“Power always thinks that it is doing God’s service when it is violating all his laws.” — John Adams. (Photo Above, John Adams)

In his famous inaugural speech, John F. Kennedy urged Americans to ask what they could do for their country. Donald Trump asks his followers to consider how to complain about their country.

He asks of them only to watch his show and click the donate button if they love it. And they do. He delivers. In his world, truth and reality are not supposed to matter, only ratings.

And give him this,  his have been pretty damned good.

Trump did not make America sick; he is the most prominent and urgent symptom of our illness. We can see what is wrong with him, and what is wrong with us, and we can decide if it can be fixed.

We have come a long way since Kennedy’s inaugural speech. His main themes were freedom, peace, God’s role in our lives, service to others, and personal accountability.

Trump’s inaugural speech was different. “The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country. Their victories have not been your victories. Their triumphs have not been your triumphs, and while they celebrated in our nation’s capital, there was little to celebrate for struggling families all across our land.”

The first Grievance Story of the new presidency. As he leaves office, one can wonder what there is for struggling American families to celebrate about him.

I think that people who try to understand  Trump through the context of politics will be disappointed. He doesn’t lead his followers; he entertains them. He doesn’t come from politics; he comes from reality TV.

Like many reality heroes, Trump offers his people a series of riveting Grievance Stories, one after the other.

Like any play, the story may have little to do with reality, more about anger. Plays and dramas can be anything the story teller wishes them to be, including fantasies.

Their victories are not your victories.

I’m a fan of Greek Drama, and as a media critic, a former TV producer, and a follower of Reality TV. I’ve also been online since the birth of the Internet. I see all of these elements in the rise and inevitable fall of Donald Trump.

There is very little in our political history to explain it.

The citizen in me sometimes wants to cry at what these crass people have done to our democracy. The producer in me is in awe—what a show. Politicians have never understood Trump, even his fawning golf buddies.

In politics, as in life, we either change or we perish. Trump is warning us to change.

In his last act, the Mad King is holed up in his castle, preparing to fight again. This is pure genius. Of course, the election was stolen. Trump has discovered Shakespeare.

The November election showed once again that traditional politicians undervalue the impact of technology and culture on politics

In his eerily relevant new book Shakespeare In A Divided America, James Shapiro  wrote about the relevance of Shakespeare to our divided country:

“Part of that divide,” he wrote, “is between those of us who believe in this democracy and those of us who believe that it has failed because they are victims, they are oppressed by the intellectuals, by the liberals, by the elite, and that’s the source of their problems. And of course, it isn’t the actual source of their problem, but they are being fed constantly a lie in order to protect the interests of the ultra-rich.”

The great theatrical feat of Trump, a charter member of the ultra-rich and nobody’s victim ever in his life,  was to present himself to those oppressed people as the leader and champion of their grievance.

He is their big chip on their shoulders..

Like all great entertainers, he will find a way to be onscreen or onstage until the last minute – thus the stolen kingdom, the ultimate outrage of them all.

Unlike our baffled Republican and Democratic politicians, Jerry Springer understood Donald Trump right away; he wasn’t the least bit baffled by his emergence on the national stage, the biggest stage:

“It’s just a show,” Springer said. “It’s not the end of Western civilization. It’s chewing gum. The bias against the show is purely elitist. We’re all like the people on the show – the difference is that some speak better or were born richer. There’s nothing that happens on my show that rich people didn’t experience.”

Of course, lots of people don’t care if it’s real or true. It’s chewing gum.

Perhaps it will take another version of Trump – a saner one –  to save us. The only political entertainer I have seen who might be up to it is the latest demon of the far-right, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

She knows Instagram and Twitter, and she knows TV and uses them well. She is the perfect warrior in the new battlefield of democracy. She knows how to push buttons.

She is young and understands both new technology and popular culture, essential tools for the next generation of leaders. She is not Chuck Schumer.

Greek Drama seized upon the arrogance and hubris of despots and dictators. Reality TV allowed ordinary people to emotionally connect with their fantasies and the stories of their lives. Social media gave these same people an unprecedented way to actually join and support these mediums’ heroes.

New technology gave enormous political power to people who had little or none.

Donald Trump and his fanbase – and it is a fan base, not a political base, really – can only be seen as entertainment, not as traditional American politics.

Reality TV has morphed from radio game show and amateur talent competition to hidden camera surprise show to dating show to documentary-style drama series.

The genre now encompasses unscripted dramas, makeover sagas, celebrity exposes, lifestyle-change shows, dating shows, talent extravaganzas, and just about any competition you can think of. You can watch “The Biggest Loser,” “Dancing With The Stars,” The Real World,” “I Love New York,” “Beauty  and the Geek,” “The Bachelor.”

Many of Trump’s supporters grew up on reality TV, which is ubiquitous now. It doesn’t need to be true. It isn’t real. Like Trump himself.

And Donald Trump, Champion Of The Ordinary Guy. The Reality TV format has now come to politics; it has, in fact,  taken over politics, at least for now.

Reality TV is not about reality; any more than Donald Trump is about governing or policy. They wanted him to disrupt. He disrupts, every day.

Reality TV is about fantasy, grievance, revenge, and always – always – shows ordinary people getting screwed by the powers that be, a/k/a elitists, Democrats, liberals, socialists, black activists, woolly-headed environmentalists, and academics – whatever demon can be summoned to fit the moment.

There are always victims in reality TV, and there are always heroes – superheroes in TV terms – who change their fate, who rise to save the day, as embattled, misunderstood and victimized as the big heroes almost always are.

Since November, Trump has made the dramatic turn from Emperor to martyr, another great reality fake, a brooding Hamlet. The hero is driven from the field, along only with a Mansion, a huge stipend, his own Praetorian Guard, and a chest full of treasure.

Poor guy. You can donate here.

Think of the poor overwhelmed and unprepared democracy, structured by the most rational and literal of people, accountable to a new kind of citizens many of whom have been raised on the idea of fantasy and grievance, not truth and civil argument.

Jerry Springer first taught us that civil argument no longer had a sacred spot in public discourse, or was in any way unacceptable. He went over the top every show, raising the bar, shattering taboos.

A young real estate developer in New York City was watching.

Unlike scripted TV shows like sitcoms, or stuffy and traditional public forums like Congress or the Presidency, reality TV is run by producers and editors’ teams.

From the first, the Trump administration was structured like a real broadcast with familiar reality TV themes: powerless people abused and ignored by detached and wealthy elites, saved by a superhero who appears out of nowhere to save them, and who is himself (or herself) set upon and victimized.

Thus the emotional connection between hero and fan.

Donald Trump wasn’t elected to run the country and has never really bothered to do it. He was elected to entertain the people, and he has and still is.

He focused on two bases, different in many ways: the conservative social movement, which for years has been seeking conservative judges and on disenchanted white workers who felt women and people of color were taking resources and jobs and political power away from them.

Pundits like to say (I was one of them) that Trump’s big mistake was in not expanding his base. That is true if you’re viewing him as a politician. As an entertainer, his base has radically expanded – almost 75 million people voted for him in November.

Those are pretty good ratings, even for a reality show.

Many of them voted for him as an entertainer, not a President, which is the key to understanding the Trump phenomenon.

America’s founders – Jefferson, Adams, and later, people like Daniel Webster – all worried that the great threat to our Republic was not from outside, but inside – an ill-informed and unthinking electorate choosing unfit and dangerous leaders because they weren’t paying attention to the structure required of a democracy.

Some people seek to be informed. Some people seek to be entertained. Every producer in the world is trained to learn that from the first day.

We see that those warnings about the electorate nearly came true in 2020. But there was a surprise ending: more than 80 million Americans voted for democracy, and in so doing, may have saved ours.

But still, the founder’s fears are also in danger of slowly coming true.

Why wouldn’t other entertainers watching Trump try the same thing? Why wouldn’t it work?  Our democracy was not prepared for Trump. Democrats were flummoxed and outraged from the beginning.  They often seem clueless to me, too slow and stodgy and pompous for the new cultural and media environment.

They really did need disrupting, and they got more than they bargained for. Perhaps it will wake them up.

They seemed stuffy, slow, and out of date these past few years; most of them still do. Schumer and Pelosi, two very traditional politicians, had no chance against someone like Trump, who brought entertainment values, not tradition or ethics, to politics.

And Biden, the decent sort that he is, is hardly hip. He still talks about listening to music on a record player.

Why have so many Americans abandoned our Constitution?

“Our constitution,” wrote John Adams,” was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

But Trump is neither religious nor moral, nor are many of his supporters, especially those in Congress. Even though he pretended to be both, according to modern entertainment rules, that doesn’t matter what you are; it matters what you seem to be.

Adams was not especially optimistic about the future of democracy. “Remember,” he warned, “democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy, yet that did not commit suicide.”

The November election suggested to me that Americans are not yet ready to murder their democracy. Against long odds, democracy won.  “You will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom!” he wrote, “I hope you will make a good use of it.”

Adams would not, I think, be happy about Donald Trump or the doomed effort of some of his supporters to stage a coup and seize power from Joe Biden, the legally elected President.

This week, with President Trump’s enthusiastic backing, Congressman Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) and several Arizona Republicans filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking to give Vice President Pence the power to overturn the election outcome.

Gohmert justified his lawsuit because Biden’s election would mark the end of our Republic if allowed to happen. He hasn’t said how.

This is a perfect window into the reality of reality TV and how it works.

If Gohmert’s lawsuit ever succeeded, and the vice president of the United States could choose any President he wanted to choose, regardless of the outcome of a national election, then our Republic really would be over.

Yet the storyline from Trump World is that the Republic is being saved by the lawsuit- intense, dramatic, and exciting. Don’t be alarmed. It’s chewing gum.

You may be thinking what I’m thinking: this makes no sense. That’s because you are not an entertainer.

Please. Trump knows the election was valid. So does Rep. Gohmert. The show must go on.

A reminder again: this is not a political or legal move.

Gohmert and Trump, and even poor Guiliani know this can’t possibly succeed and is based on false assertions and assumptions. Eighty different judges have rejected Trump’s claims that the election was fraudulent.

If this makes no sense politically or legally, it’s is a great move for a reality script.

The embattled hero, who told the truth, did what he said, and never stopped fighting for the common man, is set upon by elitists and radical socialists and fighting for his life.

So far, Trump has raised 200 million dollars to pay his debts and legal fees with every dishonest tweet, more money comes in, and another dunderhead congressman comes aboard.

The political pundits say this is insane and self-destructive. But you won’t hear a TV producer say that.

Wow. It’s just a great show.

Adams also said that Liberty could not be preserved without general knowledge among the people. There is no reason I can think of that this challenge could not be met.

“Somewhere in the land, a monster lurked.” – Jerry Springer.