Tribe Trump and the Calamity of Lost Integrity

"We are in the midst of an unprecedented national catastrophe. The catastrophe is not the pandemic, or an economic depression, or killer cops, or looted cities, or racial inequities. These are all too precedented. What’s unprecedented is that never before have we been led by a man who so completely inverts the spirit of Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address. With malice toward all; with charity for none: eight words that encapsulate everything this president is, does and stands for."

– Bret Stephens, Pulitzer Prize winning American conservative journalist, editor, and columnist (June 06, 2020)

A nationwide review conducted by ABC News (May 2020) has identified at least 54 criminal cases where Trump was invoked in direct connection with violent acts, threats of violence or allegations of assault. Yet, his supporters ignore such allegations and even seem to relish his misbehavior.

Why do Trump supporters give Trump carte blanche as he spews hateful, divisive rhetoric and commits bad deed after bad deed?

Amy Chua, the author of Political Tribes: Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations, has argued, the tribal instinct is not just to belong, but also to exclude and to attack. “When groups feel threatened,” Chua writes, “they retreat into tribalism. They close ranks and become more insular, more defensive, more punitive, more us-versus-them.”

As this powerful tribal identity bonds Trump to his supporters, they perceive him as their protector, transforming his ruthlessness from a vice into a virtue.

Peter Hermann Wehner, American writer and former speech writer for the administrations of three U.S. presidents and vice president at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, says, “In my experience, if Trump supporters are asked to turn their gaze away from their perceived opponents, and instead to focus and reflect on him and on his failures, they respond in a couple of consistent ways.” How? Wehner explains …

“Many shift the topic immediately back to Democrats, because offering a vigorous moral defense of Donald Trump isn’t an easy task. It’s like asking people to stare directly into the sun; they might do it for an instant, but then they look away. But if you do succeed in keeping the topic on Trump, they often twist themselves into knots in order to defend him, and in some cases they simply deny reality …

“That they are defending a person who is fundamentally malicious, even if he makes judicial appointments of which they approve, is too painful for them to admit. They are similarly unable to admit they are defending an ethic that is at odds with what they have long championed. They have accepted, excused, and applauded Trump’s behavior and tactics, allowing his ends to justify his means.

“In important respects, this is antithetical to a virtue ethic. So once again, it’s easier for them to look away or engage in self-deception; to convince themselves that Donald Trump is not who he so clearly is.”

(Peter Hermann Wehner, “Why Trump Supporters Can’t Admit Who He Really Is:

Nothing bonds a group more tightly than a common enemy that is perceived as a mortal threat.” The Atlantic. September 04, 2020.)

How does Trump exemplify almost perfectly the antithesis of virtue? His lack of moderation, his constant exhibition of emotion and exaggeration (which he has called “truthful hyperbole,” his habit of lying and exchanging truths for “alternative facts,” his steady appeal to passion, fear and hatred, his attempt to pit one group against another and bully his critics – all are features of what historian Raymond J. Hoffman calls “the vice of incontinence.”

This incontinence is also reflected in the president’s use of Twitter, and arguably in his Cabinet members’ unabashed display of wealth, which is emblematic of a plutocracy rather than a modern democracy.

(Donald Trump. Trump: The Art of the Deal. 1987.)

(Raymond Joseph Hoffmann. “Donald Trump and the End of Virtue,”

The New Oxonian. February 25, 2017.)

(David Graham.“‘Alternative Facts’: The Needless Lies of the Trump Administration.” The Atlantic. January. 22, 2017.)

Thomas F. Pettigrew, PhD, research professor of social psychology at the University of California, explains why Trump supporters are vulnerable to an intense sense of threat. Pettigrew cites five tightly interconnected phenomena – “authoritarianism, social dominance, prejudice, lack of intergroup contact and relative deprivation” as attracting followers by enhancing the perception of dangerous threats to the society and offering simple solutions. Pettigrew says …

“Sometimes the threats are real (Hitler with massive Weimar inflation), but often they are imagined (Trump with patently false claims of a declining economy, massive voter fraud, enormously increased crime, and unvetted immigration). With a background of genuine terrorist threats, Mideast conflict, and a recent great recession, even imagined threats seem plausible – especially to citizens who are already easily threatened and who have witnessed rapid change in their localities.”

(Thomas F. Pettigrew. “Social Psychological Perspectives on Trump Supporters.” Journal of Social and Political Psychology. March 2017.)

Trump uses threats – real and largely imagined – to create a tribal identity in which his supporters ignore ethics and engage in self-deception while convincing themselves his amoral behaviors are justified to acquire their selfish ends. Trumpers forfeit their integrity and swallow outlandish lies of simple solutions because they fear change will materialize their own deep fears … fears that Trump continually stokes as he inflames his Make-America-Great-Again, White nationalistic agenda.