Shamelessness is Trump's super-power.
Trump rode a wave of public distrust of institutions. He supercharged that distrust. He made it normal. Then he made it required.
Public trust in institutions is at a low ebb.
Congress: Gallup puts congressional job approval at 13%. We don't need Gallup to tell us that Congress is not addressing America's problems. We see it. Nearly everyone recognizes we have an unsolved problem with immigration. Congress is busy intentionally not solving the problem, hoping to score political points.
Courts: Discussion of courts by politicians and commenters now describe judges as "_______ appointed," presuming judges will decide cases to meet a partisan outcome.
Religious institutions: Pedophile priests; mega-church hucksters.
Media institutions: Fake and biased news.
Health institutions: Fake drugs, corrupt CDC, inflated costs.
Universities: Hotbed of wokeness and plagiarism graduating unemployable people loaded with debt.
Police: Bad apples.
FBI: Deep state tyrants.
Elections and Democracy itself: Rigged, rigged, rigged.
I could go on. I urge readers to comment, naming institutions they think enjoy high public trust. I am at a loss.
Trump's genius for shamelessness expanded on this foundation of distrust. He started with a proof-of-concept exercise, asserting that Hawaii's vital statistics records, plus the contemporaneous newspaper birth announcements, were faked. Trump persisted. A great many Republican voters wanted to believe Trump. Their own birth records are real, of course, but not Obama's. Trump sold it and a majority of Republican voters bought it. Partisan advantage trumped trust in a state's official records.
Trump demonstrated that one could simply assert a position, and a significant number of people would believe it, not a reality posited by our institutions of society. That provided leverage on another, perhaps equal-size group of people, people who do not fully believe Trump, but who do not dare disagree openly with the body of people who do. Go with the stampeding herd. This is where the generalized distrust of institutions is so important. Trump enablers and fellow-travelers cannot openly side with the institution, because they are perceived as weak and Trump is adamant.
My own U.S. Representative, Cliff Bentz, is an example of fellow-traveler Republicans of the kind that are commonplace among Republican officeholders nationwide. Bentz voted against accepting the electoral votes certified for Biden in Pennsylvania, notwithstanding an 80,000 vote majority and an election reviewed and approved by the Pennsylvania courts. He needed to bow toward Trump's election denialism lest he face primary opposition. Most of the presidential candidates hoping to replace Trump granted that Trump, not the institutions of justice, was right. Mike Pence, the Christian conservative presidential candidate who chose the Constitution over Trump's assertion of shameless self interest, spoke to sparse, inattentive Republican audiences and got 2% in the polls before dropping out.
Going along with a shameless assertion contrary to traditional authoritative truth isn't just normalized in the GOP. It is essential, if one is to be a Republican in good standing and not a RINO.
It is a new GOP. Ronald Reagan knew he had broken the law and his word when he sold arms to Iran to pay for aid to the Contras in Nicaragua. He was ashamed. He apologized. There was an outside moral standard that he had not met. The L.A. Times headline read: "President apologizes for Iran-Contra role: Says he needs no protection from the truth."
Richard Nixon knew it was wrong to obstruct justice by telling the FBI not to investigate the Watergate break-in by claiming it was a secret CIA operation. It was a lie. He felt guilt and shame, so he tried to hide what he did. Nixon knew it would be illegal to destroy tape recordings made in the Oval Office. He could have shamelessly burned them and dared courts to do anything about it. He didn't. Both presidents understood there was a standard of behavior outside themselves they would be ashamed openly to flout.
Trump is shameless. He looks at the institution and its verdict and says "no." He is defiant, not obedient to rules or norms. Trump exercises the shameless willfulness that Athens exercised over the Milians, as described by Thucydides. Winners take what they will and institutions suffer as they must. Republican voters want a winner; however he wins. Shamelessness is power. There are no rules.
This is a rough patch in democracy's road and I hope we come out of it.
Bentz voted against certifying Pennsylvania's election results three days after he was sworn in to office. Isn't it amazing how he could become so well versed on Pennsylvania's election laws in such a short period of time. My gawd he is a worthless representative and as the article states a pawn of the MAGA legions. He was worried about offending them three days into his term of office; cooncerned about his re-election without having even got his seat warm in the office.
It is hard not to look at Cheeto (and shameless is as good a description of him as any, although I prefer truth-challenged con-man), and think that America brought this upon itself. Reagan repealed the Fairness Doctrine, we allowed cable "News" to proliferate without oversight, we defunded public education and SCOTUS found a skewed campaign system where corporations are people and money is "speech" totally acceptable. We normalize, and provided funding, for liars and cheats, undercut actual public service and the Orange One is simply the extinction burst of either that sort of behavior or democracy itself. November will tell. I too hope we come out of it, as we find out whether or not "government of the people, by the people, and for the people," will perish or survive in the United States of America.