The ‘Taylor Swift Psyop’ Freaks Need to Go Outside

J esse Watters wants to know if Taylor Swift is a “Pentagon psyop asset.” Jack Posobiec is worried that elites are “gearing up for an operation to use Taylor Swift in the election.” Benny Johnson has concluded that “Taylor Swift is an op.” Laura Loomer is fretting about “the Democrats’ Taylor Swift election interference psyop.” Vivek Ramaswamy believes that the outcome of the Super Bowl has been predetermined. Together, these people have a prime-time cable-news show, 10 million followers on Twitter, intimate access to the likely Republican nominee for president, and absolutely no idea what the country they live in is really like.

As an immigrant, I am accustomed to hearing discussions of the United States that bear no resemblance to America as it actually exists. Turn on a political talk show in England, France, or Germany, and, when the topic turns to the U.S., you’ll be treated to a cartoonized fantasy straight from the uncanny valley — recognizable in outline, but alien in every key detail. And so it is with the MAGA grifter class, which, despite its purported hatred of American progressivism, has at long last become every bit as disconnected from the worldview of the average American as the denizens of Netroots Nations, the Squad, and MSNBC. Populism, by definition, is supposed to be popular. More than a decade into their project, America’s most prominent populists are yet to work that out.

Why? Because they’re totalitarian freaks, that’s why.

I use that word deliberately. In modern parlance, “totalitarian” is often deployed to signify “authoritarian,” but, properly understood, it signifies a little more than that. A “totalitarian” is someone who is unable to draw any distinction between the political and everything else. The totalitarian’s only true interest is politics, and, in consequence, he is incapable of conceiving of anything that is not, in some way, swallowed up by that concern. This renders him both boring and conspiratorial. Where a normal person might listen to the radio or watch an NFL game or order a sandwich from his local shop, the totalitarian sees only extensions of the ideology with which he has become obsessed. On the left, this manifests itself in the promulgation of all-encompassing slogans, such as “backyard BBQ culture reinforces white supremacy,” and in the fanatical insistence that every last piece of civil society ought to be classified as either revolutionary or subversive. On the right, this manifests itself in the detection and exposure of dastardly plots in all aspects of American life. Only in the eyes of a zealot could a story about a pop star dating a football star be transmuted into The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Alas, zealots abound.

In a free country, it is not incumbent upon anyone to acquiesce to the majority’s view simply because it is held by the majority. But, in the game of democratic politics, it sure as hell helps to understand what normal people believe. For years, I have wondered whether the country’s most fanatical progressives have any idea how they sound to normal ears. Now, I must ask the same of our most fanatical conservatives. The internet is a collation mechanism: However esoteric one’s views, one can usually convince an audience of some type — perhaps even a large audience — to discover and come to you. The real world operates differently. Online, one can say that Taylor Swift is a “Deep State psyop” and prompt a million Lost Boys to clap their hands in glee. At a bar, a baseball game, a kids’ Christmas concert, or a church, such declarations would yield embarrassed confusion, the sound of feet slowly shuffling away, and a hasty investigation into the availability of straitjackets. There is nothing conservative, populist, patriotic, or authentic about frivolous lunacy; it is as toxic when it comes from the right as when it comes from the left. To point at a television in the presence of the normal person and say, “see that Taylor Swift, she’s a Defense Department spy,” is to disqualify yourself from consideration.

Which is to say that, irrespective of their sincerity or motivations, Loomer, Watters, Johnson, Posobiec, Ramaswamy, and the rest are ultimately guilty of a profound misdiagnosis: If they believe what they are saying, then they are crazy; if they don’t believe it, but think that the country at large wants to hear about it nevertheless, then they are wrong. Despite the manner in which our media behaves, most Americans are not, in fact, myopic, politics-addled cranks. They follow current affairs, but at a sufficient remove to rule out Twitter, cable news, and the intractable pathologies that flow from them. They worry about, and wish to fix, tangible problems, but they are put off by political eschatology of all stripes — be that climate cultism, “Flight 93” analogies, identity fixations, or excited auguries about the impending arrival of a banana republic. They acknowledge the past but, come election season, prefer to look to the future. Out of gratitude, they are reflexively attached to the status quo. And, above all else, they like America. They do not believe that the country’s past was evil; they do not anticipate a ruinous future; and they do not consider elections to be the be-all and end-all of its fate. They like their families and congregations and sports teams and friends. They are open to practical suggestions as to how to improve their lives. But they’re unmoved by the ephemera — especially when it smells of narrow-minded totalitarianism.

The Taylor Swift psyop freaks would do well to recognize as much, take a good look at what they’ve become, and follow the advice that is given to children when they start to get too squirrely: For goodness sake, go outside.