The truly lethal effect of Trumpism may be it becoming yet another Lost Cause:
Trumpism has already become a lethal Lost Cause. It does not quite have martyrs and a cult of the fallen in which to root its hopes and dreams. But it does have a self-destructive cult leader about to leave power in a defeat that has been transformed into a narrative of betrayal, resistance and a promise of political revitalization.
The story demands a religious loyalty. It must be protected, reinforced, practiced in ritual and infused with symbols. What is the Trumpian claim of a stolen election but an elaborate fiction that fights to make the reality and truth of the unbelievers irrelevant. Some myths are benign as cultural markers; but others are rooted in big lies so strong as engines of resentment that they can fill parade grounds and endless political rallies, or motivate the storming of the U.S. Capitol in a quixotic attempt to overthrow an election.
Mr. Trump’s Lost Cause takes its fuel from conspiratorial myths of all
kinds, rehearsed for years on Trump media and social media platforms.
Its guiding theories include: Christianity under duress and attack;
large corrupt cities full of Black and brown people manipulated by
liberal elites; Barack Obama as alien; a socialist movement determined
to tax you into subservience to “big government”; liberal media out to
crush family and conservative values; universities and schools teaching
the young a history that hates America; resentment of nonwhite
immigrants who threaten a particular national vision; and whatever
hideous new version of a civil religion QAnon represents.
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