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Less than two months before the presidential election, it seems as though both sides ought to be scratching their heads over how this is still a close race.
Let’s start with the Republicans. They are convinced that their candidate, Donald Trump, is the greatest president in history and oversaw unprecedented prosperity. Evidently shielded by the loving embrace of God, the only reason why he is not in office now is that an insidious cabal stole the last election from him.
They also believe that his opponent, Kamala Harris, is a communist Marxist fascist who has no plan whatsoever… apart from destroying the country. It took her only days to completely dismantle that awesome economy, and she has since turned the United States into a lawless hellscape in which Black people eat abducted pets.
In addition, Harris is solely responsible for high prices and millions of immigrants flooding across the border, neither of which are things that voters like.
So, why isn’t he absolutely crushing her?
And what about the Democrats?
After ridding themselves of a mentally and physically diminished incumbent, they now have a champion the party actually feels enthusiastic about. Harris can raise seemingly unlimited amounts of money and just won the only debate between the two candidates by baiting her opponent into sounding crazy.
Speaking of, her opponent is a mentally ill near-octogenarian. Which mental illness? Take your pick. Malignant narcissism, compulsive lying, sociopathy… there is a bit of everything.
Unable to string two sentences together or formulate a coherent thought, he has the impulse control of a toddler and loves dictators.
In addition, Harris’s opponent has run for president twice before, lost the popular vote by millions each time, and only won once because of the Electoral College system, which favors Republicans.
When he couldn’t win reelection, he tried a coup and failed.
Oh, he is also an adjudicated rapist, has admitted to sexually assaulting women, is a convicted felon, and faces additional criminal charges ranging from obstruction of justice and sparking an insurrection to illegally hoarding classified documents in his chandeliered bathroom (yes, for now that case has been dismissed, but don’t assume it will stay that way on appeal).
So, why hasn’t Harris vanquished this imbecile already?
Something just doesn’t add up, especially because, in the end, this won’t be a blowout for either side. Instead, this election will likely come down to a few thousand voters in a handful of states… again.
To solve this puzzle, we have to go back to the narratives for the respective parties and take another look.
And once we do that, we realize that the answer to all of these questions reveals a sickness within America that will plague the nation long after this election.
On the Republican side, the keyword is “convinced.”
If you closely re-read the three paragraphs trying to make sense of this close race from the GOP’s perspective, you realize that the narrative is not based on anything tangible but rather on the premise that what Trump tells his supporters is true.
Yes, there are some Trumpian talking points based on facts. Prices have increased quite a bit (2.5 times) more in the past three years than in the previous four. And the number of immigrants has gone up (although there are no reliable numbers).
Everything else, however, is either false or requires blind faith in Trump.
The country isn’t a hellscape, immigrants aren’t eating pets, Harris isn’t a Marxist, and the Trump economy of 2020 wasn’t all that good — and, by many measures, it is much better now.
These aren’t even good lies.
We’re not talking about fudging a few facts, or tweaking a few numbers. That’s just how politics work and both sides are doing that.
We are talking about wholesale, verifiable falsehoods.
And that doesn’t even include Trump’s dubious boasts of being the greatest at everything.
In other words, to believe that the former president should be way ahead, you need a lot of faith in one of history’s great charlatans.
It is also telling that nobody, not even Trump’s biggest supporters, is claiming that he should win in a landslide.
It’s a bit different over on the Democratic side.
Yes, you could argue that some of the things speaking in favor of a blowout win for Harris are also not based on verifiable facts… like a focus on Trump’s mental illness, which has not officially been diagnosed.
However, you can look at the definition of Marxism (or communism or fascism), and see that none of them describes the Democratic platform. Conversely, when you look at the symptoms of various mental illnesses, you realize that the former president personifies more than a few.
It’s also undeniably true that the party is now behind Harris in a way that it wasn’t when Biden seemed to be the nominee.
Trump’s popular vote losses are well documented, as are his felony conviction, the verdict against him for sexual abuse, the other indictments, and his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
You also hear a lot more from Democrats wondering why this race is close at all.
Regrettably, that question is not difficult to answer, and, even if Harris wins and Trump leaves the political stage (after undoubtedly causing a lot more trouble), it spells trouble for the US for the foreseeable future.
More than at any point in generations, Americans are living in two completely different realities. One is (largely) based on facts and tangible things, the other is (overwhelmingly) grounded in wanting to believe certain things even though there is no evidence to back them up (or even when there is blatant proof that contradicts them).
This isn’t solely a Trump thing, although he has hyper-accelerated this dichotomy.
And, while the MAGA propaganda machine is probably the main reason for this fictionalization of reality, this development goes beyond Fox News, which has been feeding its viewers an alternate reality for more than 20 years.
A big part of the problem is that large swaths of the US public have been very receptive to being fed lies and then embracing them.
As a result, lying and rejecting reality in favor of a more convenient narrative are now the price of admission to get ahead in the GOP and in the right-wing mediaverse.
There are a lot of people who think (or hope) that all of this will end with Trump (and we have noted before that defeating him soundly is the only scenario in this election that does not have very troubling consequences).
Sadly, a swift de-Trumpification of the body politic is not in the cards.
Rejecting reality is quite clearly like a drug for tens of millions of Americans. And right-wing media outlets, social media, and an entire generation of so-called leaders are gladly providing this opioid to the masses to fuel that addiction.
It will take a really long time to kick that habit… even if leading Trump followers were to admit to themselves that they have a reality problem and want to do something about that.
Alas, we are not there yet, which means that this deep-seated crisis will continue with no end in sight… and it may get worse before it gets better.
In his Navigating the Insanity columns, Klaus Marre provides the kind of hard-hitting, thought-provoking, and often humorous analysis you won’t find anywhere else.
