Stay with me here but I have the sneaking suspicion, based on the last two yrs of zero meaningful consequences for him, that the result of Trump’s personal lawyer receiving millions of dollars worth of “consulting fees” (obvs not on *behalf* of POTUS?!) will be jack-diddly-all.
The point being: enforcing the rule of law, enforcing norms, and institutional and democratic integrity is fundamentally premised on a shared social and political commitment to those principles — one that is currently absent in the US. Don’t hold your breath for Deus Ex Mueller.
Or still more clearly: countries turn authoritarian and/or illiberal when a significant portion of the elite and/or public decide they are, for whatever reason, OK w non-democratic governance. It’s not a complex process. It is, actually, quite terrifying in its simplicity.
And if you don’t believe folks like myself, or @SashaHemon, or @sarahkendzior, who have drawn linkages w the present moment in the US & the history of E. Europe, C. Asia etc. then please just recall the *decades* of authoritarian rule in the American South well into the 20th Cnt.
The point is not to lose hope. But it is to have a sober and informed dialogue about the precarious nature of democratic government. It survives merely through shared consent & protection, not divine providence. Demand more of your representatives & elected officials. /xxx
