snip ...
Let me put some of that classical education to work, and spin the wheels of the wayback machine to imperial Rome, where they workshopped the strongman genre two thousand years before Trump ever picked up a Sharpie or a Big Mac.
When Nero killed himself in 68 AD, there was no chance of a smooth handoff. I'm sure Romans thought, "Hey, finally ... Emperor Loco is gone and things will settle down.
Nope. The empire plunged into the "Year of the Four Emperors," a twelve-month blender in which Galba, Otho, Vitellius, and finally Vespasian took turns claiming the purple, whacking rivals, and playing the game to its bloody hilt.
Each had troops, money, and a story about why he was the true heir of Augustus. The Praetorian Guard switched sides, provincial legions proclaimed their own favorites, and loyalty to Nero's sacred person evaporated in about five minutes.
For years, Rome had told itself that the emperor was the living embodiment of the state. Statues, ceremonies, language of divinity, the whole package. The moment he was gone, all that mystique converted back into raw math: who can pay the soldiers, feed the mob, and keep his neck out of the executioner's hands.
That is the first hard lesson. The louder a system insists that only one man can embody the nation, the less prepared it is for the day that man disappears. The court that spent years flattering him is suddenly full of men who see an empty chair they crave beyond words and reason.
Roll forward a millennium and change the costumes. The dynamic is the same.
"You've still offered vagaries about what they are supposed to do."
Fair.
It's more than Home Depot has offered, which is "we're not going to do anything about it."
Why are you asking me what Home Depot should do about it?
Maybe you should ask Home Depot that question.