The 2024 presidential election is going to be an endurance test. Not a battle of ideas. Not competing visions for the future. Not choices or echoes. It's going to be dark, low, dishonest and it's going to last for what seems like a lifetime.
In a sign of just how grim the landscape stretching out before us is, we need look no further than the utterly bizarre kerfuffle over…a pop singer (Taylor Swift) and her football player boyfriend (Travis Kelce).
Portions of the populist right appear to have decided this relationship is somehow a massive psychological operation intended to swing both the outcome of the Super Bowl (for Kansas City) and the presidential race (for Joe Biden).
It's the mother of all triple bank shots. This means only those who are truly, genuinely touched will believe any of it is true.
Which means the rest of it is…fake. Not just fake but profoundly cynical, entirely manufactured and ephemeral.
As the Center for Inquiry's Benjamin Radford writes:
The fact that most of the “outrage” directed at Taylor Swift is social kayfabe has several implications. First, it doesn't accurately reflect the state of the country; those who are sincerely and genuinely angry at Swift personally and emotionally are a very small and largely invisible minority. What we see is an unrepresentative minority whose sputtering outrage is carefully calculated to be amplified by news and social media…
Radford's use of “kayfabe” – commonly used shorthand for all the scripted fakery that makes up professional wrestling – is entirely correct. But it's also particularly interesting given that former President Donald Trump is also….a member of the WWE Hall of Fame.
How soon we forget:
In January [2007], The Donald interrupted Mr. McMahon's “Fan Appreciation Night” on Raw and dropped tens of thousands of dollars from the rafters of the arena onto the WWE fans below. Red-faced that a rival would steal the spotlight from him, Mr. McMahon challenged Trump to a “Battle of the Billionaires” at WrestleMania 23 with the stipulation that the loser of the bout would have his head shaved bald.
A record number of viewers tuned in to watch The Donald back Bobby Lashley to victory over Mr. McMahon's Umaga and subsequently shave the WWE Chairman's signature mane in the center of the ring.
Scripted from start to finish. Kayfabe to its core.
That's what we have to look forward to over the next long months of the presidential campaign. Manufactured outrage calculated to keep the faithful agitated. And to keep the click and views coming, of course.
In the end, we may just achieve what H. L. Mencken said was democracy's final destination:
As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
But only if the loser's head gets shaved live on Peacock.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
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