Donald Trump can say and do things that basically no one else on the planet can get away with. For reasons that will be analyzed for years to come, consequences seem to evade him at every turn. Instead, he receives endless rewards for his cruelty. 

Journalist McKay Coppins has identified this as “the most insidious legacy of the Trump era.” In an op-ed for The Atlantic, Coppoins says Trump has “thoroughly desensitized voters to behavior that, in another era, they would have deemed disqualifying in a president.”

“The national bar for outrage keeps rising,” Coppins writes. “The ability to be shocked has dwindled.

Coppins also acknowledges that Donald Trump is far from the first president to abuse power or infuse cynicism into the American people about our leaders. “But when it comes to lowering our collective expectations of presidential behavior, Trump is a singular figure,” he said, to the point where we all get bored reading about the man’s many indiscretions. 

“Trump’s apologists might argue that his success is a symptom, not the cause, of the country’s coarsened character,” Coppins continued, but he pointed out that voters continue to rebuke others who try to act similarly. 

In North Carolina, for example, voters elected Trump but also resoundingly rejected the Republican candidate for governor, Mark Robinson – a Trump-endorsed anti-LGBTQ+ politician who allegedly called himself a “Black Nazi” and a “perv” for adult films featuring transgender actors. 

“In any case,” Coppins continued, “the fact remains that Trump’s brazenness damages the political culture. Every time he crosses a new line, he makes it that much easier for the next guy to do so.”

“Nearly a decade into the Trump era, too many Americans have internalized the idea that expecting our political leaders to be good people is quaint and foolish. But this savvier-than-thou attitude only empowers Trump and his mimics to act with impunity.”

“Is it possible to resensitize an electorate to scandal and cruelty?” Coppins asked. “I don’t know. Maybe we start by trying to remember how we felt when all of this was still new.”

He also reminded us that some people today are too young to even remember Trump’s first time running for president. Some members of Gen Z, for example, have only recently learned about the infamous Access Hollywood tape in which Trump bragged about being able to sexually assault women and are utterly shocked. 

So perhaps, Coppins said, “a less cynical age may dawn again.”