Trump’s fantasyland America He seduces fanatics of Left and Right

Donald Trump is a great uniter, bringing together the most delusional elements of American life. Attacks on his administration’s reactionary turn are, of course, accurate. But it is far wiser to see his cabinet as a crackpot coalition. Served by representatives from the extremist Left and Right, the President appears to reward any idea, no matter its absurdity or origin, as long as it breaks with the exhausted liberal consensus.

Taken together, in fact, I think that the ideas animating Magaworld, though contradicting each other on the surface, represent a distinct societal force — one that divorces the republic from reality, and though years in the making represents a bewildering new retreat from empirical truth. A few years back, Kurt Anderson wrote a book exploring how America has become, to use his eponymous term, a “fantasyland.” I’d go further: it’s clear that the Trump presidency is a fantasyland administration for a fantasyland people, and one with depressing implications for the future of American democracy.

Perhaps the clearest example of Trump’s loony politics is Pete Hegseth. The Secretary of Defense, as the latest case study for America’s obsession with boring redemption-conversion stories, has morphed from a binge-drinking lothario into a fire and brimstone Christian fundamentalist. Forget his toe-curling leaks to journalists: in a series of podcast interviews last year, Hegseth spoke warmly of “sphere sovereignty” — which posits that civil law should defer to the Old Testament, even on matters of women’s rights and homosexuality.

Such theocratic ambitions are central to the dogma of “Christian Reconstructionism” — the same theology that guides Hegseth’s church in Tennessee. Part of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, its founder Douglas Wilson has argued that, in the war for Christian supremacy, women, children, and other civilians are legitimate targets, stating that “the word of God tells Christian soldiers what to do.” Wilson’s rabid form of faith prompts questions as to whether or not Hegseth, a member of his flock, believes that the Geneva Conventions and the US Constitution should dictate military policy — or the ravings of an Idaho preacher.

Certainly, Hegseth extends his apocalyptic worldview to domestic affairs, writing that the Christian Right is in a “holy war” against the “Leftist spectre”. Nor is that the only spot where the far-Right fringe is now at the very heart of government. That’s clear enough around the so-called “unitary executive” theory. Developed by Russell Vought, Trump’s Director of the Office of Management and Budget, it posits that, contrary to centuries of Supreme Court rulings and scholarly interpretation, the US Constitution gives the president complete and exclusive control over anything that falls within the purview of the executive branch of government.

The “unitary executive theory” resides in the same cul-de-sac as the dreams of techno-monarchy that Curtis Yarvin promotes in books and interviews. His belief that democracy is bloated and ineffective, and therefore, in need of replacement from a governing elite, has inspired Peter Thiel — mentor to none other than JD Vance.

Yet amid this unsurprising fear of far-Right influence, the far Left, too, has made its mark. To understand what I mean, look no further RFK Jr. He may have a name and history that many Americans associate with liberalism, but the Secretary of Health and Human Services’s lineage is deceiving. Unlike his father and uncles, he’s a promoter of deranged conspiracy theories, including that HIV does not cause AIDS; that the Covid-19 vaccine was a medical experiment on blacks and Latinos; that Covid itself was engineered to spare Jews and Chinese; and that African Americans have different immune systems than whites, resulting in reduced need for vaccination.

Commentators of the Left typically wonder “what happened” to Kennedy — once a respected environmental lawyer — while those on the Right parade him as a prop for the power of MAGA ideology. The reality is that Kennedy simply represents a faction of the Left that looks at the “medical-industrial complex” with contempt.

Tulsi Gabbard, for her part, has followed a similar trajectory. Once the co-chairperson of the Bernie Sanders campaign, the former Democratic member of Congress and presidential candidate advocates for Trump policies with a convert’s zeal. Yet if she’s dumped her support for universal health care, and abandoned the eradication of fossil fuels in the Honolulu surf, her foreign policy positions have remained consistent. In 2017, Gabbard introduced legislation in Congress to “end our country’s illegal war to overthrow the Syrian government” — and shortly after the bill failed to reach a floor vote flew to Damascus to meet President Assad.

These sympathies extend to the leader who helped Assad drop bombs on the people of Aleppo: Vladimir Putin. In this, Gabbard retains support among the so-called “anti-imperialist” Left, people like Max Blumenthal and Matt Taibbi who blame every geopolitical problem on the United States.

I could go on here — but beyond these varied examples, what does this frantic blend of Left and Right actually signify? I think that vivid phrase “fantasyland” can start to offer an answer. As America’s democracy weakens, it becomes aggressive and epistemologically reckless. There’s no longer any belief that the leading institutions of American society — from major political parties to the mainstream media — refuse to accommodate. Accusations of “elitism,” “snobbery,” or “disrespect” of religious faith await anyone who utters a complaint about hallucinatory fantasies that now pollute every conversation of political importance.

The bipartisan phantasm of the Trump administration signifies the completion of a national transformation, one resulting from this misguided accommodation. And it isn’t as if the former gatekeepers of discourse, especially in the legacy media, didn’t, at least in part, invite their own destruction. The leading newspapers, journals, and television networks, with few exceptions, were wrong about the disastrous war on Iraq. They ignored the warning signs of the 2008 financial crash — even as, long before that, they offered shortsighted reporting on the Vietnam War and the AIDS crisis.

Noam Chomsky famously lambasted the mainstream media for “manufacturing consent”. Yet if it’s clear that elite opinion-making is in desperate need of an overhaul, the anything goes, anything is possible blend of cynicism and gullibility that’s replaced it is even worse.

Consider, if nothing else, how quick mad-as-a-hatter conspiracy theories now spread online. There was the “plandemic” documentary asserting that a cabal of international elites planned the Covid-19 pandemic, even as millions of Republicans believed that Joe Biden “rigged” the election in his favour. All the while, large numbers of Leftists reflexively assumed that the first assassination attempt on Donald Trump’s life was fake. The mentality that propelled Trump to power is, in other words, bipartisan and deeply cultural — rather than merely political. Nearly half of Americans believe in demonic possession, while almost a third believe in astrology, and 57% think that ancient advanced civilisations like Atlantis actually existed.

None of this is totally new. Religious fundamentalism, con artistry, and hateful manias have always troubled the American psyche. The Know-Nothing nativists of the 19th century; McCarthyism and the Lavender Scare of the 20th; and the evergreen quality of End Times preachers all show that there is a bottomless appetite for American absurdity. But what made the inauguration of Donald Trump different was that it marked the first time that the forces of absurdity became the country’s governing force. Discontent with the decadent status quo led not to thoughtful reforms — but a rejection of reality itself.

To be fair, not everyone is happy at Trump’s carnival mix of extremism. Many of his policies, especially his assault of vital social services, have already provoked outrage. Opposition will only grow if the Republicans proceed with their plans to make massive cuts to Medicaid. Yet even if his policies ruin Trump’s presidency, the mindset they represent is here to stay, not least given the poisonous effects of social media. Expect America’s fantasyland to remain open for many years to come.