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Seeing sociologists struggle with Trump makes me want to reassign Weber's entire corpus on charisma. We are accustomed to what I call "bottled" charisma, or charisma that is restrained by the possessor's traditional or legal-rational authority. Clinton or Kennedy had charisma.
And, they certainly wielded it when it suited them, but not in the anti-structural ways Weber's most archetypal examples did. Trump is a force of destruction; a harbinger of affectual, primordial hatred for extant structure. He was not sent to routinize and rationalize.
He was sent to lay waste to that which, in reality or in subjective experience, has plagued and polluted many people's moral centers - their once vibrant (or imagined vibrant) communities. The details of the charistmatic "fervor," as Eisenstadt called it, are not uncommon
Provincialism; anger and fear; intense boundary identification and maintenance; moral righteousness; claims to superhuman strength. With every challenge by agents of the structure, his claims are laid bare as true.
Whether or not we believe his follower's claims. Whether they are true, or fair, or accurate portrayals of objective structural and social relations is besides the point. As standpoint "theorists" argue, their experiences are valid and accurate from their perspective.
It also doesn't matter if he is exploiting them for self-aggrandizing goals. If he achieves the goal of destruction, then they feel catharsis. Like all charismatic movements, they resist being bottled up but cannot survive long without being rationalized.
And thus, like all charismatic movements, the problem of succession will be pressing. The followers won't simply disappear, but it is questionable whether the fervor can be replicated by someone else. So, when we think about who Trump people are, and their motives,
we must remember they are just another community of aggrieved people who found their anger and grief and shame channeled by someone who appeared unconstrained by formal and informal structures. And sent a message (even if not objectively true) that he was going to be their
representative of destruction. True, unbottled charisma is a helluva drug.
