What Trump's exuberant corruption seeks to make us: a nation of envious cheats who yearn to emulate his delight in breaking the common good for personal gain. He's a pathetic specimen of a human; we sometimes do better.
This is a test. Paul Waldman laments:
[The] norm of honesty is what Trump attacks so directly. Just as he encourages his followers to be sexist and cruel, he encourages everyone to grab what they can, laws and rules and basic ethical standards be damned. The president really is a role model, and unlike just about every corrupt official our country has ever produced, he isn’t even trying to hide how corrupt he is. It’s right out in the open for all to see. His message isn’t that he’s clean, it’s that everyone is dirty, so grab what you can.
That’s what makes it so dangerous. By the time these four years are over, domestic and foreign interests who want some policy favor — a tariff waiver, a change in regulation, an arms sale — will probably have deposited billions of dollars directly into Trump’s pockets. “I could be a stupid person and say, ‘Oh no, we don’t want a free plane,’” he said by way of explaining why he’ll take the Qatari jet. As far as he’s concerned, if you don’t cash in on public office, you’re just a sucker. After two terms of graft, to too many people it will just seem like common sense.
G. Elliot Morris is insightful about why the mainstream media is so inept and inadequate when it comes to calling out Trump's criminality. He introduces an English word coinage (highlighted below) which I think may come in handy in our current circumstances.
... today, when one is factual about Trump, one comes off as a partisan. In his second term, the president is breaking so many laws and political norms that when you cover them each on their own, you come off as an anti-Trump Democratic pundit with “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” ...
This is all just a series of business decisions for most media institutions. Thirty years ago, I imagine network news would have done a whole show about how our politics was being corrupted by foreign influence, or some such. But given that factfulness has been polarized, we live in a media environment where news companies have business incentives to “moderate” their language on norm violations — else they risk alienating half of the country. With declining media ad rates, it becomes matter of paying the bills whether pissing off viewers is worth telling the story (or, in this case, “being ‘factful.’”)
... when you say the president shouldn’t accept a $400 million plane because the Emoluments Clause exists, and this seems kinda nasty and not something elected leaders should be doing, you are coded as pro-Democrat/center left/whatever.
I guess that perception is just the price one pays for covering the world as it is. I am happy to be writing for an audience that values the facts above everything else.
Morris, having been let go by ABC News, has launched his own polling interpretation site, Strength in Numbers.
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