This is not the reaction of a normal person. It is the reaction not of a criminal but of a revolutionary nihilist, someone who is not interested merely in breaking the law but dismantling it.
As with the Jan. 6 plot, there doesn’t appear to have been a lot of thought put into the question of what happens next. It appears to have no intent but to create as much havoc as possible, with whatever harm to national security or the rule of law: a vast primal scream, releasing the populist id from whatever lingering restraint may still confine it.
This is what makes Mr. Trump so dangerous. There’s no plan. There’s no purpose. It’s all id. That’s all he is: a bloated, incontinent bag of every conceivable vice, belching forth at irregular intervals and covering everything within reach. Had he any of the normal human impulses – for respect, or dignity, or even self-preservation – he would be more easily recognizable, and thus comprehensible.
But as it is he is invincible. It isn’t his vast wealth that is the source of his power, or his mastery of social media, or the bottomless cynicism of his enablers in the Republican leadership. It is his utter shamelessness, his refusal to be bound by any norm, convention or law, even the laws of logic.
You can see how this appeals to his supporters. What is Mr. Trump’s desire to be free of all restraint but their own, on a gargantuan scale? What is Mr. Trump’s disregard for facts but their own preference for fantasy, to believe what they want to believe?
But it also consistently disarms his critics. It is simply
impossible to comprehend a void so profound: The temptation is always to think
of him as merely an ignoramus, or a crook, or a liar, or an authoritarian, or a
child of 9, or a serial sexual molester, or a sort of grand national arsonist,
setting fire to every institution in sight, and not as all of these things and
more.
Worse, he succeeds in corrupting them, as much as his supporters, wearing them down by the sheer volume of his offences, to the point that they find, in spite of themselves, they are grading him according to his own constantly shifting curve.
Sure, this latest thing he has done is outrageous, but is it any more outrageous
than we have come to expect from him? Or if it is, does it exceed previous
records by as much as had been expected? Perhaps his behaviour is growing
steadily worse, but is it actually accelerating toward the abyss? Or merely
steady as she goes?
So we come to
the present pass, with the world’s most powerful nation, with all of its
magnificent history and intricate constitutional architecture, at the mercy of
a pathological narcissist, trembling at the thought of bringing him to justice
– as if it were the act of applying the law to him, and not his brazen defiance
of it, that were the anomaly.