But the presence of the novel coronavirus, the force of natural disaster, the reckoning with racism have all made it harder to hide inside the meager Potemkin village of Trumpism and has forced a reckoning between reality and delusion.
A high school teacher in a southwest Iowa town that’s a Republican stronghold called me to tell me about the kids and families in her school, struggling to reconcile their maskless worldview with the realities of the infection.
“Kids keep disappearing from school, no one is talking about why,” she said. “People with the virus are encouraged not to get tested so they don’t ruin it for everyone else.” It’s a cognitive dissonance that both hides from reality while acknowledging that it is there.
The teacher spoke to me on the condition of anonymity. She could get fired for talking about the reality she lives with every day. Her school’s message is essentially “this is the truth, let’s never speak of it again.”
This delusion has always been popular among Trump’s supporters — like blaming immigrants for a loss in jobs and a rise in crime in 2016. It had a wider appeal because it is easier to blame others for your misery when another party is in control. But that message isn’t nearly as contagious when Republicans have controlled the levers of government for four years, cutting off the flow of immigrants, and yet for the majority of Americans things are worse.
It’s hard to hide from that reality when school kids wear masks. Businesses are closing, and President Trump, who has covid-19, was put on supplemental oxygen to keep him breathing long enough to tell us that everything is fine. Just fine.
Even as the president suffers from the disease, sympathy and support for him are not increasing. This unwillingness to reckon with reality is why only 12 percent of people polled say they trust the information from the White House. That lack of trust shouldn’t be surprising. But it is, mostly because of what it reveals: Beyond his political base, Americans are no longer participating in the delusion.
Before his diagnosis, the biggest Trump news story was that the president had told Bob Woodward that he knew that the novel coronavirus was “ … also more deadly than even your strenuous flus,” all while he downplayed it — and he continues to downplay it.
He has tried to continue this charade by having his doctors give misleading statements and taking a joyride in a vehicle that potentially put hospital staff and Secret Service agents in harm’s way.
The reality of Trump’s mix of drug cocktails and his need for supplemental oxygen contradict the narrative that he has conquered the virus. It’s as if he’s kicking down his own thinly constructed reality, and frantically trying to rebuild it again.
But Trump’s narrative works if you already bought in. You can hide, too, in the shared delusion if you are rich enough and White enough not to have to face reality. But for the rest of Americans, coughing, jobless, worried and already heading to the polls in record numbers, the vision isn’t selling.
