Donald Trump and the "Banality of Crazy"

Donald Trump brought a 9/11 truther and self-proclaimed white nationalist conspiracy theorist to a 9/11 memorial event. The media mostly shrugged.

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The state of the looming US presidential race can be summarized as follows:

It is a neck and neck contest between two candidates. One of them is an authoritarian felon, found liable for sexual abuse, who isn’t legally allowed to even operate a hot dog stand in New York because his business committed massive fraud, who may soon not be able to legally vote because he’s a convicted felon, who stole national security documents and hid them on a literal stage, and who already incited a violent mob in a failed attempt to steal an election. It may also be worth noting that he lives in a dark and delusional fantasy world, in which immigrants prowl the streets, looking for dogs and cats to devour.

The other candidate is a former prosecutor and mainstream politician.

In January, the delusional authoritarian felon could, yet again, plausibly be in charge of the most powerful weapons in the history of the world, with the unique ability to eliminate our entire species with the push of a button.

There is only one appropriate image to accompany this set of disturbing facts:

However, as a certified degree-carrying political scientist, it is my duty to try to explain what is happening to you in formal theories dressed up in jargon and fancy, arcane language, so here is my best shot:

The United States has gone batshit insane.

There are, of course, a variety of serious explanations for why we’ve ended up in this unfortunate position. I’ve explained some of them here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, to name but a few.

But I would like to return to one phenomenon that really disturbs me and which is most easily fixable in American politics. It’s a term I coined in a previous essay and I call it: The Banality of Crazy.

Hannah Arendt wrote about the banality of evil, in which ordinary people grew numb to barbaric acts because they became repetitive and routine. I highlight the banality of crazy, in which the American press—and by extension, the voting public—grows numb to the insane behavior and statements of Donald Trump simply because they have become repetitive and routine.

But the press isn’t supposed to cover stories that are new, or that are surprising. The world is asymmetric and imbalanced, so the press isn’t supposed to be “balanced,” either. Instead, the press is supposed to objectively highlight what is important, and too often in this election, that still isn’t happening.

Let’s look a little closer at one disturbing case study that just took place.

The 9/11 Memorial and the 9/11 Truther

Yesterday, on the 23rd anniversary of the worst terrorist attack in American history, Donald Trump attended a somber 9/11 memorial in New York. His cordial handshake with Kamala Harris—the morning after she verbally flayed him on the debate stage—was widely reported.

But there was a much bigger story hiding in plain sight. When Trump and his running mate, J.D. Vance, visited a fire station in lower Manhattan yesterday, they were accompanied by Laura Loomer, a white nationalist conspiracy theorist.

Worse, Loomer has previously spread the bogus lie that September 11^th was “an inside job,” an attack carried out with the cooperation of the United States government. Call me old fashioned, but shouldn’t it matter that the Republican nominee for president of the United States brought a deranged 9/11 “truther” to a 9/11 memorial event? Does it count as “paying his respects” to the victims if his chosen guest is someone who disrespects their memory by spreading delusional claims about who murdered them?

(Trump, you may recall, spent part of the morning of September 11, 2001 phoning into TV stations, boasting that his tower was now “the tallest” in lower Manhattan, which wasn’t true).

Beyond the denigration of 9/11, Loomer’s presence in Trump’s orbit is itself worth reporting. She’s previously been a contributor to InfoWars, the Alex Jones media empire. Like Jones, she’s cashed in on the despicable lie that child victims of school shootings were plants and actors reading from scripts. She describes herself as “pro white nationalist,” embraces the label of “proud Islamophobe” and has called on Uber and Lyft to ban Muslims from being drivers.

(Despite this disturbing past, Loomer was previously the Republican nominee for Congress in Florida’s 21st Congressional District; thankfully, she lost, but still received 40 percent of the vote).

And yet, there are no blaring ALL CAPS headlines in America’s major newspapers that Donald Trump’s guest of honor to a 9/11 memorial is a white nationalist 9/11 truther and self-proclaimed bigot. A day later, The New York Times noted Loomer’s presence in two sentences within a “campaign notebook” write-up of the event. The headline was—I promise I’m not making this up: “After a bruising debate, Trump is warmly embraced in Lower Manhattan.” That’s the framing that The New York Times went with for a visit in which he brought a 9/11 truther to a 9/11 remembrance day.

It wasn’t treated like major news, either. It took a fair bit of searching for me to even find mention of the story. The Washington Post, which to its credit at least had a story about Loomer’s presence, put most of its ink on a bigger article with a headline that also defies belief:

Ah yes, I had forgotten about that classic magnanimous gesture in which a politician rises above the fray at a remembrance event by bringing—to a memorial commemoration!—a white nationalist crackpot who lies about the perpetrators of mass death.

The New York Times headline writers somehow saw “a warm embrace” and The Washington Post headline writers saw “setting politics aside” as Trump’s honored guest was someone who has called a prominent Democratic member of Congress a “ghetto bitch”; has said that Harris, the Democratic nominee for president is a “DEI Shaniqua”; and has suggested that Trump should draw up a long list of Democrats to toss in jail.

Perhaps we could have another headline story about how Kamala Harris faces unique political liabilities with Muslim-Americans because of the war in Gaza, while completely ignoring the fact that Trump literally called to ban Muslims from entering the United States and that his handpicked guest of honor to a 9/11 memorial is a lunatic racist who overtly hates Muslims and has previously said that Jews who vote for Democrats “might as well just go put yourself in a gas chamber yourself if this is how you're gonna behave.”¹

My, what a marvelous olive branch sprouting out of Donald Trump’s bountiful hair! The man can only be described as a walking goodwill gesture, a healer and unifier who knows exactly when to “set politics aside”! Sure, he says he wants to “Build the Wall,” but clearly he can’t help himself building bridges across our political divides!

What is wrong with these people? How do they write those headlines?

Consider me fully flummoxed.

Sometimes, all you can do is the Edvard Munch style scream, clasping your face in exhausted, maddening disbelief at how the banality of crazy has warped our political discourse and facilitated 45 percent of the country to accept, even celebrate, this grotesque display of anti-patriotic, un-American trash spewing at regular intervals into our public discourse.

You don’t have to worship Kamala Harris to recognize that Trump’s behavior—past and present—is uniquely disgusting. His disqualifying conduct may be routine, but it continues to be the most important story in American politics.

The good news is this: we don’t have to accept this as our “new normal.” We don’t have to shrug at the banality of crazy. (For the Americans reading this, we have 53 days to stop it). And if you’re reading this and you’re part of the press, consider having a friendly chat with the people who write your headlines.

To function properly, democracy requires the ability to register disgust when it’s warranted, especially if it’s frequent—and to never grow numb to indefensible violations of our most sacred values.

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1. I’m not suggesting that Harris shouldn’t be scrutinized; quite the opposite. Every candidate deserves serious scrutiny. Harris should face questions about her intended foreign policy and how she intends to engage with Israel and with Hamas and Gaza more broadly. But the asymmetry here is astonishing.