A Lesson Worth Learning

Tim Ryan's public destruction of JD Vance wasn't just satisfying, it was a blueprint for how to confront the authoritarian threat

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Let’s lay our cards on the table from the very start.

This clip of Tim Ryan absolutely eviscerating JD Vance in public is very satisfying.

Tim Ryan @TimRyan

Yikes. #OHSenDebate

When you’re done watching this for the sixth or seventh time, it’s time to talk about what it is that’s so effective about this approach and what we can learn from it. Because, quite frankly, this has been missing from the public conversation for a very long time.

Much of the research and writing I have tackled in the past six years has been focused on the building authoritarian threat. Since reporting from Donald Trump rallies in 2016 and attempting to understand how we arrived at his presidency and, by extension, beginning to wrap my head around why this moment of crisis is happening, one of the main constants I’ve continually found is the absolutely pathetic nature of the threat.

The Right’s embrace of illiberalism is littered with absurd overcompensation and is defined by obvious masculine insecurity. The posturing is so absurd that sometimes it challenges the notion that any of this is a threat at all because the performance is so laughable and obvious.

At its heart, the Right is defined by its paranoia, fear, and weakness. These traits create the foundation for a reactionary movement dedicated to stopping “threats” that are nonexistent but politically and financially beneficial. In the conservative mindset, terror lurks behind every corner, down every unlit street, and, most importantly, in the unexamined parts of their minds.

The conservative politician, the conservative personality, the conservative individual is dominated by their own insecurity that is then projected onto the rest of the world, necessitating violence and every-increasing aspects of control. It is a cycle of delusion and destruction that we have all been subjected to and victimized by.

That moment in the Ohio Senate debate is a perfect response to this reality that we can all understand and appreciate. We know people like JD Vance. We live with them. Work with them. We see their posturing and overcompensation and see through the layers of their performance and recognize, deep down at their core, the fear that drives them. Rather than simply accepting the performance, it is necessary that we begin addressing the consequences while also dismantling the disguise.

Ryan’s correct here. Despite all of Vance’s bluster, he is a bootlicking sycophant who is easily humiliated and controlled by bullies like Donald Trump, who is, himself, an insecure man who relies on violence and intimidation to conceal his own insecurities. By framing the question through the supposedly “masculine” lens, we are free to recognize these facts and begin wrestling with exactly why we are in this moment of crisis in the first place.

Because white men are terrified and that terror is placing us all in incredible danger.

To begin actually defeating this destructive movement is to begin a conversation about why it’s happening. We do not have to accept the twisted and paranoid reality Vance, Trump, and the rest of these pathetic “strongmen” sell to us. The Democratic Party has, for too long, kowtowed to that fictional story and, in an attempt to seem “strong,” have gone ahead and greenlit one law enforcement package and military action after another.

It’s time to change that. It’s time to highlight how pathetic these people are, refuse and refute their nightmares that they project onto the rest of us, and call them what they are. Weaklings. Pathetic clowns who have no other options beyond dressing up as cowboys and outfitting themselves with more and more powerful guns while talking about how “strong” they are.

Because make no mistake, that’s this is. An authoritarian movement that is predicated upon, and fueled by, white masculine insecurity. We can both define the threat while also recognizing just how utterly laughable and sad it is at its deep, dark core.

THE MIDNIGHT KINGDOM: A HISTORY OF POWER, PARANOIA, AND THE COMING CRISIS is Jared Yates Sexton’s newest book and the history of how conspiracy theories, white supremacist lies, and religious mythologies created the modern world and now threaten to plunge us into an authoritarian nightmare of a future. Preorder now to understand this threat and find our way out before it is too late.