It’s not just the constant lying, it’s the tone too - every day I’m exposed to the stupidest thing I’ve ever read or heard, delivered in a tone of contemptuous condescension
This. trump's team of sycophants talks down to the public as if they assume their supporters are stupid and the rest of us don't deserve a rational explanation of their actions.
This is the most important essay you have written in a while.
Maybe not the main point, but I think this is what gets at what is so wrong-headed and unimiganitve about the response of "moderate" Democrats and commentators since Trump's election in 2024. They all act as if we are living in the aftermath of the 1988 or 2004 election and that Dems need to "reach out to (normal) Americans" and "moderate".
But what their triangulation is doing/does in this new, non-comparable moment is justify MAGA as "having a point" and thus ratifying their lie. There is no need to engage their perspectives in good faith; in fact, there is an obligation to not do so.
I'd follow up to say that what the non-MAGA people who attempt to be "civil" and engage in good faith are doing is assuming MAGA is like previous Republican presidencies, even very conservative ones.
But this just totally misreads the moment and shows a lack of imagination and awareness.
The difficulty I have is figuring out how to deal with people who live the lie (in this case, Trump supporters) in day-to-day social situations. I’ve previously shared articles and tried to point out falsehoods civilly. I feel done with that approach now. What I really want to say is: fuck off—I’m done with this and with anyone who supports this shit. Of course, if I do that, I’m suddenly the one tearing apart the social fabric of, say, my kids’ soccer club, and all of a sudden I’m the asshole.
Thanks for this analysis of a truly debilitating condition. During the first Trump term (which was far less egregious), I had to rid myself of a mental reflex so that I wouldn't make myself crazy.
When Trump or a MAGA figure would do or say something outlandish, my brain would run the mental exercise of thinking "just imagine if Obama [or Clinton or Pelosi, etc] did that––if they did, the same MAGA voices would howl like banshees to denounce it."
It was obviously true, so it felt "right" to think so. But at a certain point in sunk in that the key MAGA point was that reciprocity didn't matter. The whole political achievement was the defeat of a rules-based governance. It wasn't about hypocrisy, either; the new ruling rationality was that MAGA-aligned people have license to do and say things that liberals and leftists do not.
Re the ICE murder: I can’t get past the combination of cruelty and incompetence: if the car is coming at you, step out of the way. And btw—release the Epstein files.
I sometimes think about this regime’s incessant lying in relation to why even comedy doesn’t seem to work anymore, and it kind of touches on your conversation with Barkan.
Very much unlike even the Bush/Cheney era, there’s nothing and nowhere free of Trumpism’s poison - even someone telling jokes will have the state after them. Denmark and Canada are threatened. An unarmed woman is gunned down by a government goon and Vance shitposts about it, slanders the dead woman.
There’s nothing they won’t lie about, nothing is left untouched, uncontaminated by them - they’re even pro-active, enthusiastic about it - they *enjoy* it.
Every single relationship the regime has - with its own citizens, with foreign states (except Israel and the Gulf) - is defined by coercion, threats, and lies. There’s nothing outside that frame, ever. The only people they celebrate are killers and criminals, the very existence of ordinary decency is a rebuke to them, so they can’t leave anything alone, their lies seek it out. It’s the ‘everywhereness’ of their lies, the inescapability of them.
What gets me is that there is a large chunk of the population who is eager to be lied to, who lap it up, who are enthusiastic gobblers of bullshit. Nobody forces them to watch Fox or read Musk's X posts, they actually like that stuff. They like living in the lie, maybe they are addicted ot it. While it is possible to escape the lies, you have to want to, and some people just don't.
Some days I am motivated by their sheer vulgarity and lack of imagination. Foucault would blush at this ham-handed, smooth-brained effort from the AZ state legislature (https://www.azleg.gov/legtext/57leg/2R/bills/SB1070P.pdf):
A. The director of the department of health services shall conduct or support research to advance the understanding of Trump Derangement Syndrome, including its origins, manifestations and long-term effects on individuals, communities and public discourse.
B. The research conducted prescribed by subsection A of this section shall include:
1. Efforts to identify the initial emergence or earliest documented cases of Trump Derangement Syndrome, including historical and social analyses to trace the onset.
2. An investigation of the long-term psychological, social or behavioral impacts of Trump Derangement Syndrome on affected individuals, communities or public discourse.
3. An analysis of contributing factors, such as media exposure, political polarization or social dynamics, to the development or spread of Trump Derangement Syndrome.
4. Exploration of potential interventions or strategies to mitigate or prevent Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Truly amazing. Thanks for flagging this. It shows the lengths that maga will go to eliminate resistance even if this does t actually pass. Scary stuff.
“Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.
In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols.
We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.”
Been trying to put this sentiment into words for the longest time. Highly agree re: Bari Weiss -- the idea that Weiss and her ilk are serious people asking serious questions fills me with so much rage; why must we pretend they are doing anything except covering for Trump!
I occasionally go over to TFP just to see how they're spinning things. You'll find phrases like this 'Mayor Frey set the ugly tone in a now-famous press conference.' (https://www.thefp.com/p/the-right-response-to-the-minneapolis) but from what I can tell (via an LLM query) nowhere did they ever mention the Trump AI video dumping shit on protestors. So moral opprobrium for a mayor, but a pass for POTUS. This is the kind of sneaky shit they do and try to spin as above it all reasonableness. Also, laughably, today's headline is: At Last, The Truth About Food.
The official lies are shocking, crude and North Korean in their brazen absurdity. But the gobsmacking avidity with which MAGA and the bulk of the Republican Congress seem to accept them is simply intolerable.
The depraved indifference and supine cowardice of these Republican politicians is no longer just a matter of Senators behaving like sold out rent boys but has become a very real issue of US national security. The administration invades Venezuela and seriously threatens to invade Greenland, a NATO ally, not for purported security reasons but for oil and mineral resources; Trump's ICE "brown-shirts" gun down American citizens in their neighborhoods and then calls the victim, a young mother of three, a "terrorist" - but for MAGA today is just another day that ends in -y.
Voluntary associations are the life-blood of any democracy but effective counter-weights to MAGA seem vanishingly rare. #No Kings is the lady's auxiliary and about as effective as the Democratic Party is competent compared to the militias, activist groups and paramilitary formations Trump's MAGA cultists leverage to terrorize Congress and anyone at odds with the Supreme Leader.
It's going to be a very long three years and I don't know if we'll make it. How does one live in such a regime?
I don't know John, perhaps I just need something to do with my hands.
I'm afraid this is where we are. It's baffling to me that someone like Stephen Miller can get within shouting distance of the WH without being arrested. I just keep wondering when the resistance that should be in the streets at this point is going to appear. No fan of Walz but activating the State Emergency Operations Center and threat to call out the National Guard in MN seems like the first beefy counter-threat wielded against the administration's thugs.
I think it's really time to start thinking about an under-the-radar movement for a series of general strikes. May 1st 2026 is a Friday, that would be a good day for a test run.
I was talking to my brother about that some time ago. Haven't a clue how that would get organized - the French seem to be good at it. They still have unions tho.
While I don't have anything alleviating to say about our current conditions, I think the demoralization noted here (which I feel keenly and heavily every day) is actually an analyzable "thing", although an intangible--and thus easy to slip out of analyzable attention. It would belong to the (historical, not psychological) study of sensibilities which is different from the study of emotions (although related to it), that latter having recently enjoyed a widespread appeal among social scientists. The study of sensibilities (akin to the "mentalités" studies of the French Annales School of History) is not simply about how one feels within themselves psychologically, but about how shared culture, including sentiment, works in the public social sphere, affecting all sorts of doings--and is thus about more than any individual. For some examples of what I am talking about, there are these (for those who are interested and can get access to them):
"What Is the History of Sensibilities? On Cultural Histories, Old and New" by Daniel Wickberg, The American Historical Review, Jun 2007, Vol. 112, No. 3, pp. 661-684
"Capitalism and the Origins of the Humanitarian Sensibility Part 1" by Thomas L. Haskell, The American Historical Review, Apr 1985, Vol. 90, No. 2, pp. 339-361
"Capitalism and the Origins of the Humanitarian Sensibility, Part 2" by Thomas L. Haskell. The American Historical Review, Jun 1985, Vol. 90, No. 3, pp. 547-566
I used to think that the great intangible that required being considered a "thing"/socio-cultural force for analysis was "awareness"--as that has grown in its checkered way in contemporary times--especially with the rise of the internet. But now I think that the intangible of sensibilities are "things"/socio-cultural forces as well, worthy of their own explicit focus. The demoralization discussed in this piece here is widely felt as I see in everyone around me. It governs many of the decisions of people I know, such as fatalism about voting, refusal to have children, overwhelming fears of scams and not being able to determine what is real, obsessive living for the moment only, and general depression and hopelessness--and all this makes our culture what it is now. Alas--demoralization is not just a private feeling but a socio-cultural force of our time. But still--as John concludes--it is important to keep trying to resist the lies and the demoralization they bring. I try in many little ways. So far, no big success but to stop is to invite yet more demoralization.
It’s not just the constant lying, it’s the tone too - every day I’m exposed to the stupidest thing I’ve ever read or heard, delivered in a tone of contemptuous condescension
This. trump's team of sycophants talks down to the public as if they assume their supporters are stupid and the rest of us don't deserve a rational explanation of their actions.
...and, sometimes, with a preposterous hat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWjBNBPdgjc
In fairness, the hats are the least preposterous thing about Krusti Gnome's Nazi Barbie act
first rule of "book club":
if people are out in the street today. get out in the street with them.
This is the most important essay you have written in a while.
Maybe not the main point, but I think this is what gets at what is so wrong-headed and unimiganitve about the response of "moderate" Democrats and commentators since Trump's election in 2024. They all act as if we are living in the aftermath of the 1988 or 2004 election and that Dems need to "reach out to (normal) Americans" and "moderate".
But what their triangulation is doing/does in this new, non-comparable moment is justify MAGA as "having a point" and thus ratifying their lie. There is no need to engage their perspectives in good faith; in fact, there is an obligation to not do so.
I'd follow up to say that what the non-MAGA people who attempt to be "civil" and engage in good faith are doing is assuming MAGA is like previous Republican presidencies, even very conservative ones.
But this just totally misreads the moment and shows a lack of imagination and awareness.
The difficulty I have is figuring out how to deal with people who live the lie (in this case, Trump supporters) in day-to-day social situations. I’ve previously shared articles and tried to point out falsehoods civilly. I feel done with that approach now. What I really want to say is: fuck off—I’m done with this and with anyone who supports this shit. Of course, if I do that, I’m suddenly the one tearing apart the social fabric of, say, my kids’ soccer club, and all of a sudden I’m the asshole.
Exactly.
Thanks for this analysis of a truly debilitating condition. During the first Trump term (which was far less egregious), I had to rid myself of a mental reflex so that I wouldn't make myself crazy.
When Trump or a MAGA figure would do or say something outlandish, my brain would run the mental exercise of thinking "just imagine if Obama [or Clinton or Pelosi, etc] did that––if they did, the same MAGA voices would howl like banshees to denounce it."
It was obviously true, so it felt "right" to think so. But at a certain point in sunk in that the key MAGA point was that reciprocity didn't matter. The whole political achievement was the defeat of a rules-based governance. It wasn't about hypocrisy, either; the new ruling rationality was that MAGA-aligned people have license to do and say things that liberals and leftists do not.
Re the ICE murder: I can’t get past the combination of cruelty and incompetence: if the car is coming at you, step out of the way. And btw—release the Epstein files.
I sometimes think about this regime’s incessant lying in relation to why even comedy doesn’t seem to work anymore, and it kind of touches on your conversation with Barkan.
Very much unlike even the Bush/Cheney era, there’s nothing and nowhere free of Trumpism’s poison - even someone telling jokes will have the state after them. Denmark and Canada are threatened. An unarmed woman is gunned down by a government goon and Vance shitposts about it, slanders the dead woman.
There’s nothing they won’t lie about, nothing is left untouched, uncontaminated by them - they’re even pro-active, enthusiastic about it - they *enjoy* it.
Every single relationship the regime has - with its own citizens, with foreign states (except Israel and the Gulf) - is defined by coercion, threats, and lies. There’s nothing outside that frame, ever. The only people they celebrate are killers and criminals, the very existence of ordinary decency is a rebuke to them, so they can’t leave anything alone, their lies seek it out. It’s the ‘everywhereness’ of their lies, the inescapability of them.
I needed this today, this reminder that we needn’t participate in our own oppression. Thank you, John.
Amen to all of that.
What gets me is that there is a large chunk of the population who is eager to be lied to, who lap it up, who are enthusiastic gobblers of bullshit. Nobody forces them to watch Fox or read Musk's X posts, they actually like that stuff. They like living in the lie, maybe they are addicted ot it. While it is possible to escape the lies, you have to want to, and some people just don't.
Some days I am motivated by their sheer vulgarity and lack of imagination. Foucault would blush at this ham-handed, smooth-brained effort from the AZ state legislature (https://www.azleg.gov/legtext/57leg/2R/bills/SB1070P.pdf):
A. The director of the department of health services shall conduct or support research to advance the understanding of Trump Derangement Syndrome, including its origins, manifestations and long-term effects on individuals, communities and public discourse.
B. The research conducted prescribed by subsection A of this section shall include:
1. Efforts to identify the initial emergence or earliest documented cases of Trump Derangement Syndrome, including historical and social analyses to trace the onset.
2. An investigation of the long-term psychological, social or behavioral impacts of Trump Derangement Syndrome on affected individuals, communities or public discourse.
3. An analysis of contributing factors, such as media exposure, political polarization or social dynamics, to the development or spread of Trump Derangement Syndrome.
4. Exploration of potential interventions or strategies to mitigate or prevent Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Truly amazing. Thanks for flagging this. It shows the lengths that maga will go to eliminate resistance even if this does t actually pass. Scary stuff.
Thank you John. I love your writing.
“Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.
In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols.
We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.”
— Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies
Been trying to put this sentiment into words for the longest time. Highly agree re: Bari Weiss -- the idea that Weiss and her ilk are serious people asking serious questions fills me with so much rage; why must we pretend they are doing anything except covering for Trump!
I occasionally go over to TFP just to see how they're spinning things. You'll find phrases like this 'Mayor Frey set the ugly tone in a now-famous press conference.' (https://www.thefp.com/p/the-right-response-to-the-minneapolis) but from what I can tell (via an LLM query) nowhere did they ever mention the Trump AI video dumping shit on protestors. So moral opprobrium for a mayor, but a pass for POTUS. This is the kind of sneaky shit they do and try to spin as above it all reasonableness. Also, laughably, today's headline is: At Last, The Truth About Food.
The official lies are shocking, crude and North Korean in their brazen absurdity. But the gobsmacking avidity with which MAGA and the bulk of the Republican Congress seem to accept them is simply intolerable.
The depraved indifference and supine cowardice of these Republican politicians is no longer just a matter of Senators behaving like sold out rent boys but has become a very real issue of US national security. The administration invades Venezuela and seriously threatens to invade Greenland, a NATO ally, not for purported security reasons but for oil and mineral resources; Trump's ICE "brown-shirts" gun down American citizens in their neighborhoods and then calls the victim, a young mother of three, a "terrorist" - but for MAGA today is just another day that ends in -y.
Voluntary associations are the life-blood of any democracy but effective counter-weights to MAGA seem vanishingly rare. #No Kings is the lady's auxiliary and about as effective as the Democratic Party is competent compared to the militias, activist groups and paramilitary formations Trump's MAGA cultists leverage to terrorize Congress and anyone at odds with the Supreme Leader.
It's going to be a very long three years and I don't know if we'll make it. How does one live in such a regime?
(My rant for the day)
I think this attitude is defeatist and wrong, I'm sorry.
I don't know John, perhaps I just need something to do with my hands.
I'm afraid this is where we are. It's baffling to me that someone like Stephen Miller can get within shouting distance of the WH without being arrested. I just keep wondering when the resistance that should be in the streets at this point is going to appear. No fan of Walz but activating the State Emergency Operations Center and threat to call out the National Guard in MN seems like the first beefy counter-threat wielded against the administration's thugs.
I think it's really time to start thinking about an under-the-radar movement for a series of general strikes. May 1st 2026 is a Friday, that would be a good day for a test run.
I was talking to my brother about that some time ago. Haven't a clue how that would get organized - the French seem to be good at it. They still have unions tho.
Why "under the radar"?
John, I mean this unironically: thank you for going on twitter so I don’t have to. ❤️
Agree, I also think it's good that liberals don't cede these spaces.
While I don't have anything alleviating to say about our current conditions, I think the demoralization noted here (which I feel keenly and heavily every day) is actually an analyzable "thing", although an intangible--and thus easy to slip out of analyzable attention. It would belong to the (historical, not psychological) study of sensibilities which is different from the study of emotions (although related to it), that latter having recently enjoyed a widespread appeal among social scientists. The study of sensibilities (akin to the "mentalités" studies of the French Annales School of History) is not simply about how one feels within themselves psychologically, but about how shared culture, including sentiment, works in the public social sphere, affecting all sorts of doings--and is thus about more than any individual. For some examples of what I am talking about, there are these (for those who are interested and can get access to them):
"What Is the History of Sensibilities? On Cultural Histories, Old and New" by Daniel Wickberg, The American Historical Review, Jun 2007, Vol. 112, No. 3, pp. 661-684
"Capitalism and the Origins of the Humanitarian Sensibility Part 1" by Thomas L. Haskell, The American Historical Review, Apr 1985, Vol. 90, No. 2, pp. 339-361
"Capitalism and the Origins of the Humanitarian Sensibility, Part 2" by Thomas L. Haskell. The American Historical Review, Jun 1985, Vol. 90, No. 3, pp. 547-566
I used to think that the great intangible that required being considered a "thing"/socio-cultural force for analysis was "awareness"--as that has grown in its checkered way in contemporary times--especially with the rise of the internet. But now I think that the intangible of sensibilities are "things"/socio-cultural forces as well, worthy of their own explicit focus. The demoralization discussed in this piece here is widely felt as I see in everyone around me. It governs many of the decisions of people I know, such as fatalism about voting, refusal to have children, overwhelming fears of scams and not being able to determine what is real, obsessive living for the moment only, and general depression and hopelessness--and all this makes our culture what it is now. Alas--demoralization is not just a private feeling but a socio-cultural force of our time. But still--as John concludes--it is important to keep trying to resist the lies and the demoralization they bring. I try in many little ways. So far, no big success but to stop is to invite yet more demoralization.