Page 556 - Demo

Fools%u2019 Journey550the very same way. We could easily imagine many children saying to their parents, %u201cWell the president acts this way, so why can%u2019t I.%u201d And we could certainly imagine civil discourse breaking down even further than it already had.One day, Lynn said to me, %u201cI just don%u2019t understand it. Why do so many people like him?%u201d It was a fair question, one people better versed in psychology than me had trouble answering. But I told her about something a realtor said to me many years ago%u2014that people give all sorts of reasons why they like a certain house, mentioning features such as location, room layout, style, landscaping, area schools%u2014but the primary reason is that they simply like the place. If they like a house, the other reasons are used as justification. This jived with something political reporter John Dickerson said on election night about Trump voters. He pointed out that many of them said didn%u2019t care for the man, but they liked his policies. But Dickerson also noted that, when given a list of specific policies, without saying whose they were, the policies of Kamala Harris were more popular with them than Donald Trump%u2019s. So, at some level, Trump supporters really did like the guy. But little about his likability made sense from a logical standpoint, because he had almost no truly likable characteristics. To us, his words and actions revealed him to be a bully, a misogynist, a racist, a liar, a cheat, a predator, a narcissist, an inept businessman, a fraud, a con man. And many of his closest associates used those same terms to describe him. Yet his followers still liked him%u2014perhaps because of those traits. After all, he regularly said he would fight hard for his followers, and they knew he would lie, cheat, and steal on their behalf. So they voted him into office because, even though he was a mean son-of-a-bitch, he was their mean son-of-abitch. It was like hiring a ruthless lawyer to defend you, rather than a wishy-washy milquetoast attorney.Another reason that made sense to me was the fact that Trump never apologized for anything, no matter how wrong he was %u2014 and especially when he was wrong. While he didn%u2019t take any crap from anybody, most people weren%u2019t in such a position. For example, if your landlord raised your rent, or your boss cut your wages, you had little recourse but to go along. And if a cop gave you a ticket for