Grim Theater: The Greater Rationality of Reelecting Trump

Choosing entertainment in a political wasteland

Is there a realistic scenario in which “President” Trump wins the 2020 election without cheating, or at least without the cheating having been the decisive factor in his victory, and in which the voting would have been impeccably rational?

In other words, could the Trump supporters have reason on their side in spite of everything subhuman they explicitly say in their defense? Moreover, could the Biden supporters who might fail to show up at the polls, because of their lack of enthusiasm, likewise implicitly be bowing before a higher truth? Could the nomination of such a tired figure as Biden in the first place be likewise an indicator of that truth?

Let’s reflect on the potential meaning of a Trump reelection.

Radicalism and Conventional Propaganda

To begin with, we can stipulate that most and perhaps all of the explicit justifications Republicans offer in support of their 2020 vote for Trump are or will be either dubious or frankly preposterous. I’m not going to go through them here or to explain why there’s no sense in expecting Trump to govern the country well or to fix important political or economic problems or to leave the country better off than when he found it as president.

Based on the plain facts of Trump’s first-term record, the evidence against such conservative optimism is so overwhelming that those conventional arguments in favour of reelecting Trump are better thought of, at best, as rationalizations that conceal an unstated, less palatable reason for maintaining that support.

After all, as contemptible as many of Trump’s supporters may be on the surface, they can’t be wholly ignorant or psychotic. They must know what Trump is and what he’s done and isn’t capable of doing. So what else might those supporters suspect to motivate their efforts in reelecting a monster?

Suppose you have a dysfunctional democratic republic. Half the country recognizes this unpleasant fact and doesn’t vote or pay attention to politics, out of revulsion for the system. The rest vote in the elections, but none of their votes matter because the candidates are always neoliberals, functionally speaking, meaning they’re politicians who enact policies that protect the rigged economy which benefits the plutocratic, top ten percent at the expense of the vast majority.

Under those conditions, you may realize that the culture war between liberals and conservatives is a sham, that globalization and free markets were sold on the basis of economic propaganda rather than scientific knowledge, and that American politicians hold little power either to damage the nation or to restore its good name. Real power is exercised behind the scenes, in the deep state bureaucracy, by lobbyists who work for Wall Street and by other oligarchic factions that effectively own Congress.

You’d conclude that the political battles between Democrats and Republicans are meant to entertain and distract, not to solve anything. Since at least the 1980s, American politicians have been actors and figureheads, not statesmen or technocratic problem-solvers. Since the late 1990s, when Newt Gingrich surrendered Congress to the plutocracy, these politicians have been mainly fund-raisers, as “The Swamp” documentary explains.

Democrats insist on the opposite, that democratic government can work, that Americans should favour qualified, competent, reasonable political candidates. As Thomas Frank explains in Listen, Liberal, Democrats are believers in the merits of the professional class, which means this party subscribes to the same neoliberal, social-Darwinian assumptions that have so clearly corrupted the American republic. As imperfect as American capitalism might be, assumes these Democrats, their economy is fair enough so that most Americans deserve where they end up in society. No progressive overhaul of U.S. institutions is necessary, according to the DNC and Democratic insiders and power brokers.

Democrats claim to believe in democracy and responsible government, so they vote for actors that speak to those values (the Clintons, Obama, and the liberals in Congress). But the Democratic Party isn’t a legitimate force for progress, because it apologizes for and enables the true powers in the U.S., which are unelected and anti-democratic. The more powerful American experiment in liberty is the privately-controlled capitalistic one that turns citizens into professional consumers, not the hollowed-out democratic government.

Perhaps that’s why this party could muster the inspiration to nominate only the enfeebled figure of Joe Biden, and why even the progressives or social Democrats could find only elderly, dogmatic or tedious candidates to fight for their cause, namely Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Perhaps Democrats are only superficially democratic and patriotic, while in reality they’re beginning to adopt the Republican’s rank cynicism.

The American conservatives are, on average, less well-educated and more religious than their liberal counterparts. That means the conservatives aren’t as effective at lying to themselves and are more liable to adopt radical positions. After all, if you believe there’s a supernatural war between angels and demons and that God sent his son to die for everyone and to save them from eternity in Hell, it’s hardly a giant leap to wonder whether those who seem to rule (the politicians) aren’t really in charge. If God can be the unseen power behind all worldly thrones, maybe the wealthiest, unelected power-elites have had an effective veto against all sorts of policies that the majority of Americans have wanted their politicians to enact for many decades.

Condemnation by Silence

Given these structural problems, what should American radicals do, politically speaking? Join the progressives and fight for real change? Perhaps. But there are two further options. You might refrain from participating in the absurd sideshow of American politics. Again, that’s what half of Americans have actually done for most of the last century, when voter turnout in presidential elections has been around 50% on average, and even lower in the midterm elections.

The mainstream American media ignore that devastating, revelatory fact, and a 2020 Knight Foundation study shows why that might be so. This study actually asks twelve thousand regular nonvoters why they don’t carry out their “sacred” civic duty. According to the report, ‘Non-voters have less faith in the electoral system than voters. Non-voters say they don’t vote for many reasons, including not liking the candidates and feeling their vote doesn’t matter…They are more likely to think “the system is rigged.”’

The mainstream news media are part of that very system. They operate by selling their expertise, their savvy, insider knowledge of how the system works, and they prove this expertise by retaining access to the movers and shakers. They do this, in turn, by not stepping outside the Overton Window and offending the system’s managers. Obviously, calling American institutions rotten and beset with structural flaws that require radical reform would be considered a gaffe. Radicalism or real populism doesn’t help sell the unnecessary products being advertised on these corporate media programs.

Nevertheless, the hilarious fact remains that roughly half of the United States doesn’t vote or otherwise participate in or pay attention to its political system. Period. That’s around a hundred million Americans who likely believe their government and economy are rigged against them. Are they wrong? The mainstream media ignore this colossal block of nonvoters, preferring to focus on a sliver of “independents” or “undecided” in the “swing states,” rather than acknowledge the elephant in the room.

So we have a double silence, silence upon silence which both convict the American system. Just as you can condemn someone with faint praise, you can accuse something implicitly by ignoring it and then by having others who are complicit ignore those who ignore it.

The Knight report also says, “Non-voters are less engaged with news and information. They consume less news” and thus are “more likely to say they don’t feel informed enough to decide who to vote for.”

This is like steering clear of the minutiae of professional wrestling, the matches of which are scripted.

Republican Politics as Gallows Humour

Alternatively, you might refuse to be duped and might vote in such a way as to let the powers that be know that you see what’s really going on. If the dysfunctions of the political and economic institutions have become grotesque, you can at least wring some value from them even as they work to disenfranchise you. You can vote for the superior entertainers.

Obviously, that’s what Trump is, and that’s who Reagan and Governor Schwarzenegger were, for example: actual entertainers. Gingrich, Sarah Palin, the Tea Party, and the upcoming QAnon hucksters aren’t far behind. If no professional entertainer is on hand, the American radical “conservative” will opt for the more egregious con man or psychopath, because their crimes and self-destructiveness, too, provide for the superior entertainment.

Nothing is as dreary as the Democrat’s futile and disingenuous gestures towards Chinese-style technocratic meritocracy. What good is competence in government when real progress, namely reform of American democracy, of its campaign financing laws, its Electoral College, and its individualistic consumer culture isn’t on the agenda? Why would you want to install a more competent and efficient mechanism for screwing you over with neoliberal canards?

The Democratic Party, then, may be for the real suckers, notwithstanding Hillary Clinton’s belittlement of Trump’s “basket of deplorables.”

Indeed, the true insider who sees the despicable truth for what it is might be expected to throw up her hands, knowing there’s no hope of rescue from the American political structures, and she might demand at least that her representatives debase themselves like good Republican sadists and sell-outs. Knowing that she’s going to be bullied by an overwhelming power (the top ten percent have some 70% of the net worth in the US), the radical can salvage some dignity by at least making her abuser wear a silly mask while he’s pulverizing her.

Again, that’s what Nixon, Bush Jr, and Trump were all about; that’s what Gingrich, Paul Ryan, and Mitch McConnell are for. They’re not there to address or to fix America’s problems. No matter what rationalizations or conventional arguments Republican voters may provide to keep their disturbing, perhaps unconscious convictions private, to attempt to fit into polite society — no matter what the stated case is for Republican lunacy, the late-modern Republican Party is odious on every level.

The best case for enabling that odiousness is made on the assumption that the villain in a story is often more compelling than the bleeding-heart protagonist — especially when the story is an absurd farce and the hero’s victories are meaningless.

If Trump wins reelection in 2020, as disastrous and appalling as that would be, we should start to come to terms with the underlying causes of such a travesty. Instead of demonizing and scapegoating the perpetrators in our tribal manner, we should reckon with the real, sobering importance of Trumpism.

Again, half the country is convinced that America has already discredited itself. A further quarter sides with the duplicitous, anemic Democrats, while the other quarter implicitly agrees with that first half, but instead of not voting, they call attention to American dysfunction by voting self-destructively, by installing anarchical, traitorous entertainers and flagrant psychopaths to provide them with gallows humour as their nation declines.