Rolling Stone’s Hot Take on Trump: A Lindbergh-Level Threat? …Really?

So, I just spent ten solid minutes with my jaw on the floor reading this Rolling Stone article by Sean Wilentz, and let me tell you, it’s a doozy. The gist? Donald Trump is the second coming of Charles Lindbergh, Nazi sympathizer, and America’s most notorious fascist-in-the-making—according to Wilentz, anyway. And somehow, Rolling Stone, the magazine that once rocked our world with gritty, counterculture journalism, is now the go-to spot for political hand-wringing and finger-wagging about the “end of democracy.”

Wilentz, a historian who’s done his fair share of backflips to fit history into his version of American righteousness, seems to think he’s cracked the code. In his view, Philip Roth’s novel The Plot Against America was prophetic, predicting that we’d end up with a Trumpian nightmare that’s supposedly fascism in a red hat. I get it—some people hate Trump. I get that people are fed up with the MAGA vibes. But “Trump as Lindbergh?” Really? That’s the best we’ve got? Comparing a guy with a Twitter habit to a literal Nazi sympathizer from the 1940s feels about as reasonable as saying a Big Mac is “basically” a four-course meal because, hey, they both have calories.

And don’t get me started on Rolling Stone’s slow descent into apocalyptic scaremongering. This was the magazine that gave us Hunter S. Thompson, that lived for chaos, that didn’t shy away from anything. Now, it’s like your high school principal in a leather jacket, wagging a finger and giving lectures about the “moral collapse” of America. Gone are the edgy exposes; here are the endless doom scrolls about how we’re all doomed if Trump sneezes in the wrong direction. It’s like they’ve lost their rebellious spirit and traded it in for a permanent soapbox.

Wilentz, though—this isn’t his first rodeo when it comes to bending history into a shape that works for him. He’s the same guy who published a whole book arguing that the U.S. Constitution was “fundamentally antislavery.” Sure, Sean, because the Three-Fifths Compromise and Fugitive Slave Clause were just cute little quirks, right? He’s made a career out of cherry-picking historical narratives, and people have been calling him out on it for years. So yeah, no big shock that he’s up in arms over The 1619 Project for re-examining America’s history with slavery. And what better way to keep up his crusade than with a Trump-is-Lindbergh theory? He’s not exactly showing up to this article unbiased.

The kicker, though, is how Wilentz paints Trump’s supporters as mindless minions in his fascist plot. The guy makes it sound like everyone from Lindsey Graham to Bezos is in on some sinister master plan. Newsflash: these are politicians and billionaires we’re talking about—they’re not exactly secret blood-pact types. They’re hedging their bets, playing the game. If anything, Trump’s policies—love ‘em or hate ‘em—fit the usual GOP playbook: tax cuts, conservative judges, deregulation. It’s not some overnight dictatorship. If anything, it’s capitalism on steroids, not a fascist manifesto. But hey, nuance isn’t exactly Rolling Stone’s thing these days.

So here’s where we’re at: Wilentz and Rolling Stone want us to believe that this whole Trump phenomenon is some wild, orchestrated attack on democracy. Meanwhile, they’re ignoring the actual, legit reason so many people jumped on the Trump bandwagon in the first place. People vote for what they believe in, for policies that they think will help the country, for leaders who say they’ll get stuff done—even if they’re a little rough around the edges. If Rolling Stone and Wilentz want to spend their time penning dystopian fantasies about democracy’s last breath, that’s their prerogative. But maybe it’s time to start asking why people actually voted the way they did, instead of waving them off as the new “villains” of America.

In the end, I guess the biggest disappointment here isn’t even the article itself. It’s that Rolling Stone, the magazine that once rocked the establishment, is now just another player in the outrage Olympics. They’re no longer the voice of sticking it to the man—they’re the voice of being the man. And maybe, just maybe, they should stop lecturing and start listening for a change.