April 29, 2025

THE POLITICS OF LEFTY MOBS:

Compare the above to this:

UPDATE: Related.

Matt Taibbi: Are We In A Soft Civil War?

Since Trump’s second inauguration, these and other critics have been relentless in decrying an unprecedented “assault on norms,” which in their telling began in January and has been marked by such “dictatorial” severity as to require those “new solutions.” The White House obviously sees it differently. Current and former officials connected to the administration believe “norms” evaporated before Trump took office in 2016, with official spying via the Trump-Russia probe, the subsequent launching of multiple successful politicized investigations, the May 2017 opening of a second FBI probe into whether or not Trump was “working on behalf of Russia” after the firing of James Comey, the successful removal of Trump from Internet platforms, efforts to have lawyers who represented Trump disbarred, use of courts to try to remove Trump and other pols from the ballot, the censorship (and in cases like Steve Bannon, jailing) of media figures friendly to Trump, and countless other matters.

We forget how comprehensively institutional America became politicized before the arrival of this new administration. Never mind the prosecutions and investigations: officials from enforcement agencies issued so many warnings about “brazen” efforts by Russia and other countries to meddle in elections on Trump’s behalf that you could set your watch by them. Imagine if Kristi Noem or John Ratcliffe not only issued regular bulletins about Chinese efforts to buy American farmland or dominate “emerging technologies,” but every election season issued warnings about China seeking to “sow division” by “boosting Democrats” and “denigrating Donald Trump.” Op-ed pages would be full of frantic denunciations of the politicization of the DHS and CIA, news pages would be full of analyses correctly pointing out that intelligence can be manipulated in a dozen different ways, and newspapers would valiantly point out that they’re duty-bound to not repeat such assertions until proven. Ten minutes ago, of course, everyone in media felt differently.

Well, “we” don’t forget. Plus

Since November we’ve moved a highly lawyered group of habitual rule-breakers out of office, and replaced them with a payback-seeking group that is often more interested in big results than process. Another way to view it is that we exchanged a group of officials who used executive power in an unprecedented way but didn’t admit it, for a group that is freely admitting its novel and at times unsettling use of presidential authority. It all makes for a fraught, dangerous moment and my main emotion as a voter is hoping none of this devolves into open conflict. Can we get through this with something like an intact legal system in the end?

We may be better off if we bring these conflicts out into the open.

Posted at 6:45 pm by Glenn Reynolds