Not literal ones, but inventions, ideas so embedded in our culture that we mistake them for reality. Racism. Nationalism. Borders. Religion. Wealth. These are not immutable laws of nature. They are constructs, useful fictions born of history, prejudice, and power. And in 2025, they’ve become tools sharpened into weapons, wielded by Donald Trump and the billionaire class to fracture a nation already brittle with distrust.
The brilliance of the con lies in its simplicity: convince people that these ideas are real, natural, inevitable. That we are divided by blood, by soil, by divine favor or economic worth. Once we believe those lies, we become easy to control. It doesn’t take an army to suppress a people who are already too busy hating one another to look up and notice the strings.
Race, for example, has no biological foundation. Geneticists have long agreed that the differences we obsess over are skin-deep, social distinctions masquerading as scientific fact. But the illusion persists because it serves a function. Fear of the “other” is the oldest trick in the authoritarian handbook, and Trump plays it with a showman’s flair. “They’re not sending their best,” he said of immigrants in his first campaign. That lie metastasized into border walls, travel bans, and family separations, not because they solved a problem, but because they created one: a scapegoat.
It’s an old playbook. As James Baldwin wrote, “If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God can’t do that, it’s time we got rid of Him.” The same could be said of these phantom divisions. If they don’t make us freer, if they don’t make us better, then why do we still let them rule us?
Borders are another illusion we’ve mistaken for sacred truth. Lines on a map drawn by dead empires have become modern battlegrounds of identity and exclusion. But a line on a map doesn’t change who a person is. It doesn’t confer virtue or strip it away. And yet, Trump’s America has embraced nationalism not as pride in shared values, but as an excuse to shut the door, hoard the bounty, and look inward with suspicion. His tariffs, his saber-rattling over the Panama Canal, even his flirtations with military occupation of foreign zones, these aren’t strategic maneuvers. They’re theater for an audience fed a steady diet of grievance and fear.
And religion, perhaps the most powerful illusion of all, has not escaped the spotlight. Once a source of solace and a call to conscience, it has been twisted into a cudgel. Christ’s message of radical love and humility has been hollowed out, replaced with pulpit-endorsed vengeance and prosperity doctrine. Trump's alliance with the religious right has little to do with theology and everything to do with control. When pastors turn a casino mogul into a messiah, the cross becomes a campaign logo.
How did we get here? How did we let symbols replace substance?
Part of the answer lies in the stories we’ve been told about wealth. In America, money is not just a medium of exchange, it’s a measure of worth. To be rich is to be right. If someone has a billion dollars, we’re taught, they must have earned it. They must know something we don’t. Trump built his identity around this lie, positioning himself as a self-made mogul while hiding the truth: his wealth was inherited, his empire propped up by loans, bankruptcies, and media spectacle. And yet millions believe he understands them, simply because he projects dominance.
But wealth, like race and borders, is just another human invention. A dollar has value only because we agree that it does. The accumulation of capital isn’t a moral virtue, it’s a system of control. As the ultra-rich consolidate their power, funding politicians, buying media outlets, and shielding themselves from consequences, the rest of us are left fighting over scraps, blaming each other instead of the architects of scarcity.
This isn’t a conspiracy theory. It’s the logical outcome of a society that’s forgotten the difference between what is real and what is imposed. The consequences are not abstract. They’re lived: families ripped apart at the border, trans kids stripped of their rights, Black citizens brutalized without justice, and working families priced out of housing, healthcare, and hope.
Trump didn’t invent these illusions. He simply exploited them with brutal efficiency. And while we focus on the noise, on who to fear, who to hate, who to blame, he and his allies laugh behind closed doors, richer and more untouchable than ever.
We could end this tomorrow. Not with violence or vengeance, but with awareness. With refusal. Because if these things are inventions, then they can be un-invented. Race can be rejected as a meaningful category. Nationalism can give way to solidarity. Religion can return to the quiet humility of personal faith. Wealth can be redefined, not as how much you hoard, but how much you share.
This is not a naïve dream. It’s an act of resistance.
To see the illusion for what it is, and to walk away from it.
We are not white or Black or brown. We are not Mexicans or Americans or Syrians. We are not rich or poor in the ways that truly matter. We are not red states or blue. We are people. Tired. Angry. Hopeful. Capable of building something real, if we can just stop fighting over the ghosts they gave us.
The late author Ursula K. Le Guin once wrote, “We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable, but then, so did the divine right of kings.” The same can be said of every one of these illusions. They feel eternal. But they are not. And when we stop believing in them, their power ends.
Trump’s greatest weapon is our belief in what isn’t real.
Our greatest strength is the day we stop.
Disclaimer: Jim Powers writes Opinion Columns. The views expressed in this editorial are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of Polk County Publishing or its affiliates. In the interest of transparency, I am politically Left Libertarian.
