It used to be that there was an unspoken risk that ignoring all these norms would result in your being summarily tossed on your ass in the next election. But thanks to Murdoch, Limbaugh, Stone, Gingrich, and all the right wing media pushing hyper-partisan, no-compromise, the-other-guy-eats-babies politics, combined with a court system that refused to rein in the lies that were poisoning our discourse for decades, eroded that critical check on political society.
The amount of stuff we learned through Trump is just a formality is rather stunning.
It used to be that there was an unspoken risk that ignoring all these norms would result in your being summarily tossed on your ass in the next election. But thanks to Murdoch, Limbaugh, Stone, Gingrich, and all the right wing media pushing hyper-partisan, no-compromise, the-other-guy-eats-babies politics, combined with a court system that refused to rein in the lies that were poisoning our discourse for decades, eroded that critical check on political society.
All of civilization is just formality.
True, but I mean, at a certain point pretending that laws matter is what separates a society at peace from a society at civil war.