You are the company you keep.
Think about it. Think about your friends, the people you attract. In some way, shape or form they are in your circle for a reason. No matter how minor, these people share an element of like-mindedness with you. This should also be the case with Donald Trump and his relationship with the chairman and chief executive officer of World Wrestling Entertainment, Vince McMahon. Both men, the heir to their family business, utilized their charisma to grow the empire they were tasked with maintaining. Perhaps it was McMahon's profession--scouting WWE stars--that gravitated him towards Trump. Before Trump was able to take his WWE persona to the big stage of Washington D.C. he had a few sips of tea on McMahon's product developing his craft.
Think of the first WWE superstar that comes to mind: The Rock, Stone Cold Steve Austin, Hulk Hogan. They had charisma. They had catchphrases. They moved fluidly between being a heel or a babyface--professional wrestling terms for the bad guy and the fan favorite. A 2013 WWE Hall of Fame inductee, we should have expected nothing less when Donald Trump took his talents to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
The mantra: Make America Great Again. The merchandise. The rallies. The schoolyard bully approach to his rivals. Anyone that grew up watching the WWE knows this playbook all too well. And it is not surprising in this least this approach worked. The parallels between the sports world and the political ecosystem are closer than many of the latter may want to admit. While presidents have made an annual tradition of filling out NCAA March Madness brackets with the rest of the country, it is the man that attempted to purchase the Buffalo Bills NFL franchise that would officially merge these worlds. No, not the golfing piece--although he's done a lot of that--or working on his jump shot, a la Barack Obama, but purely the entertainment. Entertainment is lucrative. McMahon knows this and most importantly, Trump knows this. It got him a spot in the WWE Hall of Fame and it landed him in the highest position he could ascend to, President of the United States of America. Yesterday, December 18, 2019, Trump was faced with a credible threat to his "United States Championship" belt: the House of Representatives voting on two articles of impeachment for abuse of power. What's truly impressive is Trump is so good at this persona that people have been resigned to concede that Trump will make history becoming the first impeached President to be re-elected.
As a writer, I feel it is my responsibility to use my words to express my position. I never wish to name-call, particularly because I assume people to be rational actors. I've written on this platform about the status of political discourse so the last thing I wish to do is to stoop to such a level.
But...voting for Donald Trump in 2020 would be stupid (not calling the voter stupid but the act is inexplicably so). Here's why: Donald Trump is one of five U.S. presidents to be elected without winning the popular vote. The most recent of which being George W. Bush--the only president of the crew to win re-election. Of his peers: John Quincy Adams lost re-election to Andrew Jackson in 1828, Rutherford B. Hayes promised to serve one term and Benjamin Harrison lost to Grover Cleveland in 1892. Yet, even Bush--ranked second behind Trump in terms of number of votes trailed in the popular vote--required being in the midst of the Iraq War and the emotional toll of the September 11th terrorist attacks to narrowly win his second bid in 2004. Instead Trump has created a Venn diagram being the middle between the popular vote losers and the short list of presidents that have been impeached. Of his latter faction, the Impeached, Andrew Johnson failed to receive the nomination and, per the 22nd Amendment, Bill Clinton was not allowed to run for a third term. Thus, the 45th president will assumedly--pending the Senate impeachment vote--be the first impeached president to run to re-election. Given the tenor of politics in this day and age, it is a foregone conclusion Donald Trump would secure the nomination of his party set to face the victor in a crowded Democratic nominee race. So, let me tell you why this is stupid: 1a) You are asking me to believe that the person that did not win the popular vote in his first election--also a rookie to the world of politics--is going to win the popular vote this time around--fresh off an impeachment? 1b) Or better yet, you want me to believe he will lose the popular vote yet again and be bailed out a second time by the Electoral College? 2) As I tweeted, your job as President of the United States is two fold: don't get us killed and don't get the boot from your job. I assume part of the position is probably engaging in activity that is perhaps unsavory to the public and may potentially be an impeachable offense if made public. From this, your job is to not be so messy that this news gets out. If you are, you probably deserve to be impeached. If 42 other presidents, that have held this role over a span of 230 years, could manage to not get impeached then I'm led to think you're bad at this to be one of three. Which leads me to my last point... 3) Whether it has been strictly Democrats versus Republicans or some other combination of former parties, no President besides the first one, where there was no popular vote, has been elected unanimously. This means every single one of the remaining 44 presidents has had to deal with people that did not vote for him to hold America's highest honor. The idea that this impeachment is the result of a partisan agenda is laughable because again no one else, besides Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton, gave their 'opponents' the opportunity to impeach. We are at an interesting time in our history with the 'Age of the Internet' in full force. Like similar revolutions, the future is up in the air; completely at the will of wherever this rollercoaster takes us. While Barack Obama began the standard of the @POTUS Twitter account, Donald Trump--15 years his predecessor's senior--has shown the dangers of this cheeky trend. Moving on from a world where news of Trump's impeachment would have come from the next day's newspaper, we could watch live from our Twitter accounts as the House deliberated on the President's fate. In the same feed, we could also hear Trump's rebuttal at a rally for his re-election in Michigan. What a world! I am someone that embodies the comedy and tragedy masks--I don't know what they're actually called. Some would say this is the Gemini in me, I would say growing up in America as a Black man created this dichotomy. The comedic side of me laughs heartedly at Trump's sophomoric pestering of his naysayers. The tragic side of me mourns for this country: too caught up in cheering for their own team to realize they are cutting off their nose to spite their face. Where do we go from here? With the weaponization of social media, we are all concerned about a revolt taking place as Trump has proven masterful at mobilizing his base. While we are again stuck debating the Montagues vs the Capulets, we stand at a crossroads of someone with the capability to transcend it all. Benjamin Franklin's reply as to if America was a monarchy or a republic is truly a question you must determine for yourself. And if we are to move away from this democracy we so cherish, is this your king?! |
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Ty FosterQuestion everything. WQHC Archives
June 2020
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