Thread by @JYSexton

All right.

We have to talk about Trump, his doctors, reality being purposefully altered by Republicans, and how this represents a fascistic threat to America.

For more of this disturbing history and a way out, consult my new book AMERICAN RULE.

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penguinrandomhouse.com/books/611439/a…

I was going to write about this tomorrow, but this situation is so rapidly changing and escalating that there's no time to spare.

This madness with Trump's medical condition is the encapsulation of a decades' long war on reality by the Republican Party in order to gain power

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What you need to understand is this bizarre moment is a result of years and years of Republican efforts to discredit science and experts in order to maintain control and consolidate power.

It's created a partnership between the GOP and a fascistic movement that endangers us.

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It's this symbiotic relationship between the Republican Party, its ecosystem of propaganda, and Trumpism/fascism that has destroyed any semblance of objective reality and has put our lives at enormous risk with this pandemic as well as in regards to national security.

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To begin, we need to discuss William Simon, Richard Nixon's Treasury Secretary, who saw the writing on the wall that the Republican Party was in political danger in the 1970's.

He, like other Republicans, believed the party might become obsolete.

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Simon believed that the Left was aided by its reliance on science, experts, and reality and that any ACTUAL debate based on facts would lead to Republican ruin.

He argued Republicans needed a "counterintelligentsia," or an alternate group of facts, for political power.

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One thing you need to understand is that prior to the 1960's colleges and universities were pretty conservative and aided the state in control.

They worked for national defense and the work done among academics was largely conservative in nature.

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With the rise of the Civil Rights, Free Speech, and Anti-War Movements, universities grew more liberal and professors and schools stopped assisting in military and matters of control.

This meant experts, intellectuals, and academics were now considered anti-Republican.

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To combat facts and experts, the Right began constructing think-tanks that created their own alternate reality filled with their own politically-beneficial facts.

This is how we got Heritage, Cato, American Enterprise. They were an anti-academy academy.

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Meanwhile, wealthy Americans and corporations started paying exorbitant salaries to scientists to actively protests consensus science, including on the issue of climate change, which energy companies knew FOR DECADES was real and factual.

They muddied the water for profit.

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The anti-science, alternate reality project of the GOP found its mascot in Ronald Reagan, an actor who gained political power by attacking universities.

He championed the think-tanks and corporate institutes and presented their fake realities as true and patriotic.

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Even though he didn't understand them, Reagan touted economic ideals presented to him by these think-tanks even as experts told him they were faulty and based on bad ideas.

Reagan just smiled and did as he was told and presented the alternate reality to Americans.

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It wasn't even partisanly untrue. George H.W. Bush campaigned against Reagan's faulty ideas, calling them "voodoo economics."

It was a myth, a total lie, but it enabled the GOP to create a massive redistribution of wealth that was sold on falsehoods.

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Later, the Right would stand triumphant in this alternate reality, but pushed the envelope as the GOP and NRA vilified opponents as socialist tyrants determined to destroy the country and steal Americans' guns.

It was an escalation in this alternate world.

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In the post-USSR/post-Reagan world, the Right added the new mythology of the New World Order conspiracy theory, attacking anyone who touted science and consensus scientific opinion as liars and traitors working to hurt America and help its enemies.

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These lies and this fabricated reality helped the GOP gain electoral power, all by giving men like Newt Gingrich a conspiracy theory they could "defeat" and then further top-down economic strategies.

It was all a lie to win elections and rig the system.

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New media helped the Right construct this alternate reality and made it impenetrable after Reagan knocked down the Fairness Doctrine that ensured radio and TV could air unchallenged propaganda around the clock.

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Fox News is the realization of this projection, a broadcast from an alternate reality tailored to help the GOP and its moneyed interests.

It is the airing of New World Order propaganda around the clock and radicalizes white Americans terrified of these conspiracies.

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This carefully crafted alternate reality radicalized the Republican Party, leading to ridiculous stunts and pseudoscience that denies climate change and claims anyone warning of imminent crisis is a traitor trying to either profit or destroy the country itself.

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Only in this alternate reality could a man like Donald Trump come to power.

Trump is a fraud, a failed businessman who surrounds himself with the trappings of wealth in order to fool people into living into his own constructed reality.

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Trump's background mirrors the GOP's, including a reliance on a perverted Christianity that promotes wealth and power as denotations of God's will.

This world relies on the same weaponized reality as the Republican illusion and is swimming with conspiracies and quackery.

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Trump is not religious, but has a background in the Prosperity Gospel and grew up in Norman Vincent Peale's Power of Positive Thinking gospel.

This is magical thinking, this idea that an individual or group can alter reality to their own benefit.

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It is because of Peale's Positive Thinking doctrine that Trump tries to project a constant image of positivity in regards to his situation.

It is a reliance on the malleability of reality, or a belief that one can attract positive outcomes by believing in them.

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This perversion of Christianity puts the individual next to Christ, as we have seen with Trumpism and the Cult of Trump so far.

It means the individual, especially the wealthy individual, can embody the will of God himself and the universe.

They can become a god.

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It was an inevitability that the GOP, with their weaponized reality, and Donald Trump with his narcissistic reality, would come together to form a toxic partnership.

And it was sadly inevitable we would suffer from it on a massive scale.

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We must recognize Trumpism is fascism.

When an authoritarian coopts a religion, a political movement, and subjects the world to his "deeper truth" that is beyond facts, science, or evidence, that is a fascistic cult.

And fascists will do anything to preserve their reality.

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Given domination over the political system, fascists institute "patriotic education" so that individuals will be indoctrinated into their chosen, fabricated reality beginning in their childhood.

This positions them in the cult from the earliest age and keeps them in.

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In regards to the malleability of reality, Trump has shown a keen understanding of it in regards to his wealth.

He knows it can fluctuate or be made to fluctuate based on what he needs. He understands reality is fluid and subject to control.

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Fascists require those loyal to them to live in this altered reality without question, and anyone who does question it is subjected to intimidation, violence, and, if they persist, will either be removed or disappeared.

Fascism is a war over reality. Pure and simple.

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The reason fascists rely on paramilitary street thugs and extremist terrorists is so that protesters and dissenters will be met with asynchronous violence and intimidation.

People can still *have* rights as long as they're afraid to use those rights.

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This situation with Trump's health is a perfect example of how these altered, fascist realities lead to confusing moments of open propaganda and outright lying.

We're on the outside looking in at a movement that is trying like hell to coopt society and make us all prisoners

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The point of fascism is to rely on dying myths of nationalist exceptionalism and to coopt movements that are opposed to liberal democracy and democratic institutions.

Trumpism/fascism is a perfect match for the Republican Party and what it's become.

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Now, with the GOP completely absorbed in a reality that has nothing to do with the one we all live in, and Trumpism/fascism dependent on that reality for consolidation of power, nothing is safe.

Not science. Not facts. Not democracy.

It's a perfect storm.

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Right now, this madness with Trump's doctors lying and obfuscating his condition feels bizarre, but this is what it feels like as the illusion is becoming apparent and is threatening to spread to society at large.

It's a flicker that makes the lie transparent.

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We have to disabuse ourselves of these myths while realizing the reality the GOP has made isn't just fake, it's a bad faith weaponization that has taken place over decades and has put us all at great risk.

The only antidote to all of this madness is truth and community.

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If you want more info, check out AMERICAN RULE and this lecture series that gets into the background of the myth and how it's been used by the Right for political power and profit.

We're at a very crucial moment. Don't let this fake reality win.

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