Republicans understand the value of avatars. Martyrs and Heels. Warriors and Losers. Hannitys and Colmeses.

The history we think we know is a confused clash of protagonists and antagonists and their travails, and our sense of who’s a hero and who’s a villain is something we construct in public. This is how 150 years’ worth of American children were taught to respect the valor of Robert E. Lee, and many other Lost Cause myths. It’s why we still fight today over how best to remember the founders of the country, and why too many of us think America is immune to fascism. Fascists are the bad guys, after all, and we beat them.

Republicans want to shape these popular legends. They want to name everything under the sun for Republican presidents, at least until those presidents ruin the country and impose exile on themselves. They want Donald Trump’s face on Mt. Rushmore, and for us to think of Rosa Parks and Riley Gaines as two faces of the same coin.

It’s worth noting here that the GOP’s batting average in these efforts is low. Most of the people they try to canonize turn out to be mediocre or worse, and can not easily be transformed into patriots or civil-rights icons. They’re attention hogs and bad actors.

Where Democrats count on A-list celebrities to chime in on politics every four years (even if just through stray social-media posts) Republicans have cultivated a small army of C- and D-list celebrities who make pro-Trump content approximately all the time. I suspect this contrast is structural: It’s hard to develop star-level talent if you’re hostile to strangers, minorities, and new experiences, but once you become a star, you face real disincentives against hyper-partisanship. Republicans thus have a difficult time nurturing real pop-culture icons, but an easy time recruiting Riley Gaineses to the cause.

In tribute to her, we can call it the pool to posting pipeline. Republicans have it. Democrats don’t, really.

Rob Reiner was something of an exception, though: A top-tier producer of pop culture who was unabashedly partisan year round.

This is why Donald Trump celebrated his murder.

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THE REINER THINGS IN LIFE

I’m familiar enough with the people who do “persuasion work” in Democratic politics to say this with some certainty: They don’t think high-profile Democrats should spend any time on Rob Reiner. They think Democrats should be stoic all the time, even when Trump heaps abuse on American icons. Their job, as Democrats, is to eat shit over and over again, to never stand up for their own people, because target voters don’t care about Hollywood or Washington elites.

These voters say their biggest concerns in life are health care and the cost of living. Building a groundswell of outrage on behalf of a murdered celebrity, and directing it at Republicans, may feel satisfying, but it lacks discipline.

I think this conception of persuasion is wrong in general, and in this instance, it’s wrong for at least four specific reasons:...