It’s hard to conceptualise how terrifying US political discourse is at the moment unless you’re in the country. It is harder still to grasp whether a cohesive national narrative exists considering how disparate, disconnected and untethered from reality political discourse has become. In New York, where I currently am, there are flashes of the political danger gripping the country. There’s the fact that the incumbent Democrat governor, Kathy Hochul, is not comfortably ahead of the Trumpist Republican candidate, Lee Zeldin, a man who objected to certifying Joe Biden’s election victory. There’s the increasingly wild attack ads, roaring about “extreme liberals” when it comes to candidates who are essentially ordinary centrists. There’s the nervousness about a red wave which, although Democrats outnumber Republicans here by more than two to one, will probably see Republicans flip a few House of Representative seats currently held by Democrats in the state.
New York isn’t just about New York City. It’s about Hudson Valley, Long Island, Poughkeepsie, Westchester County. It’s about the conservative voters who are responding to Republican candidates who are not focusing on protecting democracy, but on crime and the cost of living. And it’s also about a broader narrative that people of all political persuasions believe: the country is going to hell in handbasket. From a Democrat perspective, this fear is well-founded. Threats to democracy, the rolling back of rights and freedoms, and the Jumanji-like unleashing of extremist Republicanism that Trump encouraged, are very real. From a Republican perspective, and most certainly the extremist end of Maga Republicanism, this fear is made up of a broad set of fantasies, conspiracies and moral panics, which are in themselves enflaming division and polarisation.
If you are already in the Maga rabbit hole, you’re not going to care about democracy being dismantled, even though it’s the most important thing at stake in the US today
So what does a country do when so many voters and politicians are increasingly untethered from reality? Some of the Republican politicians driving this narrative are doing so intentionally in bad faith, seeking to gain political capital and power by riding shotgun to madness, fear, bigotry and rage. Others appear genuinely fascistic and frighteningly delusional.
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The narrative about how the Democrats messed up their messaging – focusing on the small matters of democracy and bodily autonomy – is true and not true. If you are already in the Maga rabbit hole, you’re not going to care about democracy being dismantled, even though it’s the most important thing at stake in the US today, because you are living in an alternate universe. While religious fundamentalism makes curtailing abortion rights a desire for some (too many), the majority of Americans (61 per cent according to Pew Research Centre this year) think abortion should be legal. It appears that perhaps only when it’s literally on the ballot does it drive voting in a tangible and targeted way.
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In the Kansas abortion referendum in August, for example, pro-choice voters were mobilised in a very conservative state. The same goes for Michigan, where abortion rights are also on the ballot, alongside a governor’s race between an incumbent Democrat, Gretchen Whitmer, and a Republican, Tudor Dixon, who has promoted various conspiracy theories, such as suggesting the pandemic was a Democratic Party plot. Conspiracy theorists used to be laughed at, now they’re running for office, at scale.
In 2016, all of this craziness orientated around Trump, but now, there is a tapas of madness for voters to choose from
If there’s one word to describe these midterms elections, it’s “unhinged”. Fears abound about Trump running in 2024, but Trumpism will outlast Trump. The disconnection from reality, the lying, the collapse of meaning, the conspiracy theories, the cult-like fervour, the extremism, the bigotry, the shock factor, the disinformation on social media, the sense of chaos – it’s all head-spinning stuff.
The facade that keeps things ticking along is the economy. It’s remarkable how all of this insanity can exist in the political sphere, but the US economy can override it if people still have jobs, and can still pay for things. Things that feel utterly disparate can coexist. If you’re in New York, what can you really do about the Arizona midterms, for example? Because in that universe, armed men camped out at an early-voting station intimidating voters; Republican governor candidate Kari Lake is ambiguous about whether she’ll accept the results if she doesn’t win; Peter Thiel – the multimillionaire libertarian venture capitalist – is backing the Republican Senate candidate, Blake Masters; and uncertainty is sowed about electronic voting machines. But Arizona is far away, about the same distance from Manhattan as Marrakesh is from Cork. These are midterms about disconnection and distance; from one place to another, and from truth to lies.
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In 2016, all of this craziness orientated around Trump, but now, there is a tapas of madness for voters to choose from, underscored by a national education issue when it comes to media literacy and critical thinking, and how preoccupied people are by manufactured “culture wars”, which grew in potency alongside, funnily enough, the rise of social media since the Obama era. Joe Biden can make all the speeches about democracy-in-danger he wants, and he’s right to do so, but when truth doesn’t matter, when alternate silos create bubbles of disinformation, when political violence is a threat – from the Capitol attack of January 2021, to Nancy Pelosi’s husband being beaten with a hammer in his home – when fundamentalism is mainstream, it’s not just democracy that’s being dismantled, it’s reality itself.