I definitely see how these are the highest-rated American Presidential debates yet - I watched a lot of professional wrestling as a teenager in the 1990s (you can tell by my horribly warped grasp of how drama and narrative are supposed to work) and this is both a nostalgia trip and a legitimately distrubing horrorshow fit for the season.
As always, the most cynical (Mike Judge) and deeply disturbed and drug-addled (Philip K. Dick) futurists have proven to have the most accurate predictions - there are so many parallels this basically is 90s wrestling, complete with era-appropriate retro characters and way higher stakes - "the fate of the world, up to and including possible nuclear annihilation" beats "loser sits on a cactus" for dramatic tension.
Also there's the whole scenario two groups of competing interests, in an organization with deep and destructive divisions at its core, both trying to re-rig the outcome of a fixed contest on the fly but still presenting it as a legitimate contest between two individuals. In a context where it's already public knowledge the outcome is predetermined barring an absolute disaster - the meta-conflict is where the political meat is, and as some internet schlub I can't pretend to begin to be able to crack that). I cursed at the television like a true middle-aged guy to hear both sides accuse the other of trying to influence/outright fix the election through various means. Technically correct, but omitting the crucial detail of that being the essential mechanic of modern politics and of equal, ongoing guilt on both sides. But now I may be over-interpreting).
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