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comment by kleinbl00
kleinbl00  ·  2524 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Living in the Trump Zone

Counter-hypothesis: We have a president who

- has never governed

- has never shown interest in governing

- has no close friends or associates with any interest or experience in governing

Who is also

- strongly supported by people with no understanding of governing

- primarily understood by his supporters through soundbites and tweets

- entirely driven by money and fame

We have something called the "six foot rule" in Hollywood. It's used by set decorators and propmasters. If something looks real from six feet away, it's good enough to be in-frame on a wide or a master or a 2-shot. You need a hero prop for closeups but for most stuff, crude approximations work.

This is the way most of Hollywood works - from six feet away, it looks like corporations and bureaucracies and functional org charts and all the rest. It's only when you get up in it you see the chumminess and nepotism and passion that drives most things but we're good at faking it.

If you were the on-camera talent - and disinterested talent at that - on a show arranged around you to make you look like a powerful, decisive businessman with global reach and world influence...

...you might get the impression that a one-page tax plan is all you need. After all, they'll shot it in master, they'll shoot it in close-up, they'll shoot some reaction shots, and then they'll edit it into a 10-second beat and go to commercial.

Donald Trump is not being president. He's playing president. And of course - you get weekends off and after every important beat you retire to the green room. Meanwhile you're surrounded by people who make it work because you get one shot at it and once it's done, it's done. He didn't build a cabinet. He invited guest stars to his tv show. And the fact that they have no idea what they're doing either reinforces the fact that he's the smartest person in the room.

And while the rest of us stare, jaws agape, horrified by the craven greed and incompetence, his supporters don't care. Because, you see, they don't know the difference between "being president" and "playing president" either.