In the beginning of the underrated HBO movie Head Office (1985), a fictional mogul tells his helicopter driver, “Twenty years ago when I came to this town, I had less than 43 million dollars in my pocket. Now, I own all this. That’s America.” Sometimes I think that the worst part about having Trump as a president is witnessing collective amnesia about a dozen times a day, listening to people describe him as funny, instead of finding aspects of this madcap narrative comical. In all of the big budget comedies I grew up with, the conglomerate owner is the butt of the jokes. He’s winning for a while, and then he gets ahead of himself, ending up with egg on his face (especially if he’s trying to run for political office). He’s exposed as not only a fraud but a loser, a societal outcast whose ambitions were only mirrored attempts to obliterate his own insecurities. In the 1980s and 90s, the universe won’t let bullies like this stay on top for long, and so it teaches them a lesson in shame. At the end of the movie, the bully’s underlings and the audience in the theatre all laugh at him, not with him.