The popularity of Donald Trump among Republican voters tells something about their naivety before a presidential candidate who wants the president to enjoy “total immunity” against criminal prosecution. How can we explain that what was the party of law and order closes ranks behind a guy facing 91 criminal charges in four different trials, even admitting that some of the charges are questionable? Perhaps a reflection by 54-year-old Jocelyn Kanan, a New Hampshire fan of Trump who works for an industrial building company, points to one of the factors at play (quoted from “Trump’s Legal Woes Splinter GOP Unity,” Wall Street Journal, January 21, 2024):
“All of us at some point we did something. Nobody is an angel,” Kanan said.
In the United States 8% of adults have a felony conviction, that is, are felons for life (except for expungements, which depend on state laws and have many exceptions). This 8% is composed of 23% in the black population and 6% among the non-blacks. More than 1 American adult on 12 you meet in the street is a convicted felon. Moreover, one-half of black males have been arrested at least once before they reached adulthood, and 39% of white males too. (Sarah K. Shannon et al., “The Growth, Scope, and Spatial Distribution of People With Felony Records in the United States, 1948-2010,” Demography, vol. 54 [2017]. The data are for 2010.)
Not “all of us” but very many “at some point we did something” very bad according to some law. This is due to the criminalization of so many actions by so many laws. Some of those who “did something” are husbands or sons but also wives or daughters of other people, which adds up to lots of individuals. Many ordinary individuals have been continuously bullied by the powers in place. Who would be surprised that so many people are furious with the system? Significantly, Mr. Trump does not advocate against the criminalization of minor youth errors and trifles of ordinary people; he wants “total immunity” for himself.
READER COMMENTS
Peter
Jan 28 2024 at 12:25pm
Well said. Still in your last sentence you capture the one issue I have with Trump on this and sadly you see it a lot even with convicts, some sort of Stockholm syndrome. They have intimately seen the system in its full ignominy and yet they still full throated support it sans their particular travesty with it.
Even today you hear Trump celebrating law enforcement, prosecutors, judges, criminal laws, etc; I’m to lazy to look it up but I’d bet if he was asked Trump would have voiced support of that recent nitrogen execution.
It just blows my mind given the amount of criminals, as you forget misdemeanors make one a criminal as well and I’d like to see the percentages on those too in your posting, and their supporters, i.e. families and friends, that they don’t utilize the ballot to address these issues in the states they aren’t disenfranchised. Like how is it there is no criminal voting block and why don’t they vote in their interests sans the argument they are, i.e. jail temporarily removes some of their competitors while also providing them an educational facility to improve their skills.
Pierre Lemieux
Jan 28 2024 at 12:57pm
Peter: Interesting comments, with which I have no basic disagreement. But let me just focus on the one point where I think some public-choice analysis is required. You ask:
The problem is that “a block” doesn’t vote. Each individual (when not disenfranchised) votes for himself, secretly, and he knows that the result of the election will not be different had he not voted or voted for the other side. Voting his interests would have no effect, so voting his opinion or his intuitions is the second-best alternative. (This is why rich East-Coast and West-Coast rich progressives vote to be expropriated.)
The only way a virtual “block” can be constituted is if a political entrepreneur persuades the “members” of the “block” to follow him, have some fun (like at a football match), vote for his proposal–in our case, the decriminalization of trifles and victimless crimes–and elect him. Why this does not happen is the real question to ask.
Robert EV
Feb 7 2024 at 4:53pm
Sorry Pierre, I also occasionally play the lottery too. https://people.howstuffworks.com/can-single-vote-change-election-outcome.htm
Every once in a while some lucky dog wins!
Craig
Jan 28 2024 at 3:26pm
Drugs lead to many convictions for felonies and misdemeanors of course which likely shouldn’t even be criminalized to begin with. That being said I can attest that to get convicted of a felony and sentenced to prison, you really really have to try. I mean really the system is really designed NOT to do this actually. NJ even has things like ‘pre trial intervention’ and other tracks to keep you away from a conviction. FL has a thing called deferred prosecution. NJ even has a presumption against incarceration for first time non-violent offenders.
“they don’t utilize the ballot to address these issues”
To be honest most tend to understand they’re messing up, they USUALLY will disagree as to the severity of the punishment of course. The real problem honestly is that, historically, one could just move away and find better luck elsewhere without the scarlet letter of conviction, now with modern computers/information systems, to be honest if you’re sitting on a criminal record and can’t get an expungement strongly consider emigration or starting your own business because employment is likely going to a difficult track for you. On the flip side also consider that employers CAN and ARE held LIABLE for negligent hiring/negligent retention.
Pierre Lemieux
Jan 28 2024 at 8:31pm
Craig: You write:
The data I cited were about the number and proportion of convicted felons, not the number of incarcerated individuals. But if what you say is true (and, with due respect, I don’t think it is), this must really be a country of thugs. The US is the country with the highest proportion of incarcerated people in the world, followed by Rwanda, Turkmenistan, El Savador, Cuba, etc. Russia is far down. See https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/incarceration-rates-by-country
Craig
Jan 28 2024 at 10:17pm
“But if what you say is true (and, with due respect, I don’t think it is), this must really be a country of thugs. ”
Well, it seems to be a country without dads, that’s for sure and I might add that American society is particular prone to violence when compared to other developed nations. There really is a very violent streak in American culture. Last I might add that no matter how you slice it statistically speaking 50% of the population has below average intelligence and you cite “8% of adults have a felony conviction” — ok, well, .1587 [15.87% are below 1 standard deviation from the mean] * 300mn = 47.61mn people with an IQ below 85, right?
“Average IQ for prison inmates (serving sentences of 2 years to life) is 90.53. Average IQ for “state jail” inmates (serving sentences of 6 months to 2 years) is 91.15.”
I’ve seen this play out and by the time somebody is being convicted of a felony as an adult there is typically a long record behind that of multiple arrests. Multiple instances of ‘wrist slaps’
Peter
Jan 29 2024 at 1:24am
And yet nobody would take a typical drug that has the false positive rate of the criminal justice system nor are “typical” of comfort to the tens of thousands of criminals who are actually innocent to use the legal term (as opposed to factually innocent). Nor is atypical rare. I’m have an IQ of 142 and I’m a bonafide felon though actually innocent because regardless what you think, and the black letter law, the system is geared to criminalize people in fact.
I was charged with a crime where not a single criminal element was met and was even strong clear evidence to the contrary. The DA was a former judge and my judge’s mentor prior to his recent resignation to run and take the DA position. He (DA) was facing reelection and under investigation for taking Federal funds and then misusing them so he had to put up some arrests and convictions in the correct category so he randomly arrested and charged ten people with the identical crime in two weeks. I also came to find out my lawyer was personal friend’s with the trial judge as well afterwards as he used to be his graduate advisor.
All my motions are held off the record as were all my court appearances sans the plea and sentencing. The judge told me directly off the record I could take a 5 years unsupervised no conditions probation plea and STFU about it or he would give me 10 years prison with effectively no parole. I had another lawyer run the numbers and no person on the last thirty years had been found not guilty by a local jury with a similar charge and ethnicity, nor had the parole board ever granted parole even a day early for the same. The judge denied every motion including to continue the case, change venues, change judges, change defense council, or even to show cause given there was none.
My second lawyer, who was denied from officially representing me in court, told me I could reject the plea and fight it out in prison where I’d probably lose given the politics of it and the popularity of the DA plus the plea was worded to ensure appeals couldn’t be pursued. Even if I eventually won, it would still be years from now or I could go home to my minor children that day and raise them and move on with my life as a felon but at least not doing a hard ten as a prison population ethnic minority in state that fails every PREA audit and where prisoners are routinely found dead and yet no one has ever been prosecuted for either even when staff has been proven to be involved.
But yeah, what you said
Craig
Jan 28 2024 at 3:14pm
“Many of Us at Some Point Did Something”
“It wasn’t me.” – Shaggy
The moment I had children the myth of St. Craig grew daily.
“How can we explain that what was the party of law and order closes ranks behind a guy facing 91 criminal charges in four different trials”
Don’t underestimate the contempt for the regime, the Republican neocons and the Democratic Party.
Ahmed Fares
Jan 28 2024 at 3:58pm
re: transactional politics
steve
Jan 28 2024 at 7:52pm
Evangelicals are mixed. Many have convinced themselves that he is a true Christian.
https://www.amazon.com/Faith-Donald-Trump-Spiritual-Biography/dp/0062749587
Steve
Pierre Lemieux
Jan 28 2024 at 8:10pm
Steve: Interesting. If Jesus had not been resurrected, he would be rolling in his grave.
Monte
Jan 29 2024 at 2:44am
Probably, just as He would be over those snakes, that brood of vipers, the democrats.
vince
Jan 29 2024 at 6:18pm
What is a true Christian? Please don’t say it’s someone who does not sin.
Jose Pablo
Jan 29 2024 at 9:31pm
Vince, if you are not a sinner is not worth to be Christian. You are not going to use the full potential of the religion.
Now, if you are a serious sinner then, there is no better place to be! You can commit a sin and you have always the option to repent and be forgiven. An unlimited number of times! Even for the same sin! No judgement, just repent and you will be forgiven.
Even better, if you are a sinner and repent you will be preferred to the “permanently righteous” (Lc 15:11-32). I certainly can only sympathize with this approach; afterall permanently righteous people are so extremely boring!
Even more, all Christians are born sinners. So it is, so to speak, the “by default” option. They sure know how to make you feel at home! … I mean, if a newborn and I are both equally sinners …
I am a serial sinner, but I do have repented every single time. Most of the times I was seriously repented by the next morning. At least in the 50% of the cases that I could still remember my sins by that time (actually, I have always wondered if we Christians are forgiven for the sins that we cannot remember since the repent / be forgiven cycle is not available to us in these cases).
I don’t know if Trump is a Christian, but I would strongly recommend him to be one. He sure is going to take full advantage of the Christians’ approach to sin. Like very few other people!
Pierre Lemieux
Jan 28 2024 at 8:22pm
Ahmed: Whom is this quoted from?
Ahmed Fares
Jan 28 2024 at 10:47pm
The Guardian
Trump doubled his voting base in Iowa. Here’s who voted for him
steve
Jan 29 2024 at 10:39am
Pierre- The media doesnt really cover religion very much. Evangelicalism is what I grew up with and what most of my very large family still practices so I hear about it first hand, also from friends and employees. What most people dont know is that evangelical leaders have long been willing to give political cover and support to politicians on a transactional basis but will also go to great lengths to convince themselves that the person they are supporting is a true Christian and they are doing the work of God, even when it is illegal or otherwise immoral. David Kuo, one of the two people running the Bush II faith and community outreach documented a lot of it in the book he wrote. When religion and politics mix religion always loses.
Steve
MarkW
Jan 28 2024 at 4:25pm
I’m not a Trump supporter. I haven’t ever voted for him and certainly won’t this time. But that’s because of his politics, not the criminal charges – which seem like lawfare to me (as did the impeachment efforts when he was president).
Craig
Jan 28 2024 at 10:20pm
I understand why people are #NeverTrump; I get it. What I don’t understand is why some people don’t realize that there actually are #NeverDemocrat ?
MarkW
Jan 29 2024 at 7:33am
Oh, I haven’t and won’t vote for Biden either. I’ve long stopped feeling like I have to hold my nose and vote for one of the major candidates. My vote is never going to affect the outcome, so there’s no reason whatsoever not to vote as close to my true preference as possible. I mean, why end up feeling complicit in whichever flavor of stupidity we end up getting? The candidate I vote for won’t win, of course, but so what?
robc
Jan 29 2024 at 9:40am
1988 was the last time I voted for a candidate who finished top two.
Its the vote I regret the most. Ron Paul was right there on my ballot and I didnt do it.
robc
Jan 29 2024 at 9:41am
Just to be clear, Prez votes. I have voted for people in smaller races who actually won!
MarkW
Jan 29 2024 at 10:34am
Just to be clear, Prez votes. I have voted for people in smaller races who actually won!
Sure — but probably never *because* you voted for them.
steve
Jan 29 2024 at 10:44am
I mostly vote against candidates. I think the last president I actually voted for was Reagan. I voted against Democratic candidate until McCain/Palin. I will vote against Trump but will quite happily vote against Dem candidates again when the GOP gives us normal candidates again.
Steve
Monte
Jan 29 2024 at 2:13am
Hear! Hear! While republicans (Trump, in particular) behave more like rogue elephants – self-destructive, isolated, aberrant, dangerous, or uncontrollable – and whose party is constantly at odds with itself, democrats, are a much more insidious type of herd animal. Like muskoxen:
Count me as a #NeverDemocats’er.
Pierre Lemieux
Jan 29 2024 at 8:36am
Monte: Whom were you quoting in your second quote? The economic analysis of politics is not the author’s strong field.
Monte
Jan 29 2024 at 10:44am
Monsieur Lemieux,
Mine was not an economic analysis, but a characterization. The quote is a National Park Service description of the Muskoxen’s circle defense, and one that I believe portrays the herd mentality of the Democratic Party. It has served them well.
vince
Jan 29 2024 at 1:37pm
How did you determine his supporters are naive? Are you convicting them without a trial?
A charge is not a conviction, but the answer to your question is easy. They see it as politics. It’s been clear even before he took office that the Democrats would do everything they could to deny him the Office.
Presidential immunity doesn’t mean a President can do whatever he wants.
Jose Pablo
Jan 29 2024 at 8:59pm
Not “all of us” but very many “at some point we did something” very bad according to some law.
What the data support, Pierre, is that “very many “at some point we were caught doing something” very bad according to some law”
Given the US clearing rates (around 50% for murder, 25% for rape, 10% for motor vehicle theft …) the % of us that “at some point we did something” very bad”, should be much higher than 1 on 12.
And “cleared” means that somebody was arrested and charged with the commission of the offence, not necessarily convicted. In the US only 80% of people charged with an offence is finally convicted.
Sure, some of the non-cleared crimes were committed by criminals finally convicted for other crime(s).
Let’s say that the average clearing rate for serious offences is around 30% and let’s say that around 40% of non-cleared crimes were committed by people finally convicted for other crimes (I am totally making up this last number, put here your best guess).
That would mean that, in the United States something around 20-25% of adults have comitted a felony, although only around 1/3 of them have been finally convicted for it.
That means that around 1 in 4 / (5?) Americans have, at some point, done something very bad.
Asks “54-year-old Jocelyn Kanan, a New Hampshire fan of Trump who works for an industrial building company” what he thinks of the bunch of criminal immigrants that are crossing the southern border on a daily basis.
I am pretty sure he would not answer:
All of us at some point we did something. Nobody is an angel,
and much less that:
“They are going to feel like at home here among so many fellow native criminals”
Robert EV
Feb 7 2024 at 5:15pm
Your back of the napkin statistics seem to ignore the truism that most crimes are committed by repeat offenders?
Thomas L Hutcheson
Jan 31 2024 at 6:58pm
Maybe the Party was never about Law and Order, but about using the tax system to transfer resources up the income scale. 🙂
Pierre Lemieux
Jan 31 2024 at 8:16pm
Thomas: That would not be surprising (although I am pretty sure a look at the data would clearly show that the Republicans have, on the net, also presided over a redistribution from the third and fourth quintile to the first). The tenants of the redistributive state (essentially what the state does) each, in turn, try to redistribute to their own actual or potential electoral clienteles.
Jose Pablo
Jan 31 2024 at 11:07pm
The “tax system” transfer resources from all the income scale to the government. Mostly from the upper part of the income scale to the government.
The “welfare system” transfer resources from the government to all the income scale. Mostly from the government to the lower part of the income scale.
It is very difficult to visualize how could happen what you allege is happening (the transfer of resources up the income scale by the “tax system” or the tax+welfare systems). Except as a pure rhetorical “figure of speech” with no factual base whatsoever.
Robert EV
Feb 7 2024 at 5:19pm
The legal creation and maintenance of LLCs, various financial instruments and policies, etcetera allows for this transfer. Not just taxes, though corporate tax breaks also come in to play. Both parties are, to one extent or another, business favorable, but the Dems more than the Reps are currently opposed to certain financial transactions.
The last time the Republican party really struck at this redistribution was making slavery, except as punishment for a conviction, a crime.
Jim Glass
Feb 2 2024 at 1:00am
Hey, if one wants an example of motivated reasoning, there it is. Let your emotions decide what you want to be true, then select whatever rationalization for it seems good in the moment.
“Everybody deserves a second chance. Remember the words of Jesus: ‘Judge not lest ye be judged’,” said the mother of John Wayne Gacy.
That was a good question, and an insufficient answer.
There are plenty of blocks, they all vote aplenty and do much more. They march, protest, take over Capitol buildings, form social media mobs, and all the rest. Over taxes, racism real and imagined, corporations causing inflation via their excess profits (John Stewart playing to a mob today), a Palestinian state from sea-to-sea, gun rights (both sides), vaccinations, our liberties being taken from us, men on women’s sports teams, women’s continuing oppression etc. etc. etc. You can call them “tribes” if you prefer, but they do exist and they all do vote.
Exactly! Since people know their votes mean nothing as to election outcomes, they vote for whatever makes them feel best. What makes people feel better? Social connections (being in good with one’s tribe) plus self-esteem issues, feeling one has superior morality, insight, status in other ways (the shrinks have a list), all regarding issues about which they are massively ignorant (John Stewart and econ, “Hamas for Gays”…). Which makes it really easy for activists to whip up highly emotional tribes about so many things. Especially with all the social media algorithms being expressly designed to do just that.
That is, I think you seriously understate the power of your own argument!
Now, why do so many support Trump with his horrible legal record piling up and up? The fact that blacks with their massive arrest numbers have the lowest support for him while New Hampshire law-abiding whites just voted him as their guy, suggests that no, it is not “the state” arresting too many people that’s done this. How would that explain half of Repub N.H. primary voters still believing Trump actually won the last election?
A simpler explanation is that near half of all voters have already voted for Trump twice, and it feels bad to admit one’s made a mistake. Who wants to do that? And as you’ve said, it cost them nothing to avoid that feeling. All they have to do is rationalize, “nobody’s perfect, and he really won last time anyhow, etc.”, and they still feel fine and stay in good with their friendly tribe-mates! Why not?
Let’s imagine a ‘skin-in-the-game’ test…
What reason do they have to not rationalize like that, and instead feel bad about the guy they’ve backed twice?
Moving away from Trumpian politics…
Again, I think you really underestimate the power of your own argument. E.g., You may have noticed that the Trans Rights people have become a really militant political voting tribe. Who’s the entrepreneur they are following? I dunno — but there’s no doubt they are really committed to their tribe, largely through emotionally driven fact-free motivated reasoning. For example, they’ve gone hammer & tongs after JK Rowling, formerly a hailed feminist, now an evil transphobe.
Here’s a very interesting conversation where a well-meaning student off-handedly calls JK a “bigot”, then fields polite questions about it…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIPPpsJY39c
It’s a rare case where one slowly realizes the nature of one’s own reasoning. But why shouldn’t he have thought as he did? He was rewarded by fitting in with his friends for doing so, and had no reason not to. (These people vote!) The process you describe is everywhere, we live in an ocean of it. Don’t undersell it!
Robert EV
Feb 7 2024 at 5:28pm
Like Soros for Dems and Koch for Reps, Pritzker is commonly cited as the billionaire. The Insurance-Medical complex is separately cited as a motivating actor.
Yep, you see it all over the place. Some of it is real cohesion, some of it is projected cohesion onto the “Other”.
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