Thursday May 24, 2018; 9:39 AM EDT
Josh Marshall wrote a piece yesterday saying it's time for journalism to stop talking about norms. Of course I agree. I've been writing about that a lot lately. #- Here's an analogy. Suppose you have a horrible accident and one of your legs is amputated. So you're trying to learn how to live with a single leg. All the while you're screaming at anyone who will listen: This is not normal. This is not normal. #
- But it is normal. It just isn't what was normal in the past. #
- There's a word for reporters who behave as if The Trump Totalitarian State, the one that's still emerging, isn't normal. Deluded. Not coping with reality. There are proper ways to respond to a totalitarian state, but saying it's not normal is not a good response.#
- We're in a weird period where (following the analogy) the leg hasn't been fully amputated yet. For example we still have a court system that's willing to order the president to stop blocking people on Twitter. #
- An aside, how will that be implemented? Will Twitter disable the block command on his account? Will they unblock all the people he's previously blocked? Surely they're not depending on El Presidentè to personally obey the order? #
- We still appear to have free speech. The right to assemble. Our votes still seem to work, even though some our votes are suppressed. But there's no question the doctor intends to amputate. So maybe we should be talking about things other than the incorrect idea that this is not normal. It most definitely is. #