The reason Trump voters identify with Trump is that he thinks like they do. For instance, they are bedeviled by legalities, the way ordinances and even the Covenants, Conditions and Restrictions (CC&Rs) relating to their property, confound them b/c they are, like Trump, transactional. The same thing with their taxes. If it says anyone under the age of 12 is allowed an extra ice cream cone, then they’ll present their 36 year old brother-in-law as under 12 and get upset when that is not accepted. I’m sure you think I exaggerate (surely you jest), but I’ve been embarrassed being with people who try to claim something only on the bases that they’ll get something for it. I’ll bet the IRS could give us piles of absolutely ridiculous claims made by people filing their returns.
Let’s take what a normal person might do. Say you want your nephew to attend the high school in your neighborhood but he lives elsewhere. So you claim your address as his. Then perhaps the school district community liaison officer aka truant officer checks when the kid gets in trouble and finds he does not actually live with you. So you concede and he winds up at the appropriate school (Juvie?).
But not a Trump voter. They are outraged that #1 you’ve called them on it, #2 you have that “stupid” rule, #3 this came to their attention b/c of another “stupid” school rule e.g. not installing a camera in the girls’ bathroom. And that’s just for starters. There’s a whole lot of things they don’t like about legalities.
In other words, we are looking at Trump world, where running red lights. parking in handicapped spaces (appropriate in Trump’s case), “borrowing” your neighbor’s lawn mower without asking and not returning it, driving after just a few drinks, and on and on. All restrictions that Real Americans chafe under. And don’t forget the guns.
I’ve noticed people like this before but just assumed everyone knew them. But seeing one in the White House and listening to these pieces of garbage like Kelly Ann Conway spew every excuse for Trump’s behavior, I realized too many people were talking like this was “unprecedented” when the truth is they already know people like Trump…. OR, they bought the hype that the media was against him. They are, just like they are against would-be dictators all over the world: Assad, the Ayatollahs, the Pakistani Secret Service (ISI), Robert Mugabe….. oh, and they didn’t care much for Hitler either.
But the first group, those calling Trump unprecedented, are like so many who gradually come to accept the outrageous brother-in-law, the flailing daughter-in-law, the nasty grandpa, and give up on calling them out. Alcoholics do well in this environment. The media and political pundits call this “normalizing Trump,” Daniel Patrick Moynihan called it “defining deviancy downward.”
I could, as my faithful readers know, go on and on about the trampling of what was once the United States of America and its values and institutions by this mob, but I think Steve Schmidt, McCain’s campaign manager, put it best: https://barrett.lang-learn.org/2018/04/10/to-post-in-every-courthouse-and-school-room-in-the-country/