The Unshameable Donald Trump

Such humility! 

Reading Jon Ronson’s So You've Been Publicly Shamed for Literature Society made me think about the rise of Donald Trump, perhaps the least shameable President in American history. On some level, Trump’s election was a reaction against shaming. 

When Trump told his followers that they no longer needed to feel ashamed to be white straight Christian Americans what he really meant was that they no longer had to feel ashamed to be the kind of Christians who think homosexuality is a sin and gay marriage an abomination. He was telling them that they could be the kind of white Christian Southerners who proudly displays the Confederate flag and erect statues of Confederate generals in their town squares. 

Trump re-branded homophobia, transphobia, misogyny and Islamophobia as “political incorrectness” and posited himself as the fearless poster boy for this radical brand of unafraid, unashamed truth-telling. 

Trump led by example by refusing to be ashamed of all but the most egregious offenses. I could be mistaken, but I suspect that the only time Donald Trump ever apologized for anything, or expressed shame, was after the infamous Access Hollywood tapes leaked. 

In case you’ve forgotten, Trump said of Access Hollywood host Nancy O’Dell, “I moved on her very heavily. In fact, I took her out furniture shopping. She wanted to get some furniture. I said, “I’ll show you where they have some nice furniture.” I took her out furniture (shopping)—I moved on her like a bitch. But I couldn’t get there. And she was married. Then all of a sudden I see her, she’s now got the big phony tits and everything. She’s totally changed her look.”

Shortly afterwards, Trump told O’Dell’s longtime coworker, and, like Trump, a grown-ass man, not an eleven year old boy, “You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.”

When Bush responded “Whatever you want”, Trump specified, “Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.”

It seems safe to assume that most politician’s response to being caught on tape saying those kinds of things would be complete mortification. They would apologize profusely, drop out of the race, go to rehab for sex addiction and embark on a long, difficult path to redemption or at least forgiveness. 

That’s what politicians who are capable of experiencing shame would do. It does not take a puritan to see those words as deeply shameful and wrong. 

Even the distinctly sociopathic Trump seemed to realize that the leak of that tape represented a crisis above and beyond, say, Trump cruelly mocking a disabled reporter’s impairments or making fun of John McCain for getting captured and tortured. 

Trump had to apologize but he genuinely seemed to believe that he had done absolutely nothing wrong. He predictably responded to the public release of excruciatingly embarrassing and humiliating statements by using shame against his accusers. 

Trump insisted that the words he spoke as a 59 year old husband, father and public figure constituted mere “locker room talk” and that Bill Clinton had said infinitely worse things to him on the golf course. 

Trump was caught red-handed. The evidence was on tape for everyone to hear and be repulsed by but instead of displaying anything more than a token show of contrition Trump launched an ugly personal attack where he felt his opponent was most vulnerable: her husband’s infidelities. 

Upon being publicly shamed on a level that will go down in history books Trump stepped up his attempts to shame Hillary Clinton through her husband’s infidelities, first by claiming that Bill’s locker room talk made his own pussy-grabbing comments seem positively progressive by comparison, and then by trotting out a number of women who had accused Bill Clinton of sexual harassment and assault in a press conference before a debate.

In So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, Ronson talks about “confirmation bias.” That’s our tendency to only use facts and evidence that support convictions we already strongly hold. For me, the Access Hollywood leaks offered further incontrovertible proof that Trump was, at best, a sexual predator who saw women as nothing  more than sexual objects.

I could be wrong, but I don't recall Trump ever making that face when making fun of a non-disabled reporter. 

For people who were planning on voting for Trump despite their disdain for him, confirmation bias worked a little differently. The tapes didn’t tell them anything new. It just told them what they already knew: that Trump was a creep and a misogynist obsessed with sexual conquests. They knew that already. They just didn’t fucking care. Tax cuts and their hatred for Hillary Clinton and/or minorities and immigrants proved more important than Trump’s character, or lack thereof. 

If knowing that your children and grandchildren will all at some point in their life listen to audio of you as a 59 year old talking about grabbing women by their genitalia and moving on a married woman “like a bitch” does not fill you with shame, nothing will. 

So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed is a manifesto against shaming but Trump’s inability to feel shame illustrates that shame has a purpose, and a social and cultural value. Trump is pathologically incapable of shame so it’s useless as a weapon against him, and it’s been overused and misapplied when directed at members of his inner circle, like the folks shaming Ivanka Trump for posting an image of herself staring at her baby lovingly at the same time her father is tearing immigrant families apart as a core principle. 

As a weapon, shame is powerful and toxic and should be used sparingly and strategically. But there are some offenses so unforgivable that public shaming is a natural and appropriate punishment. As the past few years have illustrated, public shaming, particularly of the social media variety, is a tactic that only works on people capable of feeling embarrassed, and that, alas, does not apply to our current President. 

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