Ultimately a scandal is a scandal if the public, not the press, says it is. Americans who didn’t care about coup attempts, criminal convictions, and dark pledges to persecute political enemies surely wouldn’t have cared if Trump had violated the esoteric and already crumbling norm against firing FBI chiefs before their 10-year term is up. I find it strange and a bit unsettling that otherwise clear-eyed Trump critics persist in the illusion, post-election, that the people still retain a civic conscience that’s capable of being meaningfully shocked if only the media applies enough voltage. […]
…Numerous writers have tried to put their fingers on the full-spectrum norms-implosion in the country’s zeitgeist right now—the “great upheaval,” “decivilization”—but whatever you call it, there is a sense that Americans have sized up various Chesterton fences protecting political and cultural institutions and are spoiling to kick those suckers over just to see what happens. Which should make conservatives very nervous.