27

Wednesday, January 27, 2021, 12PM Central Standard Time

“You’re better than this guy,” Mike said, cradling a beer as he and Pete watched Wolf News on mute at the Bank Street Bar and Grill.

“Huh?”

“You,” Mike said. “You’re better than this guy.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Look at what he’s saying,” Mike said. “He’s saying the House Minority Leader is a liar who didn’t actually pray for him when he got the virus.”

“Maybe he’s right,” Pete said.

“Maybe,” Mike said. “But let’s not bullshit around. He never responds to criticism with anything but whining and personal attacks. He takes everything personally. It’s all about him. Whine, whine, whine. Oh my god, the whining. Everyone’s out to get him. You are the opposite of that. How can you stand the constant whining?”

“Maybe I don’t have to whine because he’s whining for me.”

Mike considered this.

“I don’t buy it. He’s the opposite of you in every way. You served, he dodged the draft. You’re a useful member of the community, he’s a self-serving phony. You believe in God – you do, right?”

Pete took a swig of his drink.

“My religion is my business.”

“See? He panders to the evangelicals, and you can tell every time they are laying hands on him that his skin is crawling. He hates them. But he pretends to believe, so they keep electing him. If he gets a third term, it’ll be because of them. But he can’t stand them. He clearly does not believe in God.”

“Now how do you know that?”

“Come on. It’s obvious. I may be a backslid Catholic altar boy, but I know my New Testament. Some interviewer asked him in 2016 if he had ever asked God for forgiveness. He said, and I’ll give him credit for honesty there, ‘I don’t think I have.’ He said something like, ‘I don’t bring God into that picture, I just try to do better after.’ He also said he doesn’t think he’s done much of anything wrong. This is a guy who’s cheated on three wives.”

“And Democrats are so much more holy?”

“Democrats would never say, ‘I have never done anything wrong.’ I mean, even Republicans never say stuff like that. He’s the only one.”

“Have you ever asked God for forgiveness?”

“Not in a long time,” Mike admitted. “Of course, the conventional man-in-the-sky- with-flowing-beard doesn’t do it for me. But I would never say I’ve never done anything wrong. I’ve committed most of the sins. I’m divorced. I have regrets.”

“Well, there you go.”

“No, there I don’t go. The President never has regrets. And I think that’s very dangerous. Like I said, you’re better than this guy.”

“I like a guy with confidence.”

“Confidence is great if it’s warranted. This is a guy who is confident that all that is good and true lines up perfectly with what makes him personally feel like a big man, and anything that hurts his image in any way is evil and must be attacked. I don’t think you believe that.”

Pete stared at the television screen in silence.

“And that brings up another weird thing about this guy. Democrats say he lies all the time. The newspaper published all his supposed lies. What are they up to now, 23,000? Why am I asking you? You don’t read the liberal-biased press.”

“That I do not. I don’t have time to read all that shit.”

“Lucky for you I’m around.”

Pete made a scoffing sound, and then took another swig.

“Anyway, I’m actually going to say something in defense of your guy,” Mike said.

“I don’t know if I’d call him ‘my guy.’”

“Well, you said you voted for him, so, how about, ‘the guy you voted for.’”

Pete didn’t react to this.

“Okay, Democrats are always saying he lies. But I don’t know if we can call them lies. Because I don’t think he ever thinks in terms of truth or falsehood. He never gets to that issue. If it makes him look good, then it’s ‘true.’ If it makes him look bad, it’s ‘false.’” Mike made quote marks in the air to emphasize the words “true” and “false.”

Still no response from Pete.

“Now stay with me, because I have another hypothesis about this guy. I think you’re going to like it. Now we know he’s been involved with pro wrestling for a long time, right?”

Pete continued to stare at the TV screen.

“Now, let me ask you this. You’ve been a fan of pro wrestling over the years, right?”

Pete shifted in his seat.

“Where is this going?” Pete said. “Is there a point buried in here somewhere?”

“My point is coming,” Mike said. “Now, when you are watching pro wrestling, do you believe it’s true? On the level? That it’s not fixed?”

“Oh my god, what are you going to tell me next? There’s no Santa Claus?”

“Jesus, you are such an elitist ignoramus. The Iron Sheik never fought the Macho Man.”

“Whatever. When you were watching the Iron Sheik,” Mike said, “Did you believe he really hated the guy he was wrestling? Did you give a damn about the reality?”

“Okay,” Pete said. “I’ll bite. No, I did not give a damn about the reality. It was entertainment.”

“But you got pretty revved up over those matches, as I recall.”

“Sure I did. It was fun to cheer the guy who was the Face, who stood for America, and boo the other guy, the heel, who hated America.”

“Even if he didn’t really hate America.”

“Sure.”

“So you like rooting for something, and maybe even better, rooting against something and fake-hating it.”

“Sure. What’s your point?”

“I think that’s a big part of the secret to the President.”

“What?”

“I think he realized that a large part of the American electorate had started to see politics as just another form of pro wrestling, with ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys.’ And that part of the electorate had a deep need to show allegiance for something they saw as good, and hatred of something they saw as bad, because life was just getting too complicated and confusing for them. They needed to find a ‘face.’ Example: at the last minute, when he’s losing horribly, he ‘gets the virus,’ and so does his wife, who, let’s face it, is probably not spending a lot of time close to this guy. He knew the cues that would cause that group to love his ass like some all-American ‘face,’ and how to portray the other side as the Iron Sheik or the heel or whatever.”

“Duh, Professor.”

“Yeah, it’s not exactly rocket surgery. But I think most of us liberals and Democrats these days think that people should be rational. There is reality, and facts, and truth, and if we can show that pro wrestling is rigged, well, then, you people should stop watching it. I think that’s why we’ve lost everything. People’s need to be entertained and to believe in something simple and appealing is far deeper than their desire to know the truth. They want a team, and they want that team to win, and maybe even more, they want the other team to lose and be humiliated, because they’ve been humiliated, because their lives have not turned out the way they expected and the way they think they deserved, and they see people who look like the Iron Sheik moving into their neighborhood and getting the American Dream that they thought was theirs alone.”

Pete considered this.

“I think you might be onto something. …But you’re saying I think politics is pro wrestling?”

“That’s why I began this whole diatribe by saying I think you’re better than this guy.”

“But you think I don’t care about reality.”

“Maybe less than you care about winning, and about signaling that you are on the right side.”

“You don’t care about winning, or being on the right side?”

“I care about both of those things. I just think reality is too complicated to break into ‘good’ and ‘bad’ sides. Though I have to admit, that’s getting easier and easier for me the last 5 years.”

“So, you like the Iron Sheik?”

“I don’t know who the fuck that even is. I just think if we keep treating elections like Wrestlemania, we are going to be in deep trouble. I think the real Iron Sheiks are in Moscow and Beijing and on Wolf News and on Wall Street and Silicon Valley. These powerful bad people have noticed that we are suckers for entertainment and simplistic good guy/bad guy stories, and they are delivering them, and we are swallowing them whole, and America is crumbling because we can’t agree on readily provable facts, like Russia wanted the President elected in 2016, and re-elected in 2020.”

“You can’t prove that.”

“I can prove it for 2016. You just didn’t want to hear it, because it made the President look bad. But you’re right about 2020, because every intelligence official who could have proved Russia wanted your guy elected has been fired or quit under pressure. We have no professional intelligence capability anymore. The President has dismantled it, because the President cannot abide anyone saying that evil anti-American people wanted him to remain President.”

Pete made a scoffing noise as Mike leaned back in his chair. Mike paused for a moment and then began again.

“So, we have a President whose relationship to the truth is purely about what makes him feel like a big man and makes his enemies – he doesn’t have opponents, he only sees them as enemies – look bad. He’s grasped the fact that America, in its decadent declining-wealthy phase, feels like it has the luxury of treating politics, which the Founders considered a noble and vital vocation and the duty of every citizen, as if it was some cheap spectacle that cannot possibly have the slightest impact on their lives if they get it wrong, like pro wrestling or ‘Dancing with the Stars.’ Just another fix for their addiction to expressing passionate phony allegiances. For that matter, just another spectator sport.”

Pete remained impassive.

“Anyway, I think you’re better than that. I think you are better than this guy, in every way. He’s a terrible father; you’re a good one. He’s a three-times unfaithful husband; I think you’re a pretty damned good one. You pay your debts; he stiffs his small contractors. You treat people with respect; he steps on them and bad-mouths them. You’re a strong, silent guy; he’s a bully. You never complain or whine – unlike me, I might add; he whines constantly. You served in the military; he dodged. You’re honest and have some commitment to reality; he’s a compulsive liar, or maybe he’s a sociopath who doesn’t even understand the concept of truth or falsehood, which for the country may be worse. You give a shit about the future you’re handing off to your kids; I doubt he values his kids for anything other than how they make him look. You respect women; he molests them – come on, you know that’s true. Shit, even your hair is more honest and noble than his – whatever the fuck that thing is on his head, trying to pretend he’s not going bald. You’re too good for this mugwump.”

Silence from Pete.

“But my side fell down on the job. They didn’t realize the game was pro wrestling. They didn’t realize they had to run a ‘face’ and make the President the ‘heel.’ My side didn’t realize it was all kayfabe.”

“Kayfabe?”

“That’s what the pro wrestling guys call what they do. ‘Worked’ events. The portrayal of staged, pre-planned events as true, natural things. Basically, reality TV. Which of course is the least reality-based thing in the world, and is exactly where we got this guy.”

“What are you, Webapedia?”

“I might have looked some of this up on my phone while I was talking. Like ‘kayfabe.’”

Janet approached them with two baskets of food.

“Wednesday Taco Day,” she said. “Three each?”

“Yeah,” Pete said. “Thank you. How you doing?”

Janet shrugged. “Kid’s sick. Otherwise, same old same old. You?”

“We’re okay,” Pete replied. “We all had that virus or whatever it was. I think it might have killed my dad last year, but he was on the way out anyway, I think.”

“Shit,” Janet said. “I’m sorry.”

“But you shouldn’t worry about your daughter. It doesn’t kill young people, I don’t think.”

Janet knocked on the bar twice with her fist.

“You seen Angelo?” Mike asked.

“I ain’t seen him this week,” Janet said. “Works for me. His coughing drives away my business.”

Janet nodded toward Mike and asked Pete, “This one buggin’ you with his diatribes?”

Pete looked at Mike and grinned.

“I think he thinks if he convinces me of something, then they’ll go back and change the results of the election.”

Mike laughed.

“Okay,” he said. “No more lecturing from me. Even though the whole point of what I was saying is, you’re a good guy. But okay, I’ve learned my lesson. You’re a piece of shit.”

Mike held up his drink and they clinked glasses.

“Kayfabe,” Pete said.

“Can you change the channel to sports, please?” Mike asked.

“Sure,” Janet said, picking up the remote. “If it’ll shut you up.”

“See if there’s any wrestling on,” Pete said.

© 2020 Nolan O’Brian