Our crass political moment
I began noticing it after the September 11 attacks. The shock of it, its rawness, did something to American political discourse. Bit by bit, it became more crass, more coarse, less willing to abide by politeness and formality, dispensing with the norms which had governed before. We were at war, dammit, and as the occupant of the White House at the time was purported to have said, "the Constitution is just a goddamned piece of paper." When the person entrusted with the Republic's welfare has such a dismissive attitude towards its foundational law, then one can expect our politics to begin to slide down. But what has happened in the past decade has been nothing short of remarkable. When the "grab them by the pussy" recording came out in 2016, that should have been the end for the GOP nominee to the presidency. Instead, we were treated to this scene: Donald Trump recognized something his opponents were too slow in taking up: he was popular among his cult because h...
