Donald Trump often gets credit for his Rumpelstiltskin-like ability to spin the most demented parts of the American psyche into political gold. But in his new book, American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How The Republican Party Went Crazy, David Corn traces the lineage of the GOP’s love of lunatics all the way back to the 1950s and says Trump is just the latest in a long line of morally bankrupt politicians willing to use the chaotic crazy generated by the darkest parts of society to fuel their ambitions.
“Far right extremism, including paranoia, racism, tribalism, conspiracy theories, … what we’ve seen under Donald Trump is nothing new. It might be the culmination, it’s not an aberration,” Corn said.
Corn, a veteran journalist, author and Washington bureau chief of Mother Jones, joined the political podcast The New Abnormal to explain just how American brains became so broken.
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“The idea of exploiting and capitalizing and taking advantage of people’s fears, grievances, and resentments by appealing to violence, conspiracy theory, nuttery and the like, has always been part of the Republican playbook,” he said . “So I think if you understand that, it gives you at least some historical context as we try to comprehend what is going on now.”
For example, Corn said, to get to QAnon, a conspiracy theory that casts Democrats as part of a child-eating cabal of pedophiles, you first have to start with McCarthyism, take a jaunt through televangelist Pat Robertson’s satanic panics and spend some time in a tricorne hat with the Tea Party.
“The conspiratorial anti-government strain that [Joseph] McCarthy started which is the government is run by evil, or Pat Robertson would say—and did say—you know, a satanic cabal that wants to destroy us,” he said. “The Tea Party encompassed both, although I think its emotional energy was more of the crazy conspiratorial side. So it did suck people in.”
But the book isn’t just a trip through the hellscape of America’s political past, Corn warned—without constant vigilance, the dark underbelly of the right wing will win.
“Trump was a traumatic shock to the system. And it's hard for people to fully absorb it to understand its full ramifications and consequences and what needs to be done to deal with it,” he said. “Constant vigilance is exhausting. But if you’re not vigilant, you know who that gives an advantage to?”
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