This Is How Democracies Die

[Dill]

(01-25-2018, 08:43 PM)hollodero Wrote: Maybe there isn't any difference, but none of the other presidents have sent their supporters through such extraordinary lengths. Trump is distinctly different (or "worse", like I would put it).

When Bill was president, he walked the line for sure. But he "only" had the women stuff against him, not the authoritarian sayings, not the relentless attacks and so on. I don't want to defend that either, but this is not about the Clintons right now.
Also, I'm not young.

And the discrediting of the (unfriendly) media is just one aspect here.

You are young.  But that is not a problem.  

No other president since the Civil War era has publicly encouraged supporters at rallies to beat protestors--to resounding cheers--as Trump has.

Also, no other president has continued to relive the election by continuing to compare himself to his opponent, as Trump does almost daily. Nor has any other president set out to simply undo, step by step, everything his predecessor did in foreign and domestic policy--the rest of the world be damned.

One of the most troubling aspects of Trump rule is his continued efforts to shut down the investigation into his campaign collusion with the country that attacked our election.  I guess one other president has obstructed justice in this fashion, but not so publicly and incompetently, and with the full-throated support of a major news outlet. 

Another aspect of the "both sides do it" argument is how that is applied to news organizations. When the patent bias of FOX and fellow travelers is up for discussion, the counter is that the MSM is no different, simply an organ of the Democratic party.  The inability to recognize authoritarian, anti-democratic behavior in Trump is matched by the inability to recognize/evaluate journalistic standards, or lack thereof.

Defenses of Trump continue to drive standards downward.  His defenders dispute legal definitions of sexual assault and claim racism is in the eye of the beholder. The CIA and FBI are placed on the same level of credibility as Sean Hannity and Judge Jeanine, or lower.  There have always been fringe voters in the US who believed crazy things and throve on conspiracy theories, but never organized into a party voting block and expanded in numbers to follow a single, authoritarian leader, as is currently the case.  In the early 70s, one could still count on Nixon's own party to eventually reject his criminality. It is not clear that is the case at present, given that so many in Congress owe their seats to that now expanded fringe.