This. Seriously it hasn’t even been as bad as I feared, though it ain’t over yet.
The most pernicious element here to me is the normalization of partisan interpretation of reality.
The Republicans are still the party of law and order, but they eagerly, repeatedly and broadly break the spirit of the law while like superstar athletes staying just inbounds with the letter of the law.
Increasingly they’ve started turning a blind eye as to whether a toe went across the out of bounds marker, and now they’re disputing whether footage of the toe going out of bounds is even real. This used to be the domain of the cranks, but the cranks are the party now. They’re very much operating on the out of sight out of mind priniciple, and really pushing the narrative that we’re not obligated to investigate if a law was broken, are we? and so wallow in willful ignorance and seem pleased as pigs in mud that they’ve never been brave enough to cross this Rubicon before and now look what they can do.
I think it’s about 10x worse than I feared. I didn’t imagine this level of capitulation by other politicians, and I didn’t foresee the destruction of our system of checks-and-balances. I don’t know how you come back from that. Apparently, if you are president, you can be completely lawless, you can undermine the authority of congress, you can turn the executive branch of government into a giant grift operation, and you can be an embarrassing idiot – all without repercussion. Maybe he gets voted out of office in 2020 (if the open invitation to undermine the election doesn’t come to fruition), but we’ve been shown that our system of government is as flimsy as a house made of tissue paper. No one seems to give a crap when it’s torn to shreds.
I was genuinely fearing dictatorship and/or World War III by the end of Trump’s first term (I know, it’s not over yet) so…
If the people don’t care, why should anyone else? Why aren’t you out on the Mall right now waving a sign? Why aren’t I? Or the other 10 million? Snarky tweets ain’t gonna cut it.
The truth is we all have shit to do. Which makes republican institutions all the more precarious.
KevinC
4488
I already thought they couldn’t do worse than when Spicer left, but they surprised me by pulling Sanders out of Satan’s bunghole to fill the role. Who do they go with now, Jacob Wohl? James O’Keefe?
None
4492
Sanders at the end of the month:
Welcome to the team Sean Hannity!
Why would he agree to such a diminished role?
True, he currently is a senior policy advisor along with those Fox ‘n’ friends people.
JoshL
4497
Considering they haven’t had a press briefing in three months… why replace her at all?
They’re going to need somebody in that position once the war with Iran starts.
Tanned, rested, and ready:
Oh god I forgot about that. What a time to be alive, 'eh?
It took me the full ten minutes to realize that wasn’t Sanders wearing sunglasses.
