In this country, our many celebrity personalities seem to draw wide attention simply for being famous. What celebrities think and say is publicized in the press, on television and on the internet, whether or not they have any experience in any given field.

Such is the nature of what has come to be known as “the social media,” which feeds on celebrity and gives the famous immense influence in the realm of public policy and actions.

This peculiar phenomenon has become the stock-in-trade not only of many movie stars and TV pundits, but also deft political figures, particularly Donald Trump. He has successfully segued from being a New York real-estate tycoon to political figure as a once and possibly once-again American president.

Trump is a sort of real-life Willy Loman from playwright Arthur Miller’s “The Death of a Salesman”. But he does so with a smirk, rather than a smile and a shoeshine as he continues to dominate the Republican Party and its abrasive conservative wing.

Unfortunately, there appears to be no other GOP figure willing or strong enough to challenge his leadership as the Party of Trump undermines our traditional two-party system. The 2012 presidential nominee, now Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, has little influence as the party seems content to abide with Trump’s reckless ways.

One Republican newcomer on the scene who has signaled greater personal ambitions in the party, Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, has demonstrated more inclination to become its next Joe McCarthy. The late Wisconsin senator set himself on a course of personal disparagement of Democrats during his heyday, which ended with his early death from alcoholism.

Not since the passing of Sen, John McCain of Arizona in 2018 has the Republican Party of Lincoln, Taft, Ike and Reagan had a charismatic leader of moderation on the stage to offer to restore the GOP toward centralism and revival of our traditional two-party system of yore.

McCain memorably and dramatically bucked the longtime Republican crusade to kill the Democratic creation of federal health care insurance. He returned from Arizona on a late-night flight to the Capitol and broke a stalemate on the bill, known as Obamacare, to the great frustration of his party’s leadership.

Since then, however, the party has shown no serious inclination to rid itself of the ethical paralysis imposed on it by Trump and his captive army of worshippers. So, he has remained a glaring symbol of obstructionism and partisan confrontation that has identified the Grand Old Party throughout his personal reign within it.

Accordingly, the cult of Trumpism remains entrenched in the core of the Republican ranks as it endures the presidency of Joe Biden. The cult appears content for now with targeting him as an aging old-school liberal Democrat at 79 who is living on borrowed time.

That strategy, however, promises a rerun of 2020, when Biden’s main selling point, that he was not Trump, was enough to elect him. Biden is still not Trump, so the question again is the same, and the former president has said or done nothing likely to alter the same outcome in 2024.