The current American political moment, the Trump and Vance administration, is America’s Symptom, and also its only truth.
Trump has dragged the Obscene Supplement, hidden beneath the legal and symbolic order, into plain sight, exposing the exploitation, hegemony, and inequality that were always there, giving the public a retributive surplus enjoyment: the pleasure of feeling no shame about one’s own selfishness and desire. Voters do not care about his moral bankruptcy. They experience Trump as the Primal Father, the one who stands beyond the law and honestly shows them the dirty truth of power.
Liberals created this symptom. Yet today’s liberals resemble Hegel’s hypocritical Beautiful Soul: standing at a distance, occupying the moral high ground, taking their Jouissance from denouncing Trump’s crudeness, maintaining their self-image rather than reflecting on their failures. They can only take their Jouissance, because even removing the Trump / Vance symptom would not cure America’s underlying condition: the great America that MAGA promises to restore, “powerful, democratic, free, and equal,” was always a fantasy to begin with. American society keeps returning to this Trauma through Repetition Compulsion, electing Trump again and manufacturing enemies (immigrants, China, Iran, Venezuela) again, generating endless controversy to sustain its Jouissance, its illusion. America is operating under the Death Drive: stuck in a loop, unable to die, compelled to repeat even through pain.
The eruption of this symptom was Trump’s doing. Vance meanwhile has been encoding the madness of that eruption into open law: post-liberalism, New Right constitutionalism. This is the fascist moment. Vance is trying to transform what was once “done but never said” into national policy and symbolic order, something that can be both done and said. The Sinthome has arrived. The symptom is no longer meaningless noise; it has become the central operating logic of America. America has recognized its symptom and begun its Jouissance.
America has swapped one fantasy for another: from the old fantasy that “as long as we follow the free market, democratic elections, multiculturalism, and technological progress, tomorrow will be better than today,” to the new fantasy that “as long as we drive out these thieves (immigrants, China, the woke elite), America will be great again.” The Jouissance continues: arresting immigrants, purging dissidents, defeating enemies, until one day the Jouissance ebbs and the Void rushes back in. Perhaps at that point Americans will realize: there are no more scapegoats, no immigrants stealing jobs or China stealing technology; there is no Big Other, no strongman who can steer America; the world is random, chaotic, and brutal. And they will fall into a deep despair. But in that moment, if they Traverse the Fantasy and confront the Desert of the Real, genuine change might finally become possible.