Jane Chong on Lawfare tries to use two myths about Trump to explain his stubborn popularity:
Let’s start with the more familiar first myth: that Trump tells it straight. Perversely, Trump’s inability to control his tongue or his tweets has helped foster the illusion that does not shrink from the truth, however inconvenient or politically incorrect that truth. Never mind that, according to every fact-checker out there, his dishonesty is off the charts. He is willing to say legally and morally unjustifiable things, the thinking goes, but that just attests to his honesty; only a candid candidate unafraid of prevailing social and political mores would give voice to such positions.
The second, lesser-memed myth, that Trump will do what it takes, works much the same way. His eagerness to blame America’s security problems on supposed outsiders, from Mexicans to Muslims, and to propose impracticable, unlawful, morally unconscionable security “solutions”—from rounding up the children of undocumented immigrants to doing “a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding”—appeals to voters who believe this behavior suggests not a chemical imbalance or blatant disregard for the Constitution but courage. The very extremity of these ideas ostensibly reflects his willingness to make the hard choices that must be made to protect America.
And a willingness to blame the Other, rather than ourselves. From a food export policy that tends to ruin our neighbors’ farms to a corporate culture which fails to return the loyalty of workers to corporate interests, a lot of our pain is self-inflicted – if not always obvious. It reflects the American myth that we’re the select of God, and the simple minded belief that this makes us mistake-proof – when the real problem is that, if there is a God and he’s elevated the United States, well, think about it. Elevated.
It makes for a long way to fall when you disappoint.
