Donald Trump: Anatomy of a human pseudo-event and the crisis of modern liberalism

Abstract

This article applies Daniel Boorstin’s notion of the pseudo-event to the ascendency of President Donald Trump. Boorstin defines the pseudo-event as an event staged to call attention to itself, a phenomenon made possible by the graphic revolution. As early as 1961, Boorstin recognized this phenomenon in the areas of travel, news and politics. Concerning the latter, the hero, a person once recognized for his achievements, has been replaced by the celebrity, a person known for his well-knownness. While Davy Crockett was a precursor of the American celebrity politician, P. T. Barnum and Edward Bernays were practitioners of the pseudo-event par excellence. Donald Trump, however, exemplifies the human pseudo-event in a most tragic way because his persona is emblematic of what some observers now perceive as the fly-in-the-ointment of American liberal democracy – the unrestrained autonomous self, something to which our original political commitments ensure us can be liberated from nature, time and place. In our quest to realize ‘liberty’ for ourselves, older and more localized ethical restraints had to be cast aside. Ironically, the crisis of liberalism resides in its great success.