By Don Curren
I only
watched about half an hour of the televised debate between Donald Trump and
Vice President Kamala Harris.
There’s a
reason I avoided most of it: Trump is a pestilence.
He is a
thoroughly debased human being, a narcissist devoid of decency or morality who
has no idea of the extent of his debasement. As a vector of human pestilence, he
contaminates everything he comes in contact with, including presidential debates
and the people who watch them.
But
ultimately, the sheer significance of the debate, and the prospect of Trump
being trounced by Kamala Harris, did prompt me to switch over to the debate a
few times during ad breaks.
I’m glad I
did.
For there
was a brief moment in the debate that spoke volumes about Trump, his
supporters, and the cultural and media environment we all live in.
It came after
Trump’s infamous reference to Haitian immigrants eating the pets of the
residents of Springfield, Ohio.
Here is the
relevant section of the transcript of the debate posted by ABC:
DAVID MUIR:
I just want to clarify here, you bring up Springfield, Ohio. And ABC News did
reach out to the city manager there. He told us there have been no credible
reports of specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by
individuals within the immigrant community --
FORMER
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, I've seen people on television
DAVID MUIR:
Let me just say here this ...
FORMER
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: The people on television say my dog was taken and used
for food. So maybe he said that and maybe that's a good thing to say for a city
manager.
DAVID MUIR:
I'm not taking this from television. I'm taking it from the city manager.
FORMER
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: But the people on television say their dog was eaten by
the people that went there.
DAVID MUIR:
Again, the Springfield city manager says there's no evidence of that.
FORMER
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We'll find out
“Well, I've seen people on television” is the
moment I’m referring to.
It was said
without any of Trump’s usual bluster or venom, and with an unusual degree of
earnestness and conviction, for him.
It seemed as
if, in his own mind, he was making a sensible appeal to the final, irrefutable
authority on the issue, the source that validates any claim, no matter how
outlandish: TV.
It was, for me,
a brief glimpse inside Trump’s mental universe, and that of his followers.
In that
universe, seeing something on TV makes it true, regardless of what the city
manager or the police or any other so-called “authority” says.
That’s why
Trump says, when the ABC journalist refers specifically to the city’s manager
statement, “But the people on television say their dog was eaten by the people
that went there.”
Trump then
juxtaposes the “fact” of what he saw on TV with the statement of the city
manager, which Trump implies was inaccurate and self-interested. “The people on
television say my dog was taken and used for food. So maybe he said that and
maybe that's a good thing to say for a city manager.”
It was a moment that reflected Trump’s profound solidarity with his
followers. He knows that
TV is the world his supporters live in, because he lives there, too.
TV created
him, sustains him, enriches him.
(I’m
referring to Trump’s current persona as a Reality-TV star/con artist/politician,
his current incarnation, and not the billionaire-manque/celebrity of the ‘80s
and ‘90s)
There’s a tendency,
these days, to be dismissive of TV.
In the age
of smartphones, social media, and the metaverse, TV seems like a “legacy" medium.
And it’s
true that the structure of TV as media has shifted dramatically.
The ways TV
content is created and the ways TV is consumed have morphed dramatically. The
old-fashioned models of TV networks and “serial TV” consumed at the time it’s
broadcast have given way to streaming, YouTubing, digital recording, and
watching TV on phones and tablets rather than gathered around the family TV.
But those
changes may have complicated the delivery of TV, they have not diminished its
enormous influence.
TV has the
capacity to seem “real” – to offer what seems like a direct, unmediated glimpse
of reality.
A moving,
acting, speaking image of a human being rendered with lifelike accuracy has a power
over our minds that exceeds the more indirect modes of representation that
print media offer.
We live in a
“Society of the Spectacle,” in the words of French theorist Guy Debord, a
society where the unreal world of entertainment is more compelling to many
people than reality.
And TV is
the primary delivery system for the spectacle.
It’s seeming
realism, its ubiquity and intimacy - it’s there in everybody’s living room - give
it enormous power.
For a lot of
people things aren’t important – aren’t real – unless they’re on TV. It doesn’t
just depict reality. In a sense, it “dispenses” it.
And reality
TV, the source of Trump’s persona, is in some ways the apotheosis of TV’s ability
to dispense reality. Although inherently contrived, shows like The Apprentice
create a convincing simulation of reality, and extend that aura of reality to
people who participate in them, like Trump.
With his
inherited wealth and privileges, his bankruptcies, business failures and legion
of lawsuits, Trump wasn’t a successful businessman. But he played one on TV.
Trump’s
tenure on The Apprentice is likely the reason he keeps doing well on poll
questions focusing on candidates’ ability to handle the economy.
He made a
convincing simulation of handling business matters effectively on TV, a
simulation that for his followers was more “real” than the headlines detailing
his business failures, because they had “seen” him doing it.
His
followers think of him as a tough guy who good cut “good deals” with autocrats
around the world because they saw him mimicking a tough guy on TV.
And those TV
images have that peculiar aura of reality which, for many, seems more
compelling than news reports of his fawning behaviour around Kim Jong Il or
Vladimir Putin.
So, when
Trump cited TV as the ultimate arbiter of reality during the debate, he was not
only revealing how his own personal epistemology works, he was also invoking –
and deferring to - that of his followers.
It’s
comforting to think that if Trump’s hold on many of his followers does stem from
his days on The Apprentice, then the hold will diminish as time passes and the
memories of him as a Reality TV star fade.
Hopefully,
that will be the case.
But it doesn’t
address the broader issues reflected in Trump’s rise as a Reality TV politician.
I don’t
believe that the influence of TV in the broader sense is on the wane.
As
previously noted, traditional television networks may be in retreat, and TV has
splintered into a myriad of new formats. But that hasn’t necessarily diminished
its fundamental power.
The
continuing power and allure of video is reflected in the way even social media
platforms that start out emphasizing different formats – such as Twitter,
Facebook and Instagram – have been compelled to include video.
And arguably
the most influential social media platform of the moment, TikTok, is all about
video.
That TikTok
enables its users to post and distribute their own video rather than that of
established TV outlets is cold comfort. It merely increases the potential
sources of compelling but potentially misleading video content at a time when
the waning of traditional media weakens potential countervailing forces.
I am extremely
hopeful that Trump will go down to defeat next month. Although he is not likely
to go quietly, he is one TV-created pestilence that will lose its ability to
infect the body politic of the US, and indirectly, the rest of the world.
But it will
still be TV’s world, and we still have to figure out saner and less disruptive
ways to live in it.
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