Posted on by rjonakait

Shut Up, You Elites

Hulk Hogan’s death and comments about his cultural significance have inspired me to re-post some previous entries about the connections between professional wrestling and our politics and society. Today’s thoughts originally appeared on ajsdad.blog, July 2017.

His hair is distinctive, one could say impossible, but there it is. A microphone is only a few inches from his lips, but he still leans into it. He does not really yell into the mike, but the voice is certainly not conversational. His words can be adamant; they can be bullying. He denounces enemies, enemies that stand in the way of greatness. He talks about the alliances he has entered or created and how strong they are. He makes promises about how he will perform, performances that he guarantees will be great. There is nothing nuanced in what he says; there are no ambiguities. It is a world of black and white; of good and bad; of greatness or failure. There is not a single shade of gray.

He pauses often, seemingly waiting for his audience to catch up. The audience reacts visibly and audibly. Each denunciation, each bragging claim elicits a hoot and a holler. He encourages the audience to mock his opponents, and the crowd often responds with a sing-song chant. This is an interactive, audience-participation performance. The speaker supplies the initial energy, but he soaks up energy as the frenzied crowd reacts to him.

The audience doesn’t really care about the specifics of his promises. They know that many can’t be kept. Indeed, they won’t be surprised if contradictory promises are made in a week or a month or that the alliances announced today are changed tomorrow or that the enemy previously castigated in absolute terms is now a dear friend with whom he has been secretly colluding. The audience is there not for truth, but for an attitude, and he supplies and feeds that attitude.

This audience seems bound together by something more than what most audiences have. They know that others, “nice” people, “successful” people, “elite” people, not only do not share their enthusiasm, those others, this group knows, think there is something wrong, ludicrous, maybe even shameful or dangerous and low class in what this audience feels. Here, however, together with this crowd and this performer who understands their visceral reactions, each can indulge the passions they all enjoy, and this brings them closer together.

Perhaps this is a Trump rally, but what I was trying to describe is pro wrestling. Since the rise of Trumpism, I have thought that those who are mystified by the appeal of Donald Trump might learn something by trying to understand the allure of professional wrestling.

The theatrics of professional wrestling remain strikingly similar to what they were in my childhood of Verne Gagne with his sleeper hold and his between bout pitches for a nutritional supplement. There were good guys (Wilbur Snyder, for example) and bad guys (definitely Dick the Bruiser) in a simulated reality of pain, danger, and improbable heroics. The business, however, has changed in some important ways.

What I watched growing up was largely regional. Different parts of the country had different wrestling companies. As a friend once said about a wrestler, “He was the world heavyweight champion of the greater Cleveland area.” The spectacle might have been similar everywhere, but the performers changed with the territory.

Vince McMahon of what is now the WWE (World, or maybe Worldwide, Wrestling Entertainment) changed that. His wrestling organization, started in the Northeast by his father, did not respect others’ territories. He drove many regional operations out of business or bought them out as they started to fail. WWE now dominates the business, and wrestling fans today all see pretty much the same product. The rise of cable television, the Internet, and other media has given more choice for news and entertainment and has fragmented popular culture. We don’t share as much in common as we once did.

Professional wrestling, with its nationalization, has gone in the opposite direction. The odds are overwhelming that its fans all know, and probably have opinions about, Kevin Owens, The Undertaker, the New Day, and Triple H. Wrestling is one of the few popular forces that is producing an increasingly unified cultural base, but a base that is out of sight to the rest of America.

The wrestling business has also changed because, while it is not trumpeted, it is not now a secret that the contests are not real sporting events. Back in the day, some fans may have thought that the spectacle was a legitimate sport, but today it is acknowledged that wrestling is “sports entertainment.” All but the most naïve of wrestling fans know that while the wrestlers can be athletic and do take risks, the violence is simulated, and the outcomes follow predetermined story lines. Wrestling’s popularity has fluctuated through the years, but its popularity does not seem to have been harmed because those involved no longer steadfastly maintain that it is “real.” Instead, it has always been a form of reality TV; something that pretends to be real.

The allure of pro wrestling to the outsider is hard to fathom, but it must have something to do with the power of simulated reality, violence, the simplicity of good and evil, outrageous characters, and the continuing tensions of soap opera. As epic poems, sagas, novels and movies show, we want, maybe need, superheroes and supervillains. At least some of the time, we don’t want nuance, caveats, and tough choices. During the wrestling shows, we have those heroes and villains and only easy choices. Who and what is good or bad is crystal clear.

It is not my point and beyond my abilities to analyze the allure of wrestling, and anyway, the appeal may largely be visceral and, thus, cannot be satisfactorily explained to those who don’t feel it. What should be recognized is that the spectacle has had an enduring appeal, and if I am right, that Trump at a rally performs much like a pro wrestler talking to the audience, and that audience responds much as a wrestling crowd does. It may make sense for those who can’t grasp Tumpism to try to grasp pro wrestling.

When Trump was gaining traction in the political arena, this wrestling fan thought back to one of the WWE storylines. It featured Donald Trump. Oh, yes, Trump has been a part of pro wrestling for quite some time. As I recall, Vince McMahon backed one wrestler and Trump another, and Trump and McMahon agreed to have his head shaved depending upon which wrestler lost some big event. This billionaire-baiting went on for weeks or maybe even months, providing us with the recently reprised and altered video of Trump “taking down” Vince McMahon in a moment of made-up macho madness. But of course, no one could really believe that Trump was going to appear bald to further wrestling ratings. The mere thought of it, however, whipped up the crowd. Politicos have studied Trump’s business records and pop culture critics have talked about The Apprentice, but pundits mystified about his appeal should also have been studying Trump on Monday Night Raw and then watching more of the wrestling shows.

Perhaps roots of Trump can be found in Huey Long and William Jennings Bryan, but we should also consider Gorgeous George. Gorgeous George was–perhaps next to Milton Berle–early television’s biggest star. Professional wrestling has always presented itself as what is now called reality TV, and GG was America’s first huge reality TV star. Gorgeous George (George Raymond Wagner), often shortened by TV announcers to Gorgeous or Georgie, was in wrestling parlance a “heel,” a bad guy. (Good guys are “babyfaces” or just “faces.”) But he broke stereotypes. In what was supposedly a testosterone-fueled world, his character displayed effeminacy. Flunkies would precede him up the arena’s aisles spraying perfume in his path. He entered the ring wearing elaborate robes no “man” would have been caught in—festooned with ostrich feathers, for example. No one but his valet was allowed to touch his robe, and the referee in a Chaplinesque routine would be repeatedly blocked from doing so. And he had that hair. It was some sort of yellow or straw color never seen in nature, and it was curled and primped in ways that only permanents and feminine implements could produce. His hair was secured with what otherwise would have been called bobby pins; his were labeled Georgie pins. Before a match, he would elaborately remove and toss them to the crowd. The hair was central to the character. The storylines often said that he would not fight someone unless the opponent contracted not to touch his hair. And late in his career, as other wrestlers were eclipsing him, he fought a match where the loser would have his locks sheared. Gorgeous lost the match and his hair.

There is a line leading from Gorgeous George to Trump. This path meanders with stops for Muhammed Ali and James Brown, both reportedly fans of Gorgeous. It goes through Ric Flair, William Regal, and other wrestlers. But although the line goes to him, Trump in some ways has flipped (piledriven?) the Gorgeous George persona on its head. Gorgeous played the heel to fill the arenas with those who came to jeer him. Trump, too, acts the heel, but not to the faithful in front of him. Trump unites with the audience, and together they act as the heel to all who are not Trump’s fans or are, like Vince McMahon, Trump’s real or imagined nemeses. It provided pleasure akin to that at a wrestling spectacle when he would say–and the crowd would join in denouncing–little Marco, that nasty woman, the lying press. The fantasy of pro wrestling, however, becomes dangerously real when Trump wants the audience to join him in jeering at and taking down legitimate news media. Wrestling stars in the ring have a made up and scripted role, but Trump seems not to realize the President of the United States is not a fictional character.

Gorgeous entered the arena to work and work up the audience. When the crowd frenziedly taunted him, he would shout back, “Shut up, you peasants.” The crowd would roar with delight. Trump’s has shifted the heel’s performance. His audience roars because Trump and his audience together seem to shout to all those that are not enthralled by him, “Shut up, you elites.”

Posted on by rjonakait

Unnatural Immunity

The Supreme Court will soon decide whether Donald Trump has immunity from criminal prosecution for his actions that culminated with the events on January 6, 2021. Immunity is most frequently granted when a prosecutor agrees not to prosecute a person in exchange for testimony against someone else. Trump, however, is not seeking immunity as part of such a bargain. Instead, he wants it for his status as ex-president of the United States. Status, however, has not prevented the prosecution of governors, members of Congress, judges, CEOs, religious figures, or others.

While status has not given others immunity, it has been argued that a president enjoys limited immunity while in office. The Office of Legal Counsel of the Department of Justice (OLC) in 1973 and 2000 concluded that it was, in fact, unconstitutional to prosecute a sitting president. The Office reasoned in part that the president “is the symbolic head of the Nation. To wound him by a criminal proceeding is to hamstring the operation of the whole governmental apparatus in both foreign and domestic affairs.” And, of course, the time that a sitting president spends defending criminal charges is time not spent governing.

Other prominent legal thinkers have not agreed with the OLC and have maintained that even while president, a person can be criminally charged. The Supreme Court has never decided this issue, but the OLC’s rationale would only protect a person while in office. Trump, however, wants something much more. He wants immunity now even though he is no longer the symbolic head of the country and a criminal trial would no longer interfere with presidential duties. He wants immunity for his status as ex-president.

 Some find merit in his position. For example, Marco Rubio, as reported by Nick Robertson in The Hill of March 24, 2024, defended Trump’s claim of immunity. Rubio said, “I do think there’s a legitimate issue here that we need to talk about writ large, especially after what we’ve seen in the last three years. Do we want to live in a country where basically the opponents of the president can kind of extort them, can have leverage over them during their entire presidency and say, ‘Don’t worry, once you’re out of office, we’re going to prosecute you or we’re going to come after you, charge you with this crime or that crime.’ We’re living in a country now, where basically, if you’re president now, you have to think to yourself, ‘I gotta be careful what I do as president,’ not even legal or illegal, even on policy.”

Robertson reports that Trump’s attorney have made a similar claim: “A denial of criminal immunity would incapacitate every future President with de facto blackmail and extortion while in office, and condemn him to years of post-office trauma at the hands of political opponents. That bleak scenario would result in a weak and hollow President, and would thus be ruinous for the American political system as a whole. That vital consideration alone resolves the question presented in favor of dismissal of this case.”

Nowhere in the Constitution does it say that a president, much less an ex-president, has immunity. The only explicit constitutional provision about presidential immunity makes it clear that ex-presidents can be prosecuted at least sometimes. Section 3 of Article I states that a person convicted of an impeachable offense, which would result in the removal from office, “shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.”

If the Supreme Court were to find any sort of immunity for Trump, they would have to make it up. That, of course, is not what they will say they are doing. Instead, they will say that they are inferring it from explicit constitutional provisions. The Supreme Court has often been criticized for finding rights that are not explicitly stated in the Constitution, but only “activist” judges could proclaim prosecutorial immunity for an ex-president.

Even though it is not in the Constitution, I have some sympathy for the position that presidents should be able to make decisions without the fear of later prosecution. The only reason to give an ex-president immunity is to keep subsequent presidents free of such a concern. I leave it to you to decide whether that is a sufficient reason to infer that such a protection for ex-presidents is in the Constitution.

On the other hand, I hope that we can all agree that a president who brutalizes his wife leaving her disfigured and disabled should not be free from prosecution. A president who arranges for a political, business, or romantic rival to be killed should not have immunity. A president who barricades the polls to prevent citizens from voting can, and should, be prosecuted.

If an ex-president were to have any immunity, it should only be for presidential decisions and actions. It should only be for the use of powers granted by the Constitution to the president. Committing domestic violence is not a presidential decision. You don’t have to be a president to commit domestic violence. Nor do you have to be a president to kill a rival or, as our history has shown repeatedly, to intimidate or use violence to prevent votes from being cast.  Decisions that only a president can make perhaps should have criminal immunity but not for behavior that non-presidents also commit.

Although the boundary as to what constitutes a presidential decision may at times be hazy, some of the criminal prosecutions against Trump are brought for clearly non-presidential actions. It should be evident that any litigation concerning his behavior before he was president do not involve presidential decisions. His actions alleged in the New York criminal” hush money case”  occurred before he was president, so there cannot be any kind of presidential immunity for those actions. As I wrote before, perhaps we should be concerned that he was targeted by New York law officials (see post of March 18, 2024, “Targeting Trump”). If so, he should get the same legal protections that are available to anyone who has been arguably targeted by prosecutors, but nothing more.

The absence of immunity in the Florida case also seems straightforward. The transfer of records from the White House to Trump’s living spaces may have happened while he was president and perhaps could be deemed presidential actions. However, because he is being prosecuted in Florida for refusal to surrender classified documents after he left office, he could not have been making a presidential decision to keep them because he was no longer president. He was acting as a private citizen, and he should not get any kind of presidential immunity in that case.

That leaves the Georgia and federal criminal cases revolving about the events that culminated on January 6. Trump was president when these events occurred, and some have claimed he was acting within the duties of a president by insuring or inquiring about the integrity of an election or was simply exercising his free speech rights. The criminal allegations, however, allege that he was interfering with the integrity of elections and trying to prevent the rightful winner from peacefully taking office. Trials exist to resolve questions of fact. Thus, if Trump was not seeking to interfere with the outcome of the election or was not inciting or colluding with those trying to unlawfully interfere with the transfer of office, he does not need immunity. He will be acquitted.

If Trump was interfering with a valid election, he was not using powers given to the president by the Constitution. If he had lost, Biden might have tried to marshal fake electors, could have leaned on a state official to “find” more votes for him, and then encouraged a mob to march on the Capitol to prevent the lawful certification of the election’s result. If this is what Trump did, he was not exercising presidential authority; he was, instead, trying to manipulate a system that had rejected his presidential candidacy. He should not have immunity for these actions.

Finally, the alleged fear that political opponents will persecute former presidents in the future for partisan reasons has neither history nor logic behind it. These are the first prosecutions of a former president in our over two-century existence. This is so even though during those two hundred years we have had many fierce, partisan alignments. The immunity advocates may say the times are different now, but if so, they don’t want to recognize that the times may be different because Trump’s actions have made them different. They give us no examples of prosecutions of ex-presidents for trying to hide hush money payments, withholding classified documents after leaving office, the obstruction of results of an election, or any other reason. And our future history is unlikely to be rampant with similar prosecutions.

There are natural, institutional restraints on the use of criminal charges for presidential decisions against former presidents by successors. Most of what a president does—appoint a Secretary of State, prepare a budget, draft a new healthcare bill—is not even arguably criminal and will not lead to any criminal prosecution. Perhaps, however, ordering a drone strike that kills an American citizen claimed to be a terrorist leader in the Mideast or declaring an “emergency” to find the funds to build a border wall that Congress has refused to fund — these might arguably be criminal. Even if so, successor administrations are highly unlikely to seek indictments for such actions no matter what the partisan climate. Criminal charges would mean that the successor had restricted his own freedom of action. Someday he may want to do something akin to what a predecessor did, but if he labeled it criminal through a prosecution, he won’t be able to. Sitting presidents almost never want to limit their own power. Indicting and trying predecessors for presidential acts has not happened and will not happen.

The scare tactics are a false flag.

And in our country, you and I and ex-presidents are all supposed to be equal under the law.

Posted on by rjonakait

O Sisters, My Sisters

I had not paid much attention to the brouhaha between the baseball team and the drag group until I heard members of a Fox News panel say that to re-invite the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence to Dodgers Pride Night was an attack on Christianity and religion in general. Jews and Muslims, one Fox commentator said, should be concerned because if they were coming for the followers of Christ, they could be coming for you.

In the you-can’t-win department, the baseball organization had invited the Sisters to a Pride night at Dodgers stadium. That caused on outcry. Then the Dodgers disinvited them. That cause another outcry. Then the Sisters were re-invited causing yet another outcry, including the “outrage” I saw on Fox News. I had not paid much attention to any of this. It seemed like a minor, local thing. Sports organizations do all sorts of things at their stadiums, including making kids dizzy by spinning around a bat pinned to the ground by their foreheads, sausage races, and playing what once were considered radical songs. But count on politicians and conservative news outlets to escalate the trivial into what they hope will be tremendous controversy. Marco Rubio, far removed from Los Angeles and (I am guessing) ballparks in general, issued a press release about some of this.

I don’t think that the conservative concern was because, according to their rather staid website, the Sisters for over forty years “have devoted ourselves to community service, ministry and outreach to those on the edges, and to promoting human rights, respect for diversity and spiritual enlightenment.” Who could oppose that? On the other hand, in today’s world, there is apparently something subversive in the latter part of the Sisters’ mission statement where they proclaim that “we believe all people have a right to express their unique joy and beauty.”

The real concern, however, is that (again from their website) the “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence are a leading-edge Order of queer and trans nuns. . . . We use humor and irreverent wit to expose the forces of bigotry, complacency and guilt that chain the human spirit.” Although I have never seen them, I am confident that what is irreverent to a group of trans and queer “nuns,” is offensive and outrageous to many.

As with many such controversies, the supposedly offending group may have been bolstered by the episode. The Sisters report that they met with the Dodgers organization which offered a full apology, which the nuns labeled sincere. The Sisters continued in their statement, “This affair has been an opportunity for learning with a silver lining. Our group has been strengthened, protected and uplifted to a position where we may now offer our message of hope and joy to far more people than before.” They thanked all those who spoke up for them and concluded with injunctions that I hope even Rubio, Brian Kilmeade, Harris Faulkner, and all archbishops could agree with: “May the games be blessed! /May the players be blessed!/May the fans be blessed!/May the beer and hot dogs flow forth in tasty abundance!”

You might think that such graciousness would charm anyone, but then you must not be an unthinking conservative. Instead, the Sisters have been labeled a threat to Christianity and religion in general. This criticism, however, conflates Catholicism with Christianity and religion in general, and it conflates mockery of the Catholic church for its political stances with an attack on religious beliefs. 

Trans and queer people posing as nuns may seem to mock the Catholic church, but I doubt that Presbyterians and Methodists feel mocked. Catholicism is being satirized but not all of Christianity. Most important, however, is understanding why the Sisters use their “irreverent wit” to mock the church. I doubt that the Sisters are truly concerned about Catholic beliefs on genuflection or transubstantiation. These doctrines do not affect society at large.

However, I am sure that the Sisters are concerned about the church’s stances on sexuality. The mockery might be more constrained if the church limited its injunctions on same-sex relationships and abortion to its own church members. The church, however, does not show such restraint. It does not confine itself to labeling homosexuality, contraception, and abortion as sins for Catholics. Instead, it has sought to prevent same-sex relationships, contraception, and abortion for everyone in society. It has sought to impose its religious views on you and me and everyone else. I have a right to oppose such policies. That doesn’t make me anti-Catholic. It makes me in favor of a government staying out of the private lives of me and others. The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence may criticize these policies in a form different from others’ chosen methods, but they have every right to do so, and those who believe in American freedom should celebrate their ability to do so.