Why wouldn’t Trump conclude that his order banning flag burning will beget a ton of flag burning?

Those who have taken the time to peruse Donald Trump’s executive order on “Prosecuting Burning of the American Flag” know that it does not, in fact, recommend the federal prosecution of those who burn or are otherwise “desecrating” the flag. Instead, it notes that the Justice Department will take actions “consistent with the First Amendment,” which has been found by the Supreme Court to protect activities like flag burning. Indeed, only if acts of flag desecration amount to incitement to violence (which would be a high hurdle to clear in a courtroom) or if the flag-burner is engaged in other criminal behaviors are offenders likely to be prosecuted.

There is just a lot less to this initiative than the heavy breathing that it has inspired among the executive orders critics and supporters alike would lead observers to believe. Indeed, the reaction to this order seems so divorced from its black-and-white text that we can probably conclude that inspiring impassioned reactions was the whole point of the exercise.

Trump has every reason to believe that he is possessed of mesmeric powers over Democrats. Whether it’s his sheer force of personality or the oppositional defiance disorder that ails the American political class, he’s right; it just doesn’t take much Republican goading to get Democrats to take actions that run counter to their political interests.

Trump says that crime in Washington, D.C., is too high and deploys the National Guard to counter it, for example. So, what do Democrats do? They don’t argue that the deployment is overreach or that U.S. service personnel have more important things to do. No, they claim instead that Trump’s edict is further evidence that D.C. needs to be a state and that crime has declined to manageable levels — the former being wildly unpopular and the latter an expression of elitism that is tacitly tolerant of at least some level of urban criminality. Even if Trump is misusing emergency powers to confront something his own rhetoric suggests is not an emergency but an unacceptable status quo, the Democratic reaction to his maneuver helped make it a win for him.

Something similar could be said of Texas’s mid-decade redistricting ploy. We know that Democratic elected leaders understand that they are outgunned in a national gerrymandering war, should it come to that. We know that because the publications they read know it. For weeks, left-of-center media venues have warned Democrats against antagonizing GOP-led states to follow Texas’s lead by trying to push Republicans out of their state’s congressional delegations. Their admonitions have nothing to do with civic propriety. Quite simply, Democrats have more to lose if they go forward with retaliatory reapportionment. Even though they know the risks they’re courting, Democrats are moving forward with retaliation anyway. The need to respond to the GOP in equal but opposite measure, irrespective of whether that response is prudent, has become a reliable Democratic behavior pattern.

So, why wouldn’t Trump conclude that his order banning flag burning will beget a ton of flag burning? That’s what you would expect if you’ve observed the progressive activists to whom the Democratic Party’s leading lights are hopelessly beholden. What better way to express uncompromising opposition to the president’s authoritarian subversion of the Constitution and his disrespect for Supreme Court precedent than to show that he is a paper tiger? Do your worst, Mr. President, they will aver as they do theirs.

Now, you would think that this is a bridge too far. Democrats with any institutional memory will remember that the GOP has demagogued legal protections on flag burning for political gain in the past. Those who lack that memory might still be counted on to consider how their conduct reflects on themselves and their movement, and flag-burning is never a good look. Well, maybe, but all of that requires some strategic thought and the ability to delay emotional gratification. We haven’t seen much of that from Democrats in the Trump era.

So, yes, it’s likely that Trump’s executive order is a political enterprise. Trump is betting that his contempt for America’s legal traditions will pay off when Democrats take his bait. Honestly, at this point, Trump’s is not even that much of a gamble.