Our WWE Election

The metaphor I think is most appropriate to Trump politics, his rallies and his supporters is the WWE.

I haven’t watched a WWE event since, well, since before it became the WWE. But as a youth I watched wrestling on TV and am very well acquainted with the cultural phenomenon it has become.

Traditional wrestling is a very competitive physical sport. In WWE it gets scripted, with good guys, bad guys, (heels and heroes), and plot lines that create stories and stir the emotions. Men with sculpted bodies and/or cartoonish strength and agility perform character roles that the fans hate or love. Some use gimmicks to assist their villainy; most use boisterous braggadocio to rile the passions of their fans and the crowd. It’s formulaic but it works, even for those who know it is scripted/fake; and it is very big business.

In 2017 WWE took in $800 million dollars and the top wrestlers each made several million dollars. Entertainment is part of its name and entertainment sells.

 

Donald Trump rallies are also scripted; not the teleprompter scripts that he drones through when pretending to be serious or presidential, but the rallies where he plays his greatest hits like “Lock Her Up” and “Build that Wall.” His heels are Hillary and CNN, among many others; his heroes are Fox and the military, coal and tax cuts.  Most people know he lies and exaggerates; promises things that can never be delivered; but they don’t care. He gets them riled up; he plays on their passions and prejudices; he brings entertainment into politics like Sarah Palin did; the antitheses of suits and insiders with their wonkishness and nuance. He “tells it like it is” at least like they want to believe it is. It is fantasy politics. He doesn’t have a Dream, but insists everyone else’s Dream is a nightmare.

Donald Trump loves the applause; loves the love he gets from rallies. He found the one thing that he is good at, that he enjoys, that strokes his ego, which feeds the narcissism. He is an entertainer. From Miss Universe to The Apprentice he was the Impresario and knew that spectacle and controversy got attention and made money. As a Candidate he said anything that would get attention because that was more important than truth or consistency. Now in the unexpected and exalted position of President, he can tweet thunderbolts at his opponents and create controversy out of thin air. Everything he does, every gut instinct he follows, every expert opinion he ignores is all magnified. And the thousand cuts of criticisms from the mice below sting and provoke the mighty lion who was never one to reflect rather than react.

Where does this leave us or lead to? In the WWE there is always an evolving storyline, a new plot twist, characters coming and going. But it is all manufactured. In Politics, real live shit happens all over the world. Natural heels like Vladmir Putin and Kim Jong Un pretend to change and befriend the President. Traditional boring allies like Merkel, May and Macron (Europe’s 3M’s?) are kicked to the sidelines. And the Main Stream Media goes wild, cheerleading or criticizing with fanatic hyperbole to capture eyeballs and cash in on the game. The Grand Game, 21^st century style.

We can be entertained. We can be outraged. One tribe’s heel is another tribe’s hero. It wasn’t always this blatant, this superficial. It used to be more mundane, more intellectual, and even elitist. Now there is so much information that confronts us from devices we can’t escape.

Will a leader emerge that can bring the tribes together like the Five Nations of the Iroquois? Or will there have to first be a cataclysmic disaster? Are we looking for such a leader? Will the corporate media, the oligarchs and plutocrats prevent an egalitarian bridging of the political, social, cultural, and economic divides in this country? Again, will a real catastrophe, natural or manmade, have to occur first?

All we can reasonably do for now is work within our little circles, our friends, families, colleagues, and social media acquaintances for peaceful dialogue and change. Civility. Let harmony be as important a goal as hegemony. Vote for accountability; vote for honesty; vote for integrity. Vote on issues not on fear and hatred.

Enjoy the fictional WWE, if that’s your thing, but don’t let it be the model for our National Politics.

 

:>Howard Flantzer