phantasm

Some are wildly extravagant, proliferating heads and arms into delirious phantasms of multiple personality and manifold temperaments.

David Hume, the 18th Century philosopher, described it as “the phantasm of the senses.”

Even the implicit promise of a male-oriented community is a phantasm.

Republican politicians win by keeping their base voters focused on phantasms and symbolic, ego-driven identity politics, rather than real world issues.

This dependency on fighting imaginary phantasms — which are responsible for eroding our "values" and "culture" by making America browner, less Christian, more constitutionally equal and ever less heterosexual — is what unites GOP base voters.