Profiting From Perfidy

SINCE TRUMP'S LATEST SET OF INDICTMENTS, his popularity among Republican voters has increased from about two thirds (67%) to about three fourths, (75%). Among Republican presidential candidates, it pays to be perfidious. Possible psychological explanations for this are numerous, most having to do with loving an underdog, helping a man to his feet instead of kicking him while he's down, and so forth. Another way of looking at it is to simply assert that people who support Donald Trump politically see the worst of themselves in him, what they consider the best of themselves - he gives them impicit permission to be their angriest, least moral, least intelligent versions of themselves, which to them is a sort of liberation from the onerous responsibilities associated with good citizenship. In other words, instant empathy. Included among those responsibilites is good behavior and respectable moral values, neither of which is currently in evidence in conservative America. It may well be that when other impending indictments are handed dwon by their respective grand juries, his approval rating will rise to near one hundred percent, and all other eleven and counting G.O.P. candidates give up the ghost, and drop out of the race, knowing they are licked. Already they have mostly, cannot succeed. At some point, one must make unkind comments about one's political foes to rise to power in these United States of Animosity. Only Asa Hutchinson and Chris Christie have thus far had the gumption to come clean about Trump. All the others fear that their own chances will shrivel and shrink by alienating Trump's powerful support base, and are hinting at future presential pardons for Trump, if he is convicted, and they are elected. Precisely how they think President Biden and the DNC managed to stack all these grand juries with solid Trump - hating Democrats has as yet not been explained. But one thing seems certain; Donald Trump will apparently have no need to shoot some poor person dead on Fifth Avenue in order to bolster his ranking among conservatives, as he said he could do with no negative impact on his popularity. It seems evident that a murder one rap not only would not adversely impact Don the Con's electibility, it would actually enhance it. If we are fortunate, will will not have to live to find out.