Normal Is As Normal Does

I’m so sad and tired from the normalization of this. The sad thing is I’m not sure those supporting him are being convinced - I think they have been waiting for someone to give them permission to behave this way and voila! https://t.co/gKiGTELrPv

— jerushah duford (o | | | | o) (@jerushahruth) December 9, 2020

I think this is closer to the reality of the situation than anything else I've seen lately.  Trump is giving the crazies permission to take to the streets and make noise.  I grew up around these people.  I've known them all my life.  The social constraints on announcing their views on the street were considerable until the Trump presidency.

And those constraints will return when Trump leaves office.

My comparison to "The Monsters Are Coming To Maple Street" was not casually chosen.  The people in that story are agitated because they are being agitated.  There's certainly some explanation for that in the argument of "The Paranoid Style In American Politics," (it all seems peculiarly and tragically American, to turn on your neighbors and friends that way) but the agitation has to remain strong.  There was a serious agitation in the '60's for civil rights.  It moved the nation, it moved the President and the Congress.  And then it went away, and now we've had four years of the Racist-in-Chief, which moved the nation to pour into the streets to protest the death of George Floyd.  The Lovely Wife told me of a story out of North Little Rock, Arkansas.  I'm old enough to remember Orval Faubus and the story (not the memory) of Eisenhower enforcing a court order for desegregation in Arkansas.  But this story was from this year.  A black man put up a black inflatable Santa in his yard, for his daughter's sake.  He got threats on-line, which he posted on Facebook.  He was angry, scared, wondering if he should even move.  Shortly after his Facebook post neighbors started inflating Black Santas in their yards.

That is not the action of yahoos shouting for Trump to be instated POTUS by judicial fiat.

Trump will leave office, officially, on January 20.  He will lose his bully pulpit.  Twitter may even cancel his account, as he won't be a public official anymore.  He will scream and shout, but who will listen?  What clout does W. have anymore?  What clout did Reagan have after Poppy took over for him?  Jimmy Carter's strength has been in his moral actions.  Even Obama's star is fading.  Trump?  He'll be fish wrap.  A day old newspaper will have more importance than him.  A tweet from yesterday will have more staying power than he does.

Biden is already turning us back towards "normal."  Normal is a very powerful pacifier of crazed emotions.