Sometimes with legislation. Sometimes with guns.
Pundits and news sites are still analyzing fallout from CNN’s Trump “town hall” spectacle. We learned nothing about the former president we did not already know. The fiasco changed no minds. James Fallows invoked “shocking but not surprising” to summarize the show. “Don’t say you haven’t been warned” sits atop Susan Glasser’s review. The jeers and laughter from the Trump mob, she writes, “was the tell, the most revealing part of the whole exercise.” Without “the approval of the mob, his mob,” Trump “would be just another angry old American man” shouting at his TV instead of being on TV.
It is the audience for his shtick that gives it power, and us pause. The relationship is symbiotic, but Trump is not telling them anything they don’t want to hear. Trump has his grievances, but he validates theirs, gives them permission to wear “Fuck Your Feelings” tee shirts in public. He reads the room. He sees them and makes them feel seen in all their dark seething. He is their retribution.
Whatever other mind-altering substances he abuses, Trump is famously a teetotaler. A therapist friend once commented that Baptist teetotaling culture produces a slew of closet drinkers. Fundamentalists oversell their product. They make unrealistic claims for how much better life goes with Jesus (or whoever). When those extravagant claims don’t pan out, believers hide their troubles for fear of appearing of weak faith. They repress their feelings. Stuff them down deep.
I’m going to butcher this, but here goes. The late Huston Smith (“The Religions of Man”) gave a lecture at my university in which he explained that mankind has several basic needs: personal, physical, social. The major religions of the world address those to differing degrees, emphasizing some, downplaying others, and the cultures those religions inform reflect both their benefits and deficiencies. Where strict social conformity is valued most strongly, personal expression tends to take a back seat. Until in situations like war where normal social restraints no longer apply. That’s when things get really ugly. (Or at least that’s what I remember taking away.)
The American right sees itself fighting a culture war. The rest you can figure out. Trump has freed the repressed Unfreedom Caucus to vent its collective spleen at anyone and everyone it’s hated for years. Sometimes with insults. Sometimes with legislation. Sometimes with guns.
Bill Lueders, editor-at-large of The Progressive, writes at The Bulwark:
Trump has always been animated by a longing to punish his enemies. But now this desire for vengeance seems to be catching on across the Republican spectrum. Retribution is all the rage, not just to punish political opponents but to crack down on internal dissent. The good news is that, in many of these cases, retribution appears to be backfiring thanks to both public aversion to tyrannical overreach and this crazy little thing called law.
Lueders lists recent instances in which Republican attempts at retribution went wrong. But that does not mean people did not or will not get hurt. They mean to bring it. With Trump’s encouragement and blessing.