"...We are worried about this baseline assumption that everything is fine until someone alerts us that nothing is fine, that of course our system will hold because it always has. We worry that we are exceptionally good at telling ourselves that shocking things won’t happen, and then when they do happen, we don’t know what to do. We worry that every time we say 'the system held' it implies that “holding” equals 'winning' as opposed to barely scraping by. We worry that while Trump has armies of surrogates out there arguing that Trump is an all-powerful God proxy, the rule of law has no surrogates out there arguing for anything because nobody ever came to a rally for a Rule 11 motion. The Biden administration has largely taken the position that the felony conviction is irrelevant because it’s proof that the status quo isn’t in danger. But the reality is that Republicans are openly campaigning against judges, juries, and prosecutors. Overt declarations of blowing up our checks and balances and following the blueprints to autocracy set by Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orbán, meanwhile, are treated with shrugs by mainstream journalists and commentators. What’s more, Republicans in Congress have shown a willingness to kowtow to every Trump demand. The signals are flashing red that our fundamental system is in danger.
“'The system is holding'” is not a plan for a knowable future. It never was." -- Dahlia Lithwick and Norman Ornstein in Slate, on the "normalcy bias" in the horse race media and in the general public that leads to the belief that something out there -- "the system" -- will keep us from truly bad things, like the convicted felon Malignant Loser's fascist, existential threat to our democracy. Contrary to the authors, we believe the Biden-Harris Administration and campaign are focusing on the danger in starker and starker language. But, time is short and (to coin a cliche) more needs to be done. By them and by all of us, in our own ways.
