What Survivor Can Teach Us About the Government

H istorians will always recommend a few essential texts if you’re looking to understand politics in America. Perhaps they will suggest The Federalist Papers. Or maybe the U.S. Constitution. Or possibly the most astute historians will urge you to savor Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America.

Ignore these nerds. The best way to understand American politics in 2025 is to watch reality television. More specifically, reality show competitions.

The most obvious connection between such shows and current politics is that America elected a reality show host to its highest office. There is no doubt that Donald Trump’s appearances on The Apprentice helped him win in 2016. A 2015 poll by AMG found that 62 percent of Republican Apprentice viewers had a favorable opinion of Trump compared with only 37 percent of nonviewers. Apprentice fans may have had a point: who can deny that kicking comedian Sinbad out of a fake boardroom was proper training for outsmarting Vladimir Putin?

The Apprentice aside, the real mind-meld between modern politics and reality competitions can be found in shows like Survivor, Big Brother, and last year’s Emmy winner for Best Reality Competition Show, The Traitors. Each features a toxic version of democracy, faction-building, and misinformation, in which lying, backstabbing, and boorish behavior are not only permitted but encouraged.

Non-Survivor viewers may wonder what about politics can be gleaned from a show in which buff shirtless men and bikini-clad women eat rats to stay alive. The key thing is that each show sets up an alternate world in which standards of honesty and loyalty do not exist — no doubt a cathartic experience for folks at home who want to know what it would be like to be rewarded for rules-free, conscience-absent malfeasance. On these shows, alliances form and a strong leader emerges; however, those alliances are broken when skulduggery is afoot. Those angling to be leaders lie and bully other contestants to get to the top, and if the top dogs are challenged unsuccessfully, the failed usurpers are banished. (Presumably to Mitt Romney Island.)

The most prominent character in the world of competitive reality shows is the villain. The reprobate lies and cheats his way through the competition, and when the heat is on, creates chaos by pitting other contestants against one another to divert attention away from himself.

The strategy is simple: A villain who feels threatened with being voted out simply approaches another contestant and tells him a third player has been targeting him. Then those two players fight it out at that night’s vote, and the villain remains unscathed. Sixty percent of the time, it works every time. (A Survivor contestant has yet to redirect the tribe’s focus by tearing down the East Wing of the White House to build a ballroom, but the show will probably be on forever, so stay tuned!)

One would expect viewers at home to loathe the villain, but the exact opposite is true. Mustache-twirling bullies provide excitement, forcing other players to show where their true loyalties lie. In most cases, this means that otherwise good players are willing to patronize the villain to keep their own television careers alive. At the same time, the evil players often drive their opposition crazy, forcing the other players to make bad moves that eventually get them voted off the show.

And for their shameless duplicity and conniving, villains often become beloved by viewers and network executives alike. The best way to earn a return invitation to the show is to be an effective bad guy. Survivor even had one season in which the show fielded an entire team of self-described villains — and (15-year-old spoiler alert) a villain took home the million-dollar prize.

Further, when a player demonstrates that he is an effective villain, other players bow down to him. People of mediocre talent and strategic acumen often try to ride a villain’s coattails to the end of the competition. It is the irony of many of these shows: those who are too good at the game are eliminated for being too significant a threat, meaning mediocrities are always bound to end up in positions of power.

This promotion of dullards is always encouraged by the villains, who can drag a “goat” (an underwhelming player who is almost certain to lose) to the end, making the villain look smarter and increasing his chances of winning. (Presumably, no reality show villain would be dumb enough to take a weekend Fox News host and make him the secretary of defense; even RuPaul’s Drag Race contestants are too smart for that.)

Even the way voting factions work on reality shows is a bit on the nose. Frequently, a majority voting alliance on Survivor will have the votes to eliminate members of the minority alliance, one by one. But that would require discipline and wouldn’t allow individual players to flex their strategic muscles, so someone in the majority will always flip on their colleagues to demonstrate his own strength. This is basically how Mike Johnson became House speaker and why Marjorie Taylor Greene defected from her MAGA colleagues — a lack of chaos is good for Congress but bad for its individual members.

Of course, our politics have a real problem when the ethics of a TV competition bleed into our everyday governance. When a reality show character lies and deceives people within the show’s moral ecosystem, people aren’t blown up in the Caribbean, and the American justice system isn’t weaponized against political critics.

In real reality, our meretricious leaders are trying to evade responsibility and court the audience by forming divisions elsewhere — and we’re all stuck on the island with them.