Thread by @JYSexton

So.

On the heels of the AXIOS interview, we REALLY have to discuss Donald Trump's murderous delusion and how American media has both enabled him and intentionally covered up his madness.

I learned this writing AMERICAN RULE, which comes out soon.

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penguinrandomhouse.com/books/611439/a…

What the AXIOS interview showed was a horrifying look at not just how delusional Trump is about the pandemic and indifferent to human suffering, but that just a LITTLE questioning by a journalist reveals how lost and ignorant Trump is.

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themuckrake.com/main/veneer

Even the smallest bit of questioning by Jonathan Swan quickly showed that Trump has no understanding of the pandemic and has been drowning in delusional, best-picture "statistics" given to him by yes-men and yes-women.

It's obvious Trump's delusion is costing American lives.

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The reason the interview went viral the way it did is because it is an unvarnished, extended look at Trump's ignorance and unhealthy delusion.

We need to understand why Trump lives in his alternate reality BUT ALSO why American media has enabled it for years now.

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During the pandemic, Trump has failed by every metric of leadership while presenting to America a thin veneer of "presidential behavior" anyone can see through

It is obvious he thinks he's an expert and believes the lies he's selling, but why has it happened this way?

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To understand Trump's delusional alternate reality, we have to go back in time and examine his relationship with a man named Norman Vincent Peale, a self-help guru who disguised himself as a Christian pastor.

His work defined what we now call the Prosperity Gospel.

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Norman Vincent Peale was part of what I now call the Cult of the Shining City, a rerouting of American Christianity that emphasized white supremacy, political power, and personal profit.

Trump "worshiped" under Peale and even had him officiate his first wedding.

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Peale championed "Positive Thinking," a magical worldview where if you were positive enough and virtuous enough God himself would reward you with riches and power.

This has defined Trump's worldview his entire life and contributes to our current tragedy.

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This narcissistic "faith" positions the white patriarchal male at the center of the universe, ensuring that they believe they are champions of God's plan and should be beyond reproach or questioning.

This is Trump's worldview and why his alternate reality is so skewed.

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Because Trump believes that he is the center of the universe and that his fate is intertwined with America's fate, he truly believes the pandemic will be taken care of by "a miracle" or that any reports that it's worsening are lies meant to hurt him and his fate.

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Trump's career has been a case study in the dangers of positive thinking and the American myth of a meritocracy that holds that success, riches, and power mean that you are a worthy, "godly" individual.

He's been enabled in his pursuits, even as he's been a total failure.

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In pursuit of his Positive Thinking and presentation as a success, all of it meant to attract actual successes, Trump has played a fictional role his entire life.

He's never ACTUALLY been successful. He's failed at everything. But the performance and belief are key.

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Even though Trump was given everything by his wealthy parents and actually squandered his large inheritance, failing in one business venture after another, he portrays to the world this American fiction of "the self-made man" or the "business mogul."

It's all fake.

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Trump has failed at literally every business and venture, racking up huge debts.

But his performance as a success granted him more and more chances as his creditors understood there was more money to be made off using Trump as a mascot and continuing the performance.

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Trump's delusional alternate reality actually created a fake "success" that capitalized off his portrayal of a successful person.

His creditors relying on this illusion imbued Trump with power, and his continued reliance on "Positive Thinking" manifested in another career.

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Eventually, Trump as a mascot would be placed in The Apprentice, a reality show that portrayed him as a success even as producers saw he was incompetent and that his businesses were disasters.

It was an illusion, again, meant to bolster the idea of a meritocracy.

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Trump's performance as "successful mogul" manifested in a false reality for himself and Americans, but we also need to examine how our media perpetuated this myth while using Trump for their own purposes.

They profited off him while maintaining an illusory America.

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By now it is well-documented that Trump was big business for media outlets, who relied on him in 2016 for record ratings and profits while gifting his fascistic campaign billions upon billions of free advertising.

He isn't lying when he says these people need him.

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Infamously, CBS head and total creep Les Moonves would say that "Trump may not be good for America, but he's good for CBS."

This disgusting quote sums it up. The business of "news" and spectacle profits off of concepts and people damaging to the country's well-being.

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In 2016, the networks would play Trump as a freakshow, a bizarre circus that was pretty much harmless and incapable of gaining momentum or power.

While they gave him free air and invaluable exposure, something uglier was festering under the surface.

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When I started sneaking into Trump Rallies and reporting from the crowds in 2016, I found that his supporters were not just coalescing around racism and xenophobia, but espousing fascistic, anti-democratic wishes and preparing for widespread violence and oppression.

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The truth is that the "circus" on TV wasn't representing the actual facts on the ground. Trump wasn't just a spectacle, he was a burgeoning fascistic authoritarian tapping into an existing and growing fascist movement in the United States.

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But here's the horror of it: for the media to admit they were complicit in growing a fascistic movement, they would have to look in the mirror and understand 1. their motives were disgusting and 2. America wasn't the country they believed it was and were portraying it as.

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Modern America, or the picture of Modern America we see on the news, is a mythology with no basis in reality.

It was grown, in part, by Ronald Reagan and his strategists, who created in America a sepia-toned illusion and intentionally wrapped the presidency in its lies.

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The myth of Reagan's America was an intentional campaign tactic, designed to bolster a fake, perfect America that was intertwined with Reagan, meaning that America could not be questioned or criticized, and that the president, as the embodiment, must be respected.

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(That excerpt is from AMERICAN RULE, by the way, and what I learned, writing it, is that there was a concentrated effort by Reagan and his team to construct this alternate, unquestionable reality to solidify the Right's control over cultural and political debates)

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Reagan's mythmaking was a titanic success and both won him a mandate for a second term but also sealed the alternate reality and myth around America, ensuring that any good-faith criticism of the country or its institutions would be treated as traitorous and unpatriotic.

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When Trump's delusion and the mythological Perfect America came together, it created a perfect storm for those alternate realities to merge.

The Presidency had to be respected by the media and Americans, but the president was petty, delusional, and obviously incompetent.

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The Trump Administration is an extension of Trump's delusion and stocked with sycophants who either tell him what he wants to hear or are as lost in that alternate reality as he is.

This is how, during a raging pandemic, we hear it isn't real and it's all overblown.

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Meanwhile, Trump's reliance on Positive Thinking means that he pushes anything he believes might work, including drugs that kill people, injecting bleach, all of it happening while the media blinks and tries to treat it like this has to be normal

Because it's the Presidency

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There is no room for dissenting voices, and so someone like Dr. Fauci, who refuses to give Trump fake, complimentary data, becomes an enemy while the media continues to portray this dysfunctional, horrific moment as something even approaching normal.

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Trump's reality distortion has to reach into Right Wing media, because the alternate reality is SO BRITTLE that everything must Us vs. Them, Black/White, either with us or against us mentality.

We're watching the Right bend and break and eat its own tail trying to keep up.

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Meanwhile, the tragedy in America continues to grow worse and worse. The human toll of suffering under a delusional, broken man like Trump is apparent and traumatizing.

But we can't get to the root of it all because we're still trying to protect the Mythological America.

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Because our media and so many Americans refuse to believe that America isn't ill, that it's been problematic and faulty for a long, long time, because they refuse to believe that our system is crumbling, they continue to view Trump through his distorted, chosen lens.

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What Trump has done is to graft his delusion onto the American delusion, inextricably knotting them together into a twisted caricature of reality.

We have to see through his illusion, but we also have to see through the American illusion created by the American Right.

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The AXIOS interview made such a huge splash because Jonathan Swan didn't attempt to help Trump's illusion.

He reacted with appropriate bafflement and horror.

This is how EVERYONE feels about Trump, but the myth prevents us from accepting that obvious truth.

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Throughout his career, Trump has taken advantage of the American Myths of meritocracy. He's used our preconceived notions against us as he failed and failed and failed his way to the White House.

We must disabuse ourselves of the myth, see through its veneer and find truth.

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None of this is normal.

Trump's presidency is a disaster and has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans and left us in ruin.

We can't continue to treat this like it's normal or like his delusions have any basis in reality. It's well past time to see the horror.

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