The CBS hit show Marshals premiered recently. After watching, I felt something at least akin to PTSD. The violence, adapted to our culture of fast-paced, combative entertainment, reeked of vengeance. And this is only the first episode of the second season.
Rodney Kennedy
Crime dramas instinctively increase the violence in an attempt to increase ratings. A rerun of last season’s FBI finale had CIA agents assaulting members of the Bureau. In one extended scene, agents dropped bodies in a long hallway — too many bodies to count.
Television producers, directors, and writers have always known violence sells. The business in violence has been especially good in the last ten years. Viewers are attracted to violence. The CBS Sunday lineup opens with American gladiatorial games in huge stadiums where very large and very fast heavily armored contestants pummel one another. This is followed by three hours of the “good guys” taking out the “bad guys.” As Jesus puts it, “All who take the sword will die by the sword” (Matthew 26:52).
In The City of God, Augustine argues the Roman elites indulged in violent entertainment to distract them from the inevitability of death. They were afraid they would not be remembered, and like the rich, in general, lived in fear of the loss of comfort and status.
How Roman we Americans now seem. For more than a decade, we have mostly watched The Trump Show. Like all other power brokers, Trump is afraid and insecure. His administration has produced an ever-growing fear even among MAGA about annihilation. His anxiety has led to an over-dependence on military force. Weak and unstable males of the species always resort to bluster, bragging, and threatening when they are afraid.
Having taught MAGA to fear, Trump can’t be surprised that anxiety now disseminates in red states facing a possible loss to the Democrats. The Trump Show bears all the identifying marks of a TV drama increasing the violence in an attempt to boost ratings and keep the program alive.
Trump’s midterm rallies look and sound like a combination game show and crime show. Palpable, visual, and auditory, the fear hangs in the air. With mere days until the midterms, he is again rallying, talking up his record, offering cash prizes, and asking supporters to play pretend.
Photo by benjamin lehman on Unsplash
“I’m really in to win it. We want to win the midterms,” Mr. Trump told a crowd at a high school student center in Vandalia, Ohio, on Saturday evening. “If you don’t mind, please pretend that I’m on the ballot.”
Trump has never been anyone other than the persona he projected on “The Apprentice.” He combines the offer of cash prizes — think “Jeopardy” and “Wheel of Fortune” with his violent rhetoric that threatens democratic values and process. Trump has never been anything other than another long-running TV show running out of steam. His ratings are a dumpster fire. The rally crowds are smaller, as the empty seats testify.
Early Trump Show episodes felt like overflow rock concerts. Now they feel like the farewell tour of an old rock star. And, on cue, Trump plays all his greatest hits. He attacks Democrats. Halfway through the monologue, he leaves the world of logic for what he labels “the weave.” He accuses the Democrats of stealing the 2020 election (they didn’t), and he attacks the media.
The numbers — all Trump cares about — tell the sad tale. His approval rating has dropped to 30%. Red state candidates for the U.S. Senate are trailing in the polls. Even the crowds are smaller. In 2015 Trump drew 30,000 people to a stadium in Alabama. In Ohio for a midterm rally, the venue seated only 4,500 and there were empty seats. When you live by the ratings, you die by the ratings.
And now our self-proclaimed “really smart” and “really rich” president wants his followers to pretend. The Trump Show has been all pretense since the first episode. Trump sold MAGA a collective fantasy of getting things done by shaking up politics as usual. It has been a fun but tense ride for MAGA and Trump.
Voters, the true “cancel culture” of America, seem on the verge of canceling the Trump Show. Someone needs to tell President Trump, but there are no truth-tellers left at the White House. Natalie Harp only feeds the president good news.
Any bad news gets filtered out before it gets to Trump. He’s whining that the media isn’t adequately promoting his events. “These Election Rallies were representative of what’s really happening with our great Republican Party,” Trump wrote.
Trump will continue to star in his own fantasy where the price of gas is falling, any bad news is still Biden’s fault, the arenas are packed with people, all sane white men desire him, the economy is booming, Canada will soon come to its senses and join the U.S. as our 51st state, Greenland will vote to become part of America, and the war with Iran has been won.
Fantasies never work out. Fear finally overcomes the fantasy. To put a minimal biblical point on the reality, recall Pharaoh, the richest and most powerful ruler in the world, becoming fearful of the population growth of the Hebrew slaves. Dominated by fear and insecurity, Pharaoh issues an executive order to kill all the baby boys born in the slave community. He deliberately enacts a policy designed to eliminate his cheap labor supply. The irrational act is fueled by insecurity. How Donald!
Rodney Kennedy has his M.Div. from New Orleans Theological Seminary and his Ph.D. in Rhetoric from Louisiana State University. The pastor of 7 Southern Baptist churches over the course of 20 years, he pastored the First Baptist Church of Dayton, Ohio — which is an American Baptist Church — for 13 years. He is currently professor of homiletics at Palmer Theological Seminary, and interim pastor of Emmanuel Friedens Federated Church, Schenectady, New York. His eighth book, Dancing with Metaphors in the Pulpit, is out now from Cascade Books.
