Judged

I'd worked up something of a long diatribe for this post, diving into how social desirability bias leads people to deny things happened, rather than admit that they're excusing them, but it occurred to me that I could distill the point down into something simple. So here goes:

No legal system can legislate how people see themselves, or those people they see themselves reflected in.

For all that Donald Trump has spent the past eight years or so loudly proclaiming that he can flout rules and get away with it, when push has come to legal shove, he hasn't claimed a right to be pardoned. Rather, he's claimed a scrupulous adherence to the rule of law that contradicts nearly every aspect of the persona that he's built for himself.

And because his supporters understand themselves as upright and law-abiding, he must be, too, and so they believe it, despite the evidence, and despite the persona. Because the laws of reality can't legislate how people see themselves or their heroes, either.