rant · moment 11 of 14
Trump as a Reality Star President and America's Broken Institutions
from My Last Christmas · #128
Audio-only archive episode — no video to seek.
7 minTim marvels at how a reality TV con man became president, argues America is splintering into alternate realities due to a corrupt press, and describes people checking out entirely from politics and news, disillusioned by failed institutions from the Catholic Church to Hollywood's MeToo scandals.
- 41:40Trump promised transparency by letting every thought he has exist in the public sphere, negotiating with countries on Twitter.
- 42:07Tim's riff on telling a seven-year-old to grow up and get into Medicare fraud instead of believing in Santa.
- 42:54The fact that a reality star casino owner and wrestling heel became president reflects how fundamentally sick the country is.
- 43:33The infantilization of people is visible everywhere—at Christmas parties doing the hokey pokey.
- 44:02Americans are splintering into alternate realities and may never come back to a shared one, facilitated by technology.
- 44:24Faith in the press is completely destroyed—they were complicit in Iraq, torture, and concealing Saudi involvement in 9-11.
- 45:08Online, supposed independent journalists are ranting in basements about aliens, so there's nowhere left to turn for information.
- 45:51Trump represents people so angry and confused they've given up—they just want to let it burn.
- 46:17Every major institution has been exposed: the Catholic Church as a human trafficking ring, mainstream media enriching the top 1%.
- 47:06Hollywood's Me Too revelations destroyed the credibility of the cultural institutions supposedly binding the country together.
- 47:29People are in the wilderness with no authority left to trust and no shared mission or purpose to restore the country.
- 47:52It's probably impossible to get everybody on the same page anymore—the fragmentation seems permanent and irreversible.