Even in the midst of a pandemic, the president set out to eliminate the drab and pain of everyday life from politics.
“What Mr. Trump promised was the power to create imaginary worlds and the freedom to unleash a selfish and extravagant fantasy life, free of the constraints of political correctness or even good manners, the limits imposed by climate change and the international rules tying America to the ground.”
-- Bruno Maçães
This op-ed by Bruno Maçães offers one of the most insightful explanations I’ve read about why so many Americans support Trump. Here are some excerpts:
“President Trump has been endlessly mocked for his reality-show stunts and attacked for his willful disregard for the facts....
“But what most critics have missed is that the disconnect from reality is a feature, not a bug. It is not a flaw to be corrected, because without it, Mr. Trump would never have become president in the first place. [....]
“Over and over again, Mr. Trump has striven to produce a vision of political events plausible enough to be absorbing, but without the drab and pain of reality. The problems of a typical president were political in nature; for Mr. Trump, though, they seemed like technical problems of storytelling.
“A key was to create deeply immersive story lines without allowing them to crash against the limits of reality. He was often successful, convincing his followers that they were living in a new country — even when very little of substance had actually been accomplished. [....]
“What Mr. Trump promised was the power to create imaginary worlds and the freedom to unleash a selfish and extravagant fantasy life, free of the constraints of political correctness or even good manners, the limits imposed by climate change and the international rules tying America to the ground. This extreme form of freedom — call it hyperfreedom — appealed to Greenwich, Conn., financiers no less than to West Virginia coal miners. It was also, as we found out in the election, attractive to some minorities.
“In the traditional way to think about freedom, we want to limit or even eliminate obstacles to individual choice, but ultimately we must deal with reality. Mr. Trump’s example is to take it an extra step: Why not be free from reality as well? Indeed, this may be the ultimate goal of contemporary America: a society that is pure fantasy life, free from reality. [....]
“ What survived the election was not Trumpism as a policy platform but the fantasy politics of the last four years. Those are as powerful and addictive as ever, but they will look very different once the current executive producer has left the job.”
[emphasis added]
