The correct lens through which to view candidate Donald Trump is his long-time role in Professional “Wrestling” (WWE, formerly WWF), World Wrestling Entertainment, and not just his roles on ‘reality’-TV. He knows WWE well. So well, that Donald Trump was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2013. He owned the Monday Night Raw TV wrestling franchise and show. Trump appeared on TV at five annual WrestleManias. He physically tackled WWE owner Vince McMahon (in a staged fight; McMahon’s net worth: $1.2 billion). Trump then shaved McMahon’s head completely bald when Trump’s wrestler ‘won’.
This is not some unfair, partisan accusation; this is who Donald Trump is, and the key to understanding (and defeating) him. He knows how to appeal to the base, primal instincts of a boisterous WWE crowd, when the kayfabe script has been written in advance, including the referees and players attacking each other, and the winners and losers are agreed upon. The crowd wants passion, bloodlust, bravado, the smell of violence (without actually risking their lives or their children’s). This is how Trump sees American politics.
One serious danger to the world is that international relations is not staged. Wars can break out even despite careful diplomacy, let alone reckless saber-rattling like Trump’s (and other GOP for that matter).
Here’s one video from WWE, well worth watching to convey the truth about Trump (one can find many more videos of him on WWE):
Discussion, below.
Update: h/t to MTmofo, below, here’s what happened next to Trump, in that event. It’s hard to tell, but it looks like he was supposed to slam the ref, but instead he tripped and ended up on his ass himself:
Here’s a screen-grab of Trump as 2013 inductee in the WWE Hall of Fame: wwe.com/superstars/donald-trump
Part of the bizarreness in Trump’s rallies is that ¾ of what he says is false, and his audience doesn’t care at all, they lap it up. Likewise in pro wrestling everything is choreographed and decided in advance before the event — it is 100% fake, and the audience doesn’t care at all, they lap it up. In both cases, the audience “suspends disbelief” and goes along with the show, as if it were real. Thus, the key notion of “kayfabe” (a quasi pig-Latin version of “fake”). In wrestling, it means this:
In professional wrestling, kayfabe is the portrayal of staged events within the industry as "real" or "true," specifically the portrayal of competition, rivalries, and relationships between participants as being genuine and not of a staged or pre-determined nature. Kayfabe has also evolved to become a code word of sorts for maintaining this "reality" within the direct or indirect presence of the general public. In 1989, World Wrestling Federation owner Vince McMahon testified before the New Jersey state senate that wrestling was staged. Long sanctioned by New Jersey and other states as an athletic exhibition for regulation and taxation purposes, McMahon sought to eliminate oversight, and hence taxation, on the WWF's house shows and pay-per-view events held within the state.
Kayfabe is often seen as the suspension of disbelief that is used to create the non-wrestling aspects of promotions, such as feuds, angles, and gimmicks, in a manner similar to other forms of fictional entertainment. In relative terms, a wrestler breaking kayfabe during a show would be likened to breaking character by an actor on-camera. Also, since wrestling is performed in front of a live audience, whose interaction with the show is crucial to its success, kayfabe can be compared to the fourth wall in acting, since there is hardly any conventional fourth wall to begin with.