Politicians are full of shit. They always have been, and they always will be. 

Some are more full of shit than others, this is true. Some are more likable than others—people you might want at your dinner table or fancy having a drink with. Others are less personable, but they earn our confidence by radiating their own. They seem suited for the gig despite not being anybody we’d want on the interior of our lives. This is an important distinction. Nobody ever said the president should be warm and fuzzy. I usually tune out the majority of what candidates say since they’re never going to implement most of it anyway. 

I’ll be the first to admit: My political apathy is longstanding and stems from self-absorption. I find my life is plenty for me to handle without anxiety-inducing, macro-picture stress. 

I am, however, a good judge of character. There have been people in my life whom I may not have always liked, but I’ve trusted them because I deemed them sound individuals with decent inner compasses. I have a very strong bullshit-meter, and I’m careful not to always let on when I know I’m being lied to. Depending on what’s at stake, it’s usually more interesting to see what the liar might do once under the false impression that they’ve gotten away with something. And sometimes it’s fun to watch someone squirm.

But Donald Trump is more than I can take. He’s more than any of us should be able to take, and it’s frightening that his campaign has been let to advance this far. There’s way too much at stake for us to quietly stand by and see what he might do next. This isn’t a game, nor is it a TV show. Try as we might to make him one, Trump isn’t a fictional character. 

Therein lies a major part of the problem: We get our news in the same place that we play our games and watch our stories. The games have become intensely real-seeming, and the stories, well…

On a grand scale, our culture’s perception has been poisoned by reality television. There was a time when most of the programming we sought on television was of a blatantly fictitious nature—sitcoms, soap operas, miniseries-dramas, and second-run movies. Sure, sometimes these things were based on real events, and PBS has always run shows with a historical focus. But game shows were probably the closest precursor to what we have now. The news has always been there, but it used to be a more clearly separated entity: a break in the story cycle for something decidedly real.

Thirty years ago, there was a much clearer delineation between news broadcasting (“hard news”) and everything else. Now we have special interest news programming, news magazine shows, and true crime shows, all of which throw their own spin on the facts. And to top it off, reality television arrived to bulldoze right through whatever ability to discern the truth might have been left.

At first, we were expected to swallow that reality television was, indeed, reality. But it quickly became apparent that even the more serious reality shows had partially scripted elements. And so our notions of reality were blown, albeit subtly at first. The important takeaway is this: We no longer know exactly which parts of what we view on television are real, what parts aren’t, what outcomes are predetermined, etc. 

“But it’s just television,” you correctly assert. 

Well, good for you and your discernment. You’re ahead of the game. But before you get assertive about your smarts, I’d like to make clear that smarts have little to do with the problem. It’s more about being mindful of the images and words being hurled at you while watching television (or streaming stuff, or however you do it), and that requires a diligence that most of us aren’t motivated to apply when we’re in front of the story box. When we go to the box, we’re looking to be entertained. “Tell me a story, I’m spent and I don’t want to think too hard,” we say. And the box does a pretty good job at hijacking our minds for a few hours. 

During that time, our brains go on automatic pilot. It’s not that we’re not thinking, but we’re in a spongy state of absorption, wherein we become unusually susceptible to false information. Fiction. Stories.

It’s not that the things that transpire on reality shows are so believable. It’s more that the events occupy a free-floating space between what’s real and what isn’t. In this realm, nothing is fixed, nothing is certain. Contestant shows like Idol and Runway exacerbate the problem, since most of us still believe that the majority of what happens on those shows is real. (And maybe it is, maybe it isn’t—it doesn’t matter, since it’s the uncertainty that perpetuates the problem.)

After more than a decade of taking all this drivel in, our judgment is permanently impaired. So, smarts can only save you if you’re the type of person who watches TV with a hypercritical eye and likes to ask questions. Sadly, that’s not the majority.

From this media-generated pseudo-reality stew comes an election season like this one, and it’s more heavily reliant on misinformation and half-cocked attitudes generated on social media than any other before it. Those of us that consider ourselves as having smarts are blinking, incredulous. Is this really happening? Sure as hell is. 

Donald Trump reminds me a little of John Iselin in The Manchurian Candidate—bumbling, self-contradictory, laughable. He was initially amusing in the most infuriating ways, but we’ve moved well beyond humor. The scariest realization about Trump’s campaign is that he isn’t nearly as dumb as we originally suspected. 

Whatever business savvy he may or may not have, his understanding of how to leverage media has kept his campaign alive. Here’s a man who not only knows we’re confused, he seems to understand exactly how we’re confused and how he can best use that to his advantage. Our understanding of what makes a celebrity and what makes a politician are now forever crossed. This is the new hybrid. While Ronald Reagan makes an interesting study along these lines, it’s not really a fair comparison. Reagan came before the internet and had an established political career. 

As far as his stance on LGBT issues, Trump waffles. He’s been reluctant to say anything definitive, instead harping on Muslims and talk of building walls to keep out Mexicans. Ted Cruz, another brilliant specimen, would like us to believe that Trump’s our Republican LGBT ally, and perhaps it’s all relative. But if Cruz thinks that Trump’s got true “New York values,” maybe he should spend a little more time in the five boroughs. 

With respect to gay marriage, Trump tells us he’s evolving. Bully for you, Donald. It changes nothing. Trump could come vogueing out of the closet with bells on and a gigantic butt plug lodged in his backside and I still wouldn’t want him as president. Why on earth would we want a real estate mogul who’s a product of inherited wealth running our country? We’re talking about a man who owns casinos and beauty pageant brands—two gigantic warts on the nose of American culture—and who has parlayed his big-mouth antics into some convoluted notion of celebrity. He isn’t a leader, he’s a soundbite.

We’ve been watching televised popularity contests for too long, and now the entire race is just a slightly more official looking reality show to many of us. Some people seem to view it as a game. But there’s much more at stake here than a high score or a recording contract with Clive Davis’s label. Snap out of it, America. Do we really want Kim Kardashian to run in 2020? Because that’s where we’re headed. If you think they’re rude to us in Europe now, just wait a few years—we won’t even be allowed in anymore. We’re on the cusp of becoming the laughingstock of the Western world.