The news that a professional villain, a man whose entire public persona is built on manufactured outrage and scripted cruelty, is seriously considering a run for mayor of a major American city should not surprise anyone who has been paying attention. We are, after all, living in the twilight of the Roman Republic, when the mob cheers for the gladiator who wields the sharpest trident, regardless of his qualifications to govern. This is not a bug in the system; it is the feature.
The decadence of our intellectual and political class has created a vacuum, and nature, as they say, abhors a vacuum. Into that void steps the vulgarian, the professional provocateur, the man who has mastered the art of the cheap thrill. He offers no policy, no vision, no substance.
He offers only the flickering glow of celebrity and the promise of chaos. And the masses, weary of nuance and complexity, are ready to anoint him. Compare this, if you will, to the late Victorian era, when the rise of the yellow press and the music hall celebrity presaged a similar collapse of civic virtue.
Then, as now, the line between entertainment and politics dissolved, and the result was a generation of demagogues who led their nations into the abyss. The man in question is a symptom, not a cause. The disease is a culture that has elevated the trivial over the essential, that has confused notoriety with fame, and that has abandoned the very idea of the common good.
If he runs, he will likely not win. But the fact that he is even considered a serious candidate is a damning indictment of our times. We have become a nation of spectators, content to watch the circus while the city burns.
And we deserve the mayor we get.
