October 17, 2019
Re: John Lithgow’s takedown of Donald Trump, our Reality President, in the New York Times today.
Let me say that it includes a great illustration by the writer, in addition to some fine prose. In the piece, Lithgow concludes that DT (is it pure coincidence that his initials are the same as Delirium Tremens, the post-drunk shakes?) is not only a bad president but a bad entertainer.
As an actor, Lithgow is well-positioned to comment on his subject’s lack of finesse. He is also one of the few to point out a trend: that the convergence of reality and entertainment into the infotainment world in which we now find ourselves can be traced directly to our first Actor-President Ronald Reagan. JL is also the first, as far as I can tell, to refer to Trump’s audiences by the correct term: “claque.” Takes an entertainment industry insider, I guess; and there is comfort in this. As a different kind of Republican at a similarly dangerous time – a time also involving the spirit of Roy Cohn – once said, more or less: their numbers are few and they are stupid. But I digress.
First thought on finishing the article was that we need more like this. Because how things seem is now more important than how they are. So call in a professional to describe what is going on. Robert Redford once said (I paraphrase here from memory) that he didn’t live anywhere near Hollywood because he worked in an industry whose stock in trade was artifice. So distance from that industry was important to mental health. He got the difference between real and fake. We need more actors to describe artifice in a critical way, as a component of our day to day world. My kids used to ask “Is that real?” How about watermarks in the upper right hand corner of our little screens rating credibility of the source on a numeric scale? All that’s needed is an accrediting body, such as already exists for schools.
The conflation of entertainment and reality is less surprising when we consider that a favored means of communication is via a digital slam book created by a college undergrad so that his fellow Cantabs could rate their date, including pictures (MyFace or SpaceBook; can’t recall). Now people get their news from such sources, and are as happy as not to believe that such news is fake, doesn’t matter. Easy come. Easy Go. Little high. Little low. Nothing really matters to them.
What to do?
Let us recall that decades of experts pointing out the health risks of smoking put not so much as a dent in the tobacco industry’s business model. The air of death only made smoking more cool in a dark way. No, we can trace the beginnings of Big Tobacco’s fall from grace to an ad featuring Brooke Shields, in which she said she couldn’t stand the smell of smoke in a guy’s hair. Go on a date? With you? Smokey stink? As if. End of cool tobacco, beginning of better health. So, too, malignant narcissism must be made uncool.
There was once a king of France who famously may have said that he was the state. This has widely been recited as an expression of pure power. However, it is also a leadership model. If Louis was opulent, if Louis was supremely powerful, then France was glorious, France was opulent, France was supremely powerful. After all, he was the state.
In his own sick and small way, The Donald tries to do the above. The Louis example is one which Mr. Trump adopted first as a business model, even before it became his political paradigm. Donald gets Louis the Fourteenth. And he claims to have read Mein Kampf. So he has retained at least two touchstones of Western culture we can attribute to his expensive education. Standing in front of walls of tacky one foot squares of Travertine over Hardy Board, trimmed with gold paint, he states “You gotta paint people a picture!” (Picture: Donald Trump is success. Glitter is success.) Speaking to a crowd of the easily dazzled he says: “The one thing you need to understand about me is that I’m, like, really really rich!” (Picture: Donald Trump is money.) People crave success. People love money. People should therefore want to be Donald Trump. It’s wrong, but it’s right. And it has worked before. But the perceived connection, the transference, is false and dangerous.
Lithgow’s mention of Ronald Reagan brings back a memory. Picture how Reagan used to keep the press at bay. A high wave and a smile from a distance as he walked from the helicopter to the White House. This drove me nuts at the time. After all, we (the People) hired this guy and he won’t even debrief us. He’s a Federal employee, not an emperor.
A colleague at work felt exactly the opposite about Ronnie’s style. I asked him why he preferred regal aloofness and a demonstrable lack of accountability in the president. His response was: “Because if I were President, that’s how I would be.” He liked the imagery, the lifestyle. He projected his being onto the President.
Transference can be OK so long as it doesn’t port over to Reality. Even actors have their idols and are wannabes in regards to somebody. But the President of the United States makes actual decisions that actually affect actual lives. For this reason, it is important to pick someone for the job with a reasonable chance of doing the job right. As a nation, we are blessed with good basic governmental systems. All that is necessary to avoid disaster is for a competent functionary to operate the controls in a steady and competent manner. Did I say competent? We had that for eight years prior to 2016, over which we recovered from the 2008 fiasco, which had ended the prior eight years of not having it.
The difference between the two positions is whether you see the president as someone who works for you, or see yourself as the President. Can you distinguish the state being France from the state being Louis? Are you prone to hang around the back door of theaters and hiss at the person who played the villain? Can you tell real from fake?
MOE
M.I.C.H. – Modernity, Intelligence, Complexity, Humanity