When Norms Are Ignored

One thing that the last four years have shown us is the importance of norms and traditions in politics. Unfortunately, they have also shown how easy it can be to ignore them. That seems to be the strategy taken by the Republican party in the United States with predictable (and predicted) consequences. 

I've made no secret of my distaste for Donald Trump. But he wouldn't have created so much harm had he not been encouraged and enabled by the Republicans in the House and Senate. They, more than Trump, are the people we should be most critical of. 

Author John Scalzi makes point much more clearly and forcefully than I can in a blog post titled "But What If We Didn't?". 

Yesterday our nation’s capitol was invaded and looted, and our democracy was shamed, and even then a half dozen Republican senators and more than a hundred GOP representatives who a few hours before were stuffed into shelters for their safety decided to play the “But what if we didn’t?” card. Sedition was preferable to being put on record as acknowledging a loss of power and privilege. Don’t come to me in the light of day and tell me this wasn’t where the GOP understood we would one day end up. The only problem the Republicans have with where we are at the moment is that, for once, “but what if we didn’t?” didn’t do what it was supposed to.

The Republican Party is a traitor to the ideals and practice of democracy in the United States. It fomented, aided and abetted an insurrection. A regrettable number of its members in the national government have signed on for sedition over the peaceful transfer of power (“The peaceful transfer of power? Okay, but what if we… didn’t?”). These seditious members should be drummed out of Congress, right now, and some Republicans who are in power should be charged with crimes. The Republican Party got us as close as we have gotten since the Civil War to the collapse of our democracy, not by accident, but by design, and had the implementation of that design been only a little more competent, both now and over the last few years, it might have succeeded. The GOP is an enemy of the United States — not conservatism as a whole, but its party (although at the moment I have no great kind thoughts about conservatism, either) — and if it had any institutional capacity for shame and self-reflection, it would end itself.

To which I see the Republican Party saying, “Okay, but what if we… didn’t?” Because even now I can tell you that from the GOP point of view the problem isn’t the damage that party has wreaked upon the US and its people. The problem is its plan didn’t work.

The GOP always meant for us to be here. The thing is, there’s somewhere beyond here the GOP still wants us to go. We shouldn’t pretend that the GOP won’t get us back to here as soon as practically possible. And then past it, to the ruin of us all.

Scalzi added a second post to expand on what he first wrote. I'm going to quote this portion, as it echoes comments that have come up in every single conversation (both online and in person) I've had with people about Wednesday's events. 

Just that I literally never want to hear another white dude whine to me that they don’t, in fact, live on the lowest difficulty setting of American life. Motherfuckers, armed white dudes perpetrated a goddamn coup attempt at the Capitol — the seat of our national legislature — and at least some of them appear to have been invited in by the police to do so. They wandered around the place with their guns and zip-ties, took maskless selfies as they trashed the place, looted offices and climbed all over the Senate chamber like it was a playground… and then walked away, almost entirely unharmed. Any time some defensive white dude querulously mopes to me about how his life isn’t on the lowest difficulty setting, I’m going to send him that picture of Naziroquai posing at the dias of the Senate chamber, and then I’m going to tell him to shut the fuck up. Captain Furhead there walked in during the middle of an armed insurrection against the national government, struck his pose, and walked out. He is still alive and as of this writing, not even close to being arrested. That’s the lowest difficulty setting in action, friends.

(Let us acknowledge here that one person was in fact shot dead by the police during the insurrection, and others died during it or as a result of it, including one cop. Let’s also acknowledge that on the day of an actual armed insurrection against the Capitol, mostly perpetrated by white folks, a grand total of thirteen people were arrested. Compare and contrast that with, oh, any of the protests this summer. What was the difference there? Hmmm.)

It will be interesting to see if there is enough will in the US to change the political system so that the kind of political gaming that the Republicans have indulged in  over the last 30 years is no longer possible. In a saner world, there would be a constitutional convention to revamp the outmoded electoral college system and make other necessary changes (forcing candidates for office to make their tax returns public, for example), but I don't see this happening soon.

I do expect that Trump will be impeached by the House next week, and quite possibly convicted by the Senate after the 20th of January. While he will be out of office at that point, a conviction will ensure that he can't run for office again.