Lochte and Trump: THE STEEP DECLINE IN AMERICAN DEMOCRACY. (Do Horrible things and then a FAKE apology.)

http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/ryan-lochte-donald-trump-and-steep-decline-american-democracy-0?akid=14555.294211.-rgmeD&rd=1&src=newsletter1062331&t=14

Ryan Lochte, Donald Trump and the Steep Decline of American Democracy

Inspiring lessons of this year’s Olympics? Same as the Trump campaign: Smash stuff, lie and issue a fake apology.

The disgraced American swimmer and the disgraced American candidate found themselves in similar predicaments this week. It’s a marriage made in hell, or at least in purgatory: These two clowns epitomize the disordered state of the American psyche, circa 2016, almost too perfectly.

Lochte and Trump are a pair of arrogant, ignorant jerks who believe that neither conduct nor character actually matters, and who feel entitled to rescue themselves from any sticky situation through the strategic application of lies and money. They’re the white men who give white men a bad name (which is, of course, deeply unfair). They’d almost be comical, if one of them weren’t endangering the future of the republic and if they weren’t working so hard to reinforce the entire world’s negative stereotypes about Americans. (Which are, of course, deeply unfair … no, I’m sorry, I can’t say it with a straight face.)

At this point it has become a truism to describe Trump as a candidate molded by reality TV, but that doesn’t make it untrue. Lochte has also played himself on television, with considerably less success. Beyond that, both men are fundamentally creatures of the digital age, shaped by an Internet culture of pixel-thin celebrity, instantaneous “hot takes” and moronic or hateful behavior with virtually no consequences.