If a striking thing about the period just before Donald Trump’s second inauguration was the feeling that America was genuinely shifting to the right – wokeness crumbling, more minority voters and elite factions joining the Republican Party, every branch of government in conservative hands – a striking thing about the Trump administration is that it has governed as though none of this were the case.

Instead, its approach belongs to a world where both the conservative position and the wider American situation are simply desperate and there’s only the narrowest of windows to wrench the country away from some apocalyptic fate.

Donald Trump lands in New Jersey on Saturday (US time) after attending the funeral of Pope Francis at the Vatican.Credit: AP

The best term for this mentality is “black-pilled”, an online reference, based on a famous scene in The Matrix, to different pills that awaken people to hidden realities. A red pill lets you in on secret right-wing truths. A white pill persuades you that the world situation is better than you thought. And a black pill lets you know just how doomed we really are.

A merely red-pilled Trump administration would still be doing much of what the actual one is doing – pushing the envelope on executive power, making a bid to revive American manufacturing, trying to find ways to increase deportations, picking fights with Ivy League........

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