- metadata: - source: https://taibbi.substack.com/p/cult-nation - people: [[Matt Taibbi]] > Please support independent journalism by subscribing to Matt Taibbi --- # Cult Nation - TK News by Matt Taibbi > ## Excerpt > National politics has robbed us of our selves. --- [](https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa84418d9-a89c-4d87-af2f-b0b7862315d0_1880x1256.png) State and federal security officials are reportedly bracing for armed demonstrations in all 50 states next week. Measures include layered fencing and secure areas, deployment of tactical teams, and designation of a “[national special security event](https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/10/politics/inauguration-washington-dc-security-bowser-trump/index.html).” We appear on the verge of literal Balkanization, a Yugoslavia-style social breakdown. Two stories demonstrate how we got to this awful place. The first person to die by violence in the Capitol riots was Ashlii Babbitt, an Air Force veteran who’d served in two wars and worked at a San Diego-area pool supply company. She was part of the huge crowd that [poured over outer gates like a flood tide](https://twitter.com/realjaydenx/status/1347061129755959300) only to be stopped by a locked entrance to the Speaker’s Hall. Dressed in snow boots and a Trump flag she wore as a cape, Babbitt appeared to be trying to break through when a Capitol guard shot her in the neck: The video of her shooting is hard to watch. Almost as disturbing is footage of her state of mind in the preceding months. Here she’s ranting while driving a few weeks after the election: Babbitt’s tirade is directed at everyone from Democratic pols Maxine Waters and Gavin Newsom to Republican Duncan Hunter (she seems unaware [Hunter was convicted for conspiracy to steal campaign funds](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/us/duncan-hunter-sentencing.html?0p19G=2103) last March). She can barely speak. The rage is spilling out ahead of her thoughts. The specifics of Babbitt’s politics have been analyzed to death, but focusing more on the obvious, this was a deeply unhappy woman. Her self seems to have been consumed by enraging obsessions even before her physical life was lost. Politics became so central to her identity that she couldn’t sideline it even temporarily, even out of self-interest. On the front door of Fowlers Pool Service and Supply, the company she’d bought and kept afloat for a time with a short-term loan that she claimed [ended up costing her 169% interest](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/07/us/who-was-ashli-babbitt.html), Babbitt put up a poster declaring her business to be a “Mask-Free Autonomous Zone, Better Known as America”: [](https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F03d31d2c-48c9-4968-8012-8d3951577442_971x739.png) The text of that poster is worth quoting in full: > Through these doors, the only thing that should be touching your lips is an ice-cold beer or some pizza, a burrito, a burger, or maybe some donuts! We shake hands like men, fist bump like homies, we smile, laugh and shout and have a damn good time! > > If you need to wear a mask outside, I’m not sure we can help you, but we will pray for you, because we believe in God! Know this, this is our autonomous zone, we love our zone & you need to respect our zone because we will defend our zone. Tyranny, lawlessness, disrespect and hate for your fellow man will not be tolerated. We are all God’s children, live free or you aren’t living at all. Brought to you by God-loving, America-loving, common-sense patriots! Translated: “The people within find such easy contentment in beer and donuts, they’re ready to defend with force if you disrespect their happy place by stepping inside with a mask.” Weird enough on the door of a home, but what person deep in a hole with a predatory lender puts that on the front door of a business? Most of us know someone, or a lot of someones, whose personalities have been subsumed by national politics. For some, it started with an older relative in the nineties plopped in front of a TV in retirement, where their idiosyncratic personalities were gradually replaced by paint-by-numbers fixations fed to them on _Fox News._ We long ago learned to [denounce as predatory](https://www.salon.com/2014/01/07/how_the_gambling_industry_preys_on_senior_citizens_partner/) the casinos that [lure in the elderly](http://www.msn.com/en-us/money) and watch with glee as Grandma and Grandpa pour lifetimes of savings into slot machines, a buck or two at a time. Patriotic media is the same scam, morally on the same plane as telemarketers selling magazine subscriptions. The formula is simple: scare viewers with stories about the loss of things most important to them (in the case of the elderly, their memories of how life used to be), then sell insurance or medication or reverse mortgages or whatever in the slots between segments. Those old folks were feeding coins into the TV as surely as into a slot machine. In the late nineties and 2000s, we started to see a new type of personality among younger adults. It might be a relative who couldn’t make it five minutes into a family dinner without starting an argument, or a cab driver who steered every conversation into litmus-test questions about abortion or the Iraq war. They didn’t converse, but talked at you: “Don’t you think…?” Every line of discussion was a trap. You either fought or agreed, and if your agreement was insincere, they were expert at sniffing it out. A lot of these people had been lured by a con built around an offer of solidarity. People like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh were experts at selling the idea that their discrete community (of Dittoheads or whatever) was plugged into a secret truth. The aggressive conversations were a symptom of being unable to get along with, or even tolerate, people outside that special society. The group was told that through the constant devotional exercise of listening together, they were fighting toward a day when everything would be made right. The best of the _Fox-_style manipulators, like the best televangelists, always knew how to keep pushing the moment of truth further and further into the future. They could get away with it because followers become more not less credulous with time. Donald Trump was one of the best, but the version of heaven he sold — “so much winning” — was supposed to happen soon, and he had to be in office besides. People like Babbitt were roped in by tales of the limitless iniquity of their enemies, who not only stole an election but were pedophilic monsters to boot: [](https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffed6a5e1-a20b-4ea7-88a1-86b1941295a4_618x383.png) The tension ratcheted up to the point where Babbitt, who not long ago could handle the stresses of war, served in a unit guarding the capital, and voted for Barack Obama, now saw life reduced to a one-game season for all the marbles. She had a blunt answer when asked by a Twitter acquaintance, “When do we start winning?”: Other victims of Trump ripoff schemes only lost tens of thousands of dollars on [worthless online degrees](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/federal-court-approves-25-million-trump-university-settlement-n845181). Babbitt lost everything, then in death was immediately turned into kindling for further propaganda fires, used as a MAGA recruitment tool through mocking hashtags like /#SayHerName. As the Babbitt story was amping up, another was gaining steam, about an 18-year-old who [publicly turned in her own parents](https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/ny-massachusetts-teen-defends-outting-relatives-in-capitol-riot-video-20210113-evvw6qjiizhklmdjzscw734pvu-story.html) for attending the Capitol riot and punching a guard in the face. Helena Duke became a hero of the Internet, was interviewed on _Good Morning America,_ and set up a [GoFundMe page to help her pay for college](https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-helena-duke-pay-for-college) (she’s raised $55,000 as of this writing). Though she was public about her reasons, which included her parents’ apparent rejection of her sexual orientation and (in hindsight ironic) exhortations not to attend BLM protests because they “could get violent,” no one can really know what went on between parents and daughter, which is why I don’t want to make an issue of what Duke did. The more concerning thing is how quickly this story was embraced by strangers in the commercial press and the Internet. Duke’s Tweet outing her parents [earned 420,000 likes](https://twitter.com/duke_helena/status/1347267376488853508?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1347267376488853508%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fabc7.com%2Fteen-turns-in-family-for-capitol-riot-helena-duke-siege-donald-trump-supporters%2F9621723), with countless offers of money and congratulations from well-wishers, and even notes from supporters expressing a willingness to step in as substitute parents (“[I’m… a kick-ass cook and a hugger](https://twitter.com/mandysue_3/status/1347397167082823690)” suggested one). People testify against or turn in relatives for various offenses, sometimes justifiably, but we’re usually not tempted to celebrate those occasions, because it’s understood they’re tragedies above all. This was once obvious to Americans taught in school about the likes of Pavlik Morozov, the little boy who in the thirties [became a celebrity](https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v27/n21/sheila-fitzpatrick/a-little-swine?referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2F) for denouncing his parents’ anti-Soviet activities. The reason that story struck us as horrible once was not that Pavlik’s parents were innocent, but because we had a hard time imagining more generally: what kind of society would celebrate the dissolution of the family? We flattered ourselves that we weren’t that way, but our mass culture has always chipped away at interpersonal relationships. Go back to the seventies, eighties, nineties and beyond, and you’ll find an endless stream of commercials showing people literally falling in love with products, or choosing a beer/cheeseburger/bitchin’ car over actual romance. The message is constant: people disappoint, and true happiness is elusive, but a Big Mac delivers the same great taste every time. Why chase perfection when you can just order a Stella? <iframe src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/dBjiMK_fBYE?rel=0&amp;autoplay=0&amp;showinfo=0&amp;enablejsapi=0" frameborder="0" loading="lazy" gesture="media" allow="autoplay; fullscreen" allowautoplay="true" allowfullscreen="true" width="728" height="409"></iframe> In news and entertainment media we pulled a lot of the same stunts, playing on audience fears of betrayal or loneliness to make a buck. The idea was to move ahead of loved ones in the line of trust. We sold stories highlighting the secret dangers that lay underneath every once-solid assumption about our personal lives. Your boyfriend might be Ted Bundy (“[I always felt loved](https://people.com/crime/ted-bundy-ex-girlfriend-speaks-out/),” the killer’s former girlfriend revealed), your priest might be a kid-toucher, your neighbors might be Nazis-in-hiding or Russian spies. News once targeted parents who feared their children might be radicalized by Satanists or fantasy gamers or [cyberporn](http://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19950703,00.html), but the narratives have changed over time (“[Is Your Baby Racist](https://www.ebay.com/itm/Newsweek-Magazine-September-14-2009-Is-Your-Baby-Racist-/223479203252)?” from 2009 was one of the all-time _Newsweek_ covers). The most recent crazes are often past manias in reverse. They invite us to wonder if the institutions the press used to warn were under threat from gangsta rap or crack or Dungeons and Dragons, or whatever_,_ have themselves been the actual contaminants all along. Everything from marriage to democracy to school is presented as a potential villain. Nothing symbolized 2020 press trends better than longtime denouncer of “[absent fathers](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/16/opinion/why-fathers-leave-their-children.html?smid=tw-nytopinion&smtyp=cur)” David Brooks writing in the _Atlantic_ that “[The Nuclear Family Was a Mistake](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/03/the-nuclear-family-was-a-mistake/605536/).” Amid this rising cultural uncertainty, Donald Trump became the first political story sold to liberal audiences using the same disquieting techniques Fox pioneered. Trump-hating was sold as yet another discrete community with its own name — /#Resist was the answer to Ditto or MAGA — and membership required maximal terror before all the various media manias of the period, from the border crisis to Russiagate to Ukrainegate. Audiences were chided that disinterest was tantamount to support, and coverage stopped even hinting at the existence of people with identities outside the Trump and anti-Trump brands. Before long, that lost relative or neurotic cabbie was everyone you knew. The easygoing liberal who once pitied right-wing media addicts became one, unable to get through a conversation without bringing up Trump, and terrorized to the point of misery by partisan dramas. “Trump-haters screaming in psychic agony” videos became so common that the MAGA crowd began to circulate them as porn, not much unlike the way the Ashlii Babbitt tirades are being devoured by liberal audiences. Of course, MAGA voyeurs watched through derisive laughter, while the latter group was just indignant and horrified. Otherwise however it’s the same story of people traumatized beyond consolation by national news narratives over which they have no control: Throughout the last four years, when legitimately disturbing political news began to be a central feature of the American experience, a lot of the usual coping mechanisms disappeared. Humor and satire all but vanished from pop culture, for the same reason the Soviets suppressed Bulgakov, Voinovich, and Dovlatov: laughter is demystifying in all directions and restores perspective. No fear-based system can tolerate it. We used to love it. Even Republicans got off on Gerald Ford falling: <iframe src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/_bvxZgCryUE?rel=0&amp;autoplay=0&amp;showinfo=0&amp;enablejsapi=0" frameborder="0" loading="lazy" gesture="media" allow="autoplay; fullscreen" allowautoplay="true" allowfullscreen="true" width="728" height="409"></iframe> Now we don’t laugh at ourselves at all. We also used to find comfort in each other, but taking time out to “remember what’s important” became taboo during this time, when we were constantly told nothing was more important, especially not the home lives that are ground zero for abuse and indoctrination into the system that produced Trump in the first place. If being able to laugh is a symptom of privilege, parental or marital love experienced for its own sake, without being channeled toward social change, is a suffocating, decadent indulgence. Watch any random group of Americans thrown together into a tough situation — a highway pileup, a hurricane, military service — and they usually find ways to get along. It’s when they’re separated, lost in their own heads, that they go off. There was a time when opinions on national politics were way down the list of what most people considered most important about themselves. In online America, that’s gone. Unhappy people are made more unhappy. Potential respites in the form of family, community, and alternative perspectives are demonized as people sink deeper into cultlike bubbles. If we could just unplug, we’d recover. But we don’t know how. Next week could go so badly. As much as Trump lacks the discipline and high-level institutional accomplices to pull off an actual coup attempt, he does possess supreme ability to inspire negative behavior. He’s been pumping followers so full of angst for so long that at this point, if he were to go on national television and implore every follower to send a congratulatory e-bouquet to the incoming Biden-Harris administration, a significant portion might storm a state capitol anyway. Worse, even if he wanted to issue another [chill-o-gram](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/07/us/politics/video-trump.html) in the spirit of his recorded January 7th address, it might be buried under the cascade of increasingly intense condemnatory rhetoric dominating the liberal press, which seems incapable of making the strategic decision to tone down calls for vengeance until the danger of next week has passed. Our elite messaging system is so broken, it no longer knows how to shelve culture war long enough to manufacture consent around even a temporary cooling of heads. We’re in a cult of hating each other, and as with any cult, no vacations are allowed.