Good to remember that authoritarian leaders generally do not *eliminate rules*; rather they *make themselves and their allies exempt from them* either officially or by compromising the systems of enforcement and exercising "discretion".
That allows the authoritarian leader to insist that rules are being followed, and to use those rules to punish members of opposition or scapegoat groups, without endangering themselves.
The implicit message to their supporters is: "You and I, we are the good people. The system's rules are meant to stop bad people like the ones who hate us, not constrain good people like us."
This is why pointing out disparities in enforcement of laws, calling out the patterns in who receives "exceptions" and who is treated harshly, is important but will never cause supporters to waver. The disparity is the keeping of a promise to them, not the breaking of it.
A leader uses government resources to prosecute his opponents? A police offiers kills a shoplifter? A young man kills protesters in the street? All acceptable, because the law is meant to stop *bad people from doing things*, not to stop *people from doing bad things*.
I dwell on this because our public discourse often focuses on confronting true believers with contradictions in a leader's statements and actions.
If they believe the contradictions benefit them and their ingroup, though, it's not a crisis for the true believer. It's the payoff.
If they believe the contradictions benefit them and their ingroup, though, it's not a crisis for the true believer. It's the payoff.
(And… to be clear I'm absolutely talking about 45, the GOP, and the USA's ideological right. The neutral language is meant to emphasize the universality of the patterns, not to imply "both sides are doing it." All humans are capable of it, they *are doing* it here and now.)
