Busting the Norms of US Democracy
A very short primer on why we are here
I have joked that Trump has been the greatest penetration tester America has ever seen. A penetration tester1 is someone who attacks a system adversarially. The term is predominantly used in relation to technology and "White Hat" hackers, but it aptly describes the tactic increasingly used to push past our democratic and institutional norms.
Constitutional questions, like presidential immunity2, were clear, taught to us in school, have been exercised since the birth of our country, and as stated with conviction by my seventh-grade civics teacher, are “enshrined in the Constitution.” No one was above the law; it was simple. According to this Supreme Court, that is a myth.
This tactic of “denormalizing” norms is a blatant attempt to fracture our democracy and reshape our system. Years ago, conservatives realized that their core beliefs were losing ground to an increasingly diverse electorate that required a more equal society. The White Christian patriarchy felt the need to take drastic measures, and so it began with Reagan. The steps are clear in hindsight:
1. Remove the unions, lower taxes, and destabilize the middle class (Reagan).
2. Direct the money taken from the middle class into politics to control the House and Senate (Citizens United) 3.
3. Elect a president with the right mix of ignorance, pedestrian appeal, and a corrupt mindset (American Oligarchs).
4. Break norms by leveraging the previous steps and fill the Supreme Court with enablers (White Christian Patriarchy).
All these steps have brought us to this point; it was not a natural progression or an accident. It is a deliberate action taken to reverse the course of democracy to retain power, disregarding the norms, laws, and rules by which we have lived.
The hypocrisy is undeniable; "conservatives" are pushing for these "changes" in our democracy. "Originalism" is a contrived construct to justify changes to the norms, our collective agreements about what is right and wrong, and that bind us as a trusting society.
1 Tiller, James S. "Penetration Testing: Protecting Networks and Systems." CRC Press, 2012.
2 Black, Charles L. "Impeachment: A Handbook." Yale University Press, 1998
3 Mayer, Jane. "Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right." Anchor Books, 2017.