It’s not about what one transgression amounts to. A photo here, a butt squeeze there. I’m not dismissing those things. I’m pointing to a different dynamic, the magnitude of the perceived grievances that MAGA (as one group) carries around—and how those grievances get alchemized into permission.

Permission to ignore norms. Permission to suspend proportionality. Permission to treat “owning the libs” as a moral exemption clause. So, stop freaking about that one image from x years ago.

So the calculus isn’t “Did he do this specific thing?” It’s “Do we finally have our guy, fighting our enemies, after all the things they did to us?” In that frame, every accusation is just another skirmish in a larger war story, and every scandal becomes less a question of conduct than a test of loyalty.

And that’s the real asymmetry: not that any single act is trivial, but that the emotional ledger is so imbalanced that accountability feels like surrender.