is a malleable, continually revised and expanding conspiracy against Trump and the Republican Party. Members include Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, the entire intelligence community, including the FBI and CIA, the mainstream media, Mitt Romney, Jeff Sessions, virtually the entire government of the United States, and anyone, at any time, who does not immediately fall to their knees and worship Trump or his cronies.
Obviously, this is a fascistic worldview that, like other conspiracy theory-based movements, erodes democratic institutions, legitimizes violence and extralegal measures, and posits the world as a do-or-die struggle that threatens the very lives and fortunes of its followers. It inspires assassination attempts. It spurs lone-wolf terrorists. And, if left unchecked and unchallenged, can plunge a nation into the authoritarian abyss.
You’ll notice, however, that this Us vs. Them mentality is constantly growing and mutating, leaving its adherents consistently isolated from members who were only previously part of the resistance. Cults of personality like the one surrounding Donald Trump are inherently unstable. Authoritarians are terrible, incompetent leaders who thrive by scapegoating others for their mistakes and relish in pitting their sycophants against one another to fight to the death over who is most loyal and loving. Their regimes are marked by infighting, dysfunction, and are often bewildering storms of changing allegiances wherein members are either “in” or “out,” their lives often being taken in the process.
On its face, it is pathetic. Trump and Hannity complaining is just a sad spectacle that would be pitiable if didn’t put the rest of us in danger. These hollowed-out men who have been given everything but still want more constitute a power group that holds sway over millions of people. The poll numbers are plunging, but that’s to be expected. Cults are constantly winnowing themselves down as the power-plays and infighting narrow the circle of “Us.” These are movements that shrink and shrink and shrink and as they do their paranoia grows by the second.
They believe they’re in a war and in danger of being outnumbered. As they realize that self-fulfilling prophecy is true, they grow more and more desperate. We’re watching that come true, and heaven help us as these sad men recognize that they’re all alone.
Jared Yates Sexton is the author of American Rule: How A Nation Conquered The World But Failed its People, available for pre-order from Dutton/Penguin-Random House. His work has appeared in the New York Times, The New Republic, The Daily Beast, Politico, and elsewhere. He currently serves as an associate professor of writing at Georgia Southern University and is the co-host of The Muckrake Podcast.
