This is what it is. It’s not even a legitimate political cause. It’s essentially people who are trying to live out a fantasy, consumed as entertainment. It’s a fantasy which they have built on narratives from film and TV, delivered to them by Trump, Limbaugh, Fox, etc.
They fantasize that they are “patriots,” or Dirty Harry, or commandoes, or whatever, and it’s the final scene from the movie where they prevail over the “bad guys.” It’s a fantasy that they desperately pursue, attempting to make their meaningless lives important.
I call it make-believism. They make themselves believe all of this, and Trump provides them the narratives they need. He isn’t the first: Limbaugh, Gingrich, Cruz et al have been doing it for a long time already. But they were never as good at it as Trump. In his case, it has become the ONLY thing he knows how to do–it’s the fundamental basis of his con game as a fake president. He’s melded it into his constant, attention-whoring act, and spews these bullshit narratives without even thinking.
Make-believism isn’t anything new. It’s the underlying mechanism of all cults, and in that way, this is essentially a cult. It’s also the mechanism driving conspiracy theorists. They fantasize that they are the one person in the movie who is able to find out the real truth (about whatever), and no one believes them until the end, when they save they day. Mass shooters, too, are make-believers. They make themselves believe they are the one hero in the movie who finds himself the only good person in a whole community of evil, and in these movies, the hero always has to shoot his way out in the end.
These are all people who desperately want to be the protagonist of a movie script, to make their little lives more important. Not all make-believers are necessarily driven by political or social ideals, but in Trump’s case, the script perfectly fits their racist and ethno-nationalist impulses, and he very deliberately cultivates that–(much better than Cruz was able to, though Cruz still is trying). Just like in any cult, their motivation isn’t going to be swayed by rational reasoning or facts, or by pointing out the contradictions in their leaders’ statements, or his blatant corruption, or his purely self-serving actions. All they want is a narrative, where they can make themselves believe that they are the hero.
Make-believism really isn’t anything particularly new. There have always been people who fantasize like Walter Mitty. And it isn’t the sole provenance of the political right. It can be the mechanism motivating people of all political stripes and social dispositions. But–starting with Rush Limbaugh and other talk radio–for the last four decades the right wing has been skillfully leveraging it and exploiting it. It has become its most effective tool for attracting people who really otherwise have no reason to embrace their political ideology.
But what’s really new is that online communications have changed everything in the world of make-believers. From Facebook to 8chan they now have echo-chambers which amplify their fantasies and validate them (in their view), to the point where taking action becomes easily justified and facilitated. Instead of a brother or sister saying, “Dude, what the fuck are you thinking,” they just have endless reverberations of their own sad self-exaltations.
In no way would I ever minimize the damage they have done, (and which such people do in general), but at bottom these are bozos. They have no clue what they would do if they actually could take control of the Capital, because their movie script doesn’t go that far. In this sense, they don’t even deserve the title “insurrectionists,” They’re just bozos, who managed to cause a lot of harm.
People have to stop wringing their hands and expose these make-believers for what they are: children playing cowboys and Indians who got their hands onto real weapons. They need to be slapped in the face, and told to sit in the corner. They need to be mocked and ridiculed, to the point where they’ll finally be embarrassed to show their faces, and where they finally realize that they are not heroes in some movie but just pathetic losers.
That’s what the media should be doing, but instead, the media are just amplifying these losers by focusing on the fear they caused in the moment, which only gratifies them, and will encourage them to do more of this. They did the same thing with with Trump, which only made him more appealing to these losers. I can’t believe they’re doing it again.