Jesse 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.
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