@Remittancegirl l recently finished listening to a 4-part Behind the Bastards episode on Jimmy Savile, and it was galling to hear how many times the man made open, cheeky reference to his crimes and abhorrent behavior, and it was just laughed off. So much so that it seemed like a combination of (a) personal thrill for Savile, to "fess up" and still get away with it, and (b) a way of hiding in plain sight. Sarah Kendzior discusses this (vis a vis Trump) in her book Hiding in Plain Sight. I think a big part of what allows this behavior to work is widespread cultural naïveté about abuse and exploitation of power. People either normalize abusive power relationships (because they have been surrounded by them: at home, at work, at church, as a child), and/or they refuse to believe that someone could truly be as exploitative and cruel as that. Trump has skated along for a long time on people's normalcy bias: he would say and do the most horrendous, audacious things, but normalcy bias would kick in and people would self-generate excuses as their brains tried to convince them that something that bizarre or brazen couldn't be actually happening.