Eight years ago, I wrote a diary called Paracosm: The Elaborate, Ongoing Improv Act that Is Republican Politics. The diary was rescued but drew just 78 recs and 36 comments (all of which were, are, and remain, greatly appreciated). The basic premise was that the GOP and its media enablers were living, operating, thinking and speaking within the confines and parameters of an unrecognizable alternate universe, and an attempt to explain how they were doing it:
[T]he whole thing is an improv act, an elaborate and ongoing production of improvisational theatre that's run constantly for two decades. When Republican politicians and their various media enablers talk in public, on the radio, on television, in speeches and in interviews, they're performing an improv act in which all of their talking points, all of the things they're required to believe in order to validate their political preferences, are self-evidently true and form the basis of the performance, of the improv act itself. Although politics has always been performance art to one degree or another, this is something else. This is a live, real-time, 24/7, never-ending, constantly-evolving improv act. It's like "The Truman Show" in reverse, with the audience in the role of Truman.
...
Noting its etymologic similarity to the familiar word "microcosm," meaning a miniature world, I thought "paracosm," meaning alternate, separate, abnormal, or not-quite-real world, was the perfect word to describe what's going on in the GOP, at Fox, on right-wing talk radio, [etc.]
Again, that was eight years ago. Two years after that, in mid-2014, I returned to the “Truman Show in reverse” premise in a diary called … well, The Truman Show in Reverse, starting off with a description of the latest Jeanine Pirro rant:
It is nothing more or less than a scene in an elaborate, ongoing, endless, perpetual, well-funded, well-orchestrated, non-stop 24/7 production of improvisational theatre, in which the performers get to make up the story as they go along and perform it for the audience. The person called "Jeanine Pirro" that we see and hear on the TV screen, is an actress, a character in a play. This is not a real person saying real things. She's an actress in character doing a performance piece.
I guess I was kind of hoping that the word “paracosm” would catch on, and I kept using it over the ensuing years here and elsewhere, but it never really did. I also started using the phrase “Republican fan fiction” to describe and categorize where a lot of the things that typical GOP fans and media enablers say, think, and believe, especially about liberals and Democrats. That one didn’t really catch on either.
Lately, though, I’ve seen occasional references to the “reverse Truman Show” that Republicans, their fans, and Grand Nagus Drumpf himself, are performing. Then today, I was browsing Twitter (I’m not on Twitter myself but like to read a couple of people’s feeds) and saw this, about last night’s debate, from Jamelle Bouie:
The Fox News Cinematic Universe.
It’s so incredibly gratifying to see something like this. Although I don’t pretend to be the first or only person to have figured this out way back in 2012 or to have been making this argument since then, it still feels like belated validation of something I truly wish more people had caught onto, and that more people with louder voices than mine had expressed so pointedly, while it was plain for everyone to see that the Republican Party and its cohort were living in another dimension consisting entirely of made-up bullshit.
The reality is, and I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, the Republicans turned politics, and particularly the presidency, into a comic-book fan-fiction reality show long before the Drumpfenführer descended the Golden Escalator into the Seventh Circle of Hell. Ronald Reagan, of course, was their first comic-book superhero; Bill Clinton, their first comic-book villain. Then we got the George W. Bush presidency, a hagiographic comic-book fantasy of the Courageous and Resilient Christian Warrior Defending America from Terrorism™.
Of course, the election of Barack Obama kicked the reality-control into overdrive, starting with the Inauguration-night resolution to cynically, dishonestly, reflexively, and utterly without principle, oppose absolutely everything the new POTUS did, said, proposed, suggested, decided, or accomplished. The result was not only a complete detachment from the reality of what President Obama was actually doing, saying, proposing, suggesting, deciding or accomplishing, but a complete detachment from the reality of what the President, as a general matter, as a constitutional executive or administrative officer, from a practical or historical standpoint, actually does. Obama became even more of a comic-book character than Bush, the fictional Radical Socialist Kenyan Usurper™ standing in for the real-life center-left moderate constitutional scholar.
So, by 2016, reality-show celebrity Donald Trump — the ultimate comic-book character come to life — could be nominated for the highest office in the land by a party that long ago abandoned any knowledge or understanding of what the actual job of POTUS is, what the office is, does, and requires, and run a campaign against another comic-book character, an implausible cartoon villain named “Hillary Clinton,” standing in for the real former First Lady, Senator and Secretary of State. Now, he’s running for re-election based not on any actual policy agenda or administrative (or even legislative) accomplishment, but on pure fantasy, on a “record” that only exists (and against an opponent that only exists) in the Fox News Cinematic Universe.
Go back and watch last night’s debate and listen to the Nagus talk about “Obamacare.” He describes and explains it only in adjectives, not nouns or verbs. (The only noun he ever uses is “disaster”.) Same for his and the GOP’s “plan” to “replace” it that’s been two weeks away for a decade; no nouns, no verbs, just adjectives, policy-by-superlative. The reason why is simple, and obvious: He has absolutely no idea what it is. When he talks about the ACA or health care policy in general, he truly, literally, has no idea what he’s talking about.
Neither, I would venture to guess, do most Republicans, Republican voters, or Republican media enablers. Inside the Fox News Cinematic Universe, “Obamacare” is just this thing that they hate ‘cause it’s bad. They can’t explain why, let alone in any detail, let alone with any connection to any actual facts (about the statute, its enabling regulations, etc.) that anyone could objectively verify. It’s been obvious for years that they have no earthly idea what “Obamacare” really is, or does, or means. It’s wishful thinking, nothing more.
(That’s another thing I’ve been saying for years; the formula for Republican fan fiction is 2% fact, 0% context, 98% wishful thinking.)
GOP fans think the Nagus has “done” a great “job,” where the reality is not so much that he’s done a bad job but that he’s really “done” no “job” at all. They have no idea what the “job” is, and neither does he. His fans are voting for a character in a comic-book fantasy, not a President; he ran for president so he could be that character, not so he could do that job. He’s running for re-election so he can continue to be that character, which is really all he’s ever been, and all he’s ever done.
If Joe Biden wins this election, we’ll go back to having a real President who is actually interested in, actually knows how to do, and actually wants, the actual job. Of course, that Joe Biden won’t exist in the Fox News Cinematic Universe; they’ll come up with their own version to bash and belittle and undermine on a nightly basis. But it also bears noting that that concept of the presidency itself doesn’t exist in the FNCU.