Wrestling Politics through Late-Stage Democracy (1/2)
Our politics as sports entertainment, in Two N-Words (Two N-Bombs), Part Four
[All chapters can be read independently, but this chapter is more independent than the others. The previous chapters are here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3]
Now that we have showcased and scrutinized those two famous no-no word incidents—the one that aired on WCW in 1997, the other that aired on WWF in 20051—let us explore how the artistry and platform of professional wrestling play into larger sociological machinations. The events described in the previous two chapters were not random one-offs or curiosities; they indicate something more about the American context not only because of their content but, more so, because of the cultural institution that delivered them to an eager and accepting audience.
This chapter documents and investigates the similarities that arose, from the 1800s through the age of mass media, between professional wrestling and democratic politics. In both cases, many observers in the crowd know that the figures on stage (whether politicians or grapplers) have hidden motivations. The audience members often suspect that the famous participants may well be following scripts. Sometimes, when they have no intention of delivering on promised victories or campaign promises, they lose on purpose or pretend that insurmountable adversity blocks their way. Other times they may flatter their fans by crediting them with providing the inspiration or support necessary for a hard-fought victory that, in truth, the promoters, backroom managers, and donors had ensured anyway. A contingent of the crowd may become suspicious, but once this contrived situation has been established—once a critical mass has bought into the fake reality—truth becomes lost in spectacle. The irretrievable loss of authenticity does not hinder audience engagement, however. Especially when filtered through and popularized by television, modern politics and pro wrestling develop analogous inner logic systems—duplicitous but dynamic—capable of generating extremely addictive secular myths. Such myths, fundamentally corrupt, cannot sustain a society forever, but let us study these forged, fallen stars of late-stage democracy while their embers still glow.
A brief history: their conjoined rise
Professional wrestling as we know it evolved from circus and carnival performances. The oldest promotional league was founded in Germany in 19122, but the countries with the most extensive pro-wrestling traditions are France and the United States. It is not a coincidence that these same two countries also happen to be the places most associated with democracy. We will see that a mass psychological linkage exists between the two pursuits: the same sorts of collective mindsets become receptive to both pro-wrestling and democracy, and both institutions require similar stagecraft techniques.
Though we must necessarily limit our scope due to budgetary reasons, let us briefly note that true (i.e. competitive) wrestling and ancient democracy have generally been traced back to a common place of origin: Greece, the wellspring of Western tradition. Clearly the special relationship between wrestling and democracy is very deep and longstanding.
Both the United States and France experienced revolutions in the late 18th century. As is well known, it would then take them many years to live up to their stated ideals (“all men equal”, “égalité, fraternité”, etc.), and many say that the struggle still remains far from finished. Regardless, our interest here concerns how the expansions of American democracy and French democracy entailed the enfranchisement of greater segments of their respective populations. The exact history is wrought with stipulations and setbacks, but in general from the late 1700s onward more and more American and French citizens were granted voting rights. One by one, various stipulations fell away: after a time, one did not need to own property to vote, then one did not need to pay taxes to vote, then people could vote and hold office without professing certain religious beliefs, etc. Contrary to popular/“Disney” mythology, as early as 1776 a few US states allowed people of color to vote—and New Jersey allowed women to vote—under certain conditions.3 This is not the place to argue exceptions to the general flow of history, however.
As these two young democracies grew, so did their fascination with fake wrestling. From the early 1800s on, France developed a tradition of fairground wrestling that may be considered the genesis of “sports entertainment”. The first organized troupe of circus wrestlers was established in 1848.4 Performances were well-attended and the sport blossomed. 1873 saw the emergence of the first masked wrestler, billed alternately as “Iron Arm” and “The French Hercules”. The first wrestling championship title was created in 1878 and was called the World Greco-Roman Heavyweight Championship, referencing the descent of wrestling from the golden age of ancient Europe. The unique and exciting spectacle spread rapidly, and by the end of the century it was the most popular sport on the continent.
Historians note, however, that at the time “the differentiation between sport and entertainment did not exist”.5 The extent to which the public knew—or cared—that the fights were fixed is a matter for some debate. In 1856 wrestling was temporarily banned in Paris after “a wave of grossly rigged matches”.6 Clearly the performers and managers needed to maintain a certain level of decorum in their deceit. The contrived nature of the contests was hardly an open secret; based on controversies that erupted when fakery was exposed, we can assume that a majority of the crowd simply believed what they saw.
In 1848 a visiting Karl Marx was so taken in by French wrestling that his enthusiasm led him to start a fistfight with another attendee, a known anarchist from Nice. Marx was captivated by the wrestlers and cheered loudly, but he became enraged when he overheard the Niçoise man telling a female companion that the winners had all been predetermined. A melee ensued and the wrestlers themselves waded into the stands to eject the two troublemakers. Thereafter, a promoter called LaSombra began referring to any and all gullible fans as “Marx”. This became anglicized as “marks”—subsequently “mark” in singular form—and remains wrestling jargon to this day.
Stateside, wrestling flourished in the aftermath of the Civil War.7 It makes sense that Americans would lag behind the French in their fondness for wrestling, because they lagged behind in voting rights as well. The 13th-15th Amendments, however, supercharged democracy in the mid- to late-1860s, and the popularity of wrestling rose in correlation, as part of the same large-scale emergent psychic shift.
The first wave of American wrestlers competed against each other in earnest. This initial attempt at honest contests can be understood as a holdover from the British influence of “fair play”. The French had no such inhibitions and pursued fake wrestling right from the start. The Americans soon began fixing matches as well, developing a choreographed style that was more entertaining and, in some regards, less risky. However much the practice and its sociological implications may be critiqued for their fakeness, we must make it clear to the reader that the performers absolutely possess talent, develop skills, and put in the undeniable effort required to work a crowd. By 1900, virtually all wrestling in America was of this scripted variety.
The early decades of the 20th century saw the formation of various larger-scale wrestling circuits in America. Women were getting the vote, mass media was facilitating mass culture, and showbiz hype and new media promotions aided wrestling’s ascent. Even though it was all fake, the pretense of integrity had to be perpetuated. Journalists—reliable assets even then—helped in this regard, reporting wrestling results alongside baseball scores, never noting that the one sport was fixed while the other was almost always legit (1919 “Black Sox” scandal notwithstanding).
Something changed in 1934: Jack Pfefer, a disgruntled promoter who had been expelled from wrestling’s inner circle, caused outrage by giving an interview to the New York Daily News in which he revealed the extent of the fakery. Ticket sales plummeted as a result, and sports writers stopped covering wrestling. Ring Magazine bemoaned the sudden demise of “honest-to-goodness wrestling”—as if any of the matches in living memory had ever been authentic competitions.
It would take a few decades, and the proliferation of television, for wrestling to come back in vogue and find its audience again.8 From the 1950s through the 1970s, televised matches were intended as lures: their primary focus was to entice people to buy tickets and see the shows live.9 From the 1980s on, however, better production techniques—and the innovations of cable and pay-per-view—made wrestling on TV a major attraction in its own right. The various hit wrestling TV programs soon became the primary consumable offerings of the entire enterprise. This shift accords with the general arc of late-stage democracy: away from the illusion of participation and in-person experiences, and toward proxy pursuits that are even more managed, usually filtered through screens.
These dynamics, outlined above, help us ascertain the nature of wrestling fandom’s group psychology, which in turn reflects the general psychology of the American public at large: They enjoyed fake matches more than they would have enjoyed real matches, but they didn’t want to know that the matches they enjoyed were fake. They may have suspected that the matches were fake, but they didn’t want to know the extent to which they were fake. Without getting too far ahead of ourselves, the reader may begin to consider that perhaps the nation at large also enjoyed fake political conflicts during this time, that the lamented two-party system provided a false choice10, and that the seriousness of the Cold War itself was at times exaggerated for purposes of social control. The citizens were either vicariously excited by these insincere clashes that appeared before them, or else they felt some skepticism but didn’t want to pursue the threads beyond a certain point, lest the integrity of their own favorite heroes be called into question.11 That was politics in postwar America.
It is crucial to understand that fake wrestling thrives in so-called democratic nations, whereas legitimate wrestling takes hold in countries that have historically been seen as more autocratic. As the oracle tells us: “Authentic wrestling forms have never been popular enough with Americans to sustain a professional league.”12 The immense money generated by fake wrestling in America has not spilled over enough to warrant a paid circuit of genuine competitors. The public here simply isn’t interested.
By contrast, in Iran and Russia many authentic wrestlers have been able to make careers for themselves by competing honestly. Both nations have very long wrestling traditions and, unlike the case in the West, in those places “professional wrestling” may sometimes actually mean real wrestling. Iranians support a Premiere League for competitive wrestlers and proudly maintain their proficiency in multiple styles of the sport, dating back to ancient times. For most of the Soviet Union’s existence, Western-style (i.e., fake) wrestling was frowned upon by Russians. From 1989 onwards, however, foreign wrestling influences began to infiltrate and WWE-style platforms have slowly been erected. Nonetheless, the USSR/Russia has won the most Olympic wrestling medals of any nation by far, has been the best-wrestling nation at 12 of the last 18 Summer Games, and remains a top contender (when they are allowed to compete). Admittedly, this situation may change after the 2028 games in Los Angeles, when Western-style pro wrestling will become an Olympic sport.
We must also note that Japan, which has become one of the most pro-wrestling-loving countries, did not establish any promotional associations for the sport until after American occupation. There was some appetite for grappling-style wrestling in Japan prior to the 20th century—a sumo named Matsuda Sorakichi switched careers and left to become a wrestling star in 1880s America—but the Japanese public could not sustain leagues or circuits for that type of wrestling until the early 1950s, when the sport became noncompetitive and entertainment-oriented. Similarly, Japan had started trying to enact democratic reforms in the late 19th century, but these faltered just as their attempts at setting up wrestling organizations had. Then American officials wrote Japan’s Constitution in 1947, and everything changed: Wrestling quickly took root and sprouted in Japan, and the Liberal Democratic party has ruled the nation almost continuously ever since. Proper democratization, from a Western perspective, appears to be concomitant with Western-style professional wrestling also becoming popular.
To conclude this section, let us review why wrestling became stage-managed in the first place:
Whereas authentic contests might be dull and boring, planned matches ensure certain exciting moments, which can be rehearsed and perfected.
If the performers aren’t actually seeking to do each other harm, the wrestlers’ bodies can remain relatively protected. (Yes, pro wrestlers often end up with severe health problems, but their careers and lives would be cut much shorter still if they actually beat each other with the intention to injure.)
Scheduling becomes much easier if the length of matches can be roughly determined ahead of time. Authentic wrestling matches may vastly exceed an audience’s attention span—especially if they are dull—or they may be over in a flash, thereby cheating the audience.
Picking winners and losers in advance allows managers to fine-tune and extend the drama for maximum profits and attention. Depending on the context, fakery can guarantee that a popular champion will remain on top, or it can purposefully lead the audience on for months, building steam, as an increasingly interested fandom wonders when an up-and-coming star attraction will finally break through and become champion.
All in all, the management of presentation and content gives the promoters the best chance to capture a crowd and keep them invested in their product.
The analogous aspects of modern, managed democracy should be obvious, and we will elaborate upon them in the sections that follow. But for now one could simply reread the above bullet points, substituting candidates for wrestlers, debates (or elections) for matches, and the public/citizens/voters for the crowd/audience/fandom. Then contrast the glib political bickering of the current era (so often like wrestling promo shoots) with the more thoughtful, technical, longform arguments of the past. The Lincoln-Douglas debates totaled 21 hours over seven days: on each outing the candidates spoke, in turn, for 60 minutes, 90 minutes, and 30 minutes, without interruption. That was in 1858, before democracy, wrestling, and everything else had been commodified by mass media.
Below we will see that in the current era—since World War II, in fact—the populace has been slowly conditioned to accept stagecraft and deception in public life. The managers consider sub rosa manipulation a necessary element of modern society. And just as a magician needs to distract the audience with one hand while performing a trick with the other, social controllers put on puppet shows for citizens to fixate on, so that the real work can go on undisturbed in the background. The workings of politics mirror those of sports entertainment in form and purpose: they serve to enthrall and provoke the people’s imagination, but only within a predefined arena. This has ensured that the true organizational infrastructure remains intact, far afield from the spectacle, and safe from scrutiny. Later on, after so much has gone wrong and so many lies have compounded upon one another, an increasingly substantial minority becomes skeptical of the entire proceedings. At that point, however, the political system will diversify its propaganda techniques, just as professional wrestling did after the mid-1990s, to accommodate for a larger contingent of “smart marks”—people who know the show is scripted but watch with rapt attention anyway. As referenced above, our research group has termed this state of affairs late-stage democracy (with stage emanating its theatrical connotation).
Eventually, more people than ever may tune in to see the show, even if virtually all of them know the proceedings are fake. Similarly, as trust in the system reaches an all-time low, more people than ever before may end up voting in the next election.
The nexus of entertainment and benightedness
In recent years everyone from Alex Jones to Salon.com13 has remarked that the American political scene is to no small extent as fake as pro wrestling. Our task here is to investigate and add depth and psychological details to the glib “politics is like pro wrestling” truism.
The actual job of a pro wrestler is not to try to win but to put on a good show, to follow the directives of the owners and managers backstage, and to increase the likelihood that the public will keep buying tickets going forward. Likewise, it seems that the actual job of a politician is not to try to deliver on promises or faithfully follow stated ideological goals, but rather to further narratives and do what his owners and well-connected managers tell him to do. Politicians—as well as pundits—often seem less concerned with solving problems, or “getting things done”, and more concerned with eliciting emotional responses from the crowd. If this process usually ends up disappointing the voters, the only proposed (or proposable) solution is to return to the ballot box next time and try again. In this way the failure of democracy results, ironically, in more emphasis being placed on its continued importance. The boys and girls in the control room will do their best to put on a good show next campaign season. And then, when sparks fly between the candidates, when pundits’ insults get too personal and end up offending large swaths of the electorate, when this time it’s really “the most important election of our lifetime”, dejected members of the public will dutifully reengage and by another ticket to the show. Many people often state that the whole enterprise is “fake” or “a scam”, but talented performers can always get the audience to suspend their disbelief in the dubious scene before their eyes.
Just as professional wrestling isn’t “real wrestling”, modern democracy isn’t “real politics”—it is the glitzy, money-makin’, entertainment version of politics, meant to appeal to the masses by any and all means. Whereas competitive wrestling, in the modern world, became a niche sport of points, patience, and subtle techniques that require a close eye to score, pro wrestling offers a big show that requires no specialty knowledge: it holds out obvious bait to attract as large a crowd as possible. It is like the tactic of the most unscrupulous artists who “dumb down” their creations in an effort to gain more customers—but it is more than that.
As it matured, pro wrestling—like many frivolous entertainments—used marketing methods to evolve into a “lifestyle brand”. Tailoring itself to function as a target for endless obsession, it worked its way deep into the audience’s souls. (Being wrestling fans becomes almost a substitute for their very identity as human beings.) Similarly, democracy prides itself on being a system for everyone, and as such it can prey upon the lowest common denominators of human nature in order to garner a large following. (The people identify themselves by—and associate their best attributes with—voting for a particular political party.) Born, perhaps, out of good intentions, the situation can degenerate into a desperate and shameless quest to lay claim to more people, and to demand more people’s full attention, debasing everyone and everything in the process. What purportedly began as a government of and for the people changes into an apparatus to fully control all The People (with the capital letters representing the system’s disingenuous flattery of those whose personal sovereignty it has commandeered). The ballyhooed “enfranchisement of all” dissuades any faction from revolting, even though most factions are increasingly discontent, and also provides regime apparatchiks with a smug justification for continuing on their path: The officials must be correct and moral, since they represent everyone. More people are voting than ever before, and yet more people than ever before feel frustrated and betrayed by democracy. The WWE is more popular, profitable, and valuable a brand than it’s ever been before, and yet most fans bemoan its current offerings.14 Eventually one begins to suspect that the lack of fulfillment actually leads to more engagement with the failing institution.
To start laying out the parallels in greater detail: Using the terminology of pro wrestling to describe political figures, certain performers are billed as babyfaces when the mob believes in them (and when they flatter the mob), while others play the heel. Heel politicians or pundits behave like “bad guy wrestlers”; they intentionally say cruel or outlandish things that they know will generate “heat” for themselves. But the performer may not truly believe in the causes he mouths support for when addressing the crowd: a wrestler may not really want to win the match, or an antiwar candidate may know full well that once elected he will continue his predecessor’s hawkish foreign policy.
In this way, through false fights and staged polemics, the men on stage direct and misdirect the audience’s attention with the most excitement they can muster, preserving the illusion of a meaningful contest of ideas and integrity. Meanwhile, the real politics goes on behind the scenes. Away from public view, the major financial interests, the entrenched bureaucrats, and the intelligence services operate through a continuity of governance that strives toward longstanding objectives, intolerant of most input from voters.15
This wide-ranging scenario generates feedback loops between the performers and various portions of the crowd. Left-wing babyfaces can quite naturally function as heels for the conservative contingent of the audience, while right-wing babyfaces function as heels for the left. Once established, the interlocking relationships seem like they were always inevitable: natural features of a contrived social reality that passes for normal. There is a red team, and there is a blue team, and they are competing. There is the man in this corner, and the other man in the opposite corner, and they are going to fight. Something will happen and a crowd will observe and react. Once this setting has been established, much of the resultant psychology will proceed automatically. The chain-reaction loop of emotionality—the call-response and viewer reaction—is all overdetermined. Operating on crowd psychology and playing upon people’s petty jealousies, power fantasies, and the narcissism of minor differences, the dynamics all reinforce each other beautifully.
This political system is, undeniably and demonstrably, a formidable and impressive one. But it is also, necessarily, a fake and dishonest “pro-wrestling-style” affair, with its own codes and self-preservation methods. Whether or not anyone involved likes it or wants it to be that way, that’s the way it is and the way it must be due to the organization, supposed rules of play, and attractive production techniques.
Sometimes many in the crowd might say they’re sick of the charade, but the dramatic bind proves virtually inescapable. The proceedings all take place within a media distribution network that automatically caters to various opinions and exaggerates every opposing argument, no matter the collateral trauma inflicted on the terrorized audience (many of whom like being scared). As is well known, all of this boosts ratings and generates clicks, but—far more importantly—it also keeps the public engaged. To some extent this is simply the way things are and the way they have to be.
Any true maverick “change” candidate will either find himself soon coerced into the system, becoming a corporate-backed babyface, or else the entire apparatus will defend itself against the upstart threat by working his dissidence into a harmless heel angle. A political figure may find himself playing the heel to one side of the crowd or the other even if he honestly has no intention of antagonizing them. The media will do their usual work of taking the candidate’s simple statements of belief, which some fraction of the electorate will surely disagree with, and amplifying them hyperbolically, to vicious effect. The same way that Goethe’s Mephistopheles “always wills the evil / and always produces the good”, heels have the effect of bolstering the system they fight against. It would take much work, or extraordinary events, for a politician to change his status once he becomes pegged as a major heel.16 Rather than working to improve his state or country, the heel-branded politician may end up spending all his time trying to redeem himself in the eyes of an unsympathetic crowd. His simpering will usually be found distasteful or even worthy of punishment.
Today it’s almost a duty, in many quarters, to publicly denounce anyone whom the system feels slightly uncomfortable with and has fingered as a problem person. Booing on cue has become the sacred expression of political freedom that everybody’s grandfather fought and died for in World War II. We boo even harder if the miscreant keeps trying to convince us that he’s not a bad guy.
In most cases, however, the players seem consigned to their roles, even if they’re losing ones:
At Eisenhower’s request, Nixon didn’t challenge the 1960 election results.17 Then a reporter documenting anti-Republican voter fraud in Chicago stopped publishing his findings—at Nixon’s request.18 Note that none of this means “Nixon really won” or that a conspiracy (which could have included Nixon himself) made sure that Kennedy won. Rather, the implication is that in certain cases the party that has been in power seems to throw the match, as if a sociological phenomenon takes hold of them and makes them start playing the role of losers for the good of the system.
John Kerry didn’t challenge the Ohio election results in ’04. If George W. Bush were even half as dangerous as the Democrats claimed he was at the time, the Kerry campaign should have contested this close and decisive state.
John McCain kept defending Barack Obama during the ’08 campaign, going out of his way to profusely compliment him all along the way. McCain even rebuffed his own supporters by telling them that Obama was “a good man [who] loves this country with all his heart”.
Bernie Sanders didn’t find it remarkable that so very, very many coin-flips supposedly went against him during the ’16 and ’20 caucuses.
It seems like these candidates knew they were going to lose. Moreover, it seems like they knew they were supposed to lose, as if the political contests were scripted. If it’s not scripted, it may as well have been, since the participants cannot help but fall into manageable roles. Whether they realized it or not—whether they intended it or not—the losers’ function was to have put up a good showing—that is, to have put on a good show. They were to try, but not too hard. Their sole purpose: to make their supporters think they had a chance, to keep certain quadrants of dejected citizens invested in democracy going forward, even though they were never going to get what they wanted. “Bernie really tried! He almost did it and he’s our only chance!” Sure. Whatever you need to tell yourself. Vote again next time.
And even if your outsider candidate wins, what do you win? Did Trump just need an even bigger congressional majority to get anything done? All the supporters get out of their guy winning is momentary entertainment value and temporary bragging rights—the same as if their favorite dark-horse wrestler got to raise the gold belt for a while, causing management to appear outraged (on screen). And while the end benefit for the fans is kept to a minimum, the “renegade” champion causes major reengagement in a product that many people had given up on: Trump has convinced many listless and disaffected “forgotten Americans” to vote and try real hard to believe in democracy again. It may as well have been Steve Austin winning the belt while feuding with Mr. McMahon, causing higher television ratings and increased revenue for the very company that Austin mocked on Raw. Every Trump speech and rally may as well have been pure theater. Only here, in addition to reenergizing democracy amongst the “forgotten Americans”, Trump instigated the lamented “deep state” so much that it actually turned against his voters. They received nothing for their trouble except perhaps a +1 added to their potential terrorist watchlist score.
But saddest of all—literally, the people who experience the most unforced misery—are those partisans who spend their entire lives emphatically booing the “bad guy wrestler” politicians. They think they are extremely clever for sussing out who the villains are supposed to be, according to their favorite media presentations.
The most nefarious platforms in this regard were the nightly news programs of several decades past—before cable—whose bland men in suits feigned low-key neutrality, allowing implicit coverage bias to slowly work the audience over. Eventually the dedicated viewer thinks it’s his own idea and great insight to deduce that, viewed through the most popular lens, the Republican Party appears to be largely made up of greedy old meanie “bad guys”. That the Republican Party has tended to function in a false-opposition role, necessary for the overall workings of the system, is too much for these “informed” news junkies to consider. They were simply happy to have figured out who to boo so they can feel smart and righteous.19
The media landscape has since expanded and diversified, and so has the nature of the marks. They come in many subspecies now and are aided by factoid-finding technologies, though their blinders remain. These spectators have puppy-dog naïveté matched only by their elephantine memory of trivia. They can tell you every nasty trick the hated heels pulled so they could win only by cheating. (“Bush only won Florida because he hit Gore with a butterfly ballot when the ref’s back was turned!”) They don’t realize that if it weren’t for the heels they wouldn’t support the babyface politicians they like so much, because without the heels the babyfaces would seem intolerably corrupt as well.
Heels (or, more exactly, heel behaviors) are the most necessary ingredients of the entire system. Not only do they make the other side look better by comparison, but they also provide a space for armchair opposition. Many of those who see through the lie of the babyfaces (“He’s not a working-class hero! He’s a company man!”) will expend their dissent not by tearing down the wrestling venue or leaving and demanding their money back, but simply by rooting for the heels and living out their dissidence through them. That is, they will vote for one of the righteously indigent men who claim to be against the prevailing, duplicitous forces of society. But the same promoters who own the babyfaces own the heels as well; the heels would never be allowed on stage in the first place if they weren’t controlled or controllable.
Once again, it is not necessary for the participants themselves to even realize their specific function, or for others to realize it. Bernie Sanders may consider himself an actual rebel. Many people with real political power may consider Donald Trump a very dangerous man. In reality, demonstrably, both Sanders and Trump are gelded; neither has seriously threatened the status quo. To date, their vaunted iconoclasm can more accurately be called false opposition, for their stated dissent has bolstered the system immensely. Both Trump’s and Sanders’s political careers have served to string their supporters along, making them feel like they’re involved, and like there is a potential solution for all their gripes. The energy of these voters is then simply destroyed—proving that political laws violate the laws of physics—after it has been expended harmlessly on failed campaigns and hamstrung presidencies. The actual political powers of the country can simply ignore the wishes of all those people, who have been exhausted in rope-a-dope fashion by the very forces they thought they were scoring points against. They didn’t understand the game they were playing, or they didn’t understand that the game doesn’t have the rules they thought it did.
Trump especially has been scapegoated as an excuse for all sorts of extra safeguards (censorship, data-collection, spying) either being added to the state apparatus or given expanded use. Trump also provided the pretext for dissenters of all stripes to face increased public shaming, media harassment, and debanking. His nonconformist antics could not have done a better job of indirectly fortifying the regime against its doubters if he were trying to achieve that aim. (Perhaps his only positive feat was getting the system to reveal many of its defenses.)
Many people will say that they know all this—and maybe they really do know it—but they still find themselves cheering on one side or the other because the show is so good. Or because, beyond a certain point, a perceived heel or the faction he represents—“the elite” or “the deplorables”—has been made to seem so heinous in the voters’ minds that, reluctantly at first, they end up throwing in with a babyface candidate they’d otherwise detest. The point here is not to equate the power levels of “the elite” and “the deplorables” but rather to underscore the ineffectiveness of simply voting against one or the other. It is scarcely more realistic a tactic for improving one’s life than the behavior of an obsessive old-time wrestling mark, who pins his self-esteem and his future on the outcome of a fake match. The crux of the matter is that the participants on stage have been identified with people’s hopes and nightmares. In this way figureheads and myths are made, with the defacto approval of the audience that buys into them. But are the increasingly shoddy leaders still worthy or deserving of such power? Rather than demanding a higher class of heroes, the governed populace keeps giving their consent, further corrupting themselves in the process. Despite having raised many complaints, they still buy the tickets in the end. They still want to watch a show, and a bad show is better than no show at all.—Just don’t call it a show too insistently or they won’t be able to enjoy it.
For now it still seems insightful to point out the theatricality of our politics. Skeptics help each other discern when certain figures are acting in kayfabe (living out their character) as opposed to the comparatively rare moments when they give the public a flash of honesty.
The Clintons and the Bushes pretended to be opposites, but really they like each other. You can tell this by how they’ve acted and worked together since they left office. It means that they were never really at odds about anything that mattered very much to them.
George W. Bush only insinuated that he was against gay people (or their rights) when he was in office, because that was his character. But he actually is fine with them and is friends with Ellen.
Trump actually isn’t liked by the Clintons, despite the old pictures showing them smiling together. He isn’t liked by the Republican establishment, either. It’s not an act! But that doesn’t mean he’s “our guy”; it means the ruling class considered him suitable enough to use to their advantage.
We try to see the patterns beneath the patterns and look for breakages in them. As the constant news-cycle furor of the day demands our precious surface-level attention, we try to concentrate and learn from history.
But by and large, the crowd never learns—or at least they can always be played, worked, and roped back into the conflict.
To begin a summary before moving forward: However much it may be staged, and however much they know it to be staged, the heel vs. babyface dynamic will do its thing by election day. A Republican long dissatisfied with his Republican president will still vote for the man because of what the damn Democrats just said that was so unfair, and vice versa. People will even tell you that, yes, democracy is a sham, and all politicians lie, but they’ll still vote nonetheless. It’s the same as with pro-wrestling fans: they know the contest is fake but are still invested in it. Occupied with whatever awful thing the opposition just did, the partisan will not mind that his own candidate broke a promise, because—for some reason—he “had” to break it. Similarly, the WWE fan will not stop liking their favorite wrestler if he fails to win a scripted contest. That would be absurd. What matters in the progressing American democracy of lowered expectations is that the promo’s good, that the match is exciting, and that it seems like at least one of the guys is really trying (and doing it all for the fans!). Under these parameters, that’s how things are supposed to be. It’s the gadfly who points out the fakeness who’s missing the point. The problem isn’t that it’s fake; it’s fake because the audience enjoys the fakeness. If there’s a problem, that’s the problem.
To similar effect, Roland Barthes wrote, “The public is completely uninterested in knowing whether the [wrestling] contest is rigged or not, and rightly so; it abandons itself to the primary virtue of the spectacle”.20 The Frenchman, as usual, exaggerates—as this section has noted, some of the public cares somewhat about the extent of the rigging—but the general point is taken.
While this essay endeavors to add depth to the discussion, the basic comparison between democracy and pro wrestling is nothing new. In fact, we argue that the not-newness of the comparison, at this point, is more important than the comparison itself.
To be clear: At this juncture we can stop being impressed that politics resembles pro wrestling, and start being concerned that we have known this for some time and yet the situation persists.
The sections that follow will help us understand why knowledge of fakeness seems to enhance engagement rather than permanently tarnish the sham enterprise. We need to familiarize ourselves with the mental exercises that maintain this thoroughly fake state—this masterpiece of deceit that some intellectuals regard as delectable, high-minded, and beneficial to the commoners.
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This ends the fourth installment of Two N-Words (Two N-Bombs). The next post concludes the “Wrestling Politics through Late-Stage Democracy” chapter and will feature commentary on “The World of Wrestling” by Roland Barthes and The Montreal Screwjob.
A third such incident, far less important, should briefly be noted: On 26 June 2017, 15-year-old Lamelo Ball, son of basketball impresario LaVar Ball, blurted out “Beat that n—a ass!” during a segment of WWE Raw in which his family appeared as guests. From the footage, it seems as though Lamelo was directing either his father or wrestler Jon Moxley to attack The Miz. This would mean that all three targets in all three cases of N-word eruption on pro-wrestling television were [W]hite: Booker T used the word to refer to Hulk Hogan, then Vince McMahon used it to refer to John Cena, and then Lamelo Ball used it to refer to The Miz. (See also: https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2718236-lavar-balls-son-lamelo-uses-racial-slur-in-wwe-raw-segment-with-the-miz.)
“A few states allowed also free Black men to vote, and New Jersey also included unmarried and widowed women who owned property” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_voting_rights_in_the_United_States).
Most of our information on the history of wrestling in France can be found here: https://aminoapps.com/c/wrestling/page/blog/the-history-of-wrestling-in-france/nbHL_unDZlZ8DoNRa1WgVxQQl65g7w
Ibid.
Ibid.
Most information in this paragraph stems from this excellent Quora post.
This presentation provides an excellent overview of the pre-Vince McMahon era of WWE (then “WWWF”): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6w9Ah5wB7tA
As Carroll Quigley wrote in Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time (New York: Macmillan, 1966):
The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can “throw the rascals out” at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy. (1247-48)
For example, Mae Brussell seriously questioned the narrative around the JFK assassination. But rather than seriously consider whether any Democrats might have been involved in covering up or obstructing justice, she instead spent decades accusing virtually every Republican of being a Nazi collaborator.
Jones’s comments in this regard are too numerous to cite, but for years it was a frequent talking point on his show, that politics were “fake” outside of the local level. One of our research members was surprised to learn in the mid-2010s that Jones had begun advocating for voting in national-level elections, at one point even telling his audience that Ted Cruz and Sarah Palin would be a dream ticket.
For Salon on the topic of politics being fake like pro wrestling, see <https://www.salon.com/2020/09/21/why-americas-political-fights-are-as-fake-as-pro-wrestling_partner/>.
Earlier this year WWE broke its all-time record in market cap with a valuation of over $8 billion (https://stockanalysis.com/stocks/wwe/market-cap/). 2023 episodes of Raw and Smackdown, however, draw only around 2 million viewers between them; a decade ago they averaged around 3.5 million (historical data available at: https://www.wrestlingdata.com/index.php?befehl=quoten), and through most of the ’00s Raw averaged nearly 4 million viewers, from an all-time-high 5.88 million average in 2000 (reddit.com/r/SquaredCircle/comments/6g5za2/year_over_year_ratings_in_wwe/). Ratings are up slightly in 2023 compared to 2022, but in general viewership has consistently declined.
In 2014, a famous study of nearly 1,800 policy issues over a 21-year period alleged that public opinion had a “near-zero” impact on American laws and regulations. Much was written about this. Many cynics heartily agreed, but the findings were also refuted by several high-profile sources. In contention was whether or not America was still a democracy, or whether it had become an oligarchy. Those who downplayed or denied the study seemed to have an obsessive self-interest in maintaining belief in democracy and in the longstanding democratic narrative (similar to “the Whig view of history”). In denying the study, their basic point was to claim that the “near-zero” figure was nonsense since, due mostly to party-line identifications, somewhere between 40%-60% of people almost always approve of any and all proposed initiatives.
The assessment of this committee, in general, is that democracy has become a less-than-meaningful term and functions now more or less as a trigger word, used by the ruling system in Pavlovian fashion, to get the audience to salivate, stand on their hind legs, and expect goodies. This technique of control cannot be maintained without expectations being met on occasion, however. Public opinion simply must be satisfied sometimes, far more often than 0% of the time. The trick is to make a majority of the public think that they have “won” and will indeed be getting what they wanted—that it was their idea, in fact—only for reality to then play out somewhat differently than expected. The oligarchy must always get what it wants, or else it throws a real fit and maybe starts a war. Commoners, on the other hand, seem content enough to receive nothing better than hollow victories roughly half of the time. That is how things are and how they have been; whether it’s how they should be is another matter.
While he was vice president, Dick Cheney said he “was honored to be compared to Darth Vader.” He loved playing the heel to half of the country. Many Democrats then, due to the Iraq invasion, considered Cheney a war criminal. Over a decade later, however, Cheney won the favor of many leftists after he repeatedly told them what they wanted to hear by condemning Donald Trump. Cheney was welcomed back to Washington and given a round of applause by Democrat congressmembers during the “January 6th” investigation. The earlier, informal charges of war criminality had seemingly been forgotten. Nothing had come of them anyway. Nothing much had come from the more formal “J6” charges against Trump, either. But throughout all of this there was WWE-style spectacle. One can imagine a longstanding heel wrestler, one who elicited many boos, disappearing for years only to return and surprisingly attack a current heel. Doing so would win the crowd over and turn the former villain into a hero in their eyes. Certain members of the crowd would even congratulate themselves for being able to see at least some good in a man they used to hate. After all, at least he’s not as bad as the current bad guy.
“Nixon’s personal decision not to challenge the electoral results came despite pressure from Eisenhower, his wife Pat, and others” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1960_United_States_presidential_election).
Many Democrat marks would interpret this paragraph as an endorsement of the Republican Party, when really it is an indictment.
Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. Trans. Annette Lavers. New York: Hill & Wang, (1957) 1972, p. 15.