I think an understated change in US politics is how completely Trump won the war over process and civility. Maybe “won the war” isn’t the right characterization, maybe defected and so pushed us all towards a defect/defect equilibrium rather then cooperate/cooperate in a stag-hunt style game. 1/

Democratic partisans, when pushed for policy specifics or unscripted, skeptical interviews call the press self-interested and untrustworthy.

It’s more polite than dismissing traditional press as “fake news”, but its implications are similar.

(Editing not to steal @marick’s footnoting style after all, when only one item is linked in this bit of the thread!) 2/

https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2024/08/it-is-good-for-candidates-to-try-to-win-the-election

@marick The “when they go low we go high” rhetoric is just gone. Instead of clutching pearls when the other campaign insults, Democrats are reveling in being mean, even a bit dishonestly mean (cf Vance and the couch) to people who thoroughly deserve it. It feels liberatory to stop apologizing, to even go for mean. 3/

https://itself.blog/2024/08/12/weird-conservatives-and-the-end-of-whiny-self-righteousness/

@marick I have no view as to whether this is good or bad. I tend to be a bit of a pearl-clutcher myself, but that might just speak poorly of me. But I do think it interesting, it’s quite a vibe shift, and I think it’s fair to say that we’ve reset our norms (or our normlessness) around practices of Trump and his partisans that once we criticized. 4/

@marick I’m not accusing anyone of hypocrisy!

In a fight, I’d criticize you if you reached for a knife, but once you had one in your hand and were lunging with it at me, I’d pick one up too! /fin