In "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance," one of the greatest "western" movies of all time, a damning line sums up the story: "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend!"
In a country where politics is based on images and fiction becomes reality, electoral campaigns are sometimes compared to a circus, and legends become facts.
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It's the world of fantasy, says writer Kurt Andersen ("Fantasyland").
But it's a circus with consequences, and few candidates seem to have understood it better than Donald Trump, who since his days as a real estate businessman has turned everything around him into a show to exalt his image, no matter how negative it may seem.
"He's P.T. Barnum," one of his own family members once said. The comparison is not gratuitous: Barnum was a circus entrepreneur from the early 19th century, the first millionaire based on the entertainment industry, and one known as the Prince of Humbugs. And the author of the phrase "Let them say what they will about me, but let them talk."
That the prestigious journalist Maggie Haberman chose that adjective, humbug, to title Trump's biography does not seem accidental.
Every fact, good or bad, around the magnate seems to contribute to his figure, at least before the core of his voters, Andersen noted.
And Trump, who already won the presidency in 2016 based on promises he did not fulfill, is a possible winner of the elections next November based, again, on a show in which he is an actor, author, producer, publicist, and ultimate beneficiary.
"Our national politics has become a competition between images or among images, rather than between ideals," because we live in a "world where fantasy is more real than reality," wrote historian Daniel Boorstin years ago, for whom "there is no way to unmask an image. One, like any other pseudo-event, becomes even more interesting the more we strive to discredit it."
That's Trump. A man driven by his resentment towards the social and economic establishment that did not accept him despite his efforts to stand out and pretend. A character who "doesn't like experts because they interfere with his right as an American to believe or pretend that fictions are facts, to feel the truth" and "sees conspiracies everywhere" while exploiting the myths of white racial victimhood that are at the center of the ideology dominant in the Republican Party today.
Trump is above all an entertainer, one who doesn't sing, but does comedy by insulting his competitors, one who claims to be a victim of the system even though he used it in over four thousand lawsuits and at least two bankruptcy proceedings; he is one who sues media outlets that question his wealth.
And perhaps once again President of the United States.
BY: JOSÉ CARREÑO FIGUERAS
JOSE.CARRENO@ELHERALDODEMEXICO.COM
@CARRENOJOSE