Illiberalism · Gilead · Donald Trump

Fig. 1. Donald Trump, depicted in an orange jumpsuit, reportedly by the Drudge, date unknown, via Mediaite,^[1] fair use. Apparently, no mugshot was taken when he was actually arrested over hush money paid to Stormy Daniels.^[2]

Fig. 2. Original caption: “Your Honor, in an effort to insure a fair trial, we move for a change of venue to the defendant’s imagination.” Cartoon by Teresa Burns Parkhurst, apparently February 16, 2024, via the New Yorker, fair use.

That grievance^[3] is a significant factor in white Christian nationalism is hardly new. Thomas Frank pointed to the bank bailout in the wake of the 2008 Financial Crisis, with corresponding neglect for underwater homeowners and the unemployed as fueling a rage^[4] manifest in “Fuck Your Feelings” and “Make a Liberal Cry” bumper stickers displayed by Donald Trump’s supporters in his 2020 re-election campaign.^[5] Here’s Glenn Beck in the wake of a grand jury indictment in 2023:

Donald Trump is not even a person anymore. He is a symbol. He is a symbol of the average, everyday guy that keeps getting screwed every single time. Watches other people screw up: big banks, screw up their companies and get away with it. They see people all the time doing stuff that they know, if they did, they’d be in prison for 20 years. But because they’re . . . part of the elite, they get away with it.

Donald Trump has taken arrow after arrow. And that’s why this is the way the average American feels tonight. . . . This guy has been taking the bullets. For the average person now for years.^[6]

This rage is, in fact, ancient, at least a thousand years old, described by Colin Woodard of what he called the Greater Appalachians socioculture,^[7] that I associated with authoritarian populism,^[8] and that I now understand as having been subsumed, along with most other tendencies of conservatism, into white Christian nationalism.^[9]

Donald Trump marries this with his own unmistakably narcissistic rage,^[10] propelling his legal strategy:

[Donald Trump] has neither a law degree nor formal legal training, but over the course of that long history, he has become notorious in legal circles for thinking he knows better than the lawyers he hires — and then, very often, fires — and frequently is slow to pay if he does at all. . . .

Mr. Trump’s intensely litigious nature has made his strategy more visible over the years than it might otherwise be. He has long used delay tactics in legal matters that emerged from business disputes, and since becoming a politician he has repeatedly tried to throw sand in the gears of the legal system, using the resulting slow pace of litigation to run out the clock until seismic events shifted the playing field. . . .

The disputes chewed up time — for briefings, arguments and then the period judges took to craft opinions — and while Mr. Trump often lost those decisions, he would simply appeal again and restart the process.

In that way, Mr. Trump effectively won despite losing . . .

Mr. Trump also has a lengthy history of conflating legal problems with public-relations problems, treating every matter as one that can be dealt with in terms of a media strategy.

While in office [as president], he talked often about investigations he faced — so much so that some of his comments became possible acts of obstruction of justice scrutinized by a special counsel, including tweets in 2018 suggesting that Mr. [Michael D.] Cohen, whose home and office had just been searched by the F.B.I., would never turn against him.^[11]

Only the president [Donald Trump] and his allies, his supporters, and their anointed are entitled to the rights and protections of the law, and if necessary, immunity from it. The rest of us are entitled only to cruelty, by their whim. This is how the powerful have ever kept the powerless divided and in their place, and enriched themselves in the process.^[12]