Thread by @Yascha_Mounk

Folks, for the love of God, PLEASE STOP OBSESSING ABOUT TRUMP SERVING FAST FOOD TO THE CLEMSON FOOTBALL TEAM.

[An exasperated thread.]

slate.com/news-and-polit…

Yes, this picture is brilliant.

And yes, Trump is a boor with bad taste.

(We knew this, right? I’m pretty sure we knew this…)

But let’s keep a little focused on things that matter at least a little for at least a little bit?

The obsession with #WhiteHouseDinners would be a bit of silly fun if took place during the languid summer of a placid presidency.

But it's inexcusable at a moment when the government is in the middle of a shutdown and Trump is threatening to declare a fake national emergency.

You’re worried about normalization?

Normalization isn’t pretending that Trump is a President like any other. No one believes that. No one ever will.

Normalization is when we pay as much attention to Trump’s odd culinary choices as to a FAKE NATIONAL EMERGENCY.

This also raises an important point about what (and I know that this phrase is about to put you all to sleep) political scientists often call “the rules and norms of liberal democracy.”

There’s been a lot of blowback against norms, both from the Trumpist right and the anti-liberal left.

The right argues that Trump promised to shake things up. What better way to show he’s delivering than that so many people are concerned about all of his breaking of norms?

The anti-liberal left argues that a focus on norms is inherently small-c conservative: all of this concern about unimportant things like process, they say, is just a plot to stop the marginalized from demanding justice in whatever way they can.

Both of these arguments demolish the same stolid strawman.

Norms aren’t important because political traditions should take precedence over equality. They’re important because, in the absence of agreed institutional procedures, deep disagreements over pressing issues of justice and equality can lead to violence, tyranny, or civil war.

So why should both conservatives *and* radical leftists care about the norms of liberal democracy? Because they allow each of them to fight for what they most care about at the ballot box.

For the same reason, people who care about norms don’t just want to fossilize all aspects of the political system.

Manners change. If voters are fine with swearing, swear! If voters are fine with dancing in the halls of Congress, dance in the halls of Congress!

(In fact, lots of political leaders in the past, from J.F.K. to Reagan to Clinton, have been very popular precisely because they embraced the mores of a new generation that had grown impatient with the pieties of their elders.)

So, yes: Trump serving fast food to White House visitors is a very salient break with a longstanding tradition of decorum.

But it is not a break with any institutional norm that sane political scientists would describe as important.

Focusing on burgers at a time when Trump is threatening to declare a national emergency over a fake crisis is stupid in all sorts of ways:

* It makes Trump’s critics look like snobs
• It obscures the actual importance of norms
• It distracts from the truly bad things he does

Phew, that was exhausting. I’m off to have a big mac. Please share my article @slate, etc., etc.

[THE END.]

slate.com/news-and-polit…