Kim Kardashian is a trend-setter. The world finally caught
up in 2020.
One of the first blog posts I wrote that went “viral” as
such a thing existed in 2011 was about Kim Kardashian being a pro wrestler. No,
she wasn’t a wrestler. But she understood what pro wrestling was all about. As
I wrote then:
Fast forward to 2020 and it seems like no one in a realperson anymore. Thanks to social media, smartphones, and fandoms, everyone is
basically projecting a caricature of themselves to the real world.
Of course, the biggest purveyor of this is our soon-to-be
former president, who learned the trade from Vince McMahon himself. Ever since
he took that escalator ride in 2015 to begin his first campaign, there was not
a single thing about him that was authentic. Every word he said, every tweet he
sent, and every message he delivered to his followers, were all about his MAGA
gimmick. He lived the gimmick to the extreme to the point where who knows if
he’s even a real person anymore. I’d say he should ask the Ultimate Warrior
what happens when you lose touch with reality but the Ultimate Warrior, like so
many other wrestlers, is long gone.
Unfortunately, that reality show character has infected our
society. We’re all playing our roles now on social media.
I think about myself, and how much I hide parts of my true
self. If you follow my Twitter feed, you’ll know that I loathe and despise Republicans in 2020 with the fire of 1,000 suns. But you won’t know that I
voted for W twice or began my career as a newspaper reporter as a veryprincipled young conservative. Sure, I learned and evolved my thinking, but
it’s still embarrassing to relive. Unless I knew you in 2000 or 2004, I’m
probably not going to admit I voted for W once, let alone twice.
We see this on a daily basis, that our daily lives have
essentially become a game. Look at Congress, and specifically Republicans in
Congress. Americans are no longer people. We are just numbers to them. As
bodies piled up and unemployment numbers skyrocketed, they continued to lie to
us about COVID-19.
How can we trust people that can’t acknowledge reality?
It reminded me of a delusional wrestling heel – let’s say
Randy Savage or The Rock – when they lose a match and try to explain their way
out of it. It’s cute when they do it because we know Hulk Hogan or Stone Cold
Steve Austin will come out to avenge them. In 2020, we had no heroes to turn
to. I mean, Joe Biden was essentially our only hope and even his victory
doesn’t help us now because he doesn’t take office until next year.
We’ve seen this with actors and actresses, Instagram
influencers and YouTube stars, that nothing we’re seeing and hearing is
authentic anymore. Everyone is living a gimmick.
Look at Twitter, and one of the left’s most notorious grifters, Ryan Knight. When the year started, he was “ProudResistor” and
sharing content to tens of thousands about how important it was to get rid of
the racist loser in the White House. By summer, his gimmick changed to
“ProudSocialist” and he now doesn’t care about the racist loser in the White
House because he loves Bernie Sanders so much.
The worst part about being a pro wrestling fan in 2020 is
clearly seeing these grifters lurch from gimmick to gimmick on an unsuspecting
public. Not only is Ryan Knight not shunned from political discourse for being
a hack, but he was also recently interviewed by Andrew Yang. Oh no, Yang Gang is a
gimmick too? Well, okay, that’s on me, I should’ve seen that one a mile away.
As we enter a new reality in 2021, we must come to grips
with the fact that too many are not living in reality. Whether they are
hopelessly optimistic or consumed by hate, they are shifting themselves into
new gimmicks daily to make these unrealistic things happen, if only in their imaginations.
It’s a frightening time to be alive because there’s no longer
any delineation between most people’s gimmick and their real lives. That blurring
of lines can have awful consequences, as the past twelve months prove.
I wish I had something positive to end on, but I will just
leave you with the words of Randy Savage about the United States.
“I've been in the danger zone, yeah! I've been in the danger
zone: east of the Pacific Ocean, west of London England, south of Mars, and
north of Hell!”
Spoiler alert: he’s talking about America.
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