The Trump administration is Gnomons all the way down

The news, in brief …

• “Absolutely appalled”: Young Republicans face fallout after racist messages leak

  But Vice President JD Vance said he refuses to "join the pearl clutching." Read more.

• “This is going to cost us”: Smith blasts Trump attacks on public servants in rare interview

  The former special counsel issued a dire warning while speaking in London. Read more.

• “My focus is New York”: Mamdani refuses to take the bait on Fox News

  The NYC mayoral candidate would not be knocked off his message of affordability. Read more.

Make me smarter …

Pete Hegseth’s press crackdown is backfiring

Even Fox News is fed up with the Pentagon’s new press restrictions. Read more.

MAGAs of Atlantis …

“Masters of Atlantis” is unlikely to be anyone’s first-ballot pick for the Great American Novel, but it just might be the novel that does the greatest job of explaining Americans.

Released four decades ago to a resounding “meh” from critics, Charles Portis’ novel traces the life of a fictional 20th-century religious movement known as the Gnomon Society. Bumbling and naive World War I veteran Lamar Jimmerson gets scammed by a drifter, who sells him a book of gibberish and a tale about secret knowledge of the location of Atlantis.

Jimmerson’s steadfast refusal to admit he’s been had – and his deep desire to make sense of a chaotic world – leads him to found a new religion with a flair for outlandish ceremonial garb and a penchant for handing out overinflated official titles. The cult is quickly taken up by equally confused acolytes and overly confident failsons. Smelling money to be made, a sizable contingent of conmen don the order’s pointy hats as a means to separate lost souls from their cash.

Rifts form between the curious and flexible Jimmerson, old-world hardliners who view any deviation from the original principles as heresy and the grifter sects. Prophesies keep on failing until the supposed prophets can’t muster up the energy to make any more declarations. The church’s gorgeous mid-century Midwestern temple, a testament to a story that Americans manufactured, if not exactly to American manufacturing, falls into disarray as the movement’s numbers dwindle. The story closes with the few remaining Gnomon leaders calling a truce and settling down in a rural Texas trailer park, content to play dominoes between arguments about the power of triangles and lost cities under the sea

Portis’ bone-dry narration of the upward failing of Jimmerson and his steady, deserved decline made the novel a cult classic among an entire generation of American comics. Conan O’Brien and David Cross are both avowed superfans. “The Office” creator Greg Daniels is one of the book's most prominent evangelists, and it's hard not to see the endearing ineptitude of Jimmerson in Michael Scott. Parallels to “Atlantis” would be easy to spot even if it hadn’t inspired a whole cadre of American entertainers, however. A quick look at the most powerful people in America in 2025 looks like the yearbook of a secret society for the amoral and easily led.

At the top, we have our Jimmerson. Donald Trump is an oaf for our times, born aloft by true believers who see the messiah in his fractured missives and failed promises, and by hucksters who see him as a route to easy money. Fragments of the textualist church leader Sydney Hen can be found in any of the conservatives on the Supreme Court, who promote a strict adherence to the inscrutable original words of the religion’s founding documents, so long as it allows them to carry out their long-term political goals.

Flimflammer Austin Popper, from Portis’ novel, could be any number of rich remoras who have attached themselves to the Trump team in the hopes of growing their vast fortunes. Elon Musk springs to mind, but his seemingly genuine belief in right-wing racist ideology rules him out. Better a character like Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick or OpenAI founder Sam Altman, who, through Trump, have found access to the endlessly deep pockets of the state for their utterly unproven tech fixations.

The cult of Gnomonism is fueled by people seeking a tidy resolution of the world’s contradictions. Neither the secret society nor “Masters of Atlantis” offers one. If there’s a glimmer of hope to be had in Portis’ cynical tale in 2025, however, it’s that even the biggest movements, no matter how nightmarish or stupid, will eventually fade out and die.

What do you think? Is there some secret esoteric knowledge that could rid us of MAGA? Are you more of a “Dog of the South” fan? Tap the speech bubble and off in the comments.

Before you go …

MAGA’s fake Super Bowl halftime show reveals their real failures

Turning Point USA's followers are pitifully out-of-touch with pop culture. Read more.

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