It has become a global ritual: you wake up each morning and grab your phone to catch up on the latest episode of The Trump Show, the addictive reality TV series. Which character has been humiliated, investigated or sacked? This has been the most distracting political year of my lifetime, and potentially the most dangerous. It’s not only Trump’s fault. After all, we are the viewers.

这已经成了一个全球习惯：每天早晨醒来，拿起手机观看“特朗普秀”的最新剧集，这是一个让人容易上瘾的电视真人秀节目。哪个角色被羞辱、调查或炒掉了?今年是我一生中最让人分神的政治年份，潜在也是最危险的。这不仅仅是特朗普的错。毕竟，我们是观众。

People in reality TV admire Trump as an astute professional. In 2015, after US TV audiences began to fall, he jumped to politics and put on a new show. This is not a metaphor: he still thinks like a reality performer. Reality TV perches between fiction and non-fiction, which is the spot where Trump feels happiest. Reality shows have scripted plots or formats, but partially real characters. Trump, several of whose companies have been bankrupted, played a successful businessman on TV, and so viewers could imagine him playing one in the White House.

电视真人秀的业内人士敬佩特朗普是一个精明的内行。2015年，在美国电视观众数量开始下滑后，他投身政坛，推出了一档新节目。这不是比喻：他的思维仍像一个真人秀演员。电视真人秀介于虚构与真实之间，这是特朗普感觉最快乐的地方。真人秀编排了情节或模式，但角色是部分真实的。旗下曾有好几家公司破产的特朗普，在电视上塑造了一个成功商人的角色，因此观众可以想象他在白宫也饰演这样一个角色。

Season one of Trump’s political show was the presidential campaign. It used the standard industry format known as “reality competition” (kicking the other contestants off the island), only with bigger stakes (the presidency) and A-list celebrities (who rarely consent to appear on reality TV).

特朗普“政治秀”的第一季是竞选总统。它利用被称为“真人秀比赛”的标准行业模式(把其他参赛者淘汰)，只是赌注更大(总统职位)，还有一流名人(这些人很少同意在电视真人秀出场)。

In season two, Trump is improvising a new format. It largely dispenses with boring political characters, especially now that Congress probably won’t pass any major bills. Instead, the cast consists of Trump’s relatives (who can’t be kicked out of Trumpworld) and his posse (who can). The relatives were born into the show so they understand Trump has to be the star, but some posse members fail to grasp what genre they’re appearing in. John Kelly, for instance, imagines he is Trump’s chief of staff, whereas in fact he’s The Trump Show’s new Marine-general character.

进入第二季后，特朗普正在即兴创作一种新模式。它基本上弃用了枯燥的政治人物，特别是在国会很可能不会通过任何重大法案的情况下。相反，演员表包括特朗普的亲戚(他们无法被踢出特朗普圈子)以及他的随从团队(这些人可以被淘汰)。他的亲戚们从小习惯了这个节目，因此他们知道特朗普必须是明星，但他的随从团队的一些成员不明白自己要出场的节目是什么体裁。例如，约翰•凯利(John Kelly)以为他是特朗普的幕僚长，而实际上，他在“特朗普秀”中扮演的角色是新的海军陆战队将军。

But they are all dispensable characters. The ideal star of a reality series is an uninhibited narcissist who gradually reveals the inner reaches of his personality. As the reality TV producer Troy DeVolld explained in 2013: “That’s when celebrity casting works for me — when you actually get to see who somebody is, beneath who you thought they were when they came into it.”

但他们都是可有可无的角色。真人秀系列中的理想明星是一个狂放不羁的自恋狂，他会逐渐暴露自己个性中隐藏的一面。正如真人秀电视剧制作人特鲁瓦•德沃尔德(Troy DeVolld)在2013年解释的那样：“这是名人角色挑选让我产生成就感的时候：当你真正看到某个人是什么样的，当他们显露出在他们进入剧中之初你的印象背后的真面目。”

The Trump Show is broadcast non-stop on both social media and TV, so its pace is unprecedented. Judged as entertainment, it’s vastly superior to the Barack Obama series. Whereas all other TV shows are now niche, this one appeals to all demographics. When Trump defenestrated his latest communications chief, I heard a nine-year-old excitedly shout: “Scaramucci’s fired!”

“特朗普秀”在社交媒体和电视上都是不中断播放的，因此剧情的进展速度是空前的。从娱乐效果来看，它远远胜过巴拉克•奥巴马(Barack Obama)剧集。所有其他电视节目现在都是小众的，而这个节目吸引所有人群。当特朗普炒掉最新的白宫通讯主任时，我听到一个9岁的小孩兴奋地大叫：“斯卡拉穆奇(Scaramucci)被炒啦!”

Scripted reality TV gives viewers a role too. The main character’s actions simply kick off each episode. The plot is then driven by the reactions of other characters, and often by audience voting. Elite viewers and journalists get especially absorbed in The Trump Show, because they kid themselves that they are watching serious programming, and because they generally hadn’t watched reality TV before and are surprised to discover how enjoyable it is.

经过编排的电视真人秀还让观众获得了角色。主角的行为开启了每一集。接下来的情节是由其他角色的反应来驱动的，经常是通过观众投票。精英观众和记者对于“特朗普秀”特别投入，因为他们欺骗自己，以为自己在观看严肃节目，还因为他们以前一般不看电视真人秀，现在意外地发现这种节目很好玩。

But they tend to misunderstand the conventions of the genre, and accuse Trump of lying when in fact he’s performing in a show. They also complain he doesn’t have a concentration span. Of course he doesn’t: in reality TV, if you spend a few minutes developing complexity, the audience switches off.

然而，他们往往误会这种体裁的规矩，指控特朗普撒谎，而实际上他只是在一个节目中表演。他们还抱怨他没有专注力。他当然没有：在电视真人秀中，如果你花上几分钟把情节搞得复杂，观众就会关掉电视。

The broader problem is that we viewers — the smartphone generation raised in peacetime — have no concentration spans either. Trump is the fitting president for our era. No wonder that another merchant of distraction, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, thinks he can be president next.

更大的问题是我们这些观众(在和平时期长大的使用智能手机的一代)也没有专注力。特朗普是迎合我们这个时代的总统。难怪另一个善于分散人们注意力的商人、Facebook的马克•扎克伯格(Mark Zuckerberg)认为他可以当下届总统。

Some liberals worry that Trump is distracting us in order to implement some master plan, such as bringing fascism to America. He isn’t. Trump doesn’t care about policy, though some people in Trumpworld do. He’s a lowbrow entertainer, so he produces lowbrow entertainment.

一些自由派人士担心，特朗普分散我们的注意力是为了实施一些总体计划，例如把法西斯主义带到美国。他没有这个意思。特朗普不关心政策，尽管特朗普圈子的一些人确实关心政策。他是一个低俗的表演者，因此他制作出的娱乐也是低俗的。

However, he is trying to distract us from one storyline that he can’t control: his campaign’s ties with Russia. Often a firing coincides with news about Russia. He rages at leakers of such news, partly because they derail his show. But he cannot keep viewers hooked merely by firing press secretaries. And Congress won’t let him fire the Robert Mueller character, the villain who is leading the Russian investigation. Trump therefore needs to create a new A-plot: by firing a major character such as Steve Bannon (who is frantically pretending to be a minor character), or perhaps by bombing Pyongyang.

然而，他试图让我们转移对一个他无法控制的情节的关注：他的总统竞选活动与俄罗斯的关系。炒人举措往往与有关俄罗斯的消息同时出现。他对这些消息的泄露者大发雷霆，部分原因是他们扰乱了他的秀。但他不能一直靠解雇新闻秘书来吸引观众。而国会不会让他解雇罗伯特•米勒(Robert Mueller)，领导通俄调查的“反面角色”。因此特朗普需要炮制一个新的重大情节：炒掉史蒂夫•班农(Steve Bannon)(此人疯狂地假装自己是个次要角色)，或者轰炸朝鲜。

That’s one of the existential dangers from which The Trump Show distracts us. The other one is climate change. Almost nobody is watching this boring show without human characters, but meanwhile giant icebergs break off into the Antarctic, forest fires ravage Europe and a study in the journal Nature Climate Change estimates a 95 per cent chance that average global temperatures will rise more than 2C by 2100.

这是事关生死存亡的危险之一，而特朗普秀转移了我们对它的关注。另一个危险是气候变化。几乎没有人在观看这场没有人类角色的枯燥节目，但同时巨大的冰山在南极断裂，森林大火在欧洲肆虐，《自然气候变化》(Nature Climate Change)杂志的一项研究估计，到2100年，全球平均气温升幅有95%的几率超过2摄氏度。

We saw a decade ago, even before smartphones, that distraction can lead to destruction: incomprehensible credit-default swaps caused the global financial crisis. Neil Postman’s classic 1985 study of television, Amusing Ourselves to Death, ends with the warning that “we are in a race between education and disaster”. I know which one my money’s on.

10年前，甚至在智能手机问世之前，我们就看到，注意力分散可能会造成破坏：让人费解的信贷违约互换(CDS)造成了全球金融危机。尼尔•波兹曼(Neil Postman)在1985年有关电视的经典研究《娱乐至死》(Amusing Ourselves to Death)在结尾处发出警告，“我们正处于教育和灾难之间的一场竞赛中”。我知道我的赌注要押在哪一边。