The only way to describe the governing class of the United States of America today is as a frat party. Or a cage match on WrestleMania. Even as a frat party in a cage match of WrestleMania.
A couple things got me jogging along this (in no way, original) line of thinking. One is the person of Pete Hegseth, a fellow Minnesotan who looks and acts the part of the president of Sigma Alpha Epsilon, nominated some time ago, as America’s worst fraternity by Bloomberg. The Smooth Operator’s responses to questions in his Senate confirmation hearings about his excessive drinking and aggressive behaviour towards women call to mind that other Lord of the Realm, Supreme Court Justice, Brett Kavanaugh. Both men brushed aside detailed, multiple and intimately-sourced revelations with an entitled and unflappable wave of the hand as if to say, “Take a chill pill, dude! I was just having a good time. Is the other keg open yet?”
The other thing that got me going was the book, Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America. It’s a funny, sad and tangled story to follow about the influence of one man, Vince McMahon, founder and owner of the WWE (formerly WWF) and his product’s influence on a couple generations of American young people, and Saudi billionaires; I’m looking at you MBK.
Aside from the garishly overdrawn characters, the blood, the steroids, the sexual assault, the violence and the appeal to our lowest human instincts (to act without consequences; to win at all costs) the biggest contribution pro wrestling has made to contemporary America is kayfabe. According to prowrestling.fandom.com, kayfabe (pronounced KEI-feib) refers to the portrayal of events within the industry as real, that is the portrayal of professional wrestling as not staged. Referring to events as kayfabe means that they are worked events, and/or part of a wrestling storyline. In relative terms, a wrestler breaking kayfabe during a show would be likened to an actor breaking character on camera. In short, kayfabe is pretending that what is fake is real and what is real, is irrelevant.
Ringmaster details how Vince completely destroyed the quaint ‘sport’ of pro wrestling that has been a popular sub-culture of American entertainment (not sport) for decades and built in its place a monopoly of gore, noise, excess, violence and abuse of people in and out of the ring. Something known as World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) which Vince recently sold to the company that owns UFC for 9 point 3 billion smackaroos. More than Disney paid for Marvel and Star Wars together!
Of course, the American President, Donald John Trump is a “yuuuge” WWE fan. Apparently, Vince McMahon is one of only two people whose phone calls DJT takes in private. And Melania is not the other one. Vince’s wife, Linda, headed up the Small Business Administration in Trumpdom1 and is now slated to be in charge of American educational policy and priorities! She (and indeed, the whole McMahon family) has herself participated in wrestling kayfabe events.
It is not hard at all to see in Trump the lessons he’s learned from Mr. McMahon. His promotion of violence, his mixing up reality and fakery, his wild stories, the sexual hanky-panky and the tearing down of all norms.
It takes no imaginative stretch to see the lines that connect all these dots-Hegseth, Kavanaugh, ‘Hang Mike Pence’, Stormy Daniels, Oath Keepers and ‘Lock her up!’-with the cultures of the wrestling ring and frat house.
An era of uncontrolled young man testosterone
One journalist summarized the culture of that frat house as having a “history of mistreatment of women, of systematic racism and of providing a path for an already elite portion of society (white men) to get ahead even further, usually in lucrative fields of business, finance and politics.”
Indeed, Geoff Duncan, a Republican and former lieutenant governor of Georgia, in a recent TV chat, said, “[Donald Trump’s] legacy is more built on a Ponzi scheme—a Ponzi scheme of populist ideas—and every day it’s going to get a little bit more edgy and a little bit more daring and bombastic. And I think you have to look no further than [his] nominees to see it as part of that next step in the Ponzi scheme.
If you told me that Donald Trump was building an administration to run a frat house, I’d believe you,” he added.
And so, here we are.
Time to get the old toga out of the closet I guess.
Missionaries, Mercenaries and Misfits 