The Anti-Hero Logic of Trump and Shutdowns
As change seems further out of reach, some Americans seek leaders who do bad things for good reasons. But are we tiring of this character?
Anti-Hero Logics
I am not the first to describe Donald Trump as an anti-hero in the minds of many American voters and people adjacent to the former president. In his 2017 book, one MAGA influencer Jack Posobiec described Trump as an anti-hero, an antisocial with a complex moral and social landscape who cares only about one thing, “getting the job done.”
Doing bad things for noble reasons — “ends justify the means” — as a brand seems to work for a television president who has spent decades honing a character on shows, tabloids, and WWE pro-wrestling fights. That character can turn anti-hero heel as quickly as he can resume his perch as endearing trickster.
Yet there are limits to this act. Many mini-Trumps in congress and MAGA Republicans who are holding the government hostage see themselves in this image of going the extra mile, making people feel the hurt to achieve some (unrealistic) goals. They imagine themselves as revolutionary freedom fighters who are upholding MAGA standards and confronting the RINOs (Republicans in Name Only) in their party by making them sweat. They are willing to withhold border patrol pay to get a provision to build a wall—something that will likely not pass. They are performing revolutionaries, less being them.
Their caucus issued a panoply of demands: limiting Ukraine aid, investigating the Biden’s for corruption, restarting the border wall construction, and limiting “woke” policies in the military. Nevermind that a shutdown will withold military pay. In the end, 10 Republicans representing 2% of the country’s population are willing to shut down the government in what increasingly comes into focus as a game of Rep. Matt Gaetz humiliating and headbutting Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
Part of being an anti-hero is being a bit removed, anti-social. Singular. This blunt “ends justify the means” approach is really the tactic of an autocrat (singular), not elected representatives.
Yet will Americans buy this story? Especially with air traffic control, military pay, border patrol pay, and many, many more checks on the line?
The Rise of the Good Bad Man
Let’s rewind to how we got there. It is no wonder that Americans have some stomach for anti-heroes in a way they did not 30 years ago. I once picked up the book Difficult Men: Behind the Scenes of a Creative Revolution From the Sopranos and The Wire to Mad Men and Breaking Bad. It opened my eyes to how and why even I had been attracted to “Difficult Men.”
The book explains how in the early 2000s, with cable television offering more channels and fewer moralizing constraints from advertisers, Hollywood could explore stories of “bad” men, in mafias and drug rings and corporate worlds, navigating structural realities and moral predicaments—sometimes with the audience rooting for them because they saw “first hand” that people do bad things for noble reasons.
The “Superman” and “Captain America” sincerity seems almost gauche in a world where innocence is lost to unlimited information on the Internet. We want to see characters dealing with the moral complexities of modernity. We want to see doubt. We also want to see conviction after such doubt is addressed.
The problem is, ongoing fetishization of the anti-hero or villain might lose sight of the good reasons for doing bad things. Our love for Tony Soprano — likeable/relatable as a mobster with mommy issues who wants to do the best for his family — can quickly be perverted as a love for the Punisher, a nihilistic and sadistic killer who uses brutality to fight crime. As the old Nietzschean adage goes, “When you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you.”
The Shutdown’s Bad Copycats
Even once successful narrative tactics can be exhausted.
Trump still remains an exceptional character, now a victimized anti-hero begging pity and support for his valiant efforts to do something different for America. As he wages a narrative war against the justice system indicting him, he reminds his followers ““If they can do this to me, they can do this to YOU!”"
Trump’s primetime show is now as daytime television-y as Megyn Kelly’s failed pivot to network television. Yet daytime television can often be where the votes are at, where the ambient politics of affection and parasocial relationships are developed. The beating drum of Trump’s consistent narrative and predictable character arc stay above the fray of internecine Republican violence.
Turning on your own does not make for a good anti-hero narrative in Congress. After all, there is an anti-hero, not anti-heroes, in this story archetype. For a party that values the moral foundation of loyalty, the mess that outlaw Republicans are making among their own in Congress might not be viewed as favorably—polls already show they would be blamed. Fighting Democrats is one thing. Fighting your brother is another.
Sometimes we just want to change the channel, put down the book, play another video game. The same reptitive story of “playing freedom fighter” or “Ballsy MAGA-stan” can get exhausting too. The song of the anti-hero is an aria, not a chorus.
Total Aside
Shameless plug. Some of my thinking on this anti-hero concept got a shout out on Televisa’s Punto y Contrapunto television show from Sofia Margarita Provencio, member of the young-spirited Mexican political party Movimiento Ciudadano. (See around minute 48 if you speak Spanish). Mexicans often ask me why Trump could be so successful. In a culture abound with the kayfabe of Lucha Libre, understanding Trump as an anti-hero immediately makes sense in Mexico.