MAGA Unreality vs the World

The U.S. government is in the hands of people who are fully detached from reality. That is a major weakness for the regime – but also a source of further radicalization.

By Thomas Zimmer, March 4, 2026

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In a deranged way, the speech Donald Trump delivered to a joint session of Congress last week did a masterful job of capturing the State of the Union (Abre numa nova janela). It was a frightening window into the pretend-reality in which this regime exists – the unreality it now attempts to impose on America and the world: A reminder that the U.S. government is in the hands of a disturbed authoritarian who is surrounded by people who either share his delusions, are too sycophantic to confront him, or believe the president’s warped perception of the world serves just fine as a vehicle for their own zealotry and ideological extremism.

The defining question from here is: How much of their unreality can they impose on the world, and how much damage will they be causing in the process?

To understand where America might go next, we must examine Trump’s delusions both as a massive weakness for a regime that is proving incapable of acting strategically and adapting to the setbacks, constraints, and resistance it encounters; but also as a source of radicalization, as it is precisely the mounting frustration over the gulf between the authoritarian unreality and the real world that is fueling the frantic search for ways to assert the kind of dominance they so desperately desire. We must grapple with MAGA’s unreality as both a major impediment to the Right’s authoritarian project as well as an acute threat for the republic, the international order, and, at the risk of sounding dramatic, literally everyone else on the planet.

This certainly isn’t the first authoritarian regime that, when faced with frustrations and public pressure, ramps up the demonization and persecution of vulnerable groups at home and throws itself into military “adventures” abroad. When delusion, authoritarian desires, ideological zealotry, and mounting desperation all combine, things are bound to escalate further.  

And by the time the Trumpists are finally removed from power, America and the world will be left with the rubble.

Authoritarian delusions

“Our nation is back: Bigger, better, richer, and stronger than ever before,” Donald Trump boasted early on in his State of the Union address: “And we’ve seen nothing yet. We’re going to do better and better and better. This is the golden age of America.”

Delusions of grandeur, presented in the unique idiom of a man who has built his fame on selling scams by slapping his name in big, fat golden letters on them, hoping enough people might be driven by folly or desperation to buy into the fake promise of celebrity and wealth: