Eight years ago, I wrote an essay about Trump’s first presidential election titled‘American Evil’. In that piece, I spoke about three broad types of Trump supporter: the dupes, the pragmatists, and the true believers. I put forward the fervent hope that people from the first two groups would come to their senses, recognize the venal, self-serving depravity of the man and his administration, and never ever do anything as idiotic as vote for him again.
Clearly, that was naïve.
My naivety somewhat reflects that of many progressives. It seemed so glaringly obvious that a second Trump term would be such a horrifying disaster that we did not sufficiently engage with the conversation to make that case.
From day one of Biden’s term, there was a steady campaign of propaganda that spun him as incompetent, old, feeble, dangerously radical, and anti-American.
This is the playbook at the heart of American Evil - cynical myth-making around a distorted view of patriotism, freedom, religiosity, and violence (masquerading as ‘fighting for freedom’) - all with a straight-talking’ tone that portrays itself as factually authoritative, based in common sense, and with a hyper-entitled context that says “this is the way it is and always has been - this is America!”.
In reality, it’s utterly driven by Bullshitting - the act of saying anything (even in court, even under oath) to achieve political objectives. This could be to bully others, to provide a test of loyalty to ‘test’ your underlings, or even to just insist that people adhere to your version of the truth even if it starkly contradicts observable reality.
In its current form, the most disturbing aspect of the current regime is how this appetite for bullshit is very well tolerated by American society as a whole. This problem is described in detail in this piece on the ‘public notice’ Substack. They describe the administration’s approach to bullshit as ‘cognitive irresponsibility’- which is, to my mind, overly ornate and far, far too polite. It’s just bullshit, and we should call it out as such.
Trumpy Bullshit is now endemic. We have been inoculated to it to such a degree so that we’re either exhausted and resigned on the left or emboldened and overconfident on the right.
Combine an effective political campaign, the repurposing of widely used information networks for propaganda, a decade of continuous scrutiny with no repercussions and you have the current iteration of American Evil. Combine that with Elon Musk’s perfidious influence and you have the current disastrous blend of kleptocracy, oligararchy, and god knows what else in the months to come.
At its heart, American Evil is simply about deception, raw privilege and power. This is notably driven entirely by bullshit, and so the way out of it may well be driven by improving our search for truth.
Yuval Noah Harari’s latest book Nexus is pitch perfect in this discussion. He makes the point that information generally serves two, orthogonal purposes: truth and/or power.
Truth is hard. It is difficult to put together, hard to understand, and likely uncomfortable to confront. Power is easier. It is driven by storytelling, and tailoring the information you provide to some purpose. It aligns with money and usually has no difficulty amplifying its signal.
Hard-hitting investigative journalism that exposes government corruption by surfacing hidden facts centers on truth. Politically manufactured narratives that distort reality to serve a narrow purpose (such as Trump’s entire narrative about immigration) center on power.
All areas of life that involve human knowledge mix truth and power: science is fiercely political and showcases hidden power dynamics; politics occasionally touches on profound important realities that makes a huge difference, journalism can showcase astonishing corruption or honesty.
So it’s important to look for each component separately and pay attention to the balance of the two forces at play.
The way we fight evil here is to (a) recognize where information is being used to drive power (and reduce our trust of that information in order to minimize its impact) and (b) distinguish what information is being used to uncover truth and focus on that as trustworthy.
More than ever, we need truth. It is in short supply, becoming scarcer and less empowered by the day. We need champions and societal structures as advocates but it is unclear where they may reside. Perhaps the best place to look for champions are those standing for it and being targeted by Trump for doing so - these include conservative district attorneys, democrat lawmakers, scientists, journalists, lawyers, judges, park rangers, comedians.
Find the shared conversation for truth and stand by others willing to fight for it. Only then can we save ourselves.
