Donald Trump against the Tiger King

Physical health is on our minds right now during the COVID-19 pandemic, but mental health is also important, so I’m going to turn to twin American scenes where mental health is very much in question: the points of President Donald Trump’s daily press and “Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness”, a new Netflix documentary on the murderous cult of tigers.

You may not want to watch Trump – mental disorders can be startling and you don’t need them right now – but watch “Tiger King” and tell me if I’m wrong.

Reality shows are carefully prepared, prepared and edited presentations that encourage extreme behavior, and this is Trump’s daily gathering at the White House Rose Garden. I dread them, that’s why at my place, Happy Hour begins when Trump opens his strange square mouth. “Tiger King” is for the night.

Each daily episode reaches a new low. Sometimes it’s Trump who grossly insults female journalists, or his malicious cheer when he learns that Mitt Romney may have a coronavirus. Or it’s Trump suggesting that hundreds of thousands of medical masks have disappeared. Could the Deep State send them to “Chi-Nah?” Stuff liberal mattresses?

Every day, Canadian viewers say “this one was the worst”. It never is.

This week, Mike Lindell of MyPillow was the worst, one of a parade of CEOs trumpeting their coronavirus efforts inspired by their glorious president. Lindell is a former crack addict who makes pillows. Now he’s a former crack addict who makes cotton masks.

He broke his character to say, “God gave us grace on November 8, 2016” when Trump was elected and urged the nation to resume prayer. (If I know pillows, and I know it, the guy should throw Trump and take a close look at his own business, which will soon be drenched in adjustable pillows – the weighted blanket of 2020 – which are cheaper and better.)

Then it was Debra S. Waller, Jockey CEO, who normally makes underpants but will now make isolation dresses. What was underpants doing in the rose garden looking for praise and praise for Trump? Why do Americans need this level of praise for toddlers, especially for something basic like making dresses, which are really just underpants?

I tabled this column before Trump on Tuesday – it will be worse – but my attention is drawn to the parallel grotesquery that is “Tiger King”.

For some reason, rural Americans love caged tigers, perhaps because it makes them feel powerful, or because they saw them in their childhood in these grim, grim carnivals that pass for entertainment in the Midwest.

Men “Tiger King” looks like bad kids – baseball cap, T-shirt, sneakers – and acts like them too. The rat nest contains very violent, tattooed baby men who illegally buy, raise and sell tigers in ramshackle profitable zoos, where they are fed expired Walmart meat and in a plot of land, possibly a missing spouse.

Joseph Maldonado-Passage (aka Joseph Schreibvogel) calls himself Joe Exotic and owns an animal park in Oklahoma. A homosexual who traps and marries lost young men who aren’t gay, but he doesn’t mind, he has been targeted by Carole Baskin, a self-proclaimed animal rights activist with his own zoo in Florida. Her hatred towards her turns into a foul and terrifying online campaign that culminates in the hiring of a hitman.

Cultists are lost souls who live in the miserable zoo, are poorly paid and less fed, and adore the chef, you know, the Manson family but happy. They are all thieves, some monsters, some relatively lovable, all stupid.

The seven episodes are a celebration of ignorance and depravity. These people do not understand social norms. They consider the law to be flexible like fruit leather. They carry rifles and accidentally kill themselves. They’re strangely jaded about things that could worry the rest of us, like domestic pythons, amputation of one arm after a tiger bite, or the loss of both legs from gangrene.

They dress like Kellyanne Conway, regularly incriminate themselves in front of the camera and are all strangely expensive. People who have been sexually abused as children do not understand the limits, and I wonder.

“Tiger King” is a witch cauldron filled with your stronger Trump voter, just like the White House. The story takes place.