For years, Donald Trump has romped through the imagination of American politics, fulfilling various socio-psychological roles: so-called “businessman,” provocateur, entertainer and brand. The attitude behind his infamous swagger and scowl is epitomized by his legendary tag line delivered near the end of his popular reality show: “You’re fired.” Those two words spoke endless volumes of power, control, and above all, decisiveness. Here was a man who was unafraid to make tough decisions, and is that not the definition of a true leader?
The smoggy sunset of white American male hegemony is hard to take for those on the losing end of bi-coastal digital disruption and college-educated technocracy. In ways big and small, everything about our culture screams with a megaphone that unvarnished consumerism, wrapped in a hip but safe multiculturalism is the way forward, and if you can’t keep up, there is not a place for you. No wonder simmering resentment burst forth into violent rage as Trump channeled, goaded, and coalesced these forces into a political movement. Are the liberals laughing at the flyover states? You betcha. Are they laughing back, with bitter glee? Drill, baby, drill.
Enter reality TV. The genre was launched in a big way with “Survivor,” a show where beautiful and beautifully quirky individuals raced to the bottom in prepackaged struggles reminiscent of “Lord of the Flies.” The next wave of shows, however, gave us the eminently cringe-worthy genre that can only be called, “make fun of the poor.” From “Teen Mom” to “Honey Boo-Boo,” “Duck Dynasty,” and “Cops,” we can grab some popcorn, pour a glass of Pinot Grigio, and feel comforted that however our messed up our lives are, we are not that. And thank God, we are so, so educated. Bookended by the trend of looking down our noses at the unwashed is a parallel crop of entertainment that has as peeping in on the super wealthy.
Although we understand on some level that reality TV is far from real, the fact of its wild and enduring popularity says much about our attention span and appetites. Perhaps it has been inevitable since the defeat of the handsome but novice Kennedy over the balding, jowly, but experienced Nixon, that surface concerns have utterly replaced any depth in who we pick as heroes and leaders. In 1980 we chose a former B-movie star named Ronald Reagan as President. His aw-shucks syntax, TV-ready voice, and slicked-back hair were the symbols of the first Make America Great Again movement of the 80s. Something was wrong in America. All of those minorities were gaining power, but thankfully it was “Morning in America.” Tragically, the similacrum of a Hollywood statesman filled the bill perfectly. A Madison avenue-constructed version of a leader was in fact a front for a band of dangerous conservatives, many of whom prefigured the kind of wildly conspiratorial anti-government thinking that has given rise to the likes of Steve Bannon.
In his 1985 classic “Amusing Ourselves to Death,” Neil Postman argued that the rise of infotainment was itself the greatest enemy to serious political discourse and democratic institutions. In a chapter that took me by surprise when I first read it, he makes the charge that one of the worst offenders is “Sesame Street,” because it purports to be educational, but undermines attention and deep thought simply because it aims to entertain first. Agree or disagree, but we see this trend continuing unchecked. Whereas I remember practicing math facts from a plain sheet of paper, today’s students are more likely to be shooting down alien spacecraft, complete with snappy graphics and chaotic sound effects in video games designed to reinforce these skills. Youtube is quickly standing in for classroom debate and conversation. To be sure, there are defenses of all of these strategies, but it is hard to deny our society’s insatiable need for total and constant entertainment. I witnessed at a restaurant the other night the sad spectacle of a family of five at a nearby table. For the entire duration of the meal, each of the three children was engrossed in some phone-based activity. They hardly looked up to even take a bite of food, let alone engage in conversation. Parents of even toddlers use TV and increasingly phones and tablets as substitutes for actual connection, care, and education.
And so we get the leaders we deserve. The gutting of public education that is commencing under Trump, DeVos, and Virginia Foxx is but the final death blow to a school system that has been in a long and steady decline. Who is to blame? We are, including liberals. We pay utmost lip service to the importance of public school, but at the end of the day, many of us make choices that are selfishly wise for our families, such as moving into the neighborhood with the “good” (read: segregated) schools, which exacerbates the decay of the rest of the system. Disclaimer: I throw myself squarely into this category. Systemic racism in housing and employment of course translates into a wildly inequitable educational structure, thereby reinforcing and reproducing the flawed system ad nauseum. We can say we care about schools into we are blue in the face, but the fact of the matter remains that teachers are wildly underpaid, have little collective bargaining power, especially in the south, and appalling disparities persist in our schools that are nearly apartheid.
Trump infamously decried climate change as a Chinese hoax, ruffling the feathers of committed recyclers and Prius drivers everywhere. We can scream at Rex Tillerson and Scott Pruitt, but how many of us are doing anything substantive to actually reduce our carbon footprint? Read all about coral reef bleaching on your next flight to the Bahamas. That journey alone will spew tons of heat-trapping gas into the upper atmosphere. When you get home, enjoy the ride back to your comfortable house in a safe suburb, where all the consumer goods you could ever want have been manufactured in polluting and exploitative factories abroad, sent in polluting and exploitative container ships across thousands of miles of open sea, and brought over roads in polluting and exploitative tractor trailers for your perusal and purchase in exploitative big box stores that have been plopped down in former fields, forests, and pastures for your enjoyment. Get home, unwrap your goodies, throwing away the plastic wrap and styrofoam insert. Don’t forget to recycle the cardboard box! That will make you feel better. We deserve this band of climate deniers. I would submit that environmental change starts at home, and then in local communities. Go to planning meetings, write letters demanding bike paths. Fight zoning that allows sprawl to swallow our last few open spaces and encourages a further dependence on car travel. Consider moving near public transit. Plan a staycation.
Finally, we deserve Trump because the underpinning of so much of our culture is rampantly sexist. How many of us willingly spend hours of our time watching testosterone and pain pill-addled giants crash into each other at great physical risk to themselves in order to sell Lite beer and shaving cream? I’m talking about football here, folks. Everything about the industry reinforces the dominant male paradigm. Any world that simultaneously normalizes both traumatic brain injury and the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders has fundamental and disturbing issues. The values we worship in athletes and coaches have disturbing parallels with fascism: unbending and unquestioned submission to authority, cult of personality, nationalism, and the Trump/Lombardi ethos that the only thing that matters is winning. Protest though you may, the stark dichotomy of gender roles presented by Tom Brady on the one hand, and Giselle Bundchen on the other form a deep and lasting imprint on children. A swaggering conqueror and a pretty face, respectively. Boys are tough and do things; girls stand there and look good doing it.
But we are woke now. I, like most of you, still indulge in guilty infotainment. I can’t wait to binge watch the next “House of Cards,” for example. However, I now spend much more of my free time reading, thinking, writing, and talking about serious and sober political and social issues. I have gotten involved in numerous groups and causes, including the local Democratic party. Above all, I have started to take stock of the walking pile of contradictions that I embody as an American. Did I create these problems? Yes, and no. Can I be a part of the solution? Absolutely. For though Donald Trump may be one choice out of many paths our nation may have taken, and his legacy will be miserable, he has poked the bear. We are here now, and we are watching. We will not be fooled again.
Comments
Post a Comment