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I've been contemplating how we got to where we are, nationally, politically. It reminded me of a situation an acquaintance dealt with. He was in a long-term relationship with a girl he'd gone to school with throughout middle and high school. They were living together and attending community college at the campus next to their apartment. He'd been helping her with some personal issues and to get through her classes. One day he asked about an appointment she'd had with her therapist. She said he'd cancelled it. He had doubts, so he asked to look at her phone, and it all fell apart. She'd skipped the appointment because - she had dropped out of school and lost her job and hadn't told him. He'd been walking her to "class" every day and helped with her "term paper" (which I actually typed for her) for a class she wasn't in, at a school she wasn't attending, and a job she didn't have. That reminded me so much of our national nightmare.
It starts with little embarrassments and a failure to take responsibility. In her case, she had failed to complete an assignment and was too embarrassed to tell the professor, so she stopped attending classes to avoid the subject but didn't drop the class. It snowballed to a failed grade, loss of a scholarship, academic suspension, etc. That is what has happened to the GOP, and by extension, our government. It started with "little lies" to keep up appearances. People have the perception that the GOP is strong on national defense and fiscal responsibility. That hasn't been true for decades (at least), but it was a little fabrication that they didn't want to cop to and that we accepted as "a little hyperbole", and didn't bother to verify, but it became a new "floor" of acceptability.
Nixon pursued a "Southern strategy" - rather than naming it what it was, courting white supremacists. Because it worked we overlooked the depravity of it, which led inexorably to Watergate - since we'd established that it was "acceptable" to place ends over means. Reagan, a divorced former actor (and closet racist) won over the evangelical leadership because he'd established his anti-gay bona fides and would appoint reliably conservative jurists. When his tax cuts created the largest deficits in US history, and had to be corrected by one of the largest tax increases in history to balance the books and save the economy, that was ignored. Because of his unrivaled support, he had no qualms about ignoring pesky things like "laws" and created a little thing called "Iran-Contra" - making a sub rosa deal with the same regime that delayed release of American hostages to help in his election bid.
His successor's pardon of Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger (and five other conspirators on the advice of Bill Barr, no less) was accepted - even though he had actively obstructed the investigation, lied under oath, and could, coincidentally and unfortunately, implicate the then-President in the illegal scheme. He also pardoned a big donor, Armand Hammer, who just coincidentally was convicted of making illegal campaign contributions to President Richard M. Nixon's 1972 campaign. Yet a new (lower) floor of precedent was established - a "pardon to prevent testimony scheme" or of a big contributor, was a-ok. (I'm not ignoring Clinton's similar pattern of pardon abuses.) Bush, Jr. was a bit more circumspect, and only commuted 'Scooter" Libby's his 30-month prison term but not his $250,000 fine. Libby, of course, was only convicted for perjury and obstruction to protect VP Cheney in the Valerie Plame scandal (the highest-ranking White House official convicted in a government scandal since John Poindexter, the national security adviser to - you guessed it - President Ronald Reagan in the Iran–Contra affair).
So, that brings us to Trump. The point of all of this is to note that Trump is not out-of-character, if markedly over-the-top. He's pardoned, willy-nilly, focusing on those most loyal to him or politically convenient, but he's also ignored laws and norms with equal abandon, lied about virtually everything, large and small, and has been abetted in all of his predations by a quiescent Senate and party. It is a pattern going back decades, at each step simply becoming more apparent and excessive. But it all started with fairly small lies.
It starts with little embarrassments and a failure to take responsibility. In her case, she had failed to complete an assignment and was too embarrassed to tell the professor, so she stopped attending classes to avoid the subject but didn't drop the class. It snowballed to a failed grade, loss of a scholarship, academic suspension, etc. That is what has happened to the GOP, and by extension, our government. It started with "little lies" to keep up appearances. People have the perception that the GOP is strong on national defense and fiscal responsibility. That hasn't been true for decades (at least), but it was a little fabrication that they didn't want to cop to and that we accepted as "a little hyperbole", and didn't bother to verify, but it became a new "floor" of acceptability.
Nixon pursued a "Southern strategy" - rather than naming it what it was, courting white supremacists. Because it worked we overlooked the depravity of it, which led inexorably to Watergate - since we'd established that it was "acceptable" to place ends over means. Reagan, a divorced former actor (and closet racist) won over the evangelical leadership because he'd established his anti-gay bona fides and would appoint reliably conservative jurists. When his tax cuts created the largest deficits in US history, and had to be corrected by one of the largest tax increases in history to balance the books and save the economy, that was ignored. Because of his unrivaled support, he had no qualms about ignoring pesky things like "laws" and created a little thing called "Iran-Contra" - making a sub rosa deal with the same regime that delayed release of American hostages to help in his election bid.
His successor's pardon of Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger (and five other conspirators on the advice of Bill Barr, no less) was accepted - even though he had actively obstructed the investigation, lied under oath, and could, coincidentally and unfortunately, implicate the then-President in the illegal scheme. He also pardoned a big donor, Armand Hammer, who just coincidentally was convicted of making illegal campaign contributions to President Richard M. Nixon's 1972 campaign. Yet a new (lower) floor of precedent was established - a "pardon to prevent testimony scheme" or of a big contributor, was a-ok. (I'm not ignoring Clinton's similar pattern of pardon abuses.) Bush, Jr. was a bit more circumspect, and only commuted 'Scooter" Libby's his 30-month prison term but not his $250,000 fine. Libby, of course, was only convicted for perjury and obstruction to protect VP Cheney in the Valerie Plame scandal (the highest-ranking White House official convicted in a government scandal since John Poindexter, the national security adviser to - you guessed it - President Ronald Reagan in the Iran–Contra affair).
So, that brings us to Trump. The point of all of this is to note that Trump is not out-of-character, if markedly over-the-top. He's pardoned, willy-nilly, focusing on those most loyal to him or politically convenient, but he's also ignored laws and norms with equal abandon, lied about virtually everything, large and small, and has been abetted in all of his predations by a quiescent Senate and party. It is a pattern going back decades, at each step simply becoming more apparent and excessive. But it all started with fairly small lies.