weapons of mass delusion by robert draper

Since his focus is “the tension between the party’s reality-based wing and the lost-its mind wing”, this confession reinforces the idea that all the book’s harsh judgements are coming from a dispassionate observer.īut later on in the book this feels less like a confession and more like a mea culpa, when Draper describes three common notions about Donald Trump’s successful putsch: the idea it was accomplished through “force and surprise” the notion “that the party was fully functioning and purposeful” before Trump took it over and the contention “that the GOP bore no responsibility for the crime committed against it”.Īs Draper writes, “Each of these notions is false.”

The author, a New York Times magazine contributor, begins with a confession: all his previous books and articles about the Republican party “tended to bear the telltale influence of my father, a lifelong Republican”. Robert Draper’s new book about Washington in the 18 months after January 6 is all about the fatal consequences of the brave new world the internet created, in which Republican outliers the like the Arizona congressman Paul Gosar and his mentee, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, are much more likely to be rewarded for “outrageous, fact-free behavior” than to be penalized for it. The internet and its infernal algorithms are the main reasons no institution or congressional leader retains the power to protect the public from outright insanity. These gatekeepers did not have perfect judgement, but in our time it has become obvious that they provided essential protections for democracy. Their leaders in the House and Senate could complete their marginalization.

Rogue legislators with histories of racism or addiction to conspiracy theories usually suffered the same fate for the same reason – nobody gave them ink or air time.

Weapons of mass delusion by robert draper