Holding Out For A Hero

About three weeks ago, I made the observation that part of the reason why Donald Trump appeared to be bulletproof in the face of mounting criminal cases was that many Republican voters "viewed him as vital enough to their interests that they'd be willing to overlook, excuse or explain away whatever they had to." Which I still think works as one of the reasons for his popularity, even though I don't think that it goes far enough.

I was attempting to make a parallel to a friend of mine between how people view Donald Trump and how we, as Americans, are taught to view George Washington. The attempt, it must be said, failed miserably, because my friend believed that for people to have similar views of Donald Trump and George Washington, that they needed to be similar people. People tend to understand their own views of reality as being objective to the point that other people share them (even if they don't admit it), and this can make it difficult to make the case that other people do, in fact, see things differently.

So rather than George Washington, I'm going to use the example of Robin Hood. Robin Hood, according to legend, robbed from the rich, and gave to the poor. And, if one is not reading a retelling of the stories about him that are aimed primarily at children, killed quite a few people in so doing. But people don't, generally speaking, see Robin Hood as someone who acted from a wanton disregard of the rule of law. Rather, it was King John's laws that were viewed as illegitimate. Once King Richard shows up on the scene, Robin is more than happy to become a loyal, and presumably law-abiding, subject. Because Robin is the hero of the story, other elements of the story are judged relative to him, rather than on their own merits. (And this was the point I was making about George Washington. We in the United States don't view him as someone who rebelled against lawful authority; rather the laws of Great Britain under King George III are seen as illegitimate, and most faults that us modern people might find with Mr. Washington are overlooked.)

If one imagines oneself as a needy peasant back in the (fictional) day, and Robin Hood shows up and drops a few shillings into one's lap, the expectation is that one would be grateful and appreciative of the largess, rather than questioning just how said shillings were obtained, or seeing oneself as the beneficiary of one or more open acts of criminality.

And it's the same with Donald Trump. For a large section of the Republican electorate, Donald Trump is the hero who goes out and steals from the unjustly rich to give to the deserving poor (namely themselves). And so the accusations, to say nothing of the legal proceedings, against him are illegitimate on their face. And in the same way that the fact that heroes often had a certain level of self-interest in things was ignored (Robin Hood was quite the poacher; many stories have the Merry Men living quite well for a bunch of people hiding out in the woods in mediaeval times.) Republican voters who understand that Donald Trump is fighting the good fight specifically to benefit them, and advance their interests, are unlikely to see him as being self-serving.

As an aside, this is why I tend to be skeptical of the Conservative/Libertarian idea that societies can work well with reputation-based (rather than formal regulatory) systems for enforcing common mores. They too easily devolve into popularity contests, with people's esteem being the basis for judging their actions, rather than vice versa.

Expectations that this civil suit or that indictment would give voters a reason to move away from Donald Trump presuppose that these proceedings, and the people bringing and/or overseeing them, are legitimate. And, perhaps more importantly, represent the standard people should use when determining their own relationships to others. But that's not how this works. It's not how it's consistently worked for centuries now.

Consider Hunter Biden, the current President's son. Despite Congressional Republicans having been hammering on this for years, with no evidence so far of any wrongdoing on the part of President Biden, House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy has been threatening impeachment proceedings against him, "based on questions about his son Hunter Biden's business dealings." This isn't happening because there is solid evidence of wrongdoing on the part of the President; it's happening because there's enough support for it among Republicans to make it something between politically expedient and politically necessary. Negative partisanship at work.

Right now, Donald Trump is the hero of many Republicans, and that status is unassailable. This is why there's no real contest of the Republican nomination for President. And it's why his supporters are going to stick with him regardless of any accusations leveled against him... even literally shooting someone on Fifth Avenue won't change that. Failing to recognize, or acknowledge, that won't make it go away.