The scarlet letter was weaponized long before Donald Trump came along. Shaming has been a tactic to used to marginalize and dehumanize people for millennia.

But in the age of Trump (and yes, we’re still in it, even after he was kicked out of office), shaming has become not only a fact of life but a way of doing business.

If you’re looking for a root cause of our social polarization, you need look no further than shaming. People are shamed for being racist by one side and being politically correct by the other. They’re shamed on the one hand for wearing a mask and on the other for refusing to do so. They’re shamed by one group for affirming traditions and by another for flouting them.

In many cases, people react to shaming by shaming the shamer in a game of tit-for-tat. One of the most blatant examples of this occurred almost 1,000 years ago. On July 16, 1054, legates from the Church of Rome arrived in Constantinople (Istanbul) with a letter excommunicating the head of the church there, Patriarch Michael Cerularius. The patriarch responded by excommunicating them. It was the equivalent of each side telling the other, literally, “Go to hell.”

The excommunications weren’t lifted until 1965, showing just how long a scarlet letter can last.

Shaming the shamer is the go-to move in Trump’s short playbook: If someone attacks him, he hits back 10 times harder. Those who accuse him within his own party are labeled RINOs (Republicans in name only). Those who assail him from the outside are condemned as “radical, vicious [and] racist.”

But Trump himself, when shamed, never apologizes — and his followers love it.

The one time he did apologize came after a recording surfaced in which he boasted about grabbing women’s genitals and kissing them without permission. It was vile and offensive: a blatant violation of societal norms and of the women he was referring to. Virtually every observer thought it would be the end of him, and they were all shocked when he not only survived but won the election.

Maybe they shouldn’t have been.

The evolution of cancel culture

Voters had watched for decades as politicians were shamed in the media for one supposed failing after another — some of them trivial. Supreme Court nominee Douglas Ginsburg admitted in 1987 that he’d smoked pot “on a few occasions” in the 1960s and ’70s. The backlash forced him to withdraw his name from consideration.

Earlier, in 1972, Democratic frontrunner Edmund Muskie brushed a snowflake from his eye during an emotional speech defending his wife from a vicious newspaper attack. The media pounced and claimed falsely that he’d broken down and cried. Muskie, suddenly seen as “weak,” watched as his support collapsed, and he was not a factor in the presidential race.

One thing Trump never wants to be seen as is weak (though he often is, and his ego is as fragile as they come).

By 2016, when the Trump tape surfaced, mainstream media had lost credibility on the right, which preferred to get its news from Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and other conservative sources. Meanwhile, the concept of canceling someone — getting them shunned, fired, or blackballed — was picking up steam. Part of this was likely an outgrowth of social media, where it was possible to “block” supposed friends for saying something you didn’t like.

Social media harassment was and is a legitimate concern, so blocking someone can make sense: There’s no reason to put up with rudeness on your homepage. But as time went on, the practice was increasingly used to block opposing viewpoints, even when expressed politely. As a result, people on both sides became more isolated, more outraged at being blocked or canceled, and angrier at the people who had treated them in a way they considered unfair.

So they sought out people who wouldn’t do that, joining with them to focus their collective anger on those who had. The result was further isolation and enmity. When combined with an increasing reliance on biased news sources such as talk radio and cable television, social media “outrage” only served to herd people into opposing (or even enemy) camps.

When Trump refuses to apologize, he’s refusing to apologize to the enemy — at least, that’s how his followers see it. They’re under attack in a war on Christmas. They’re facing an assault on “traditional values.” A Trump apology would be seen as weakness, a fact he clearly recognizes. To use an analogy from another time, it would be tantamount to the United States apologizing to the Japanese for responding to the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Trump’s followers see him, and themselves by extension, as being under siege by an enemy. He encourages them to identify with his victimhood, and they eat it up: “In reality, they’re not after me, they’re after you. And I just happen to be the person that’s in the way.”

The problem with shaming

Shaming accomplishes two things: First off, it obliterates the concept of forgiveness, because suddenly, no apology is good enough. Neither is changing one’s ways. The scarlet letter is always there for all to see. Secondly, it brands its target as inferior. Unworthy. Shameful. It changes that person’s identity in the eyes of those who disapprove of them, making them not a fellow human being worthy of compassion, but “the enemy.”

In any war, whether it’s a world war, a cold war, or a culture war, we condition ourselves to see the enemy as subhuman — and therefore unworthy of empathy, sympathy, compassion, or mercy. It allows us to use deadly force against them with a clear conscience.

On the battlefield, one side marks the other as unworthy and identifies itself as superior by the flag it flies and the uniform it wears. By the oath of loyalty it swears. By following orders without question.

Shame dehumanizes people. It makes them unworthy of jobs, of respect, of socialization, or even of life itself. Instead of a mistake, it’s seen as revealing a person’s “true colors.” It isn’t something they did, it’s who they are. Shame renders apologies meaningless because it transforms actions into identity.

You didn’t offend me; you are offensive.

You didn’t make a mistake; you are a mistake.

And if apologies are meaningless, why bother to apologize? If there’s no hope for forgiveness, why bother to change? Those are the questions Trump’s followers have been asking for a long time, and he gave them an answer: Don’t.

Trump offers something the shamers don’t: He will “forgive” you if you 1) fall back in line, 2) do exactly as he says, and 3) praise him for telling you to do it. This so-called forgiveness is entirely provisional, it’s not authentic, and it’s the price is unquestioning loyalty to an unhinged egomaniac. But for many, that’s preferable to being blackballed by those who don’t even offer the pretense of forgiveness. Besides, they’re the enemy. They can go to hell.

Stephen H. Provost is a former journalist and the author of numerous books on American culture, history, and politics. His three-book series Trumpism on Trial is available on Amazon, along with his other works.