Why Trump is Going to Win on Tuesday

Nearly 40 years ago, Neil Postman wrote a seminal book entitled Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Entertainment.

Postman, with remarkable prescience, predicted Donald Trump and all that is to follow.

Postman wrote when the television age was just starting, but he could already see where it was headed. The medium is addictive (as Al Gore told me when I asked why he wanted to get into the TV business).

Today, the average American spend an astonishing eight hours a day watching TV — and by TV, we mean the all inclusive term that incorporates broadcast, cable, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and any other video — entertainment medium. It is our national opiate, our electronic heroin.

And as such, it is the way we have come to define ourselves.

Postman could see that the only thing that would hold our attention; the only thing we would come to respect was something that was entertaining. He said, (and it seemed crazy then) that this obsession with being endlessly entertained would ultimately come to dominate every aspect of our society — even our Presidential elections and who would would select as our leaders.

And now it has come to pass.

Donald Trump is the consumate entertainer. His rallies are a combination of circus and carnival — music, acts, audiences arriving in costumes, that hats, the rants.

He is endlessly entertaining. He spent ten years studying under that master of public amusement, Mark Burnett. His TV show, The Apprentice was always a top rated show for NBC for a decade. He learned how to play to an audience, how to keep them engaged — and how to commercialize that success — from trading cards to bibles to golden sneakers to gold watches.

And now America is going to vote. It won’t really be a political vote. No one really cares about policy, outside of the Washington Beltway. He certainly doesn’t care about policy or platform. He cares about continually entertaining the crowd and ratings, or size of his audience.

So when America votes on Tuesday, it won’t be a real election. Think of it more like X-Factor or America’s Got Talent.

And who is going to win?

That’s pretty easy.

Trump may be X-Factor and The Apprentice and America’s Got Talent all rolled into one great rollicking and endlessly entertaining circus. Kamala, well, she’s more like NPR or the PBS Newshour. She is, in a word, bad TV. Not a bad person, but bad TV.

Someone just wrote to me and said Trump is Tony Soprano; Harris is Judy Woodruff.

Not entertaining.

And, as Neil Postman saw 40 years ago, if you aren’t entertaining and amusing, you are dead in the water.

That’s just who we are.