To the late and deluded pallbearers of the American dream those endowed with wealth are given moral legitimacy, a sort of divine mandate. They “made it”, they’re “entrepreneurs”, emblematic of what the rest of us surely will be or could be with enough elbow grease, of our class of temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
To a certain percentage of the American people, this wealth, this success, regardless of the context (endowed by inheritance, created more by brand than elbow grease), is an end-all be-all sign of moral fortitude and superiority. These people didn’t get rich by accident, their wealth is a symbol of the better or smarter or more disciplined decisions they made, a symbol of the grace of God, a symbol of the American dream.
Many of us have perceived the flaws of this argument, but enough have bought into it to nominate a presidential candidate for one of the two large national parties. Donald Trump’s “qualifications” as a president of the most powerful nation-state on the earth, affecting global economies and extremely tense security situations, begin and end for these people with the fact that he is wealthy and successful. He is a good businessman.
Or at least he wants us to believe he is.
I say that last part simply because the man is the first presidential candidate in contemporary history to not release his tax returns since it became common practice. The very first was Richard Nixon, incidentally while being audited. There are many implications to draw from this, the most worrying being: “This is a man who has so much to hide, so much more to hide than Richard Nixon, Hillary Clinton, every single presidential candidate before him, that he is refusing to release his tax returns in an unprecedented move. What secrets is he hiding about connections? What ties to organized crime, to the Bank of China, to Putin and the Russian regime, what debts to usurious foreign/domestic entities that influence his politics? Does his wholly unique abdication of such a responsibility not implicitly imply that he is the most corrupt human being to run for the presidency of the United States?”
The more pertinent implication, however, is that Donald Trump is not quite as successful and wealthy a businessman as he wants you to think he is. It appears to be yet another game of vain perception with him, and unlike his tiny feminine hands he is for the moment able to veil the smaller nature of his bank account.
Indeed a cursory glance over Trump’s business record will show a consistent history of enormous debts, foreclosures, bankruptcies. His casino holdings have sued for bankruptcy at a rate higher than any U.S. company on record, and most financial experts point out that he would have done better with the money he inherited from his father if he had merely invested it in some tepid mutual fund.
Donald Trump, has in fact, displayed a remarkable amount of incompetence put alongside the privilege of second and fifteenth chances that come with being a (ultra)rich white boy born into a (ultra)rich white family. He shows the impulsive and unwise tendency of brand mismanagement, compulsively throwing his name on this and that in an attempt to cash in on the “Trump” name without considering that each spurious and shady failed venture, heck each venture at all, just cheapens the name of your “brand”. Trump Steaks, Trump University, a canny and strategic businessman he is not.
Despite his capable skills as a social media manipulator, tastemaker, and entertainer, as we enter the late stages of this election and watch Donald Trump blow every opportunity provided by Hillary Clinton, one has to contemplate now: was it actually Trump’s skill or more the ignorance and hateful nature of the minority of voters he managed to bamboozle and capitalize on? Did Donald Trump actually bring anything inventive to the game or is he just a George Wallace who kind of sort of knows how to use Twitter?
This brings me the center of this article, physically and figuratively speaking. That is to say, I know someone who has actually skillfully managed her brand, what she attributes her name and image to, a canny businesswoman whose mobile app empire as produced over a hundred million dollars, someone who has displayed an ingenious mastery over social media hype and distribution.
That is, Kim Kardashian West. Forging her way out of her father’s legacy as an O.J. Simpson attorney, from a sex tape with a minor r&b singer, to a wildly successful reality television empire that has made her family cultural icons of varying degrees and interpretations over the past decade.
Merely by entering into partnerships with mobile developers such as Glu Mobile and endowing them with her name and likeness and brand, Kim Kardashian has already eclipsed the small time and small-minded peanuts of “I GOT A STEAK WITH MY NAME ON IT!” Kim Kardashian has shown herself to be a far cannier, successful, and strategic businessperson than Donald Trump. And she picked the better trophy spouse. Her strategy during the Taylor Swift beef, as silly as pointing this out may seem, of dropping her comeback on a single snap rather than monolithically copy and pasting the same robotic statement on every social media source possible like Taylor Swift (or a politician campaigning) also displays a canny perception of social media forces and manipulating them to serve as your own methods of distribution. Kim Kardashian, suffice to say, will never “accidentally” tweet Taylor Swift’s face over a star of David or, frankly, make nearly as many gaffes as Donald Trump seems to make publicly day to day.
It’s not quite the American dream, but it’s an example of someone actually being what Donald Trump wishes he was and presents himself as.
Yes, Donald Trump wishes he was as successful and canny at business at Kim Kardashian. And yes, under the qualifications that the average Republican voter attributes as “presidential” to Donald Trump (i.e. “he made da big moolahs!!!”), Kim Kardashian is qualified, nay more qualified, for the presidency of the United States of America.
Kim Kardashian, however, is perceived as an object of ridicule for making money the Trump way and far more successfully: leveraging family momentum, skill over a social media empire, putting her name on various products, and most importantly reality television. One can’t help but perceive some racial and gender-based reasons for this bizarre contradiction in perception. People ask, “Why is she famous?”, “Why is she rich?”, but not only do they not ask the same questions about Donald Trump, they take the exact same Kardashian qualities he has (but in inferior quality and implementation) and see these as positive, signs under their social Darwinistic psychosis of leadership and strength.
If we’re going to go crazy and start voting in oligarchs as the public faces of our oligarchy, if we’re going to perceive someone’s wealth and relative success as some divine validating boon of what it means to be a leader, then we had at least better elect those who are actually wealthy and display the ability to manage and expand lucrative media and business empires.
That is to say, Kim Kardashian for President.
