We are stumbling around now in the hall of mirrors. Americans began to relinquish their grip on self-government long before Donald Trump came onto the stage, but the extent to which we have accepted a pantomime democracy is truly astonishing. The president knows the power of the television, the Black Stone of American culture with which he himself is so deeply entranced. He knows that the camera lies, presents just one rectangular crop of the world in fragmented time, and that no other force in our body politic is fast or decisive enough to correct the record. Perception is reality in all the ways that matter. The truth is whatever you can get enough people to believe. The world's most powerful man threatens to triumph over observable reality itself, and too few among us have realized the peril at hand.

That includes the elite political media, of course. Some under that label have engaged in investigative reporting to expose the president's relentless corruption. Some have outlined his assault on democratic institutions, and the checks and balances that undergird our constitutional republic. Some have steadfastly documented his lies and called them what they are. But far too many seem to accept the premise that American self-government is a system to be gamed, that Trump's reality-TV theatrics are an exciting new strategy rather than a scam on our constitutional birthright. CNN described his fourth State of the Union address on Tuesday night thusly:

"If elections are won by defiant showmanship alone, Donald Trump, the grand political illusionist, will waltz to a second term in November."

This was the same speech in which the same CNN's Daniel Dale identified that the president lied or misrepresented the facts about judicial appointments, illegal border crossings, drug prices, The Wall, insurance for pre-existing conditions, trade-deal jobs, U.S. oil and gas production. He continually suggested the economy was in freefall before he took office and magically revived it, when in fact the strong economy he touts—and it is strong—is an extension of the Obama-era recovery. He demonized immigrants as rapists and criminals, just like always.

The pasty wraiths clambered over one another to kiss the presidential ass. Mark Wilson Getty Images

And yet some within Dale's network seem to have watched all this and processed it as a show. Just another piece of theater from the man who last week added Nigeria—Africa's largest economy, where one in five Africans live—to his travel-ban list. Surely it's a coincidence that, in an Oval Office meeting, he reportedly dismissed Nigerians on the basis that they'll never "go back to their huts" in Africa if allowed in. Nigerian-Americans are statistically the most highly educated subgroup in this country.

Shiny objects really glisten within the hall of mirrors, however, and so Speaker Nancy Pelosi's flourish at the night's conclusion was always going to drive the next morning. Again, it's hard work coming to grips with the reality of things. Better to pretend to believe Donald Trump Junior when he and the clown brigade whine that tearing up a piece of paper is some grave breach of decorum and civility that is beneath a chamber where Donald Trump is speaking. Even Junior, stunted failson that he is, has realized that bad faith is a currency always accepted in precincts where people are desperate to avoid accusations of Liberal Bias.

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This was what many people charged with reporting events decided they must offer the public after last night. Not corrections to the racist lies. No reminders that Trump's crowning legislative achievement is a tax cut for rich people. Not the grotesque spectacle of his pasty wraith allies clambering over each other to kiss his ass, trying to telegraph their allegiance to The Leader cartoonishly enough to get on the telecast and get some juice online. Perhaps Pelosi intended it this way, hoping to seize the narrative rather than have another cycle of pundits who just want to go to D.C. dinner parties in peace jumping on TV to declare This Is the Night Donald Trump Became President. Maybe she, too, knows the power of the lying lens.

But it seems a whole lot easier to simply not invite the president to address Congress when he has essentially rejected the legitimacy of the Congress as an institution and a co-equal branch of government. He has repeatedly signaled that Congress has no power before him. He has declared its oversight powers null. He has engaged in open defiance of their lawful subpoenas. When they refused to exercise their power of the purse to fund his Big, Beautiful Wall, he tried to simply seize the money by declaring a phony national emergency. If the president can take money for whatever he wants, whenever he wants, he can do anything. His lawyers argue from the Senate floor that he can do anything he wants to secure re-election, including undermine the integrity of that election, so long as he decides it's in the national interest that he is re-elected. His Senate allies will vote to acquit him Wednesday on charges of which some even admit he's guilty, and God knows he'll take that to heart. We are sliding towards the abyss now, and far too few of us are feeling any friction at all.

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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