Last week, we watched with horror the spread of a bizarre and inexplicable contagion—and it was not the coronavirus itself. Somehow, in spite of all evidence and reason, Trump's approval rating for his handling of the COVID-19 crisis was trending up!
Since that time, the rate of infection of this social delusion has stabilized. People seem to have remembered that they dislike Trump, and his approval rating has started to move back toward where it was pre-crisis (though it's certainly not evident that he's losing support, on net). As a friend put it to me in an email: "There are two curves I'm watching right now... thankfully this one's finally starting to bend down."
But why, oh why, was it going up at all? Why hasn't it in fact sunk through the floor? Perhaps it was related to the bizarre wave of premature optimism we witnessed last week in general. Based on the idea that the peak infection and death rate was now in sight, at least in some areas, people started to talk about reopening the economy again, and the markets began to climb upward from their recent low.
We were warned it was too soon to look for the light at the end of the tunnel. But we all did it anyway. Perhaps because we are so accustomed to the news cycle that our brains now are not wired to accept that the same piece of bad news may simply continue uninterrupted across several weeks or months. With every seven-day span, we demand a fresh take on the situation, whether or not the events of the world and nature actually justify it.
What certainly cannot be said with any justification is that Trump is doing a bang-up job. This has been a federal response that by every possible measure has gotten it wrong, time and again. Recent coverage has excavated in detail the way the administration actively contributed to making the crisis worse. And this evidence of errors of commission is so overwhelming that we've barely noticed the errors of omission- that is, all the things that the administration ought to be doing, but isn't.
Where, for instance, is the guidance, the planning, on all this? We keep asking in a vacuum questions like: if some businesses started reopening, which ones would they be? And when? What would that look like? How could we do it safely?
Why are we the ones doing all the speculating on this? Why is there not some kind of an answer to these questions?
Why is there not a document you can find somewhere that explains how to conduct life with varying degrees of social distancing; how to organize our social and economic lives on a sliding scale of virus alert level, which can be altered over time depending on region and the current rate of transmission, and in cooperation with guidance from public health experts?
There is no such document. There is no White House plan on this. There is no guidance. All we have is Trump wildly contradicting his previous statements and re-tweeting a suggestion that he fire the leading public health official in charge of the COVID-19 response.
We would not accept this from any other administration. Any other head of state would be asked to have a plan, to have answers. Why do people not demand this of Trump? Why, indeed, do they actually seem to be rewarding him for his manic flailing?
If Trump were behaving in all of this as just a straightforward right-wing demagogue, it would make sense. The public's approbation of his approach would be depressing, but it would also be explicable—rooted in the worst and ugliest aspects of human nature. Yet, even in his usual role of a neo-authoritarian illiberal populist, Trump has not been staying on message.
It is true that Trump is outrageously stoking racist hatred against Asian Americans by crowing about how quickly he "banned China." It is true that his administration has so far responded to the virus by summarily expelling all asylum-seekers, including unaccompanied children, in flagrant violation of international law and U.S. statute. It is true that his Justice Department has requested dangerously expansive emergency powers from Congress.
But Trump has been erratic even in the appeals he makes to his usual stand-bys of racism, xenophobia, victim-blaming, scapegoating, etc. Some days the virus is the WHO's fault. Some days it is China's. Some days it is no big deal. Some days it is a human catastrophe.
He's all over the place, in short. So why is his messaging working on people?
We were discussing all this over dinner the other night, and a number of explanations were offered. He knows how to manipulate the media, my brother-in-law said. He's on TV every night, and everyone's watching. People are paying attention to him even more than they were before.
My sister and I, though, were convinced there had to be something else to it. Trump does indeed have the right-wing spin machine to surpass all others, as well as an infinitely loyal band of internet followers and trolls who will mimic him in twisting and denying any truth he dislikes.
But even then... with all those resources at their disposal, I'm not sure other presidents could have pulled the same thing off. Even with the exact same troll army and spin-doctors, I'm not convinced a different administration would be granted such a totally, abjectly free pass from the public for their bungling and mishandling of the crisis.
So again, we must ask—why?
Trump is of course aware of—and likes to gloat about—his seeming immunity to all the scandals that would ordinarily sink a president. He has remarked before on his capacity for getting away with grotesque behavior. As he famously put it, he could "stand in the middle of 5th avenue and shoot somebody" without losing votes.
In Shakespeare's Julius Caesar—that great study of political demagoguery—a character remarks at one point upon the seemingly infinite forbearance with which the great Roman public treats the usurping Caesar. After describing a scene of one of these acts of forgiveness, Casca remarks: "there's no heed to be taken of them; if Caesar had stabbed their mothers, they would have done no less."
Many of us have felt ourselves in the role of Casca, as we have watched Trump's candidacy and presidency unfold. Where is the accountability? Why are the expectations everyone has of him so monstrously low? If he had stabbed their mothers, would they care? As the title of an Onion article put it last October: "GOP Lawmakers Watch Silently As Trump Strangles Each Of Their Loved Ones In Turn."
Of course, GOP lawmakers are only granting him so much carte blanche because they fear a large segment of their own voting base would refuse to return them to office if they did otherwise. But why, in turn, does a large enough chunk of the electorate feel this way about Trump in the first place?
A lot of it is just Trump's usual appeal to the "deplorables," of course. And although there are not enough of them to win the popular vote (which is why Trump lost it, and is widely expected to lose it again in November), there may have been enough to swing the electoral college.
But something else is plainly at work when we start to see an actual numeric majority of people give a thumbs up in polling when asked to assess Trump's response to the coronavirus. This is more than just a matter of the people who backed him from the start, and were willing to vote for him in 2016.
In searching for explanations of this social mystery, I hypothesize it has something to do with a sense of personal identification. Trump, in his foggy-headed and arm-flailing response to the coronavirus, has been behaving just like all the rest of us. We don't know what to do about all this; he doesn't either. We're paralyzed by uncertainty; so is he. We didn't see any of this coming; he too seems to have been utterly blindsided by the course of events.
Trump mirrors back to us, in short, our own sense of desperation and helplessness in the midst of this crisis.
Of course, these are not actually the traits that make someone a good leader in a time of crisis. In moments like this, we need a degree of expertise. We need planning and foresight. We need an ability to defer to specialized knowledge—not absolutely or abjectly, but within reason. The president should be someone who has information about a problem before the rest of us do, and has it more abundantly, and is acting on it before it becomes a crisis.
Those are the traits that are more helpful and needed in a global pandemic. But they are not the traits with which we personally identify; and they are therefore not the ones to inspire a fierce and emotional loyalty.
Julius Caesar shows us something of this effect in action. In Shakespeare's play, Brutus speaks with the voice of expertise. He is the Anthony Fauci, you might say, of first-century BC Rome. After Caesar's assassination, he addresses the crowd in measured and eloquent tones, explaining why this course of action was necessary from a rational and public-spirited point of view.
Mark Antony, when he rejoins, claims to be offering his views on the matter without any special cleverness, expertise, knowledge or eloquence (and the joke is, of course, that in doing so, he is employing a far more deft rhetorical strategy than Brutus). "I am no orator, as Brutus is;/ But, as you know me all, a plain blunt man," he cries—as all demagogues have done down the ages since.
And of course, the people follow Antony. Because they are able to sympathize with him. By appearing to acknowledge his own limitations, he wins their sense of personal identification and empathy.
Perhaps in the public turning to Trump, therefore, there is something more complex happening than simply the usual stirring up of the worst traits in humankind. Perhaps there is also a misdirection, a perversion and abuse, of some of our more generous impulses.
People respond to Trump with forgiveness and magnanimity, because they see themselves in him. They choose to regard him in the light of his humanity, despite so much evidence of his inhumanity to other people, especially those most vulnerable, most at his mercy. Because people look at him and think: he is like me. He has my flaws. If I were elevated to power, I would make the same mistakes he does. I would do no better. So I cannot condemn him for his errors.
In how they relate to Trump, therefore, the American people betray a surprising bias (one not in evidence, to put it mildly, in our system of mass incarceration) toward offering someone a second chance. And a third chance. And infinite chances after that. They want to judge not lest they be judged. They want not to neglect the beam in their own eye by condemning the mote in their neighbor's. They are, in short, trying to do the right thing.
But what happens when this endless denial of accountability for his actions allows Trump to foreclose the life options of so many other, vastly less powerful people? What about all the asylum-seekers being deported, all the people suffering in prisons and detention centers, let alone all the people perishing from coronavirus around the world, because of Trump's actions? By giving him endless chances, we foreclose even the first chance to our other neighbors.
There must, at last, be some sense in which we expect our leaders to exhibit traits that go beyond simply our own failings and limitations. To expect no better of them—to expect nothing at all, in fact—may appear an act of generosity; but it is also an act of brutality to the millions of lives who depend upon their actions.
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