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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.