The recent furor over an illustration depicting Donald Trump in a quasi-religious pose—laying hands on a sick man, with the American flag behind him and surrounded by a nurse, soldiers, and veterans—perfectly illustrates the deranged mental state of much of the progressive left. Friedrich Nietzsche’s famous quip in Beyond Good and Evil puts the matter deftly: “In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs, it is the rule.”
The image the President shared evoked themes of national healing (a core part of Trump’s political message). It triggered an immediate and hysterical backlash. The hysteria was largely manufactured, as noted in yesterday’s essay (Trump Can’t Heal Mass Manufactured Hysteria), but impactful nonetheless, especially in the context of Democratic coordination with the Catholic Church hierarchy to split the MAGA coalition, already troubled by blue-hate American-only protest against the preemptive war in Iran.
Trump eventually had the image taken down, but he should not have. The overreaction reveals far more about his critics than about the image itself. But the President yielded to pressure from his own party. Establishment Republicans are terrified of the prospect of losing the mid-term elections. One might think that Trump should be, as well, but his instincts are channeled not by polls but by conviction. If he finds himself in a Senate trial adjudicating articles of impeachment, it will be because he was so committed to making America great again that he set aside political calculation. He knows what’s coming.
Readers may recall that, only two years earlier, during the 2024 Paris Olympics, the world witnessed a deliberate subversion of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper. A heavy-set woman portrayed Jesus Christ while performers pantomimed paraphilias around her. The scene was compounded by the appearance of Dionysus—the Greek god of debauchery and ecstasy—wheeled out on a platter overflowing with food.
The Paris spectacle was not merely a subtle artistic expression; it was an open mockery of one of Christianity’s most sacred moments, mixing it with Pagan imagery, staged at a global sporting event watched by millions across the planet. At the same Olympics, female boxers were punched in the face by individuals widely understood to be males; the opening ceremony was part of a greater propagandistic effort. Activists, authorities, and media insisted that what everyone could plainly see was not happening. In psychology, we know this as “gaslighting.”
Indeed, the juxtaposition of these images represents a textbook case of double gaslighting: the public is told to be horrified by Trump’s relatively tame spiritual imagery (not even a negative depiction of healing), while also being told that the Olympic scandals never really occurred, or at least were not what they appeared to be. There were no sexual perversions, no mockery of the Last Supper, and certainly no men beating women in the boxing ring. These males are women because they said or think they are. Move along—nothing to see here, bigot. Trump is the mad one.
This pattern of selective outrage and reality denial has become the defining feature of progressive discourse. When Donald Trump posts an image suggesting the healing of a divided nation, a button is pushed, and the left loses its collective mind. Yet when Christianity is openly mocked on the world stage and basic biological reality is denied in women’s sports, the same voices either celebrate it or pretend it didn’t happen. I am not a Christian; mocking the religion does not offend me. The problem isn’t mockery per se; it’s the weaponizing of religion to advance ideological and political agendas that’s the problem.
How can something so obviously propagandistic work? A comprehensive hegemonic apparatus—corporate media, cultural institutions, and political operatives—has created the preconditions for believing things that would otherwise be dismissed as obvious nonsense. They have conditioned the public to accept absurdities as truths.
It’s not just Trump’s supposed blasphemy. Many see American involvement in Iran as morally equivalent to Bush and Cheney’s folly in Iraq, forgetting (or never knowing) that leading Democrats gave the Bush regime authorization for military action in the Middle East and that much of the corporate media cheered it on at the time. Today, a just war or defensive action (both are applicable ethical standards) is treated as unforgivable aggression. Why? Because it occurs under the “wrong” administration. Imagine the Trump-as-healer image with Barack Obama in the place of the President. It’s not hard to. Nor is it hard to imagine how differently that would be taken.
If you are on the progressive left and find yourself dwelling in this level of unreality—where sacred imagery is only offensive when used by political enemies, males competing against women is “inclusive,” and wars of choice and a regime of torture are okay because they’re establishment—you are not engaging with the world as it is. You are living in a constructed narrative.
Progressive mass delusion is a given. They are too far gone. It’s conservatives who must be wary. The coordinated effort involving figures as high as the Pope and elements within the Democratic Party to turn faithful Christians against Trump by framing him as uniquely dangerous, mad, and ungodly is destabilizing the populist-nationalist project to reclaim the American Republic. If conservatives fall for this obvious ploy—if they allow themselves to be manipulated into opposing a leader who champions religious liberty and national renewal simply because the media and certain religious authorities tell them to—they should be ashamed of their gullibility. Conservatives, the Republic should be your calling now, if only because it will keep open the terrain for your religious faith. Progressive worship other gods.
The deeper question thoughtful persons must ask themselves is this: Who benefits from making so many people this susceptible to such crude manipulation? Who has spent decades shaping our institutions—education, media, and even parts of the Church—to erode critical thinking and replace it with reflexive ideological loyalty? How did they corrupt American culture? The Trump “healing” image controversy is not ultimately about one picture. It’s a symptom of a deeper sickness: a society in which tens of millions of people have lost their grip on reality, and demand that everyone else join in, exploding in rage when others refuse to play along. Don’t contract their madness.
The American people deserve leaders and institutions grounded in truth, not in performative outrage and gaslighting. Citizens deserve captains steady at the helm. The progressive left’s meltdown over a single image of national healing, while gaslighting the public about foundational truths, only proves how desperately that integrity and steadfastness are needed.
freedom and reason 