Hulk Hogan is a character played by a gentleman named Terry Gene Bollea, but it is the character speaking on stage. The theatre is now part of the nonfiction, for better or for worse. At least in professional wrestling, violence is performance rather than actual assassination attempts. Look out for Bernie Sanders with that steel chair.
Full Circle
Readers will recall that I’ve often suggested that Trump learned political rhetoric from his time with the World Wrestling Federation (later “Entertainment”). Just read the mean tweets in the voice and with the beats of Hulk Hogan, I’d advise; then they won’t seem scary, but will be recognizable as the theatre that they are.
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Is what Trump does then a way to signal that we shouldn't take the politics thing too seriously, and that our daily lives are far more important? That what happens in DC (or local halls of government) should only matter in so far as they affect that? Perhaps. For too many, it's sport, it's tribe- in replacement of that which really matters.
I often think it's why Trump rubs people the wrong way, and the same sort of people who really hate pro Wrestling. They don't quite get that it's a game; or they hate the ultra-masculine posturing (which frankly is adopted even by the women in the game); or their offended by the aesthetic of over-the-top patriotism; or something similar. With Trump, they don't get that he's just doing the same thing on a political stage instead of a wrestling ring.
Trump I have described as sort of the 'history repeats itself as farce' form of Reagan. Hulk Hogan was already the farcical version of Reagan even when Reagan was around. Bringing him back really underlines the point that this is what "Make America Great Again" is really about: it's about restoring Reagan's America, as much as can be done, even if a farce of it is now the best we can do given the rot.
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