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NYT: Trump Embraces Lawlessness, but in the Name of a Higher Law (NYT Pitchbot: "Someone shoot me")
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/02/opinion/trump-trial-2024-election.htmlGUEST ESSAY
Trump Embraces Lawlessness, but in the Name of a Higher Law
May 2, 2024, 5:02 a.m. ET
By Matthew Schmitz
Mr. Schmitz is a founder and an editor of Compact, an online magazine.
-snip-
Mr. Trump and his associates may seem to welcome this characterization. He celebrates himself (inaccurately, as it happens) as a man who has been investigated “more than Billy the Kid, Jesse James and Al Capone combined.” He has praised James as “a great bank robber” and urged his fans to watch the 1932 film “Scarface,” based on Capone’s career. Donald Trump Jr. sells T-shirts that display his father’s mug shot with the words “Wanted — for president.”
For Mr. Trump’s detractors, such an open embrace of lawlessness confirms the danger he presents. But this understanding of his newfound criminal persona, a persona his legal opponents have helped to thrust upon him, overlooks something important: Mr. Trump may pose a threat to our political system as it now exists, but it is a threat animated by a democratic spirit. It is the threat of the outlaw hero, a figure of defiance with deep roots in American culture who exposes the injustices and hypocrisies of a corrupt system.
The outlaws in whose image Mr. Trump styles himself gained fame in the United States because they seemed to embody freedom and spontaneity, along with mistrust of authority and indifference to polite convention. They appealed to democratic impulses, however perversely. As the folklorist Stephen Knight has observed, the core values of the figure of the good outlaw are “liberty and equality.” These outlaws were lawless, yes, but in the name of a higher law. It is no coincidence that Mr. Trump recently described himself as the “public enemy of a rogue regime.”
The imagery is politically salient. Insofar as it resonates with his supporters, it may be an indication not that they are indifferent to our political tradition but rather that they are drawn to one of its core mythologies — and it suggests that attempts to use the legal system to defeat him politically will backfire.
-snip-
Trump Embraces Lawlessness, but in the Name of a Higher Law
May 2, 2024, 5:02 a.m. ET
By Matthew Schmitz
Mr. Schmitz is a founder and an editor of Compact, an online magazine.
-snip-
Mr. Trump and his associates may seem to welcome this characterization. He celebrates himself (inaccurately, as it happens) as a man who has been investigated “more than Billy the Kid, Jesse James and Al Capone combined.” He has praised James as “a great bank robber” and urged his fans to watch the 1932 film “Scarface,” based on Capone’s career. Donald Trump Jr. sells T-shirts that display his father’s mug shot with the words “Wanted — for president.”
For Mr. Trump’s detractors, such an open embrace of lawlessness confirms the danger he presents. But this understanding of his newfound criminal persona, a persona his legal opponents have helped to thrust upon him, overlooks something important: Mr. Trump may pose a threat to our political system as it now exists, but it is a threat animated by a democratic spirit. It is the threat of the outlaw hero, a figure of defiance with deep roots in American culture who exposes the injustices and hypocrisies of a corrupt system.
The outlaws in whose image Mr. Trump styles himself gained fame in the United States because they seemed to embody freedom and spontaneity, along with mistrust of authority and indifference to polite convention. They appealed to democratic impulses, however perversely. As the folklorist Stephen Knight has observed, the core values of the figure of the good outlaw are “liberty and equality.” These outlaws were lawless, yes, but in the name of a higher law. It is no coincidence that Mr. Trump recently described himself as the “public enemy of a rogue regime.”
The imagery is politically salient. Insofar as it resonates with his supporters, it may be an indication not that they are indifferent to our political tradition but rather that they are drawn to one of its core mythologies — and it suggests that attempts to use the legal system to defeat him politically will backfire.
-snip-
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