Oprah vs. Hulk

What the aesthetics of the DNC and RNC reveal about our politics.

Political conventions are a form of theater. The stage, the lights, the confetti; the personalities, who, from the rostrum, make the case for their party; and the driving ambition: to rally the base, demoralize the enemy, and win.

In most years, the oratory supports the agenda. The parties select their nominees, assemble a platform, and focus their rhetoric on how their policies will improve the life of the nation. But this year, the agenda took a back seat to aesthetics.

Donald Trump’s policy proposals—control the border, cut taxes, and achieve peace through strength—have been the same for a decade. Kamala Harris’s have been carefully hidden. She has distanced herself from her previous positions and presented emotion, most notably, “joy,” in lieu of concrete policies. Given this situation, let’s set aside substance for a moment and focus on style.

The two conventions this year, the DNC in Chicago and the RNC in Milwaukee, featured two speakers who captured their respective parties’ aesthetics: television host Oprah Winfrey, for the Democrats, and professional wrestler Hulk Hogan, for the Republicans.  

The Democrats selected Oprah for an obvious reason. She is a star—and a star-maker. For decades, Oprah has curated her image as a compassionate friend, generous hostess, and moral voice. She appears in public immaculately dressed, coiffed, lighted, and staged.

The aesthetics reflect the substance. The Democrats are the party of film, television, media, and advertising. They dominate the production of spectacle and prestige. They can put their own on Oprah’s Book Club. They can turn anyone, even a historically unpopular vice president, into a star.

Oprah also represents the mythological core of the Democratic coalition: the strong, wise, black woman, who can reveal the ugly truth about America and then promise a path to redemption.

At the convention, Oprah laid claim to this oppression narrative, arguing that America’s past was filled with injustice. “I’ve seen racism and sexism and income inequality and division,” she intoned. “I’ve not only seen it; at times, I’ve been on the receiving end of it.”

As a factual matter, of course, she is right. American history, like the history of all nations, includes racism, inequality, and division. But the bait-and-switch is that this mythology, presented innocently in Oprah’s soothing contralto, is used to rationalize the Left’s full agenda. Kamala Harris’s past support for “redirecting resources” from police, decriminalizing illegal immigration, and ending the filibuster were arguably informed by the notion that America is “systemically racist”; she referred to the concept explicitly to justify her support for the Green New Deal.

This mythology is central to the Left’s ability to wield power. It must be maintained, no matter how extensively that past injustice has been addressed or how high its supposed victims have risen.

The experience of oppression is so vital to hold onto politically that Democrats are willing to distort facts to keep it operative. In one passage of Oprah’s speech, she claimed that, like the children who integrated the Deep South under National Guard protection, Harris was “part of the second class to integrate the public schools in Berkeley, California.”

The problem? It’s not true. Berkeley Public Schools were never segregated by law, and black students attended Harris’s school long before she enrolled.

It’s an untruth that reveals a more fundamental truth: the Left has supreme confidence that it can transmit its narrative to the public from a position of power. The “fact checkers” will twist every falsehood into the shape of verity. And the party organizers can dispatch actors, stars, and personalities—including the queen of daytime television—to lend their authority to each part of the myth.

Let us compare this state of affairs with that of the RNC, whose symbolic figure was the former wrestler Hulk Hogan. 

Hogan’s appearance was something of a surprise. Hogan has been out of the ring for years. His body was broken. He struggled with addiction to alcohol and painkillers. He was involved in a nasty personal scandal featuring a secret sex tape, a friend betrayed, a bout of public humiliation, and a lawsuit that bankrupted a tabloid.

But Hulk stepped in. He resurrected his old trademarks, tearing apart his shirt on stage and adapting his old slogans to the political moment: “Let Trump-a-mania run wild, brother! Let Trump-a-mania rule again. Let Trump-a-mania make America great again.”

We can dispatch subtlety: the selection of Hogan was, like that of Oprah, an identity play. Trump’s key demographic is middle-aged, blue-collar white men, who, like Hogan, have suffered disappointments and humiliations, but still want to believe that they could get in the ring.

This is a form of nostalgia, and it was the driving aesthetic of the RNC. Old heroes, old songs, old dreams. And new enemies. When Hogan appealed to the “real Americans,” the implication is that those Americans have been put into a corner.

But the old wrestler, and, by extension, his friend and onetime WWF promoter, Donald Trump, still had enough strength to deliver revenge. “All you criminals, all you lowlifes, all you scumbags, all you drug dealers, and all you crooked politicians need to answer one question,” Hogan threatened. “Whatchya gonna do when Donald Trump and all the Trump-a-maniacs run wild on you?”

Nostalgia is a polite way of referring to fantasy or illusion. Hogan has selected concrete enemies, who would make good fodder for a performance on the mat. But the Trump-a-maniacs are not going to “run wild,” so to speak, on the institutions that matter: the Ivy League; the prestige media; the education sector; the permanent bureaucracy.

This was evident in the latent tragedy of Hulk’s performance. For a second, Hogan struggled to rip apart his shirt; it seemed as if he might be too old, too far gone. The symbol revealed the deeper politics: the forces that rule America cannot be put into submission with a Big Boot or an Atomic Leg Drop. It would require a political counter-movement of vast technique and sophistication, which was not on display at the RNC.

So, for the time being, we will get theater. We will get kayfabe and WrestleMania. It’s a consolation only a degree better than alcohol or pills. But the function is the same: to feel; to perform; to be great again—if not in the political arena, at last, for a fleeting moment, under the lights, on the stage.

This article was originally published in City Journal.