US Politics is increasingly Kayfabe (Dramatic)

But it's not Trump's fault... it's ours.

This past week I watched this video called, “How The Attention Economy is Devouring Gen Z | The Ezra Klein Show.” Here is a portion of the transcript (full transcript found here):

EZRA: You (referring to

kyla scanlon

) had another line that I thought was very perceptive. You said: Typically, events create narratives. But during the Trump presidency, narratives create events.

Talk me through that.

Kyla: I think it’s all kayfabe to a certain extent.

What is “kayfabe”?

It’s theatrics — “The show must go on” type of thing in W.W.E.

There’s this great essay by Roland Barthes that I always talk about called “The World of Wrestling.” He talks about how they’re always in character and doing stunts and performances. And it’s just always a show.

Elements of politics increasingly resemble wrestling — this theatrical pursuit of justice and truth. You can align it with the way wrestling always has a heel — there’s always a bad guy to defeat. Once you’ve defeated the bad guy, you did a great job and it’s on to the next opponent.

Which is kind of how Trump moves throughout his presidency. He got bored of the war, essentially.

I think this is one of those really interesting things — we get a spectacle, and then we just move on, because the policy never had a strategy.

So did we destroy Iran’s nuclear program? It felt like there was a three- or four-day news cycle here: We bombed Iran. Then there was an intelligence leak that we only set it back by a few months. Then the Trump administration yelled about the leak. And then we just moved on to debating the “big, beautiful bill.”

It’s not that past policy efforts didn’t create spectacles — they did. But the spectacles were yoked to some kind of strategy and end goal.

The tariffs have had this feeling, too. What is our tariff policy at this point and what is it trying to achieve? Does anybody actually know? Could anybody give me an account of our global tariffs and where they think they’re going to be in 30, 60 or 90 days?

There’s something about the way things rise and fall now that genuinely feels different. Even after the big story line has played out, the moment is gone — even if the policy has not been decided or the goal has not been reached. The decay rate has really accelerated.

Yeah, it kind of feels like Trump has ADD, but that’s to be expected with someone in the presidency. It was a good podcast episode. There were plenty of things to think about. I particularly enjoyed that section due to the Drama talk. I’m just going to write about why Trump seems to take on that savior role, moving through “persecutors” and on to the next though.

To some extent I think all of politics can be seen through a Drama Triangle lens. The whole point of Government is to “save” the people from having to worry about things (who will make the roads? who will defend us so we don’t die in a war thrust upon us? who will take care of the starving orphans and widows? etc.). People created the government to take on those responsibilities that they didn’t want to take care of themselves, individually. Of course, in the beginning the worries were different such as “who will make sure no one ever tramples the people’s unalienable rights to free speech and protection again?”, etc.

People love to blame Trump for why it has seemingly grown more kayfabe-like. But I think it’s something else. When I was listening to the podcast, I was thinking about how Trump really thinks he’s saving our nation. I don’t actually doubt that he thinks he’s doing something really beneficial for the United States. But the reason isn’t because he’s arrogant. It’s because, in part, it’s true. Don’t mistake me there, I’ve gotten plenty of annoyances and frustrations with him that are seemingly increasing exponentially since he got into office this year, which I could list but we’d go off topic. Regardless of all those critiques, I still thank God that we do not have Kamala at the wheel.

So, first he’s feeling like a savior type because in reality he is doing the things we need done, while making some mistakes along the way. No one is perfect. But, secondly, he also has a bunch of people who felt like victims telling him that he is their savior in a sense. Most people will not say the actual words, “You’re really saving this nation, Trump,” but with what they do say to him (or in the polls), they’re fueling his belief. If he was doing exactly what he is doing right now, but no one approved of it, and he found polls dropping and people he met in his own party chastising him, he would not be able to (as easily) believe that he is their savior.

You influence others by your stance

So, if you were to meet Trump in person and you have been feeling like a victim and see Trump as your savior, you are fueling that savior-like belief in him. We cannot make other people do or think things, or not do / think things. But there are nudges we can make by our “vibe.” If you, instead, met Trump and saw him as a person, just like you, with pros and cons, and thanked him for the good things and critiqued him on the incorrect things, calling them mistakes, etc. (no yelling), you might temper how he sees himself in the moment.

This isn’t about Trump. In your own life, you do this with your relatives, co-workers, and romantic partners. You want to see people as on your level, not a savior above you, or a victim below you. You want to see their pros and cons, so you’re not seeing them as an evil persecutor either.

People Wear Many Hats & Switch Roles Quickly

I bolded and italicized the “in the moment,” part above because I wanted to come back to that. People who see things through a Drama Triangle perspective all of the time, switch between the 3 roles (persecutor, victim, savior/rescuer) quickly. Besides feeling like a “savior” around those who agree with him, he also spends time feeling persecuted due to the assassination attempt, excess court cases and various other pushback he’s experiencing by people who pretend to think he’s like Hitler. Once again, he’s not wrong. I don’t really see him as a victim in this, because he does bring some of this on himself. He could take more personal responsibility, but that’s also a lot to ask of him, now that he’s president again. That said, in some ways he is being persecuted, literally. I believe no matter what he does people are projecting onto him, scapegoating him, so they do not deal with their own mental illnesses.

It would be very difficult to be in his position at this moment in time and not feel a lot of pressure to do something meaningful, that stands the test of time (so that if we had a Democrat president next everything wouldn’t just reverse). And, since half of the country has been brainwashed to think he’s a maniac destroying the country, he’s going to be faced with these situations all of the time that draw out the “savior” or “victim” stance in him. I don’t know how you would protect yourself from that as a president.

It’s Our Faults, Not His

But I want to reiterate, we the people are the ones doing this. If everyone felt safe and were personally responsible, then people would not be overly praising of him (forgetting his faults because the country “needed saving” so badly), and they would not be persecuting him at all, because they felt safe.

The reason why things are seemingly getting more dramatic is because people feel unsafe. The response to COVID made things exponentially worse. The video below talks about how when people feel unsafe in some unresolved traumatic situation, they can fragment their mental state into parts, such as the vulnerable part and the protector personality¹. If you want to feel safe, you will be have to do some emotional work to heal through that situation. It takes personal responsibility to feel that feeling. But most people don’t want to feel that unsafe, so they reject, deny, and disown it. But that makes the protector personalities come out. And one person’s protector is another person’s persecutor.

To some people being forced to wear a mask or get a vaccine made them feel like victims, and others viewed those who refused to wear the masks or get the shot as persecutors (spreading disease). The protector parts in each group are in a struggle. It was not resolved, and that free-floating terror just keeps moving around since most people are refusing to acknowledge that we all have PTSD.

Not Dealing With Our PTSD is Hurting Society

When someone feels vulnerable, the protector personality guards them, and it becomes more difficult to break through that defense to have rational discussions. As Teal says in the video, the more they do this, the more the other side feels vulnerable, and so they go into defensive mode, and there’s this back and forth making each other feel more and more unsafe and getting more and more defensive and antagonistic. And, it’s not just you having a protector part, people don’t feel as if their protector personalities can do enough to protect them, so they elect people in the government to protect them more (take actions like a protector personality would).

I do not believe that Trump is solely responsible for how dramatic everything political is getting. I believe that the government reflects the society. If our society healed, then it would calm down. But, I don’t see that happening any time soon, because it takes difficult shadow work to sit with those scary feelings, and to try to come up with something in your life that you have control over to feel safer. But you can do it for yourself. It will improve your life in the local arena at the very least.

The whole reason I write this Drama of It All Substack is because if people took personal responsibility to heal themselves and improve their local lives, they would not be so keen on forcing others to do (or not do) things to “protect” them.

We are at risk of being hurt, not because we’re not doing enough to protect ourselves, it’s because we’re doing too much of the wrong thing. We look to get some external force (a savior/rescuer) to stop others (persecutors) from hurting us (victims), rather than taking internal actions personally to solve the problem of feeling unsafe.

I wrote more about that in connection with guns in an article about Kyle Rittenhouse and boundaries. A person afraid of guns is much more likely to want to ban them, rather than do the emotional and mental work of accepting guns and learning to be safe in the world regardless if they exist.

Rather than confronting personal fears and rage that reside in their hearts, many people just blame others. They put the responsibility to assuage their fears onto other people. For example, a person afraid of guns gets mad at gun owners rather than take personal responsibility for their fear. Someone who takes personal responsibility for their fear will find a solution, such as therapy or meditation.

We used to have a world where people took more personal responsibility and had an okay government. It wasn’t perfect. I’m not saying we can have a perfect utopia here. But if people en masse started taking personal responsibility for their emotions and healed up, we could calm down. Our government wouldn’t be so crazed.

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The cover art was found on Pixabay and asks the question, “Do we get the leaders we deserve?” I thought it was apropos for this article, because that is the point. If we behaved better, taking personal stock and no longer scapegoating or projecting our faults outward, we would stop electing people who would take such outrageous actions.

If you enjoyed this article, you might also like this one called, “Political Pendulum Issues in the US: Are You Getting Whiplash From the Crazy Political Swings?” It goes along with what Teal said about our protector parts bringing out the protector parts of those on the opposite side of the issue.

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1. I have written about how shame is an internal Drama Triangle here. A protector personality could be seen as an internal drama triangle as well, with the protector in the savior role, and the vulnerable aspects of the self in the victim role. The victim might view the part of yourself that would want to feel & heal from the trauma as a “persecutor” because it hurts so badly to feel those feelings.