This piece will be appearing in newspapers in my very red congressional district (VA-06).
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Many people are aware of the profound mystery at the center of the America in these times. My own experience of that mystery is deeply colored by my own experience of the goodness that I once saw at the heart of the (political, religious, moral) conservatism of the people among whom I live in Virginia’s rural Shenandoah Valley.
Conservative Goodness
Years ago, over the course of more than a decade , through hundreds of hours of radio conversations with callers, I came to see something fine that animated the best of such conservative folks. At the heart of their worldview, I came to see, was an allegiance to the valuable heritage that had been handed down in their culture.
It was a heritage embracing ideals, norms and rules that were woven together with their Christianity, their patriotism, and their dedication to virtues of good character.
It was conservative because of its emphasis on honoring what the generations before us had bequeathed as guides to life at both the individual and societal levels. But the ultimate values were beyond the liberal/conservative dichotomy, going into goodness itself—into lives lived well, and society functioning for the greater good.
I admired and appreciated that conservative goodness, with its respect for established norms.
Which brings us to the mystery: How does it come to pass that people who so valued the established norms of America could come now to be the unwavering supporters of a leader whose relationship with norms is the complete opposite of what they’d conveyed to me?
Trump’s Hostility Toward Norms
What can hardly be denied about Trump is that he’s motivated to violate norms. He’s different in that way from, say, Richard Nixon, who only violated norms and laws when he thought it necessary to get what he wanted, and who never wanted to be seen to be other than the pious person he’d always posed as being. No, with Trump he will go out of his way to step on a norm, even when it isn’t connected with advancing getting what he wants.
The way some people in the fall will go out of their way to step on leaves in order to hear the crackle, so also has Trump behaved in ways that we’ve never seen in an American president: acting consistently contrary the political norms that America has constructed over the generations to bolster the constructiveness of our political system. Trump has seemed to relish not just disregarding the laws and the Constitution, but also American norms for presidential behavior-- like his insulting people, and attacking critics, and telling lies at the rate of more than ten a day.
As I’ve catalogued in numerous previous pieces, it would be a challenge to imagine an American President whose conduct ran more counter to the Christian ethic, to the values proclaimed for generations on town squares on the 4th of July, or the virtues that have traditionally constituted “good character.”
Which raises two psychological questions: 1) Why would Trump be so hostile to norms? And 2) What can explain why people -- who used to stress their respect for such norms – would regard a leader who violates norms to such an extraordinary degree as a hero?
The Psychology of Norm-Breaking
From Trump’s behavior, an obvious conclusion to be drawn is this: in his formative years, Trump must suffered some very painful and enraging experiences with norms—experiences profound enough to lay down the foundation for a life-long antagonism toward norms and rules, and a defiant insistence not to be constrained by them.
(I know enough to reasonably speculate further that Trump’s father– a KKK racist, bad landlord, and by all accounts something of an S.O.B. –was emotionally abusive of his son. And I’d infer further that it’s likely that much of that abuse was wielded by the father in the forms of norms, limits, commands delivered in a punitive and humiliating fashion. Hence the anger, and the determination to violate them and get away with it.)
Which raises the question about those good conservatives who expressed their deep fealty to the very moral structures of their heritage being demolished by their present hero. Was that allegiance to norms but the top layer, with some Trump-like rebellious impulse simmering underneath, ready for some demagogue to tap into?
Clearly, they were not like Trump in their rebelliousness. But were they enough like Trump, below the surface, to find gratification in identifying with one who tramples on the structures they valued at –perhaps—only the conscious level?
Which raises the further question: has there been something in the way that conservative American culture has socialized its members that rankles, that violates, that causes some underground rebellious impulse against the strictures and values they are taught?
Years ago, in an unpublished book titled The Mystery of Mysteries, I investigated the psychology of the detective story that arose in the unusually strait-laced, repressive, conservative and proper culture of Victorian England. Those stories revolved around the discovery of proof that beneath the surface lurked terrible impulses: i.e. the discovery of a murdered corpse in that well-ordered world.
The allegiance of America’s conservatives to this norm-wrecking President seems like the corpse on the carpet in the Victorian parlor.