Seeing is Believing

Ronald Reagan’s Hollywood career – spanning decades and marked by more than 50 films – was on the down-slide by the time I came into the world.  For me, he was simply the host of Death Valley Days. And a pretty bland host he was, too.

Two years after DVD went off the air, Reagan made a wildly successful switch to politics that boggled my tender, 14-year-old mind.  How could a mediocre actor (it’s a fair cop) go straight from introducing true stories of the Old West to presiding over one of the largest economies in the world?

Turns out, “The Great Communicator” had acquired a wealth of administrative and leadership experience as twice-President of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG).  In fact, the American entertainment industry has Ronnie to thank for the residual payment system still in use today.  And Americans have SAG to thank for whetting Ronnie’s appetite for politics.

Still, the leap from head honcho of an actors’ professional association to head honcho of the State of California is quantum.  I’d have found it more comprehensible had he first snagged a mayoral position, like Clint Eastwood in 1986, gone from mayor to representative, like Sonny Bono, or made a senatorial bid from a less populated state, like Al Franken.  But Ronnie moved from his mansion in Pacific Palisades to the Governor’s mansion in Sacramento without passing “GO” or collecting $200.

At the time, I suspected his political speed and prowess were due in no small part to his Hollywood-star status. When body-builder/”actor” Arnold Schwarzenegger followed suit by winning a recall election and becoming Governator of California in 2003, that clinched it, as far as I was concerned.  Sure, their ultra-conservative right-wing views made them way popular with Republican voters (basically, all of So-Cal).  But it was their screen personas (genial, trustworthy, straight-dealing, firm and fair Ronnie; powerful, indomitable, heroic, Aryan-god Arnie) that won them the trust of the masses and put them in office.

This ain’t nothin’ new.  Once upon a time, Americans believed what they saw in print:  “It’s gotta be true – I read it in the newspaper.”  Well, present company excluded, reading is becoming less and less of a thing as each successive generation ups the ante on screen-time.  Amygdala-ruled, fear/pleasure-addicted brains don’t crave carefully-researched articles and insightful investigative journalism.  They don’t even crave exploitive, tabloid yellow journalism with incendiary headlines and shocking photos.  Not like they used to, anyway.

Modern brains crave sensory stimuli that trigger either the adrenals or dopamine.  (If you missed my blog-post on how images wrapped in emotional content bypass the neo-cortex and fire up the limbic system, you can read it HERE.)  Nowadays, people believe what they see on the screen:  “It’s gotta be true – it’s on the tube and echoes my subconsciously-formed assumptions.”

I’ve already blogged-in on the dangerous influence media narratives and images have on our socio-political reality.  I get how the vaguely alarming news-ribbon that scrolls under the vaguely threatening visual feed to the accompaniment of anxiety-producing audio commentary serves to sway FoxNews viewers toward Islam-a-phobia, racism, sexism, and climate-change denial.  What I’m only starting to get is how a pathetic performance by a recognized flim-flam artist can instantly (albeit temporarily) reassure huge swaths of left-leaning America that things aren’t so bad and persuade the liberal news media to pronounce an authoritarian loose-cannon “presidential.”

There are two aspects to this fickle fallibility that just make me cringe.

First, I’m stunned 45’s passable TelePrompTer performances don’t ring hollow in more people’s ears.  Nobody – nobody – gets through childhood without learning the hard way that actions speak louder than words.  What does it matter that, upon occasion, a barely-articulate orange-u-tan can read from an inoffensive script without making a complete ass of himself?  What does it matter, if every action he takes, every Act he signs, every Tweet he posts, and every impromptu speech he makes is entirely and undeniably offensive?

After barely 2 months “in office” (about 20/60 of those days – 1/3 of the time – he’s been in Florida, vacationing to the tune of $3 million tax-payer dollars per trip), the Golden Fleecer and his team of All-Whites have fomented hate and hate crimes, exacerbated tensions between nations, and launched all-out attacks on the free press, education, science, the environment, Muslims, Obama, women, Mexicans, and the Arts.  The jingoistic Jerk-in-Chief has obfuscated issues of supreme importance to the safety of our nation – his administration’s ties to Russia, his taxes, his failure to divest his business interests, his fascist adviser’s agenda to eradicate American democracy – with acts of political arson that keep us racing to put out one explosive fire after another.  What the hyperbolic Toupee-Topped Turd can’t hide is that he hasn’t a clue how our government works, he’s taking his briefings from Fox & Friends, and he’s using the White House to get-rich-quick by screwing every non-White, non-male, non-billionaire American out of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The other, more horrific aspect of this “Ooh, look – he’s presidential!” phenomenon is its connection to the psychology of abuse.  When Der Gropenführer presides over the United States of America as a narcissistic, megalomaniacal, self-aggrandizing, bigoted creep, then tweaks the lights and contradicts everything he’s done by uttering a few comforting and reasonable sentences – that’s gaslighting, folks.  And when the pundits we count on to Speak Truth to Power sign on to this bullshit, when they praise 45’s speechifying as if it bears some relation to reality, they’re turning down the lights on us, too.

The most insidious part of the abuse cycle is the act of reconciliation.  Not “act” as in action.  “Act” as in putting on an act to elicit a specific response from an audience.  I’m over-simplifying here, but in broad terms, abusers abuse because it makes them feel powerful and in-control.  Once they’ve found a victim, it’s in their sick interest to keep that victim from skipping out on them.  And that’s where the Big Act comes in.  “I don’t know what came over me, baby . . . but I did warn you.  C’mon, you know I love you.  I’ll never do it again.”

When I listen to Smarmy Smug-Mouth laboring through sentences someone else wrote to make him look good, I hear an abuser trying to reconcile with me.  And when I see media commentators accept the Abuser-in-Chief’s phony, unfeeling sentiments, to me it looks like a co-dependent parent denying a battered child’s perceptions and failing in their duty to protect that child from harm.

The limbic system’s inability to separate truth from fiction is at the root of this, I swear.  In any objective reality, 45’s verbal assurances that he will act with integrity for the common good can hold no more weight than protestations from an acolyte-raping priest that he “truly loves the boys” he is assaulting.  Unfortunately, our animal brains are crap at distinguishing between fact and fiction, artifice and authenticity, truth and lies.

Ronald Reagan rode his homespun, boy-howdy, true-blue, defender-of-the-public-weal film roles through to 2 terms in the White House.  Despite that the public weal suffered irreparable damage under his greedy “Reaganomics” policies, despite that he supported dictators and abetted the genocide of innocent civilians, despite that he went senile while in office, the American people never stopped seeing him as the beloved sheriff who runs bad guys out of town.

Arnold Schwarzenegger parlayed his bulky machismo and outsider-standing-up-for-justice screen persona into a solid political career.  Despite that he admitted to behaving “badly” for 3 decades by groping and sexually humiliating women on the set, despite that he peppered his political exchanges with opponent Gray Davis with lines from his Terminator movies (“Hasta la vista, baby!” “I’ll be back!”), despite that the public interest was smothered by his own self-interest (biographer George Butler referred to him as a “Mountain, Himself, with an ego that was slightly bigger than the Austrian Alps), voters had no doubt that the right man for the Governor’s job was a genuine, indestructible cyborg.

TV personality and business-bankrupter Dum-Dull Drumpf ruthlessly exploited his public persona – tough, successful, wheeler-dealer with a Midas touch – to win hearts and minds.  And it didn’t work.  Firing apprentices on a reality show doesn’t have the impact of being a white-hat hero on the range or taking down the Mafia in Chicago.

Nevertheless, thanks to gerrymandering, the Electoral College, the CIA, and Putin, the current Leader of the Free World is an embarrassment to the nation and a extermination-level threat to the entire planet.  For me, praising his theatrical approximation of a President (you can see him rehearsing the role HERE) is tantamount to collaborating with his regime.

Either his insanity and vicious policies have people so damn scared, they are willing to grab onto any semblance of normalcy out of the guy and cling to it like a shipwrecked sailor clinging to flotsam in a shark-infested sea.  Or, my fear and suspicion, people are so conditioned to believe what they see on the screen, they are actually suckered in by his act.  Facts, history, incontrovertible proof that he is a totalitarian monster all fall by the wayside, because there he is on TV, and look! he’s sounding presidential.