This is not normal.
That’s what many continue to chant under their breath in the Trump era as the institutional norms of America crumble around us. One only needs to look to the much talked about Cohen hearing to see it in motion. If there’s one event you can look at to define how broken our government is…well, you get at least one a week, but this instance stood out. Republicans and Democrats lived in two separate realities as they grilled Cohen. The latter used the event to ask Cohen anything and everything about Trump. GOP Representatives used it exclusively to discredit Cohen and yell at him, including one Congressman who printed out a poster at Kinkos that displayed Cohen along with ‘Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire.’ Could very well be a scene from the 2008 political absurdist comedy, The Campaign.
One thing both sides did manage to come together for was praise of current Committee Chair, Congressman Elijah Cummings. He delivered an impassioned part sermon, part plea, to return to normalcy at the hearing’s end. It resonated with so many because most average folk, regardless of what side of the painful political divide, pine for going back to this nebulous normal. What that means will fluctuate depending on who you ask, but undoubtedly it’ll come down to that time before Trump ran for office (even if they are a diehard Trump supporter, it’s that undefined ‘time before’ that’s glorified). But unfortunately for Representative Cummings and all the others dreaming of that fabled return to a better time, it’s not happening. This is the new normal, and there’s no going back.
Politics have seeped into everyday life in a way alien only three or four years ago. Late night and morning talk shows, once a bastion of apolitical humor mixed and fluff promotion for movies and TV shows have become fierce and sometimes raw political mouthpieces (still mixed with fluff promotion for new movies and TV shows) that’s often taken a harder stance against Trump and his administration than any major news network. The View is harder on Trump than MSNBC or CNN dare be. Families once with occasional dinner time grievances and head shakes at one another find themselves torn apart and looking at each other in disgust and unable, or unwilling, to talk to one another.
The point of reference for many may be Trump’s rise, but anyone thinking things will settle when he’s gone has another thing coming.
The Republican party is the Trump party now. Even if he were to lose the 2020 election, and his family jet off into the sunset with him and not get involved in politics themselves to become a new dynasty, his mark is already clear. Look at the marathon speech he gave at CPAC, the conservative event of the year, not long after Cohen’s hearing. All the fresh-faced and young up and coming conservatives cheered like they were at a rock concert. They love him, and for a lot of them, he’ll be the first politician they connect with. He’s going to be to them what Ronald Regan was for three decades to their parents and grandparents.
And that reflects in the young up and coming actual GOP members of Congress that are primed to be the future of the party. Dan Crenshaw, for instance, the Texas Representative with an eye patch has much buzz about him. He may lack Trump’s nastiness, at least so far, but loves his hardline stance about the border and makes misleading and unsettling claims about border security and loves that wall. Or how about Matt Gaetz, who took the very Trumpian approach of outright threatening Cohen on twitter before his hearing. He got in some hot water there, to be fair, but it remains to be seen if any real action will be taken (don’t hold your breath).
I could go on with many other examples, but you get the idea. The future of the party isn’t shaping up to be much different than the man who is President now, only much younger and here for a lot longer.
Then of course we have the judiciary. Trump already got two judges on the Supreme Court and will most likely get at least one more. But that’s nothing to say of the lower courts. At this point 1 in 6 federal judgeships have been Trump appointees, and if this track keeps up he will have approved more judges in one term than most past Presidents have gotten in two. And boy, are they young and very far to the right. Did you know the Senate is on the verge of confirming a 37-year old woman to a lifetime federal judgeship, the youngest ever in history if it goes through, who is part of a group classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center?
This is not normal? Look at a large part of the other judicial nominees and you’ll see this is as normal as it gets.
Of course, the new normal isn’t all doom and gloom. There’s more women and minorities in Congress than ever before, both on the federal and state level, and it shows no signs of stopping. The growing candidates of Democratic challengers for 2020 looks incredibly diverse in race and gender, and you can be sure that there’s going to be just as many women and minorities running underneath them for the House and Senate. One side of Congress is going to remain as white as snow and mostly male, but the other side is going to continue to be more and more speckled.
This is not normal? Normal as black and white, near literally, at this point.
The gatekeepers of the so-called ‘Fourth Estate’ are under fire more than ever, not just from the right-wing who spent decades demonizing them, but from the left-wing who now put a magnifying glass on everything. Once untouchable and standard-bearing news institutions like The New York Times and CNN have their editorial pages questioned and many of the motives of its contributors put in the spotlight. For example, just a few years ago the story of ex-Sessions staffer Sarah Isgur, a woman who has never even written a political opinion piece, being hired to be part of CNN’s political coverage probably wouldn’t have been talked about at all. But in today’s hyper-polarized and wide open social media it became a firestorm with any CNN staffers anonymously expressing their worries and confusions about the baffling move.
This is not normal? Feels just like any other day.
I understand the desire. There’s a part of me that wants to go back, too. Over the last few years I’ve lost friends and saw relationships with family strained to the point they’ll never be the same. But once Pandora opened her box everything, good and bad, spilled out into the world. All that remained within was hope. It’s the same for us now. The box is open now and no matter how much we want to cram that lid back on, all of the good and bad that flowed out won’t come back. All we have is hope. Hope our new normal will lead to something better and stronger, to a more engaged and diverse public who are going to push us forward. And hope that it’s not just the beginnings of a nation on the verge of succumbing into its own madness and hatred and leading to something far darker.
Either way, I feel the pain of Congressman Cummings and those like him, but we’re on a one way street, no U-Turns and no last minute exits, to wherever this road goes. Welcome to the new normal.
Illustration: DonkeyHotey