The Old Normal

Finding Our Way Home

It is an unusual thing for me to want to turn back the clock. I consider myself to be personally, religiously, and politically progressive. Terminology like that implies . . . well, progress. Going backward usually feels counter-productive to me. Life itself is a dynamic process, and let’s face it, the chicken is not going back into the egg. The life I have lived to this point has taught me some hard lessons, and in my personal life I have no desire to do any of it over. But these days, in our collective experience, I might be tempted to make an exception.

That one little thing might be to reverse the normalization of some things heretofore considered abnormal. When is the last time a major mainstream news outlet or legacy newspaper stayed relentlessly on one single thing in the way Katharine Graham empowered Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein to do with the Pentagon Papers, the Watergate break-in, and the ensuing cover up? Granted, it was a simpler time, and the criminality of Nixon’s aides was pretty well contained. A number of them, including the Attorney General ended up in prison. There was no internet or social media, just some live televised congressional hearings and a clunky old audio taping system where the president could be heard saying some pretty awful things. The Supreme Court did not allow the tapes to be withheld. There was no blanket immunity. When members of his own party told him it was over, he got on a helicopter and flew into the pages of the history books. In that quaint old Constitutional crisis, the American people said to Mr. Nixon, “What you are doing, sir, is not normal. In fact, it is illegal, immoral, and unconstitutional. Therefore, you are going to be fired unless you leave now.” And he did.

Our trusted historians and political scientists are confirming that we are in the midst of another Constitutional crisis. But this one is worse; number one, because the other branches of government have abdicated their Constitutional duties, and, number two, there is a surprisingly strong base of voters who are just fine living within the MAGA Cult, cheering on the president’s basest instincts and bragging about how “He says what he thinks, and doesn’t back down.” It is as if malignant narcissism has become the supreme moral virtue. He told us long ago that he could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue without losing any voters. Just to be safe, we should all probably take Avenue of the Americas instead. I wish that statement felt funny to me. It does not.

In my lifetime white Christian nationalism, white supremacy and racism have not been considered normal. In the modern era we have never seen the so-called leader of the free world embrace and empower misogyny, xenophobia, and racism the way this man has. We have come to expect this from him. But it is not normal.

Would it have been considered normal if President Obama had ignored his own intelligence community, received his daily briefings from MSNBC, or stayed up all night pretending to govern through memes and tweets? What if he had sold Obama Bibles for profit? Would the press have tired of reporting on the Obama White House if he had treated the People’s House as his own private property, knocking down a wing or two whenever he felt like it. It would have been outrageous. It IS outrageous. It is not normal.

When has it ever been normal to pick a fight with the Pope or to instruct him in matters of theology? When has it been normal to conduct foreign policy via social media, to manipulate the stock market for personal gain, to insulate oneself and one’s family and from the I.R.S., or to loot the Treasury of the United States for the financial benefit of those convicted of violence and insurrection? None of this is normal, and no other president in American history could have gotten this far with all of it. Why, then, is this one able to do it?

Someday we will answer that question, but in the meantime we’re fighting a five-alarm fire. Out of the ashes of this destruction we’ll need to rebuild the foundations of our Constitutional government and respect for the rule of law.

But I just want to know one thing. How will we ever find our way back to the old normal? And if we can find our way back, how will we ensure that this cultural tolerance for a mad king can never repeat itself. We need to accept that this will take generations to rebuild, then commit our selves, our children, and our grandchildren to doing just that.

P.S. Whatever happened to the Epstein files?