the fulcrum and the bear

It’s an election year ….

It finally hit me last week that come next January we could have a Trump presidency. Or a Clinton presidency. I’m not enthused by either scenario, but honestly the specter of a Trump presidency makes me queasier than politics usually do. Its not merely that Trump is a bombastic, racist, Narcissistic media whore who couldn’t care less about the health and well-being of the American people. What really hit me, looking at the latest polls that have Clinton and Trump running neck and neck, with Trump ahead in some instances – is that there really are a fair percentage of people out there willing to vote for him. And that scares the heck out of me.

And why when the lies are so obvious, the positions on issues change not just week to week but sometimes moment to moment, when the man’s own career in business is not only lackluster but fraught with scandal? He isn’t a politician, not even really a businessman – Trump is a celebrity. We know about him because of his tenure on the “reality” tv show The Apprentice.

What’s ironic, and not so funny, about all this is that I think many Americans have come to experience reality and “reality tv” in much the same way. We all know, even if we don’t like to admit it, that “reality tv” is far from real. Edited, scripted, hyped up – reality shows distort and angle and amplify situations to make them more entertaining, to create narrative arcs and dramatic climaxes. You can read the eventual outcome of a reality contest show early on by its edits and focus features. Joe is definitely getting kicked off because of the poignant feature on his sick grandmother. We all get a little moment to bond with Joe, perhaps there’s a tear, before he gets dismissed from the stage. It’s not bare facts, not talent and judges: behind every reality show is a narrative mastermind. The translation into real life? Truth is just a matter of opinion, facts can be edited out, and in the end entertainment is really all we want. Something to distract us from the desperation and drudgery of our daily lives.

In a nation of reality tv – Trump is the contestant to foster because he is the one who will create crisis and contention. He is the one who continues on into the final round, long past when any of us viewers know in our heart-of-hearts that he should, because he “spices things up.” Leslie Moonves, Chief Exec of CBS, speaking at a Morgan Stanley investor’s conference said of Trump’s candidacy, “It may not be good for America, but its damn good for CBS. The money’s rolling in and this is fun …” Fun? You bet. No worry that we’ve reached the tipping point for climate change and the next four years could be critical (and that Trump’s view of climate change is most influenced by his inability to use his favored aerosol hairspray anymore), never mind that millions of Americans are still without healthcare, or have coverage with such high deductibles and co-pays it is useless, never mind the safety of young men and women overseas still fighting in amorphous, endless wars, and never mind that the winner of 2016’s biggest reality tv show is going to have the codes of America’s nuclear arsenal. It’s fun, and the media conglomerates are making money.

How can Moonves be so glib? Well, he made $56.8 million dollars in 2015. So, safe to say that baring all-out nuclear armageddon – he is relatively insulated from the possible effects of his attitude. The fallout of climate change? He may lose a beach house – but unlike the climate change refugees of disappearing islands and coastlines around the world – I imagine he has a second, third, and fourth home to choose from to keep himself dry.

But what about the rest of us? The majority of the working poor, the middle class, the ones struggling to put food on the table? As writer Ben Fountain points out in an excellent article in The Guardian, “Two American dreams: how a dumbed-down nation lost sight of a great idea” – people living at a subsistence level don’t have the ability to think much beyond tomorrow, the next day. Survival takes everything. Citizenship, informed participation in a democracy – those things require not only a decent education but the ability, the space, to see beyond a looming mortgage payment or rent bill. 

And meanwhile the “Fantasy Industrial Complex” (as Fountain terms it) is there waiting for us – surrounding us, permeating every available moment of our lives with narratives of varying levels of fiction – from some rock star’s twitter feed to the latest episode of “Game of Thrones” to the latest polling numbers of the 2016 presidential election. I'm not just throwing stones here. I have my own struggles with both the bare-bones survival mentality of poverty and with media addiction (something I will go into in a future post). 

This ever changing, ever trending mass media reality is constantly telling us its okay to edit, to distort, to pick and choose among facts and fictions. So if climate change or the insane rate of shootings of African Americans by police are a bit too “real” – it is much easier to choose a different narrative to believe in. Perhaps one where Trump is a maverick outsider who speaks from the heart and will make America great again.

Please read Ben Fountain’s excellent article here: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/17/american-dream-divided-nation-equal-opportunity-trump-clinton-campaign