1. This week Trump broke (or flirted w/ breaking) two important political taboos. First, he turned his visit to the troops into a partisan campaign rally. There's a reason why we insulate the civilian military from partisan politics. Because coups are bad. washingtonpost.com/world/national…
2. Second, Trump tried to pressure the federal reserve into making decisions according to Trump's political interests. There's a reason why we insulate the fed from partisan politics--so politicians don't use monetary policy for personal or political gain. washingtonpost.com/world/national…
3. If anyone should be squealing the loudest about these authoritarian, banana republic-like moves on Trump's part it should be conservatives. They've long been the ones who emphasize the need to constrain what the sovereign people can do through the mechanism of politics.
4. But of course, such squeals from the right have been virtually non-existent since conservatism ca. 2018 has come to largely mean "anything Trump thinks is right or which helps the GOP." And "anything the great leader thinks is right" is a colloquialism for "authoritarianism."
5. Neither Trump nor the people in his circle are aware that these taboos exist, nor do they know the reasons why they exist. They just want to "win," and that means getting the military on their side and getting the fed to do things to the economy that make Trump look good now.
6. The real issue here is not whether Trump's going to change (he's not), but rather what he is getting the GOP base accustomed to. Why shouldn't the military side with one party over the other? Why shouldn't the President be able to determine monetary policy?
7. For my entire adult life these were never really questions to be considered...they were just taboos. Like, are Nazis really so bad? Or, is white nationalism such a bad thing? Or, why do we have birthright citizenship anyway? Or, why do we need NATO?
8. Or, is it really so bad that governments murder journalists? Or, might there be good reasons to separate children from their asylum-seeking parents and put them in camps? Or, do we need to have a President who knows anything about politics or diplomacy or economics?
9. So many questions that were never questions before are now newly open questions; and that is how large-scale changes happen. Each of these newly opened questions I've mentioned have potentially dangerous answers, ones that point toward a possible demise of liberal democracy.
10. Taboos exist for a reason...they are always constructed and sometimes are worth discarding, but as any good conservative should be able to tell you, these deeply rooted constructions are usually of such ancient vintage because they serve a useful purpose.
11. Taboos, once broken, are not easily reasserted. Perhaps American political culture will withstand this authoritarian, taboo-breaking presidency and even come out the other side stronger for having been tested.
12. But another possibility is that some important, unspoken rules that have served as largely unspoken, constitutional guardrails for our liberal democracy have been permanently undermined.
13. For those who care whether the US is a constitutional democracy in the future, that should be concerning. In the past, I would have assumed that American conservatives would have counted in that camp. At this point, I'm not so sure this is (or perhaps even ever was) the case.
14. Oopsie, screwed up and forgot to post the article about the fed. Here it is. cnn.com/2018/12/22/pol…
