If end-times prophesy is still marketable, CNN’s Brian Stelter could top eschatologist Hal Lindsey book receipts. Lindsey’s “The Late, Great Planet Earth” (1970) was one of that decade’s top best-sellers. Lindsey mined events of the day for echoes in The Book of Revelations (and Daniel and Ezekiel) and predicted the rise of the Antichrist, the Rapture, and that other biblical catastrophes would occur perhaps in the 1980s. This stuff wouldn’t capture the public imagination again until Ghostbusters (1984):
Dr. Raymond Stantz : Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling!
Dr. Egon Spengler : Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes…
Winston Zeddemore : The dead rising from the grave!
Dr. Peter Venkman : Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together… MASS HYSTERIA!
Drawing on what we have already seen from Trumpism, right-wing media, and the Trumpified Republican Party, Stelter on Sunday presented a case for how Trumpism might overtake the United States between now and 2024. To compete with OAN, Fox News quadruples down on feeding red meat to viewers rather than news. Paranoia deepens. Donald Trump’s Big Lie becomes gospel in his party. External reality dissolves.
“There’s a clear difference between the people who pay for news … and want to know what is true, versus people who pay for views, incendiary views, of what they want to be true,” says Stelter. “There’s a market for this. It’s a giant grift.”
Trumpists at conferences begin dreaming publicly of violence. By 2024, “Neighbors turn on neighbors,” Stelter continues. “Normally easygoing local elections turn into existential battles.” Threats of violence become real violence by cosplaytriots, while MAGA-media apps, broadcasters, and commentators “justify stomping all over the Constitution as an attempt to save it.”
During Stelter’s 11-minute essay, headlines from the recent past flash behind him to reinforce that what he’s suggesting is not wild fantasy.
“I’m not saying that all this will happen. But I’m saying it could,” Stelter continues. “We know it could happen because it has all happened before. Almost everything I have described has already happened in one form or another.”
The evidence is out there in multiple books. The peaceful transfer of power in January 2020 was something of a miracle, Jonathan Karl writes in his upcoming book, “Betrayal.”
“We know what Trump will do,” Stelter says. “So what will the rest of us do?”
“Raising awareness isn’t a theory of change,” messaging expert Anat Shenker-Osorio tweeted on Sunday. Neither is finding a dark cloud in every silver lining. Clicktivism and sending political donations will not be enough to stop Stelter’s “prophesy” from coming true.
One of Donald Trump’s only true talents is for survival. Trumpism reflects that. Only his followers don’t mean to save themselves by staving off political apocalypse, but by bringing it about. What happens to this country in the next few years may not be as much a matter of laws but of whose wills — and survival instincts — are stronger.