A recent very good diary by otto pointed us to an older Jedd Legum piece, which analyzed Trump as the first Pro Wrestler in the Oval Office, and linked back to a 1957 Roland Barthes essay. Well worth reading.
This seems to me to closely parallel a cogent recent piece by the always provocative Naomi Klein, in an article in the October 2017 issue of Harpers, entitled "W.W.E the People":
https://harpers.org/archive/2017/09/w-w-e-the-people/
Non-subscribers should be able to read the article from this link.
If not, I suggest seeking this issue out on the newstand or in your public library, as it is, to my mind, one of the best “explanations” of Trump — connecting his WWE background and his “reality-television” experience. The piece is an excerpt from her recent book "No Is Not Enough", which was published in June.
A couple of excerpts to give you a flavor:
Reality television and professional wrestling are relatively new forms
of mass entertainment, and they establish a relationship with reality
that is at once fake and genuine. With W.W.E., every fight is fixed
and rehearsed. But that doesn’t lessen the enjoyment. The fact that
everyone is in on the joke, that the cheers and boos are part of the
show, increases the fun. The artifice is not a drawback — it’s the
point.
This posture is as authentic as the violence he enacted when he
appeared to take on a W.W.E. wrestler in the ring, or when he was
choosing among contestants on The Celebrity Apprentice.
Ms. Klein connects so many aspects of Trump's actual behavior while
"president" to reality television and to Pro Wrestling:
So Trump sees himself less as a president than as the executive
producer of his country, with an eye always on the ratings.
and
As a veteran of the form, he understood that if elections had become a
form of reality TV, then the best contestant (not the same thing as
the best candidate) would win.
She ends the piece with a devastating line:
That fearsome technology [the full arsenal of U.S. military power]
is now in the hands of the first reality-TV star president.
Ms. Klein's essay provided me with a very useful way of framing the disaster that is Trump's presidency, and I recommend it highly.
[first diary from a long-time Kossack]
