Republicans supporting President-elect Donald Trump have fallen into a
trap that The Atlantic's Adam Serwer called "Tony Soprano Syndrome" -- comparing the very people they support to run government to fictional characters, unaware they were obviously meant to be the bad guys.
"As Trump reshapes the nation in his image, some of his supporters
seem inclined to turn cautionary tales on their head, empathizing with
villains or antiheroes to such a degree that they miss the point of
these stories entirely," wrote Serwer -- including when the writers of
the stories make it completely obvious.
For example, "One undecided voter told a New York Times focus group
earlier this year that Trump is 'the antihero, the Soprano, the
'Breaking Bad,' the guy who does bad things, who is a bad guy but does
them on behalf of the people he represents.'"
But the audience isn't supposed to sympathize with the mob boss Tony
Soprano even on that level in "The Sopranos," he noted.
"Tony is a murderer whose greed and ambition harm the people he claims
to love. He is not a moral exemplar, nor is he intended to be; his
selfishness helps no one else and is destructive to all around him.
The same is true of Walter White, the protagonist of Breaking Bad, who
at one point in the show literally looks at the camera and says of his
crimes, 'I did it for me.'"
https://www.rawstory.com/maga-2670337010/
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)