Trump’s artificial reality

The indictment of Donald Trump for allegedly attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential elections makes us all witness to a stunning moment in the history of the United States and of democracy across the world. Perhaps we are at an even more important moment, one which will determine the relationship between citizens and politics everywhere if Trump is successful in presenting reality as it suits him and if he gets away with persuading his followers with lies.

Trump’s decision to undermine not only the credibility of the electoral process but also the very relationship between citizens and reality creates a different level of rift in society

At critical moments in every nation’s history, it is natural that opposing groups will have completely different opinions on events (modern Greek history alone is full of such examples). But these are shaped by the usual rivalry, where each group’s followers are enclosed in a microcosm in which they receive specific input and their passions are stoked in such a way that they assume specific opinions and undertake the action that this demands. They are “blinded” either by choice or because they cannot see beyond what is shown to them. However, reality does not cease to exist. And this is confirmed by the general acceptance of democratic institutions and processes. 

Trump’s decision to undermine not only the credibility of the electoral process but also the very relationship between citizens and reality creates a different level of rift in society. This is not just a clash of people with opposing opinions. Here the difference is between those who live in the real world and those who interpret it as their leader demands, and act accordingly. Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and the politicians who have turned the Republican Party into his hostage, act as if they are primarily members of a cult (participating in the leader’s paranoid fantasies), and only secondly as the disappointed losers of an election, as is natural in any democracy.

The future will present these days either as the triumph of American democratic institutions, or as the moment when the greatest democracy the world has known proved unable to deal with the danger posed by an unscrupulous demagogue when there existed the technological means (and powerful interests behind them) to spread the contagion of artificial reality to millions of people. Today, the outcome of this contest between reality and lies is not certain.