lThe State of the union

The Deep Weird: Consequences of the Rabbit Hole
We're incredibly fortunate that the GOP is so weird. We need to take advantage of that before that weird becomes normal
Jared Yates Sexton
Mar 8, 2024

Do me a favor.

Take 17 minutes out of your day to watch Senator Katie Britt’s response to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union.

Listen. Maybe not even 17 minutes. But a few minutes. Do me a favor. Put down your phone, maximize the video. Take a deep breath. And then, as you hit play, do what Britt is asking you to do and imagine you’re sitting down across from her at her kitchen table.

I’ll wait.

Woof.

The reaction this morning to Britt’s response has been brutal. People continue to point out how bizarre and upsetting it is, comparing it to The Stepford Wives or The Handmaid’s Tale. There’s a reason for that. And there’s something important to glean from this performance.

If you did as I asked and fully imagined yourself seated across from Britt at her kitchen table, what you likely felt was a sense of panic. Horror, even. Both The Stepford Wives and The Handmaid’s Tale rely on a key aspect of horror in which you, as viewer or reader, are brought into a world that, at first glance, seems somewhat normal or commonplace, only to realize, with building terror, that something is very, very wrong.

Britt’s response brings the weird. It begins with the internalized misogyny of location mixed with her quick declaration that “wife and mother” are her most important jobs. That, on the surface, isn’t particularly threatening, but when coupled with what comes next and in addition to her membership to a party that is aggressively dismantling any progress at women’s equality, the sinister energy floods in.

It’s a performance straight out of a domestic horror movie. At times it’s conversational, then heightened with uncontrolled spikes in panic, certainty, indignity, and righteousness. What is being communicated, beneath the rhetoric, is that we are interacting with an unwell person who is dangerous. Our natural instincts rebel against the situation. We don’t want to sit in the chair anymore. We want to run. To escape. To flee in exactly the same way you could imagine someone throwing back this chair and then running for the door with Britt following closely behind. The door is locked. She’s pursuing slowly.

And it’s because you’ve fallen into an alternate reality. As opposed to a nice cup of coffee and a neighborly chat, you’re being told the Chinese Communist Party is using TikTok to brainwash children because it knows “if it conquers the minds of our next generation, it conquers America.” Then, with a vacant stare and artificial gravitas that seems beamed in from another dimension, you’re told, “When we gaze upon the heavens, never forget our DNA contains the same ingenuity that put man on the moon.”

But Britt’s unsettling performance isn’t entirely her fault. Responses to the State of the Union are almost always doomed to fail. They’re either boring or offputting, and agreeing to do one is risking your political future.

What is important here, however, is what we can draw from feeling of this response. The GOP, after all, has once more largely healed its schism and reinforced an orthodoxy tied to the fever dream of MAGA ideology. Easily debunked conspiracy theories, like the idea that the 2020 Presidential Election was stolen, are required shibboleths. The majority of Republicans believe, in some form or another, tenets of QAnon, including lurid rumors of sexual exploitation. Britt’s section on sex trafficking in her speech was so genuinely unpleasant and disturbing that I had to pause the video and shake it off while I got another cup of coffee.

And her version was somewhat mild. Around the country Republicans are repeating their gospel of twisted truths and outright lies, punctuating it all with emotional appeals that run headlong into repellent territory. Rather than appealing to religious values or traditions, the urge to go even further in this quixotic crusade to “reform” America has resulted in a teeth-grinding need for pathos. It’s not enough to stand in front of a school-board meeting and request an audit of books in the library. You’ve got to accuse the teachers of grooming students, read as many lurid quotes as possible, and remind people that PizzaGate wasn’t a conspiracy theory.

In other words, rantings of madness.

For the GOP to turn into its current phase required a twisting of logic and identity that all but destroyed objective reality. In order to counter the obvious cognitive dissonance, a veritable flood of contradictory ideas and explanations had to drown the acolytes. There was a need to look at Donald Trump, an obvious failure and fraud, and see an agent of God and a warrior. Reality itself had to be twisted like so much saltwater taffy until it disintegrated altogether. And, with each twist, the madness only grew.

We are genuinely lucky that is the case.

While authoritarianism gestates it is vulnerable. Upsetting. Revolting. In its early stages it hides in the dark as adherents gather and the mythologies and narratives that will eventually propel it are accumulated and turn inward and then outward. Nazism and Fascism would’ve never gained power had this not been this case, had they not practiced outside the eyes of the public and created their own worlds to inhabit. And then, as they begin stepping into the light, there is still a moment to reject them. To see exactly how twisted the ideologies are.

This is where your reaction comes in. You sense danger in Britt because there is danger. When you hear Trump speak the tuning fork of the soul wants to reject him like so much bad food. Watching the gleeful cruelty of MAGA turns you off because you feel, deep in your marrow, that this isn’t something to trifle with. Every day we’re presented one more bizarre issue after another that has no basis in reality and only seems to veer more and more into insanity.

The Republican Party is historically unpopular because the turn toward authoritarianism requires this phase. They are repellent to the general public because what is sensed is that unwellness. The problem, however, is that over time, and with enough exposure, the sickness spreads. Soon, instead of wanting to escape Britt’s kitchen and run for your life, the words start making more sense. Or, rather, they don’t seem as dangerous. They might seem strange, but not necessarily dangerous. This desensitization is a natural aspect of human psychology as immersion and exposure lend an air of normalcy so that we can begin to get our feet under us and survive in whatever environment we find ourselves. You get used to it in the same way a soldier surviving the trenches of World War I get used to fighting off rats while giant bombs rain from the sky.

There are many political strategies for defeating authoritarianism. What I continue to espouse is that we must address the material conditions that brought us to this point in order to break the fever and move forward. History shows us this is necessary. But, at this stage, it is also important that we do not lend the GOP any measure of normalcy. This means no hoping Republicans will have “an epiphany” and wake up. No longer calling them “friends” and pointing out when they’ve “worked across the aisle.” Or continuing to claim a “strong Republican Party is needed.”

Instead, this weirdness needs highlighted. Appealing to voters about “tax credits” and “means testing” doesn’t do the job. It only highlights a species of technocrat that is similarly off-putting, but in a different way. Neoliberals are bloodless, cold. Republicans and authoritarians excel at feverish passion. These two things counterbalance one another in a way we’ll need to discuss further. The answer, though, is to relentlessly highlight how strange all this is. Appeal to Americans who are genuinely put off by this nonsense. There’s already been proof in special elections and Midterms that voters don’t want to vote for these people and would rather be left alone by it.

Britt’s performance was disastrous and might very well hobble her career. It was probably the best she could have done, judging by her past ads and speeches. But it’s a valuable artifact. A glimpse into a world we should never glimpse. Pure, unadulterated horror.

A room with no exit.