Donald Trump vs The Comedians: The Farce's Existential Import

In the flood of images and stories purveyed by mass media, the spectacle of Donald Trump’s political campaign is trivialized just by being part of that flood, since each narrative is invariably replaced by another and soon forgotten. Comedians like Jon Stewart make a show of longing to keep the Trump spectacle alive forever, but along with most popular comedians, he serves the institutions that churn out infotainments so that he’s obliged to pounce on each new spectacle that captivates mass attention, without pausing to reflect much on the deeper meaning of any of these news items that he ridicules.

For just a moment, let’s think about what’s really happening in the confrontation between Trump and the comedians. First of all, who are these people? More specifically, what are their social functions? On paper, Trump is a wealthy and famous businessman, but as far as his character can be discerned from his public image in his television shows, interviews, and political speeches, Trump is also a buffoon and a troglodyte. The mystery is how someone whose many privileges afford him every opportunity to refine himself could exhibit such gross character flaws in public. How could anyone with his stratospheric wealth and fame appear to be so uncivilized?

That mystery is solved as soon as we consider two dynamics that are at play. First, power acquired through affluence and stardom tends to corrupt the character. In this respect, Trump indeed serves as the GOP’s id, as observed by comedian Bill Maher. Those drawn to business dealings that have notoriously outsized payoffs are already more likely to suffer from sociopathic tendencies, which the payoffs only exacerbate. Younger, idealistic people who wear their heart on their sleeve are thus more liberal than older individuals who have more to lose and are tempted to rationalize their possessions with conservative ideologies that warp their mindset. The deranged conservatism of a plutocrat like Trump is only a limit case that reflects this commonplace transition from youthful idealism to jaded, old-age realism. 

Mind you, the natural reality in question isn’t necessarily seen more clearly by older people so much as it captures them in the forms of their accumulated fears and hatreds which sustain their social and political prejudices. For example, political and economic power is reserved for adults who are afflicted with bodies that gradually fail them as they enter old age. As we approach death, our control over ourselves and our work and leisure activities is offset by nature’s grip on every cell of our body, and we mitigate that maddening tragedy in turn with self-serving delusions. If you invite any older person to attempt to express his or her innermost thoughts in a monologue, chances are what you hear will appall you.

Second, Trump likely plays a role or at least exaggerates his churlishness for the sake of certain business transactions. He only seems to be carefree and clueless, whereas he’s calculated that even if he can’t be president, he can appeal to aging, white, blue-collar Americans who, as Thomas Frank explains, resent being abused by the globalized free market and are primed to lash out. Trump can profit from being a right-wing demagogue in the infotainment sector. In this respect, Trump himself plays a role much like the average comedian, except that he laughs his way to the bank.     

Who, then, is the comedian? The comedian is a truth-teller but also a janitor. She sweeps horrors under the rug, calling attention to unpleasant facts with oblique references, only to comfort the audience with the opiate of laughter. Most comedians are able to uncover a subversive truth because they’re social outsiders and the silver lining of their alienation is heightened objectivity. In King Lear, this social role is famously formalized by the court jester whose silly hat and speech distance him from the audience members as well as encouraging them to laugh at his mock madness. The modern standup comedian is likewise distanced by the stage and the spotlight, but again those are formalizations of her underlying alienation. The comedian is typically bitter from being at least initially victimized and marginalized in life, and her isolation affords her the chance to scrutinize society and thus inadvertently to be sickened by what she finds. She then consoles herself with comedy. 

Incidentally, this is why the notion of a politically conservative comedian is oxymoronic: comedians begin as losers in some respects, not as conspicuous possessors who are preoccupied with the goal of conserving anything. For this reason, the conservative comedian comes across as a mere bully who is ill-disposed even to pretend to subvert the social conventions that typically subserve some ludicrous inequity. Of course, the more successful the comedian, the more she’s subject to the first dynamic, of being corrupted by the ability to overpower others.

What, then, is the meaning of Trump’s clash with the comedian? What’s really at stake in this little diversion? On its surface, the comedian just points at a clown and encourages the public to laugh at his antics. The news isn’t that there are clowns among us, then, but that they can be found outside of a circus. The deeper truth, however, is that the clown's painted-on smile is only a symbol of the attempt to keep up the appearance of being happy in the face of some absurdity. Thus, Trump is targeted for comedy because his political campaign brings to mind both of the underlying dynamics discussed above. Trump’s status and power have evidently corrupted him so that comedians are free to routinely dehumanize him. And savvy comedians like Jon Stewart and Bill Maher understand that, whatever Trump may be like in private, he seeks to profit from playing the role of a buffoon, which he’s able to do thanks to the culture’s decline of standards. Both of these underlying facts, however, are disheartening and so comedians come to our rescue by substituting comedy for more onerous existential analysis.   

The political and economic corruption is indeed horrific because Trump represents the hollowness of all power elites, so that we ought to be struck by the question of what sort of society not only has no respect for its leaders but that openly ridicules them for being beneath contempt. Few business elites are as crass as Trump, but this is a matter of style rather than substance. In the so-called "clown car" of Republican presidential candidates, Trump leads the polls with Jeb Bush, but Trump’s xenophobia, warmongering, egoism, and uncivilized deference to the outcomes of an unregulated—which is to say savage—marketplace are standard fare in Republican enclaves. The policies Jeb Bush will be obliged to endorse at the behest of his financial backers will be just as alien to distinctly human, progressive sensibilities as are Trump’s rants, deriving as they do from the sociopathy that flourishes in corporate struggles for dominance. The difference is that Trump doesn’t disguise the regressive, macho worship of jungle law with market-tested doubletalk. So if Trump’s attitudes are mocked for their manifest subhumanity, this bodes ill for the society in which those same attitudes are applied in most walks of life. To laugh at Trump is to use him as a scapegoat for collective sins.

The other scenario, in which Trump isn’t actually a monster but is merely capitalizing on Fox News’s whipping up of Tea Party sentiments to distract the exploited classes with boogeymen, preventing a return to progressive politics, is hardly more encouraging. In fact, the cynicism involved in this double-dealing would itself be a sign of the dehumanization brought on by power’s natural tendency to corrupt its user. In any case, this scenario features a higher form of comedy in which the professional comedian’s smugness is matched by Trump’s and the business magnate appreciates that American government in general is a joke, true political power having been transferred decades ago to unelected factions of the corporate-military-media-entertainment complex of American plutocracy. Just as the comedian is burdened with insight into the unvarnished truth of human relations, so too rulers are masters of the Machiavellian norms of society, because it’s lonely at the top and the ruler has few distractions from the ugly business of managing real-world affairs.

Trump is therefore the Andy Kaufman of elite political comedy. Jon Stewart’s comparison of Trump to an orangutan is a mere trifling distraction of the mob, whereas Trump’s political campaign itself is a joke played on all of American society that’s been reduced in many ways to a theater of the absurd. Trump’s campaign is of a piece with the escapades of the too-big-to-fail Wall Street bankers: both are grotesque mockeries of American laws and Enlightenment values, but only the wealthiest, most cynical and barbarous members of that society can afford to laugh along with the elite pranksters.  

The clash between Trump and the comedian has existential significance, as does everything else in the world. Trump’s public image is farcical, embodying the absurdities of upper-class narcissism, senility, and civilizational decline. Scapegoating Trump by laughing at him with the professional comics amounts to surrendering to the natural forces that made Trump’s image the obscenity that it is. We hold a light to that persona only long enough to glimpse its ghastly contours before we expect the comedian to shoo the unspeakable truths back under the rug so that we can return to playing our roles as victims in the games dominated by Trump and the other top one percent of beasts in suits.