"Seething Rage"

How do Trump supporters justify ending elections and self-government in America?

"Those people were so frustrated."

Five years ago this week I was in South Carolina, at the "Tea Party Convention."  Trump spoke. So did Mike Huckabee, Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, and Rick Santorum. I saw the early signs of a campaign and presidency built around resentment and anger. It grew over the past four years. Trump's supporters showed up as he urged on January 6, expressing seething rage, and feeling entirely justified. 

"Seething rage"

I posted this photo on Facebook, back then, a bad selfie with Mike Huckabee. Huckabee said that Americans should feel enraged, but he was not the seething-rage candidate. Ted Cruz was the angry candidate, the guy who talked about America with a snarl. Ben Carson was mild and sleepy-eyed and Rick Santorum was sanctimonious. Back in January 2016 Donald Trump was still just one of several candidates, but he had his niche. He was the TV star and the resentment-candidate. 

His message was that people were picking on you, you good Americans. Black people and unwanted immigrants were stepping in line in front of you, taking something from you. The left was stealing from you, and so were corporations, politicians, and establishment big shots. He had not yet discovered the phrase "Drain the Swamp." He spoke of loss. You are losing something, America, taken away by that impostor Obama and his lousy health care plan. He had a way better one in mind. Mexico would pay for the wall.

The January 6 Capitol insurrection creates a problem for Republican spokespeople and officeholders. Most of them need to support Trump. Most Republicans are now Trump-populist-resentment Republicans, not straight-arrow-Romney-Republicans. They want a populist, nativist fighter. However,  events at the Capitol show indefensible behavior: People using flagpoles with the American flag or "Trump" on them as weapons, people stealing things, the death of a policeman, people barreling past uniformed officers. The disorder was on video. These aren't caravans. These aren't Muslims in traditional Arabic clothes. The videos cannot be denied. They were White Americans wearing MAGA hats, carrying Trump banners, yelling about killing Pence. That is hard to clean up.

Trump loyalists settled in on an approach. They justify the big thing and condemn the little things. There are exceptions--Liz Cheney, Bill Barr, Mitt Romney, and a few others--but most Republicans have averted their eyes from the fact of armed insurrection. This was an armed mob that attacked the American seat of government at a critical moment in their work completing the choice of an elected leader, with the intention of reversing the result of an election. It was an attack on American government, using force. That is a big thing. The 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor targeted a military installation 5,000 miles from the seat of government; this was an attack on the seat of government itself.

Of course, the complication is that Pearl Harbor was an attack by foreigners; this was an attack by Americans following a speech by the American president. He wound them up telling them "Republicans are constantly fighting like a boxer with his hands tied behind his back. It’s like a boxer. And we want to be so nice. We want to be so respectful of everybody, including bad people. And we’re going to have to fight much harder. And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore."

The narrative Americans get from Republicans is a subordinate clause, and then the real message: Yes, a few extremists in the Capitol mob were wrong, but the Capitol invasion is reasonable and just because the participants--and millions of other good Americans--feel seething rage. 

The primary amplifier of Trump's message is Fox News.

Fox's Steve Doocy said, 

But here's the thing. Those people were so frustrated because they had been told by the President of the United States that the election was stolen from him and the system was rigged against him. Uh, other Republicans did win, but it was rigged against him, so that's why they were frustrated. So, ultimately, he--he incited them to go down to Congress, uh, yesterday, and give 'em a piece of your mind--and they did that--except Congress had evacuated so instead some people looted and it was declared "a riot" by the police.

Fox's Brian Kilmeade put it this way:

I think Americans, I think Republicans can be forgiven for the skepticism, because whether or not an election was rigged, it certainly feels like society is rigged right now, from the complete squelching of dissent, on college campuses, inside the media institutions, to being lied to about the Hunter Biden story, to watching President Trump impeached, every step of the way watching President Trump impeached--his legitimacy questioned--you deal with that, not just four years but decades. You have to think, if not an election, an entire society is rigged against people who hold my values, and at some point you begin to understand that kind of skepticism.

 

Fox's Pete Hegseth said,

I talked to a lot of [the Capitol rioters.] They were hopeful that something could be done, but most of them acknowledged it wasn't going to happen. There were there to support the President of the United States and defend our republic and stand up and say "I just want a fair shake." I understand what this country represents. I see how the left is trying to tear it down. And I see one man in Donald Trump who has been willing to fight undeterred the poisons of political correctness, expose the media for what it is, a left wing cabal completely silencing communication across the board. They told us Russia was the biggest problem we had for four years--until they dropped it. And it was exposed for being totally false. So you don't have to believe the election was stolen to know that the system has begun to undercut people who love our country. That's what they were there for. 

One way for Americans to understand Fox anchors--and Franklin Graham, in yesterday's post--is to see them as partisan business-people, each working to motivate and preserve a paying audience. Graham is in the religion business; Fox in the advertising business. They will say what needs to be said. How crazy for Hegseth to complain that he completely silenced across the board. He is on TV!  And isn't Kilmeade doing dissent right then, and didn't he and other Fox hosts help Trump to question Obama's legitimacy?

What are these people thinking?  

Some of it is tribal, their leader-hero screwed up, but their instinct is to rally behind him. Stand by your man. Some of it is partisan; Republicans are Republicans. Some of it is the bigger issue of resentment that Trump has spoken to for five years. It has been nurtured and grown into seething rage sufficient that thousands of people gathered with weapons and banners to carry out a revolt against their own government. 

They resent the changes that are happening in the modern world. They are being displaced as the default "regular" Americans. They are one of many now, not unquestioned in place solely on top of the pyramid of "normal" and privilege. The country is more urban, more cosmopolitan, more diverse. Power is shared more broadly, including among people who many Americans thought of as outsiders and marginalized. Now they fear that they--a heterosexual White married Christian--are maybe the outsiders. They aren't, but they fear it and they see change happening and they observe the left as pushing the change. They are pushing back.

The times are a-changing and a lot of people are uncomfortable with that-- uncomfortable enough that they would destroy America's government to "take back the country." Trump said they were right to do it. It was fighting back. Trump will make America great again.

And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.