How Oprah Paved the Way for Trump
By John Beuhler
Although times seem dire,
you can take solace in the fact that you’re pretty cool. You’re the result of
millions of years of evolution and—you are the most intricate system in the
known universe.
Your body is a complex
society. Cells with the same DNA make up different biological structures for
different purposes just like how people of the same species have different jobs
in society.
The white blood cells
police the body. Proteins construct organs structures to form tissues. The
central nervous system mitigates the body’s functions like a government. The
digestive system is the energy company and waste disposal—you get the point.
Like the body, society is
constantly seeking a balance of operating conditions in which it functions
best. Too far in either direction means illness within a biological body or
unrest in a society. To keep a balance, both systems utilize duality. Two opposite
forces keeping each other in check and the system in balance.
Duality occurs in the
family, with the opposing energies of the father and the mother compromising to
raise a balanced child. Too much nurturing raises a spoiled neurotic, and too
much nature produces an emotionally illiterate brute.
Evolution is elegant; it
only needs two energies, because two is the least amount needed to create
opposition. Government has even been reduced to a liberal and conservative model
that mirrors the male and female model.
If left off balance for
too long, complex systems will correct themselves with a violent reaction such
as a fever or a revolution. Just as a single bacteria or mutation in the body
can cause illness, certain people and ideologies that can throw a society out
of balance, also making it sick.
In 1986, Oprah went on the
air—and over the next 25 years, pushed Western culture so far to the feminine
side of the equilibrium, that 30 years later she paved the way for her
masculine equivalent, Donald Trump to win the highest office in the world.
Trump won because he offered
himself as a force to balance the equation with his ultra-masculinity. He would
be an equal and opposite reaction to the current hyper-feminized culture Oprah
had created and few enjoyed.
Trump and Oprah are two
sides of the same coin. Trump’s a megalomaniac who puts his name on everything
he touches, delights at the sound of his own voice, and has absolutely no idea
what he is talking about—just like Oprah.
He sells his name to brand
buildings, ties, and steaks. She puts her name on magazines, books, and
merchandise. He pushes hard, male ideologies. She pushes feminine,
faux-spiritualities. They are both reality TV stars, and both are stunningly
full of shit.
Trump doesn’t own the
buildings that bear his name; he is a merely a brand. Oprah doesn’t write the
books in her book-club; she is merely a name. Trump spouts macho rhetoric
because it garners him votes. Oprah spouted therapeutic, pseudo-spiritual
claptrap because it garnered her ratings.
They both even opened
schools, with mixed results.
The significant difference
between them is that Trump’s wives are only with him for his money, whereas Oprah
has Stedman, who never quit his job at the carwash.
Both Trump and Oprah have
superseded their human forms, each becoming media mainstays. He claims to want
to make America great again and she claims to want to help you live your best
life. The truth is that neither of their interests extend past their own bank
accounts.
Oprah had an influence on
society that will never be realized again. Media has splintered into so many
different platforms that no channel will ever be as influential as the big
three (NBC, CBS, and ABC) networks were. Even Oprah’s own cable network, OWN,
is currently being “owned” by a cadre of competitors.
If you don’t think she was
influential; her show produced 4,561 episodes. That is enough to fill an hour a
day, seven days a week, for nine years. There is no other media source that has
ever had that much exposure in culture. You might say religion did, but 43
minutes a day, five days a week for 25 years is the equivalent of going to
church for an hour every Sunday…for 63 years.
She targeted the
underestimated housewife market which was, up until that point, resigned to
watching games shows and soap operas. The housewives were ultimately the most
powerful members of society, as they formed children’s values, shaped the school
system, and made most household purchases.
Oprah also broadcast into
millions of homes simultaneously—by sheer numbers alone, Oprah’s influence
dwarfed any religion ever.
During my own development,
many sociological changes occurred as a direct result of Oprah’s influence on
mothers: the self-esteem, self-love, and victim-worship movements;
fear-mongering about sexual abuse, pedophilia, and incest; the relentless
pursuit of happiness; and positive visualization as a science, to name a few.
Though they masqueraded as
positive ideals, Oprah’s philosophies and their legacies continue to have, a
deleterious effect on society. For advice on marriage, parenting, and our
health, we trusted a single, childless, overweight woman—and we’ve been paying
for it ever since.
How did Oprah become so
famous? She’s not an entertainer. What the hell did she do?
She was a friend.
She joked with women,
complimented them, experienced things with them, and exposed them to new
ideas—but most of all she let them know about fantastic things they should buy. She was a one-woman
marketplace—exhibiting ideas, philosophies, and merchandise—and taking a cut.
The opinions,
philosophies, and life rules came from guests, not from her, so she could take
a cut of the profits without any responsibility for the product. She was
insulated; safe to sell her heart out—and sell she did.
A show produced every day
became a voracious beast hungry for content, so there wasn’t time to vet the
ideas, products, or books for truth. They would be selected based on
profitability.
Slogans such as “Take Care
of Yourself,” “Live in the Now,” “You’re Worth It,” “Spoil Yourself,” and “My
Favorite Things,” easily translated into “Buy
something nice for yourself, right now!”
She sold more than goods;
she sold a culture of self-indulgence and instant gratification. This of
course, made women less happy. As it turns out, when you eat whatever you want
and buy whatever you want, you don’t get happy, you get fat and broke.
A theme kept recurring in
Oprah’s dialogue with women and that was their ambition towards happiness.
Oprah realized that she should just sell them what they wanted.
Happiness was a gold mine
because it perpetuated its own demand much in the way alcohol does. Depressed?
Drink alcohol. Feel happy momentarily. Then feel depressed. Drink more alcohol.
The person caught in the cycle pays through the nose, but if you’re selling,
you sell.
Like alcohol, material
goods also only briefly alleviated depression, but happiness was better. It
didn’t have to be manufactured, transported, or warehoused, only marketed—and
Oprah was the queen of marketing.
Happiness was the perfect
product because it created its own demand, and people had to keep rebuying it
because they couldn’t hold on to it.
The saying “Happiness is
not a fish you can catch” is factually correct. Your brain will actually close
the reward pathways in your brain to return your mood to a balance. That’s why
your favorite song or food loses its appeal after too much exposure. This is
also why addicts have to take more and more of a substance to achieve the same
high. The society in your head tries to balance itself.
People even migrate back
to a base mood after experiencing events as extreme as winning the lottery or
losing their eyesight. Happiness is fleeting, and thankfully so. Ecstasy can’t
be maintained for a reason. If an orgasm lasted for two days, you’d be praying
for a bath with your toaster.
Although perpetual
happiness doesn’t exist, Oprah sold it by introducing us to people who claimed
to know how to get it. However, the problem with selling something that doesn’t
exist it that the buyer will eventually lose interest when they can’t get it.
To get around this
problem, Oprah would put the onus of obtaining happiness on the happiness
seekers themselves. That way, when they couldn’t find it, they would blame
themselves and not Oprah.
She had to make perpetual
happiness impossible to find, so that no one could discover that it wasn’t
real. It’s a classic scam; sell a pill too big to swallow to cure a disease
that you’ve made up.
The impossible method
Oprah would sell housewives as a means to find happiness was self-love. If they
could just learn to love themselves they would finally be happy.
Of course, self-love
doesn’t exist either. Self-respect and self-esteem do, but love is an emotion
for family and other people, not yourself. If you truly love yourself, you are
a narcissist and you should seek help.
A healthy person exists in
a constant state of self-diagnosis. “What
is wrong?” “Should I have said that?”
“How am I being perceived?” “Do I look okay?” It is important to be
self-critical for the comfort of others and for your own well-being.
We know that death-row
inmates score the highest in self-love and self-esteem, but because of Oprah,
the pursuit of it persists as the main goal in life. If it is the right thing
to do, then why does its actualization read so obviously as pathological? After
all, who loves themselves more than Donald Trump?
In the years following the
self-love movement’s inception, people futilely chased it, but it eluded them
just as happiness had. Again, Oprah had to change tack and concentrate on why
women couldn’t love themselves. She looked to blame outside influences such as
body standards, unsupportive husbands, not doing what you love…but most of all,
not having enough stuff.
When the housewives couldn’t
manage to love themselves, they reasoned that it might be impossible for them.
Maybe years of exposure to these external influences had rendered them unable
to ever love themselves. Maybe it was too late.
However, it wasn’t too
late for their kids.
Of course! If their
parents and society were responsible for ruining their self-esteem, they’d be
damned if they were going to let the same fate befall their kids. Their children would love themselves and be happy if it
killed them.
With that realization, the
self-esteem movement entered the nursery and then the schools, ultimately
turning them into narcissism factories. Oprah began rocking the hand that
rocked the cradle and focusing the mother’s protective instinct on their
children’s self-esteem.
All things that lowered
self-esteem were attacked. Competition was bad because it produced a loser, and
losing doesn’t make one feel good about themselves. Sports changed from an
emphasis on winning and sportsmanship to having fun and giving participation.
We rewarded mediocrity, then wondered why our children were not be able to
compete with cultures not lucky enough to grow up with Oprah.
Discipline also makes
children feel bad, so we did away with it and produced a generation with no
respect for authority. We treated a generation like child stars and then
wondered why they grew up like child stars.
Oprah also knew that fear
was a huge ratings grabber. Self-preservation and the safety of family rates
very high on people’s hierarchy of interests, so why not combine fear with
children?
She would commit shows to
how our children could be hurt by faulty products, bad parenting practices,
freak accidents, or violent toys and play—but the biggest ratings draw was
sexual predators.
Oprah combined fear, sex,
and children into one super-topic of child sex abuse. Although statistically
very rare, child molestation by a stranger was hyped up for maximum emotional
impact and it changed parenting forever.
Oprah professed that being
a mother was the hardest job, and it is—especially when you’re fighting a
nonexistent enemy.
She framed the outside
world as such a dangerous place that mothers brought their children indoors. These
new indoor kids lacked a sense of competition and exercise. With this isolation,
they failed to develop the interpersonal skills developed by sports and non-structured
imaginative play and would grow up socially delayed in many cases.
Mothers stopped denying
their children junk food, for fear repeating the oppression of their own
parents, and American children became the fattest in the world.
Mothers were nurturing their
children to death, to spare their feelings.
Oprah had become the mouth
at the ear of America’s mothers. Housewives took their parenting advice from a childless
woman just because she was good on TV and for their efforts, they created to a
spoiled, self-centered, ineffectual generation with a life expectancy shorter
than that of their own.
Ostensibly, they had done
it for the child’s happiness—but children were less happy than ever because
they were isolated and unhealthy.
With TV as the primary
caregivers of the indoor generation, children became obsessed with celebrity.
Their artificially inflated self-esteem saw fame as the only worthwhile life
path.
A generation encouraged to
follow their dreams, all picked the same dream, super-stardom. There is little
limelight in careers such as plumbing or teaching, so practical ambitions were
dashed and the population of YouTubers, Instagram vixens, and karaoke
contestants exploded.
If anyone criticized a
child’s lackluster performance, they were called a bully, the newest enemy of
self-esteem. Bullies were held up as foreign invaders that needed to be
eradicated. They are, however, a natural part of society.
Of course, assault is a
matter for the police; I’m speaking of social pressure placed on a high-strung
child when their level of achievement doesn’t match their level of self-esteem.
For example, a student makes a play at raising their social status higher than
that of their fellow students by singing a song and posting it on YouTube.
They haven’t put in the
time or practice that it takes to get good at singing, but they want the
accolades, wealth, and popularity that comes with fame. Ultra-supportive
parenting has inflated the child’s ego artificially, so when the negative comments
from honest children pour in, the ego pops.
Some children have even
killed themselves over these ego crashes. Instead of placing the blame where it
belongs—with the parents, we invent a new foreign invader: the bully.
If your child is truly
interested in performance, they will start out with training, then recitals for
family or a smaller, trusted group while they develop their talent into
something worth exhibiting.
If you want your child to
be bully-proof, teach them humility and hard work instead of lavishing fake
praise and empty accolades that only set them up for a fall back to reality.
To be fair, bully hysteria
did not come from Oprah directly, but is a direct result of her legacy of
victim-worship.
Children and fear were
great topics, but people could become fatigued by the constant fear-mongering.
Oprah would balance her
shows with therapeutic, happy things. People were also very interested in the
things that made them feel good and they didn’t even question the logic as they
were ‘happy.’ things. Thanks to a concept introduced on The Oprah Winfrey Show, 77% of Americans believe in angels, and
many also believe in positive visualization as a science (The Secret).
People ask me what the
problem with pseudo-therapy is if it makes people feel good. The problem is
that things that feel good with no
sacrifice or effort are rarely good for
you. Donuts are not packed with vitamins.
An overemphasis on eliminating everything that makes you feel bad
mirrors the effects of the current painkiller addiction. It doesn’t address the
root cause, it takes more and more to achieve the same result, and it
eventually kills you.
Negative emotions are
important. They serve as a contrast, allowing us to feel real happiness. That is
the secret to real happiness, by the way. Happiness takes sacrifice and
discomfort; it exists only in contrast to unhappiness and struggle.
You never hear that
because you can’t sell that idea in a book. The reason you can’t sell that idea
is because everybody already knows it to be true, deep down.
Negative emotions should
not be muted, as they are essential for navigating life. We feel bad when we do
things we shouldn’t, so we don’t do them again. We feel shame when our behavior
has negative effects on others and on ourselves.
Shame is essential to
civilize a society. No rule of law can control a population that does not feel
accountability for its actions. However, in Oprah’s world, it must be done away
with because it degrades one’s self-esteem.
The war on shame started
with the moms, then leaked into schools and infected an entire generation.
Shame was outlawed, and now the only people you are allowed to shame are the
bullies or people who are honest.
Oprah was also a big
opponent of body shaming. As a compulsive overeater, she has had a life-long struggle
with her own weight. She used that fact to gain credibility with her viewers as
she trotted out all manner of ‘experts’ selling fad diets and lifestyle
changes.
You can’t sell a book
about sensible eating and exercise because we
know that already. Novelty is the rule of television, so fads took center
stage and the viewers laid down the dollars that forged Oprah’s
three-billion-dollar empire.
Of course, the diets
worked only briefly, leaving the dieter deprived, only to gain back more weight
when they ultimately gave up. Diets are another self-perpetuating product for
Oprah, because the cure is the sickness—buy the diet, deprive yourself, fail,
indulge to make up for lost time, gain weight, buy the diet…
When the women failed,
they would blame themselves, never Oprah—because it wasn’t her diet idea, she just took some profits from each book.
The diets kept failing for
years and Oprah was forced to take the new tack of ‘body acceptance.’ She
pointed women’s blame away from themselves and toward the beauty industry’s
unattainable standards.
If she could not keep her
own weight in check, she would seek to change the reality of body preferences to
fit her own.
Oprah would later claim
that one of the factors contributing to her overeating was the trauma of sexual
abuse.
It was a perfect way to
shift accountability for overeating from herself to her sexual trauma—another
big ratings grabber.
Oprah would reveal her own
sexual abuse, and in doing so, change how we saw victims.
She called victims of
sexual abuse “survivors” and “brave”. With shame gone, people began feeling
pride for having endured trauma and began wearing it like a badge of courage.
Even competing with others for trauma-supremacy. “You think you had it bad?”
If that wasn’t enough to
launch victim-worship into the public ethos, Oprah invited celebrities to share
their own traumas, conflating trauma and talent in the public ethos. They could
safely share your trauma without seeming egocentric if they claimed to be doing
it to spread awareness or to help others. This made victimhood even seductive
to a celebrity-obsessed generation. You could achieve a small level of fame by
sheer virtue of having been a victim.
Trauma was excellent because
Oprah could sell self-help and therapy to cure it. The only problem was that not
everyone had trauma, so people would
begin to invent it out of smaller and smaller things.
As an example of how
mundane trauma have become; American college students now claim trauma over words
and ideas just because they conflict with their own—demanding safe spaces and
trigger warnings.
Victimhood has become so
prevalent that colleges have become less like institutions for expansion of the
mind and more like shelters for emotional weakness.
These students are actually victims, not of a hate
speech, but of a legacy of victim-worship.
One can only hope that the
hero paradigm will recover. The hero used to be one who had a positive effect
on the world. Now you are a hero when the world has had a negative effect on
you. Ambition toward victim status doesn’t produce effective people, only
emotional cripples who hold up hard luck stories and fake trauma instead of art
or achievement.
We let society become
severely damaged by believing a liar for a long time.
I had read about her
propensity for lying, storytelling, and embellishing the truth, so I watched an
old Oprah episode to see if I could catch her in a lie. It took all of thirty
seconds.
She told a story about how
Stedman had surprised her with a Sheepy
Fleece bathrobe. The well-trained audience swooned at the romantic gesture,
never questioning the likelihood of a multi-billionaire being caught dead in a
$92 bathrobe. “She probably wears it when
she clips coupons,” they must have thought.
She gave each audience
member a robe, and they were ecstatic. The company pays Oprah to lie about
using their product, sales go through the roof, women get a material fix, and
Oprah gets paid…to lie.
Oprah cares so little
about being genuine that she even hired a lying coach for her court case
against Texas ranchers. The man who specialized in coaching defendants on how
to be more believable on the stand was Dr. Phil McGraw. He was an expert in
lying. He was such a good liar in fact, that Oprah gave him his own show
following hers.
Dr. Phil was to be the
perfect patsy for Oprah’s toxic effect on relationships. She would claim that
husbands were the source of much of women’s unhappiness. She would suggest
sweeping life changes to be made behind the husband’s back.
The Oprah Winfrey Show would end at 5 p.m., leaving wives simmering with
vitriol just as their husbands were arriving home—to a bushwhacking.
When a husband wondered
who might have poisoned his wife against him, a glance at the TV showed no
signs of Oprah—only Dr. Phil. That lovable hayseed, that font of folksy common
sense—the perfect patsy.
There are people with whom
we all wish our mates would not consort, because they seem to poison them
against us. Women had no trouble forbidding men from hanging out with their
bad-influence friends, but men didn’t even realize the extent to which Oprah
was influencing their wives. No big deal- only more than any other influence in
history.
Women would put a quick
stop to their husbands watching a male version of Oprah.
Especially if he
encouraged them to buy products they couldn’t afford, to only do work that
nurtured their spirit, or to stop being ambitious and just be happy with their
current size of their bank account.
In Oprah culture, a man’s
value in relationships became worthless. They were seen as more of an adversary
than a partner. Men didn’t feel needed or wanted in the relationship, so they
began leaving marriages or not getting hitched in the first place. The ones who
stayed were the submissive men who fit the new paradigm of irrelevance.
As men disappeared from the
family, so too did their role as fathers, with cataclysmic results.
The ideals of a workable
society are in danger of being lost entirely, as they have been absent over two
generations- replaced by pseudo-spiritual mottos and motivational quotes that
are only good for an immediate and fleeting emotional boost.
Emotions are the language
of therapy, so emotional thinking is gaining respect as the preferred form of
thinking over logic in many areas of life. Everyone from anti-vaxxers to
climate-change skeptics, even ‘flat-earthers’ are all now able to voice
delusional opinions because they feel
that they are true.
Of course, everyone has a right to their own opinion.
That is also a flawed
ideal of the new ethos. Of course, everyone has a right to say anything, but if
you don’t know what you are talking about, your opinion is worthless. However,
because we’ve cut the shame, people now offer unqualified opinions without fear
of reprisal.
Of course, everyone deserves respect. Wrong—that is
another fake ideal.
Respect is defined as
“esteem for, or a sense of the worth or excellence of a person, a personal
quality or ability.” Not everyone or every idea deserves esteem. Awarding
people respect not deserved is an extension of the self-esteem movement; it is
the equivalent of a participation award. Obligatory respect is not respect at
all.
I am not a religious man
and I am not proselytizing here, but I do respect the Christian religion and
how it has framed Western society. It evolved to be the best religion because we
take what we consider useful and leave the rest to fade into antiquity, falling
off like vestigial appendages.
I heard once that the only
significant rule in The Bible is The Golden Rule; the rest is just
commentary—and I agree. Christianity works so well because of its emphasis on
treating others well.
Selflessness is the ideal
that holds society precariously over a fall into anarchy, so it is very
troubling to hear anyone extolling self-centeredness as the most important
virtue. Oprah is the mother of egocentrism and self-centeredness, and those
qualities are the precursors to an evil, and cruel society.
The good news is that
people have become fed up with the quality of people that these new ideals have
been turning out. So fed up in fact, that when they were presented with the
feminine, hyper-nurturing ethos, they chose a megalomaniac, just because he was
the alternative.
This thirty-year ethos of
egocentrism, fear mongering, and victim worship is coming to an end.
We have been arresting
reality in favor of emotion for a very long time, and the results have been terrible.
I don’t judge Trump for
being Trump or Oprah for being Oprah. They are simply emergent energies in a
capitalist game. Their psyches have developed to support their own avarice.
Trump became an
eventuality once Oprah pushed the pendulum so far to the emotional side of the
spectrum. Its swing back towards the center is not going to be pleasant.
Oprah’s children have come
home to roost. They are mean and without conscience. Thank god, they are
ineffectual wimps.
It’s 5 o’clock. Oprah is over. Daddy is home.
john@johnbeuhler.com
