Tapping the American id A second look at Abraham Josephine Riesman’s Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America, this time by John Hendrickson in The Atlantic, contemplates how watching a “good guy” wrestler like Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson deliver “‘the people’s elbow’ to a bullying foe” is cathartic for professional wrestling fans. They pay good money for it. WWE’s McMahon “tapped into the American id,” made a fortune by it, and drew Donald Trump a roadmap to the White House. A technology and science fiction writer I know online commented Saturday night on how Generative AI “will turn civilization upside down” in ways hard to predict. For better or worse, Pandora’s Box is open and will never be closed, she wrote. That’s how technology works. Similarly, who could have predicted that professional wrestling and McMahon “could have such a profound influence on American culture and politics,” Hendrickson writes. McMahon’s pal Donald has changed American political culture and the party he leads by dint of throwing elbows at people his fans love to jeer. (That’s you, Dear Reader.) The threats and injuries are more than theatrical. The “incentives and current architecture of politics” make it unlikely they will go away either, writes E.J. Dionne: Two studies this month highlighted why. Let’s start with an analysis of all 435 congressional districts conducted by the Equity Research Institute at the University of Southern California in conjunction with the Atlantic. It found that 142 of the House’s 222 Republicans represent districts with low levels of…