Our country is accepting the unacceptable
The profound damage President Trump has inflicted on our liberties can be measured by widespread complacency in the face of his administrations escalating attacks on the rule of law, our public servants and the truth itself.
As Attorney General William P. Barr was reducing the Justice Department to a legal defense and public relations firm, Trump himself (who pretends to be law enforcements greatest friend) was attacking the FBI in terms that authoritarians use to prepare the way for persecuting their political enemies.
Look how theyve hurt people, Trump told his supporters Tuesday night in Hershey, Pa.. Theyve destroyed the lives of people that were great people, that are still great people. Their lives have been destroyed by scum. Okay, by scum.
Please pause here. Scum was the word used twice by the president of the United States about those who dedicate their lives to battling wrongdoing and lawlessness. And because he is Trump, the response involved mostly shrugs and head shaking.
When this presidency began, it was commonplace to write off fears that our political and journalistic systems would eventually normalize the presidents abuses. The worry was that however strong our system might have been in the past, we would come to accept behavior that had never been acceptable before.
This is exactly what has happened. When the House unveiled impeachment articles on Tuesday, a large share of the reporting and commentary was about the political risks facing Democrats for insisting on something that would once have been uncontroversial: It is a chilling threat to freedom and to democracy for the commander in chief to use his power to press a foreign government to investigate a political opponent.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/our-country-is-accepting-the-unacceptable/2019/12/11/202481b4-1c5a-11ea-87f7-f2e91143c60d_story.html