I wrote this years ago during the 2016 presidential primary, back when the idea of Donald Trump becoming the republican nominee, much less president, seemed absurd. Ha ha, the joke is on me.
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Every so often a turkey hunter gets shot in the face. This happens because the hunter, while attempting to cluck and cackle like a horny, female turkey, succeeds in tricking another hunter instead of a big tom turkey. Boom! It’s dangerous to pretend to be something you are not.
Some bird mating rituals are so elaborate that they rise to the level of performance art—think Bird of Paradise or Sage Grouse. It is fascinating to watch these displays. At what point did evolution decide, “The hell with being sensible. That looks too cool. He’s the one.”
Compared to the birds, human mating displays are fairly tame, a little paint and powder, some boasting vocalization by the male that is as likely to disgust the female as to impress her. Another species could not possibly find our mating displays fascinating. Even to us they are often an embarrassment.
We make up for this deficit by extending our theatrical activities beyond mating—opera, NFL games, Taylor Swift, professional wrestling. Here our pageantry equals anything on the nature channel.
These artistic performances are so widely varied that if human mating depended mutual appreciation of art, we would quickly split into multiple species unable to communicate or procreate with each other. Compare professional wrestling and opera. In one the actors follow a scripted drama, engage in mock violence, and communicate with the audience in short, often guttural burst of speech. In the other, the actors follow a scripted drama, engage in mock violence and communicate with the audience by high-pitched singing in a foreign language. In both cases the audience identifies intensely with the actors and sees the pathos of the human condition revealed through the performance. And yet, strangely, there is very little overlap between the fans of pro wrestling and the fans of opera. You’d think they would make natural pairs, but they don’t because what looks like art to one person looks like crap to another.
Journalists, who often consider themselves to be cynics, are fond of telling us that politics is also performance art. But like a lot of cynics, the journalists don’t really believe what they say. This is why Donald Trump has been so difficult for them to understand. The Donald, like a Sage Grouse, is engaged in a mating dance and it is pure performance. The self-satisfied smile, the hair, the offensive proclamations, these are all display features, admired by the Donald’s fans but confusing or repelling to everyone else.
When a sage grouse puffs out his chest in a grotesque but fascinating display, he is saying, simply, “I am the best damn Sage Grouse around. The best, do you hear, THE BEST!” The Donald is no more complicated. He too is saying that he is the best. THE BEST!
This is performance art. The tenor isn’t really dead when he falls to the stage on his wooden sword, the wrestler isn’t hurt when a three hundred pound man somersaults through the air and lands on his neck. Donald Trump could never become president. It’s all an act. Everyone knows it’s fake. The carnival goes on.
Until it doesn’t. Until the turkey hunter gets mistaken for a turkey, or a turkey gets mistaken for a president. Then, BOOM! Right in the face with hot lead.