The Spectacle and the Spectators

Conservative columnist George Will was a regular panelist on ABC’s Sunday morning news show back when it was called This Week with David Brinkley and “conservative” meant something quite different from what it seems to mean in today’s Republican party. That’s not to say that George Will has never made a been dubious remark, but on This Week, he often had Cokie Roberts there to say, “Oh, George,” and correct him in the way of a mother who has found some unexpected ignorance in her teenage son.

When I read George Will’s column’s or see him on a news show, I have moments of thinking, That’s a valid point, followed by moments of rolling my eyes and channeling my inner Cokie Roberts. That’s how I felt while watching him on Bill Maher’s show last week. He got off to a strong start by quoting James Madison from Federalist No. 10 in regards to Donald Trump:

But Madison warned them: “Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm.”—understatement of the millennium.

Madison thought that the cure for that problem was a large enough legislative body to keep any one faction from advancing their interests at the nation’s expense. Such a legislative branch would be an effective check on executive power. Speaking of Trump and the separation of powers designed at the Constitutional Convention, Will said,

He’s become an inadvertent educator. This term of his is going to become a long seminar on the wisdom of the founders.

George Will did not spare Congress, either:

A constitutionally enumerated power of Congress is to regulate trade with foreign nations. Congress, however, in its absent-minded way, has now become a spectator of government, and it has given vast power to the President. Either they have given it to him in the statute that he cites, which doesn’t mention tariffs and has never been used by a president for this, or they have given it to him, which is an unconstitutional delegation of legislative power. The interesting thing is he calls this a fifty-year emergency. That’s an oxymoron.

I think “delegation” is too diplomatic a term here. Congress has unconstitutionally surrendered legislative power. Delegation is something done by people exercising their authority, not by a gelatinous puddle quivering at the feet of a bully.

There is, of course, no fifty-year emergency, which George Will correctly characterized as an oxymoron, but there are plenty of people in the Trump Administration manufacturing moronic new emergencies. It’s all about the ratings, of course, the only metric that means anything when you’re putting on a show. This isn’t governance; it’s a reality-TV production. The only way to win the ratings war is to create conflict and be more outrageous than the competition. It’s all part of the spectacle.

Dr. Phil on an ICE raid? Spectacle. Federal takeover of the District of Columbia? Spectacle. Pictures of poor, bloodied Edward “Tiny Testicles” Coristine after a beating or of Kristi Noem posing in front of caged brown men? Spectacle. Every unhinged, rambling, randomly-capitalized Truth Social post, every press gaggle—regardless of whether Trump is on the roof or the ground, every desperate attempt to win a Nobel Peace Prize, every nomination of an unqualified hack or firing of an expert, and every gaudy redecoration and destruction of beauty at the White House is part of the show. What looks like another cabinet member getting their ass handed to them at a hearing is a ratings boost. There’s no such thing as bad press. If they are really up in arms and yelling about something, it doesn’t represent reality. It’s a plot twist penciled into the script.

The massive upward redistribution of wealth is real, as is the spike in the deficit. Increasing inflation and lost markets are real. Layoffs of hundreds of union steel workers are real. The decrease in manufacturing jobs is real. The threat of stagflation and the threat to democracy are real.

On his show, Bill Maher alluded to the 37% of Americans who couldn’t come up with $400 in an emergency, and George Will said he thought that was “a made-up statistic.” Oh, George! You need to get out a little. I know people in that position, people with almost no savings, people working more than one part-time job and foregoing health insurance. That is the real world that too many in Congress have never lived in or near. A world that might as well not exist for those who are only concerned with keeping their seats and not upsetting the Emperor.

Maybe they will get to witness an expensive military flyover for a visiting war criminal or a military parade for the Tsar’s birthday. Even if they don’t, I’m sure we can count on them to sit on their hands and keep their mouths shut when, say, a legally present graduate student in Massachusetts is snatched by masked men and sent to a Louisiana prison for writing something the President doesn’t like.

At least no one will ever accuse them of being enlightened (or courageous) statesmen.

Buy Trygve a Coffee!