General Discussion

Donald Trump, the Greatest Show on Earth: He’s the second coming of P.T. Barnum, not the next Reagan
by Sean Trainor

Donald J. Trump is not, as Matthew Pressman argues in the Atlantic, Ronald Reagan’s heir. Rather, he’s the heir of the 19th-century showman Phineas Taylor Barnum – disingenue extraordinaire and purveyor of humbug (that quaint, old-timey synonym for bullshit).

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Now, the people who paid admission to see this rank fraud were not idiots — not all of them, at least. While 19th-century Americans had a more magical conception of nature’s possibilities than their 21st-century counterparts, many were skeptical when it came to the existence of merpeople. And many more were familiar with Barnum’s reputation for deception.

But they still went to see the “Feejee Mermaid” because they enjoyed the spectacle. They enjoyed the act of looking for the seams where the monkey flesh had been woven into the fish scales. They enjoyed talking to others engaged in the same act. And they relished the possibility that some spectators were well and truly being taken in by Barnum’s fraud.

Barnum understood why his audiences came. And so, time and again, Barnum returned to the public with a litany of spectacles that tested the boundaries of spectators’ belief (while also, at times, exploiting white patrons’ racism): Joice Heth, an elderly African-American woman who he told viewers was the 161-year old nurse of George Washington; William Henry Johnson, an African-American man from New Jersey who Barnum claimed was a “missing link” between humans and apes; and even a hairy horse that he tried to pawn off as a living fossil.

read more: http://www.salon.com/2015/09/18/donald_trump_the_greatest_show_on_earth_hes_the_second_coming_of_p_t_barnum_not_the_next_reagan/