Thread by @JYSexton

So.

Uh.

You realize that if Joe Exotic was born in New York to an extremely wealthy family he could be president, right?

Because there's virtually no difference between him and Donald Trump.

The obsession with fame. The outlandish public persona. The obscene, misogynistic feuds. The outward appearance of wealth and power despite a crumbling empire. The shallow relationships built on manipulation and public appearances. Reliance on outside, shadowy investors.

The truth is that Tiger King is a story of America's foremost disease: the cult of the individual and how our economic system and mass, popular culture harvest the worst human instincts and desires and then sell the failures and catastrophes to the culture at-large.

When individuals like Trump or Joe Exotic become obsessed with personal wealth and fame, they're more than happy to destroy lives. Doesn't matter if it's defrauding people with Trump University or letting someone get their arm bit off by a tiger.

Tiger King is unbelievable viewing, just a fantastic experience, but it also relies on classism to hide the fact that Joe Exotic is just an impoverished corporate CEO with ridiculous behavior that is only notably ridiculous because it's impoverished and in Florida.

Watching Joe Exotic talk about killing his female rival is no different than Trump's garbage feud with Rosie O'Donnell. It's just the same play in different locations with different individuals.

What remains, though, is the American Disease.

Because Trump has money, though, he's viewed differently than Joe Exotic. But they're two sides of the same coin. Self-obsessed, delusional men who are willing to hurt anyone to get what they want and maintain their artificial, delusional luster.

They're chasing the same things.

Tiger King and Donald Trump are indictments of what America has become. A delusional, fictional empire where the pursuit of meaningless self-aggrandizement and artificial power not only corrupts individuals but destroys lives and eradicates shared society.

All of reality TV is based on this concept of self-ruin through self-worship and the pursuance of American ideas of wealth and power. What we watch is individuals willing to destroy others for power and profit.

This is why Trump succeeded there. He's the embodiment of the idea.

I actually write quite a bit about the link between America's fictions, the corrupting market, Trump's rise as a reality star, and how these myths hurt and endanger us in my new book AMERICAN RULE: HOW A NATION CONQUERED THE WORLD BUT FAILED ITS PEOPLE.

penguinrandomhouse.com/books/611439/a…

It's also important to take a moment and just point out the media's complicity in all of this. The need for spectacle created monsters in both Donald Trump and Joe Exotic, and the more outlandish and abusive both of them got the more press coverage they received.

We can watch Tiger King and enjoy it because Joe Exotic is in jail and there aren't societal stakes. But what we're watching is the Trump Story in a different setting, in a different reality.

We're watching all the elements that gave us Donald Trump as a societal destroyer.

But, again, Tiger King is just Donald Trump. It's a different viewpoint of the same tragic, slow-moving disaster that has corrupted our society and corrupted individuals and how the cult of profit and celebrity has given us a country that doesn't work and puts us in danger.

With Joe Exotic, being at his mercy means possibly having your arm bit off or eating spoiled meat in a trailer.

With Donald Trump, it means society shutting down and all of us huddling in our homes because he's incapable of fighting an epidemic.

Different sides, same coin.

Because Trump dressed in the costume of success, because his background was from money, because he went to the right schools and knew the right people and went to the right parties, his delusional illusion was awarded time and time and time again.

That's the difference.

Important to note for future understanding and posterity that reality television is the concentrated essence of how corrupting and dangerous hypercapitalism is and the commodification of the dangerous lies we tell ourselves about wealth, meritocracy, relationships, and ourselves.