Mastodawn

Thomas Zimmer Mar 4

MAGA Unreality vs the World

The U.S. government is in the hands of people who are fully detached from reality. That is a major weakness for the regime – but also a source of further radicalization.

Some thoughts from my new piece:

🧵

https://steady.page/en/democracyamericana/posts/55dc578f-c914-4239-8dc9-e2bbef1fe5c6

MAGA Unreality vs the World

The U.S. government is in the hands of people who are fully detached from reality. That is a major weakness for the regime – but also a source of further radicalization.

Steady

Thomas Zimmer Mar 4

The U.S. government is in the hands of a disturbed authoritarian who is surrounded by people who either share his delusions, are too sycophantic to confront him, or believe the president’s delusions serve just fine as a vehicle for their own zealotry and ideological extremism.

Thomas Zimmer Mar 4

We must grapple with MAGA’s unreality as both a major impediment to the Right’s authoritarian project - as well as an acute threat for the republic, the international order, and, at the risk of sounding dramatic, literally everyone else on the planet.

Trump has been hemorrhaging public support. A smarter, more prudent regime would have changed tactics long ago. But the Trumpists keep doubling down. What may look like mere stubbornness is actually the result of significant structural weaknesses and ideological blind spots.

Thomas Zimmer Mar 4

What is striking is how no one around him is acting as a corrective to even the most outlandish nonsense Trump propagates. And that has a lot to do with the unreality bubble in which basically everyone of consequence in this regime and in MAGA land more broadly exists.

Thomas Zimmer Mar 4

Even if some people in this administration must be aware that Trump is constantly making stuff up, most of them are convinced what they are doing is popular. The degree to which the Trumpist leaders have bought into their own propaganda is astonishing.

Thomas Zimmer Mar 4

Because they are perceiving the world almost exclusively through the prism of the far-right media landscape, they have their delusions constantly reflected back at them and thereby confirmed, especially by an extremist online scene that eternally lusts for violence.

Thomas Zimmer Mar 4

As a result, this regime has so far been incapable of adapting to the changing political and public environment. Instead of acting strategically, they keep overreaching, clinging to the fantasy that “real America” stands behind them and is about to rise up in support of the MAGA vision.

Thomas Zimmer Mar 4

Trumpism presents an extreme example of the pitfalls of personalism: Personalist rule with a lazy, delusional leader at the top, a bunch of sycophants and zealots around him, and a base drifting ever deeper into fantasy land – that’s not a recipe for efficient authoritarian consolidation.

Thomas Zimmer Mar 4

If only the rest of us could relax and watch as the Right descends further into madness.

But MAGA controls the levers of state power. This is where the gravest danger lies: Delusion, ideology, and ineptitude are conspiring to make escalation almost inevitable.

Thomas Zimmer Mar 4

MAGA is also ideologically and psycho-politically incapable of moderating. It is a hysterical movement that exists in a constant state of imagined emergency. There is no room for compromise or restraint. Every crisis, every defeat only heightens their sense of being under siege.

Thomas Zimmer Mar 4

We are experiencing a heightened version of that foundational paranoid siege mentality now. It will only get worse as the leaders on the Right start thinking about what will happen to them once their project fails and they are removed from power. They fear accountability.

Thomas Zimmer Mar 4

Where is the off-ramp? Those on the Right and in the Republican Party who are standing with Trump today have gone so far already with and for him, and in the process became complicit in his rise, his rule, his lawlessness, his breathtaking corruption. All the bridges have been burned.

Thomas Zimmer Mar 4

The more they run into hurdles they fail to overcome, the more frustration mounts, the more attractive it becomes to the regime to focus on areas where their desire to dominate, plunder, and punish is more easily put into practice.

Thomas Zimmer Mar 4

Illegal wars abroad and ICE concentration camps at home are MAGA’s version of scorched earth. They are not merely a “distraction” – they are, for this regime, the real thing: A way for people obsessed with the destructive power they can unleash to assert dominance and feel “manly.”

Thomas Zimmer Mar 4

I believe MAGA will ultimately fail to consolidate authoritarian rule. But for the time being, the powers of the U.S. government are in the hands of a regime that is hellbent on imposing its unreality on America and the world. And that is truly frightening.

Please consider subscribing:

https://steady.page/en/democracyamericana/posts/55dc578f-c914-4239-8dc9-e2bbef1fe5c6

MAGA Unreality vs the World

The U.S. government is in the hands of people who are fully detached from reality. That is a major weakness for the regime – but also a source of further radicalization.

Steady

Toni Aittoniemi Mar 4

@tzimmer_history I believe the war’s purpose is solely that of getting popular support. That’s why the selected target is what it is. That’s why Israel is involved.

They are doing what authoritarians across the ages have done to seize popular support: Bring the heads of their enemies home on a stick, parade their military victories around, and silence critique as ”unpatriotic”.

RenkeSiems Mar 4

@tzimmer_history I found "Assault on the State" an insightful read. This attack on modern governance is not concerned with the functioning of the state, stability, or anything else. For those who profit from this personal regime, it still pays off. The loss of reality can become apparent, as in Putin's war in Ukraine, but the money-making continues, and destruction and misery are socialized.

https://www.wiley.com/en-us/The+Assault+on+the+State%3A+How+the+Global+Attack+on+Modern+Government+Endangers+Our+Future-p-9781509563166

@tzimmer_history

A way for small men acting out about their sad cringeworthy life choices instead of getting their shit together like normal people do.

Toni Aittoniemi Mar 4

@panda @tzimmer_history Avoid this thought! Most men are indeed small & weak, but that’s exactly why they submit to authoritarians.

Wake up to the real consequences of what you already know! The other end of the authoritarian stick is submission.

@tzimmer_history EXACTLY. I remember the moments leading up to when Jonathan Ross killed Renee Good. All because they were teasing him. His insecurity over feeling "unmanly" seems to be the only reason he decided to murder Renee

@tzimmer_history
I believe the proper term for that is hypervigilant group think

ProScience 🇪🇺Mar 4

@tzimmer_history

🎯

Sad, but you nailed it.

Jack the Waterlogged Count Mar 4

@tzimmer_history When a political party runs on moral panic and triumphalism, there's not a heck of a chance they're going to see a rational interest in compromise.

Guillotine Jones, Flâneur Mar 4

@tzimmer_history
This description of the Trump regime's behavior sounds like it pertains to all fascist enterprises, Mr Zimmer.

Geoff Berner Mar 4

@tzimmer_history they don't care about current public opinion. They are living in a future where they control information. In that future, they're very popular. When they kill kids, they believe the kids of the future will thank them for everything they "had" to do.