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Thread: Why Trump Supporters Don't Believe He is Corrupt

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    Default Why Trump Supporters Don't Believe He is Corrupt

    https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/ar...uption/568147/

    On Wednesday morning, the lead story on FoxNews.com was not Michael Cohen’s admission that Donald Trump had instructed him to violate campaign-finance laws by paying hush money to two of Trump’s mistresses. It was the alleged murder of a white Iowa woman, Mollie Tibbetts, by an undocumented Latino immigrant, Cristhian Rivera.

    On their face, the two stories have little in common. Fox is simply covering the Iowa murder because it distracts attention from a revelation that makes Trump look bad. But dig deeper and the two stories are connected: They represent competing notions of what corruption is.

    Cohen’s admission highlights one of the enduring riddles of the Trump era. Trump’s supporters say they care about corruption. During the campaign, they cheered his vow to “drain the swamp” in Washington, D.C. When Morning Consult asked Americans in May 2016 to explain why they disliked Hillary Clinton, the second-most-common answer was that she was “corrupt.” And yet, Trump supporters appear largely unfazed by the mounting evidence that Trump is the least ethical president in modern American history. When asked last month whether they considered Trump corrupt, only 14 percent of Republicans said yes. Even Cohen’s allegation is unlikely to change that.

    The answer may lie in how Trump and his supporters define corruption. In a forthcoming book titled How Fascism Works, the Yale philosophy professor Jason Stanley makes an intriguing claim. “Corruption, to the fascist politician,” he suggests, “is really about the corruption of purity rather than of the law. Officially, the fascist politician’s denunciations of corruption sound like a denunciation of political corruption. But such talk is intended to evoke corruption in the sense of the usurpation of the traditional order.”

    Fox’s decision to focus on the Iowa murder rather than Cohen’s guilty plea illustrates Stanley’s point. In the eyes of many Fox viewers, I suspect, the network isn’t ignoring corruption so much as highlighting the kind that really matters. When Trump instructed Cohen to pay off women with whom he’d had affairs, he may have been violating the law. But he was upholding traditional gender and class hierarchies. Since time immemorial, powerful men have been cheating on their wives and using their power to evade the consequences.

    The Iowa murder, by contrast, signifies the inversion—the corruption—of that “traditional order.” Throughout American history, few notions have been as sacrosanct as the belief that white women must be protected from nonwhite men. By allegedly murdering Tibbetts, Rivera did not merely violate the law. He did something more subversive: He violated America’s traditional racial and sexual norms.

    Trump’s supporters honor the American tradition of discrimination.

    Once you grasp that for Trump and many of his supporters, corruption means less the violation of law than the violation of established hierarchies, their behavior makes more sense. Since 2014, Trump has employed the phrase rule of law nine times in tweets. Seven of them refer to illegal immigration.

    Why were Trump’s supporters so convinced that Clinton was the more corrupt candidate even as reporters uncovered far more damning evidence about Trump’s foundation than they did about Clinton’s? Likely because Clinton’s candidacy threatened traditional gender roles. For many Americans, female ambition—especially in service of a feminist agenda—in and of itself represents a form of corruption. “When female politicians were described as power-seeking,” noted the Yale researchers Victoria Brescoll and Tyler Okimoto in a 2010 study, “participants experienced feelings of moral outrage (i.e., contempt, anger, and/or disgust).”

    Cohen’s admission makes it harder for Republicans to claim that Trump didn’t violate the law. But it doesn’t really matter. For many Republicans, Trump remains uncorrupt—indeed, anticorrupt—because what they fear most isn’t the corruption of American law; it’s the corruption of America’s traditional identity. And in the struggle against that form of corruption—the kind embodied by Cristhian Rivera—Trump isn’t the problem. He’s the solution.

    We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.

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    In other words its only corruption if done by the other party.
    Good article.

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    Quote Originally Posted by dUIgRRL View Post
    In other words its only corruption if done by the other party.
    Good article.

    go lay down till you sober up

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    So you agree with Trump that Hillary is corrupt? Maybe you should put down that pipe and take a nap.

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    Quote Originally Posted by dUIgRRL View Post
    In other words its only corruption if done by the other party.
    Good article.
    Trump has been a self aggrandizing liar and cheat for 40 years.. What makes Americans think he would change at 72?

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    Hello Gotcha68,

    Quote Originally Posted by Gotcha68 View Post
    https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/ar...uption/568147/

    On Wednesday morning, the lead story on FoxNews.com was not Michael Cohen’s admission that Donald Trump had instructed him to violate campaign-finance laws by paying hush money to two of Trump’s mistresses. It was the alleged murder of a white Iowa woman, Mollie Tibbetts, by an undocumented Latino immigrant, Cristhian Rivera.

    On their face, the two stories have little in common. Fox is simply covering the Iowa murder because it distracts attention from a revelation that makes Trump look bad. But dig deeper and the two stories are connected: They represent competing notions of what corruption is.

    Cohen’s admission highlights one of the enduring riddles of the Trump era. Trump’s supporters say they care about corruption. During the campaign, they cheered his vow to “drain the swamp” in Washington, D.C. When Morning Consult asked Americans in May 2016 to explain why they disliked Hillary Clinton, the second-most-common answer was that she was “corrupt.” And yet, Trump supporters appear largely unfazed by the mounting evidence that Trump is the least ethical president in modern American history. When asked last month whether they considered Trump corrupt, only 14 percent of Republicans said yes. Even Cohen’s allegation is unlikely to change that.

    The answer may lie in how Trump and his supporters define corruption. In a forthcoming book titled How Fascism Works, the Yale philosophy professor Jason Stanley makes an intriguing claim. “Corruption, to the fascist politician,” he suggests, “is really about the corruption of purity rather than of the law. Officially, the fascist politician’s denunciations of corruption sound like a denunciation of political corruption. But such talk is intended to evoke corruption in the sense of the usurpation of the traditional order.”

    Fox’s decision to focus on the Iowa murder rather than Cohen’s guilty plea illustrates Stanley’s point. In the eyes of many Fox viewers, I suspect, the network isn’t ignoring corruption so much as highlighting the kind that really matters. When Trump instructed Cohen to pay off women with whom he’d had affairs, he may have been violating the law. But he was upholding traditional gender and class hierarchies. Since time immemorial, powerful men have been cheating on their wives and using their power to evade the consequences.

    The Iowa murder, by contrast, signifies the inversion—the corruption—of that “traditional order.” Throughout American history, few notions have been as sacrosanct as the belief that white women must be protected from nonwhite men. By allegedly murdering Tibbetts, Rivera did not merely violate the law. He did something more subversive: He violated America’s traditional racial and sexual norms.

    Trump’s supporters honor the American tradition of discrimination.

    Once you grasp that for Trump and many of his supporters, corruption means less the violation of law than the violation of established hierarchies, their behavior makes more sense. Since 2014, Trump has employed the phrase rule of law nine times in tweets. Seven of them refer to illegal immigration.

    Why were Trump’s supporters so convinced that Clinton was the more corrupt candidate even as reporters uncovered far more damning evidence about Trump’s foundation than they did about Clinton’s? Likely because Clinton’s candidacy threatened traditional gender roles. For many Americans, female ambition—especially in service of a feminist agenda—in and of itself represents a form of corruption. “When female politicians were described as power-seeking,” noted the Yale researchers Victoria Brescoll and Tyler Okimoto in a 2010 study, “participants experienced feelings of moral outrage (i.e., contempt, anger, and/or disgust).”

    Cohen’s admission makes it harder for Republicans to claim that Trump didn’t violate the law. But it doesn’t really matter. For many Republicans, Trump remains uncorrupt—indeed, anticorrupt—because what they fear most isn’t the corruption of American law; it’s the corruption of America’s traditional identity. And in the struggle against that form of corruption—the kind embodied by Cristhian Rivera—Trump isn’t the problem. He’s the solution.

    We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.
    Fascinating.

    Thanks for posting this.

    It really does explain what has been quite mind-boggling to me.

    I respect people who deserve it, and it doesn't matter to me if they are conservative or liberal. Respect is mutual. Give it, get it. So I have just been perplexed to know that most of my conservative friends voted for this guy. These are people whom I respect, and I know darn well if Obama had all these scandals going on they would be all over his butt about it. But not Trump. Trump can do no wrong with them. I don't get it. They don't seem to want to talk about it much, almost as if there is some subconsicous shame there, and if they do talk about it, they usually go right into what-about-ism. So it has been pretty baffling.

    This explains it well.

    The what-about-ism is their main concern that outweighs the other stuff. All the reasons to hate Hillary are more important than ANYTHING Trump might have done. Literally.

    Very interesting.

    I was raised to think like that; and it's been so long since I even identified with that male-dominated kind of relationship, I forgot that even exists. I remember now. I know all relationships are not 50-50. I remember one guy I knew long ago but quit hanging out with. He just told his wife what to do. Like she was one of the kids. And she did it. Very weird. Some guys want to think they are 'in control,' and their wives are ultimately dependent and subservient to them.

    If a man can't see women as his equal, that is a basic underlying inescapable guide to his feelings about everything. But it would have to be at a very subconscious level. Not really part of any conscious thought patterns to decide to be that way, just a gut feeling. Like a basis for everything else.

    If that's the principle being operated under, then it makes sense that it just feels wrong to have a woman as President. Even though he might believe he thinks women are simply equal but different.

    Ya know, I always thought there would be a female President before there would be a black President. Hillary certainly believed her destiny was to break that glass ceiling, that she should have won in '08. Obama's rise came seemingly out of nowhere, his charisma off the charts. No wonder she felt it was owed to her in '16 and used everything at her disposal to make that happen. If only she would have let Bernie do to her the same thing Obama had. Now, THAT would have been an easy choice in '16. Bernie or Trump. There's so little to hate about Bernie. Not much dirt there to exploit. Pretty clean candidate. All there was to hate about him was the S-word. And he shattered the pox on that, made it OK to talk about Democratic Socialism. But Trump might still have won that. Good old boys hate socialism as much as they hate the concept of dominant women.
    Personal Ignore Policy PIP: I like civil discourse. I will give you all the respect in the world if you respect me. Mouth off to me, or express overt racism, you will be PERMANENTLY Ignore Listed. Zero tolerance. No exceptions. I'll never read a word you write, even if quoted by another, nor respond to you, nor participate in your threads. ... Ignore the shallow. Cherish the thoughtful. Long Live Civil Discourse, Mutual Respect, and Good Debate! ps: Feel free to adopt my PIP. It works well.

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