Trump’s not-so-secret weapon

WASHINGTON – In the prologue of his new book Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to Artificial IntelligenceYuval Noah Harari writes: “We should not assume that bullshit networks are doomed to fail.” The implications for the United States ahead of the presidential election should be clear. After all, the authoritarian Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement, of which the Republican Party is now merely a political wing, is nothing more than delusional, and a second term in office for its leader, Donald Trump, would be a disaster. .

And yet the race is neck-and-neck, with polls showing Trump’s support at about 50 percent—an alarming result given Trump’s penchant for extreme, offensive, unconventional and downright dangerous rhetoric. A testament to the intoxicating power of the MAGA fallacy is the fact that half of American voters apparently sincerely believe that Trump is better suited to lead the United States than his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.

Trump’s supporters may not all cite the same reason for supporting him, but they do have one thing in common: a constant and sustained inhalation of highly addictive right-wing propaganda. These voters have been bombarded with Trump’s toxic rhetoric for a decade, but this is just the latest step in a much longer process. Americans have heard the late Rush Limbaugh’s vitriol for half a century, and they have watched Fox News’s monotonous stable of talking heads spew lies and stoke division for nearly 30 years.