The insurrectionists have been sold a fantasy, and their costumes warp the works that inspired them.
They thought they were heroes; that much is obvious. The animal furs and war paint, the banners and utility vests, the slogan slinging and wall climbing: Wednesday’s attack on the U.S. Capitol felt like fiction to watch, and doubtless many pro-Trump insurrectionists had Hollywood on their mind as they pillaged and took selfies. Some participants wore the logo of the Punisher, the Marvel Comics character who stabs muggers in Central Park. Others flaunted shirts that said CIVIL WAR in a font recalling the Avengers sequel of the same name. Those shirts were printed with the date January 6, 2021, which helps clear up whether the chaos was spontaneous. But wait—isn’t the Avengers saga about the fight to stop a big-chinned narcissist from consolidating unchecked power and disintegrating a great civilization? Isn’t smashing up the Capitol, a long-standing monument to human compromise, total Thanos behavior? If the Trump mob contained cosplayers inspired by popular entertainment, they seemed to have missed some key thematic points of that entertainment. Earlier in the day, at the rally that sent Trump supporters raging toward the Capitol, Rudy Giuliani called for “trial by combat” to settle election disputes. Trial by combat is a term used throughout Game of Thrones, a famous fantasy series about the horrors of a pre-democratic society in which might makes right. In the rioters’ world, of course, right and wrong have custom definitions. Their insurrection was against reality itself. Every day, the “stop the steal” cause became more far-fetched: State and national legislators, courts at every level, foreign observers, media watchdogs, and Donald Trump’s own Justice Department all determined that Joe Biden won the presidency by millions of votes. Many of those who lost coped via costumes, for banal reasons. Sometimes, the truth hurts so much that it can disorient and unmoor a person. Denial is part of grief; fiction, fantasy, and what-ifs are part of coping; escapism is seductive even in the best of times. Trump’s bellowing about a rigged election provided comforting make-believe in the manner of any hack evangelist or entertainer.
