Bruce Lear lives in Sioux City and has been connected to Iowa’s public schools for 38 years. He taught for eleven years and represented educators as an Iowa State Education Association regional director for 27 years until retiring. He can be reached at BruceLear2419@gmail.com  

We’re Las Vegas magic show nerds. We’ve seen a lot of big names like Lance Burton, Penn and Teller, Criss Angel, Shim Lim, and David Copperfield. But early in one of our Las Vegas vacations, we couldn’t afford prime time, so we settled for an afternoon magic show at the MGM. 

At that time, the basement of the MGM was decorated like the Wizard of Oz. So, the tiny magic stage was nestled between munchkin mannequins and the yellow brick road.

If you’re in a magic show for under $10 a ticket, your expectations are low.

After a handful of tricks, it was time for the big finish. His assistant scanned the audience looking for a volunteer. I averted my eyes, kept my hands in my lap, and silently prayed.

I was chosen anyway.

Maybe it was the cheesy mustache or maybe the Andy Griffith shirt. It didn’t matter. All eyes were on me as I shuffled forward.

While the assistant kept me busy introducing myself, the magician whipped a cover off a guillotine. She took my hand and pulled me toward it. They put my head in a vice like thing, and all I could think of was the $7.50 a piece we’d paid didn’t seem like a bargain.

After some magician patter, the assistant whispered in my ear, “Don’t move.” That’s not comforting when what looks like a sharp blade hangs overhead. With a whoosh, the blade came down.

The audience gasped. 

Oz went black.

While we were walking out my head still firmly on my shoulders, a lady asked my wife, “What were you thinking when he was in the guillotine?”

With a laugh, she said, “I was thinking, I was going to own this casino.”

Even an afternoon magician knew how to use smoke, mirrors, and the right equipment to fool an audience. Afternoon magicians and geezer rock bands know their audiences love the old stuff. But if they ever want to play on the big stage or become popular with a younger audience, they must freshen up their show by doing new tricks and performing new music.

Donald Trump hasn’t learned that.

Trump’s audience may love his “greatest hits,” but it doesn’t attract new voters. His latest act, questioning the racial identity of Vice President Kamala Harris, is a show as old as Jim Crow.

Harris is biracial, which Trump pretended was puzzling to him.

At his recent rally in Georgia, he also performed old material. He said, “Kamala happens to be a really low IQ individual.” That’s the same tired insult he used in 2016 and 2020. He also claimed that if Harris is elected, savage foreign gangs will invade the suburbs.

It’s an old show relying on insult and fear.

His new young assistant, Senator JD Vance, also seems bogged down in the past. He spends a lot of time explaining why women who have given birth are somehow better leaders than those who haven’t, and he has even implied that loving your cat is a vice.

But the tragic part of the Trump show isn’t the way he throws juvenile insults at others during his long rants, it’s how he undermines basic American institutions. 

He still hasn’t conceded the 2020 election, despite more than 60 court cases finding no fraud changing the outcome. Still, he shouts, “The election was rigged.”

He thinks the American jury system and elections are only fair if he wins, and he plans to pardon the people he calls “hostages”—the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol on January 6.

I didn’t lose my head in Oz, because the magician had the right skills and equipment, and know how to shock but not harm. We can’t let the old, worn-out Trump shtick behead our democracy.

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Top image of a magician is by FOTOKITA, available via Shutterstock.