When I was a kid growing up in St. Louis, Wrestling at the Chase was appointment television every Saturday night. It was the regional version of what has now become the global phenomenon, World Wrestling Entertainment or WWE.
Long before Hulk Hogan or Randy Macho Man Savage came on the scene, for us there was Dick the Bruiser, brothers Terry and Dory Funk, and Pat O’Connor, who was known for his very lethal sleeper hold.
Even as kids, we knew then that the story lines were concocted, but we were devoted fans; that is until we grew up and realized that all professional wrestling was one big lie. At least some of us grew up and realized that.
Who knew that American politics would one day take a page from American wrestling, and thereby put our entire democracy at stake in the process?
If you are a fan or you know a fan of the WWE, you have a clear understanding of the politics of denial of Donald J. Trump, who even in the face of four felony indictments still insists that he won the 2020 election.
Trump not only still insists that he won that election, he also maintains that the recorded telephone call he made to election officials in Georgia seeking additional votes was a “perfect” call despite those officials saying they felt pressured by the former president to sabotage election results.
If he can say it, that makes it so.
If you run down the list, Trump openly defies the truth no matter how obvious the facts align against him. He maintains the economy was the best it’s ever been under his administration – not true. He claims that the Russia investigation into his 2016 campaign was a hoax – not true. He even claims that his present legal woes are a witch hunt by the Democrats, even though the vast majority of witnesses against him are Republicans. Witch hunt – not true either.
So how is it that Trump can so easily lie in the face of the truth. More importantly, how is it that so many others – fully one-third of registered Republicans — defend his lies in spite of all the evidence against them?
It’s the WWE.
Always a publicity hound, in 2004 Trump served a stint as a WWE character which might explain where he learned his unique political science. A guiding principle of” professional” wrestling is a concept known as “kayfabe.”
Kayfabe, believed by some to be a Pig Latin expression of “be fake,” is an approach which holds that wrestling characters never deviate from their storylines.
Those who stormed the U.S. Capitol building on January 6 were wrestling fans from central casting. They are experts at manufacturing emotions and defying anything that contradicts the plot.
This is precisely the Trump playbook.
“I won (the 2020 election) by hundreds of thousands of votes,” Trump says a full two years into the Biden administration, and in the wake of federal indictments against him in four jurisdictions. Kayfabe!
“Democrats are weaponizing the justice department, and they’re engaging in election interference because I’m ahead in the polls.” Kayfabe!
The wrestling world has a limited universe of playactors who hold to their storylines for dear life: “faces, heels, and marks.” Faces (babyfaces) are the hero-types who are depicted as patriotic, hardworking underdogs. These are the people to whom Trump appeals – those he says have been aggrieved by the deep state, “and I alone can fix it.”
Heels are the antagonistic characters, the villains like Democrats and prosecutors who are responsible for the grief of the patriots. Finally, there are the marks – those for whom the stage play is written and who it is designed to deceive.
““I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and wouldn’t lose any voters,” Trump said during his 2016 campaign. He was marveling at the effectiveness of kayfabe.
Trump is so devoted to this political ideology, he doesn’t bat an eye when it comes to propagandizing falsehoods. But kayfabe as a political strategy is really as old as the cosmos. Jesus characterized it this way:
“You belong to your father, the devil… When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” (John 8:44 NIV)
