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How America became the love child of Kim Kardashian and Donald Trump

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After sailing to victory in Nevada and South Carolina and leaving the political establishment gobsmacked, Donald Trump has predicted that he will not only nab the GOP presidential nomination, but deliver the largest voter turnout in history. Typical trumpery perhaps, but the blustery billionaire is now closer to the White House than many people would have imagined. With breathtaking speed, he has rewritten the rules of campaigning while holding up a middle finger to Fox News, Republican elders and even the pope. He says things nobody else dares say - from expressing support for fans who roughed up a Black Lives Matter protester to maligning Senator John McCain's military record.

His reality is becoming America's. Do we have the Kardashians, in part, to thank?

With their cartoonish appearances - Trump with his buoyant hair and Kim Kardashian with her outlandish curves - both seem characters from a storybook. They are the king and queen of an American Dreamland, all the more important now that the American Dream has become fantasy for so many people. In an era of growing inequality and foreclosed futures, people can't get what they need, much less what they want.

In a better system, those who take advantage of a rigged set-up wouldn't be seen as heroes. But when there seems no hope of transformation, watching celebrities who float free from any kind of social responsibility becomes hypnotically compelling. Not only can you be famous doing nothing of value for society, you can even be president! How awesome is that?

Trump and Kardashian have both acted as barometers for how far a person can go and how low a culture can sink. Trump was famous, of course, long before the Kardashians. He was the poster boy for 1980s excess, just as Kardashian became the emblem of same in the naughts. He started grabbing media attention during his ill-fated ownership of a football team, which he ran into the ground while seducing the press with his outlandish claims and boisterous personality. Trump learned then to present himself as the biggest and the best at everything - bankruptcies and business blunders be damned. He may have ridden to success on a train of tax breaks and government largesse, but he became adept at styling himself as the emblem of the free market.

The temporal bridge between Trump and Kardashian is the 1990s - the decade in which reality television exploded, making people with no special talents wildly famous. The shows were loudly denounced as signals of American cultural enfeeblement, but the more the critics sniffed, the more the ratings soared.

Trump and the Kardashians perfected the genre. "The Apprentice," hosted by Trump from its inception in January 2004 until 2015, presented the mogul interviewing, and gleefully dismissing, job candidates and went on to become one of the most-watched programs on NBC. In 2007, "Keeping Up with the Kardashians" flooded American living rooms with what looked like fly-on-the-wall glimpses of the lives of the Kardashian-Jenner family, mainly the antics of daughters Khloe, Kourtney and Kim. That program became one of the longest-running reality shows in TV history, with the 11th season airing last fall.

Reality stars aren't supposed to elevate us or educate us. They are there to entertain us. So Candidate Trump need not concern himself with the minute details of foreign policy or healthcare. He only has to say, "It's going to be very big. It's going to be very special," to have the crowd cheer. Kim Kardashian never went to college, but she can make the news instantly whether she is demonstrating how to achieve maximum cleavage or tweeting semi-literate statements about the 1915 Armenian genocide.

Trump and Kardashian share the values of opportunism, image-obsession and materialism, but where they really rise above the celebrity pack is their knack for making oodles of money simply telling the world how awesome they are. And being rich. In 2015, Kardashian ranked 33rd on Forbes' roster of the world's highest paid celebrities. With $52.5 million in earnings, she beat out both Oscar-winning actress Jennifer Lawrence and former Beatle Paul McCartney. Trump placed 121st on the Forbes 400 list of the wealthiest people on Earth the same year, with a pile estimated at $4.5 billion.

Surely something magical happens in the rarefied air at that stratospheric level of wealth and fame. Inanity can magically transform into insight; solipsism into social concern; ridicule into reverence. The only skills required to keep the American public's attention are self-promotion and conspicuous consumption. Peers of this realm get a certain immunity from criticism and a pass on gaffes. Exaggeration becomes truth, or, as Trump himself artfully puts it, "truthful hyperbole."

Garish taste and questionable credentials become emblems of connection to ordinary people. Despite a dwelling that looks like the fevered dream of a French monarch, Trump has been called the "people's billionaire" and is considered by many a populist. Celebrity watchers love to remind us that Kardashian is just a "regular girl." She has a daughter! She hangs with her family! Her lack of talent - unless you consider taking photos of your rear end for Instagram a talent - dissolves in the public fascination for such mundane activities as taking endless selfies (we all take selfies!), even when she is shelling out $827,000 on gold-plated toilets.

Reality stars are special kinds of celebrities. Not only do they distract viewers from what's missing in their lives as we follow their every move, their association with a genre that ostensibly documents unscripted situations lures viewers into imagining that they are more "real" than other celebrities. They suspend viewers' disbelief more than professional actors, so when they fabricate reality out of whole cloth, the public might just buy it. They seem extra-intimate because they come to viewers apparently unfiltered.

Reality TV thrives on high drama, outsized personalities and loud-mouthed conflicts, so when we see a person linked to the form, we expect and accept these things as par for the course. That's why Trump can get away with denigrating Fox News' Megyn Kelly on the air during a debate. Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush could not. The rules are different.

Kardashian and Trump appear to represent a kind of capitalist abundance and freedom. What they really signify, however, is the imprisonment of the self and a future of further restricted possibilities.

When our connections to each other fall away and our self-absorption intensifies, Americans' chances to act collectively to redefine the terms of our lives diminishes. Trump's loud talk of building walls and roughing up those who get in the way is really the whisper of an authoritarian future where the freedom and abundance are reserved for elites who will protect their privileges at any cost.

The real wall will be around us - to keep us in our place. And we will have helped build our new reality.

© (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2016.

©2024 GPlusMedia Inc.

8 Comments
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Probably because the current reality of Washington has become so detached from the reality of the ordinary people that any alternative is an improvement.

3 ( +5 / -2 )

Excellent piece.

3 ( +4 / -1 )

When our connections to each other fall away and our self-absorption intensifies, Americans’ chances to act collectively to redefine the terms of our lives diminishes. Trump’s loud talk of building walls and roughing up those who get in the way is really the whisper of an authoritarian future where the freedom and abundance are reserved for elites who will protect their privileges at any cost.

Trump is a mobster. Make a mob, tell it to kick someone and what do you have? A Trump Rally; Thugs and racists, armed and ignorant, the expression of the least educated the most prejudiced and the most useless leader, Donald Trump.

With four hundred thousand votes so far, Trump is a long way from the confirmed choice. But, of course with Trump those voters are glad to have a side of David Duke from the KKK. What ever people say, when David Duke supports you, you've gone a long, long, long, way away from the American Ideal.

Rage on Mr. Trump. As our brothers say, "Never Forget" and "Why did Trump Dodge the Draft and How?"

-1 ( +3 / -4 )

They simply represent the decline and vapidness of American culture and civil life. This vapidness is also why drugs are being legalized everywhere. Americans need an escape from vapidness and their declining lives.

-2 ( +0 / -1 )

Who is Donald Trump?

According to the recording from Howard Stern in 1997 . . .

Draft-dodger Donald Trump once said that the danger he faced from getting sexually transmitted diseases was his own “personal Vietnam.”

In a 1997 interview with shock jock Howard Stern, Trump talked about how he had been “lucky” not to have contracted diseases when he was sleeping around.

“I’ve been so lucky in terms of that whole world. It is a dangerous world out there. It’s scary, like Vietnam. Sort of like the Vietnam-era,” Trump said in a video that resurfaced Tuesday on Buzzfeed, “It is my personal Vietnam. I feel like a great and very brave soldier.”

"I feel like a great and very brave soldier" Donald J. Trump

In 1997 Trump thought it was great fun to mock the soldiers of Vietnam comparing them to his Stateside sexual exploits.

Fast forward 2015? Trump's ready to send Americans to fight in the Middle East, again, for no purpose but to satisfy his bloated ego.

No wonder Trump fans love him so much. Trump can duck a draft and make David Duke happy. If that doesn't say "President", well, why would the GOP ShiaTea be interested in looking any further for another AWOL Bush? They found one in Donald J. Trump.

1 ( +4 / -3 )

@kcjapan During my year spent studying in the state, I learned the line "Those who do the least say the most and those who do the most say the least". I guess they applies to Trump, but not only to his sex life.

1 ( +2 / -1 )

I really do not understand the American public. In general, they are very very stupid people in the things they like and cheer on. Why would anyone want to watch Kardashians huge butt is beyond me.

I am happy Trump has a ton of money. At least he can say what he wants and not listen to supporters that donate money.

-1 ( +1 / -2 )

@shonanbb, as an American I can say this, a lot of Americans are stupid, you are correct. They don't educate themselves. They only want to be entertained, it is the land of Entitlement. We the people of American send soldiers around the world to fight for freedom and injustice while at home we're taking selfies and having fat put into our butts. The majority of Americans don't know what it's like not to have. Our stores are loaded with "things", cool things, expensive things, big things, small things. And it's these "things" that have become more important. It is as simple as that. It is true. BUT...(and see it's a large butt) but there are still a lot of good people in America trying to get education back into the norm and trying to educate people on what's right and wrong in the world. It's just that the stupid people have a tendency to scream and yell and not listen. But I have to believe that America will get smarter, it will get better, I have to have hope that the people with self-respect and great minds will persevere and make America if not great, but at least a place to be proud of again.

Not all American's are watching Trump and Kartrashians, some are studying and working to help America get better.

bec

2 ( +2 / -0 )

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