Big headlines in the Catholic clergy sexual abuse crisis have postponed this "think piece" from The Atlantic for several weeks now.
However, I still think this essay by Peter Beinart – a professor of journalism and political science at the City University of New York – is important enough to spotlight for readers and, hopefully, for some journalists who are covering religion and politics these days.
Here is the double-decker headline, which offers a lot to think about in and of itself:
What the president’s supporters fear most isn’t the corruption of American law, but the corruption of America’s traditional identity
Now, the lede is pretty dated, in this age of multiple crises were week. So prepare for a flashback. On a not so distant morning:
... the lead story on FoxNews.com was not Michael Cohen’s admission that Donald Trump had instructed him to violate campaign-finance laws by paying hush money to two of Trump’s mistresses. It was the alleged murder of a white Iowa woman, Mollie Tibbetts, by an undocumented Latino immigrant, Cristhian Rivera.
On their face, the two stories have little in common. Fox is simply covering the Iowa murder because it distracts attention from a revelation that makes Trump look bad. But dig deeper and the two stories are connected: They represent competing notions of what corruption is.
Cohen’s admission highlights one of the enduring riddles of the Trump era. Trump’s supporters say they care about corruption. During the campaign, they cheered his vow to “drain the swamp” in Washington, D.C. When Morning Consult asked Americans in May 2016 to explain why they disliked Hillary Clinton, the second-most-common answer was that she was “corrupt.” And yet, Trump supporters appear largely unfazed by the mounting evidence that Trump is the least ethical president in modern American history.
Once again, a crucial question in this piece is one asked many times here at GetReligion: Who, precisely, are these "Trump supporters"?