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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023

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[removed, overly emotional]

I think Trump has a point, that arguing the specifics seems irrelevant to me, when the larger issue is unfair treatment. Unfortunately, it's probably impossible to persuade anyone of this to people who consider Trump to be a singular threat.

I mean, Re: Hillary, destruction of evidence is a pretty automatic charge. Can you imagine Trump not being charged with it? Not to mention the 1001 charges (also apparently seen here, according to reporting), and the OIG report quoted FBI agents who were dumbstruck as to why such charges weren't brought against folks, because they were dead-to-rights. But nope; that stuff is reserved for the likes of Flynn and Trump... the folks who need to be removed.

Possibly more interesting for actual culture war analysis is just observing the public narrative shift. Back in the days before it was fashionable to prosecute Trump and anyone related to Trump, when the possible charges were against Hillary, it was a grave and serious thing to prosecute politicians, especially when they had possible elections in front of them. "That's the stuff of banana republics!" they said. "That's, like, what Putin does!" they said. It was "deeply dangerous for democracy". Whether or not our democracy was legitimate was supposedly hanging in the balance, depending upon whether their preferred candidate was charged with a crime. You don't hear that anymore. For good or for bad, fair and just or unfair and unjust, it's a change in the narrative. Whether this change can be easily flip-flopped on in another 5-10 years... or whether it will be persistent, possibly leading to endless tit-for-tat, I don't know.

Back in the days before it was fashionable to prosecute Trump and anyone related to Trump, when the possible charges were against Hillary, it was a grave and serious thing to prosecute politicians, especially when they had possible elections in front of them. "That's the stuff of banana republics!" they said. "That's, like, what Putin does!" they said. It was "deeply dangerous for democracy". Whether or not our democracy was legitimate was supposedly hanging in the balance, depending upon whether their preferred candidate was charged with a crime. You don't hear that anymore.

Do you have any theories for why this changed? Were there any chants at political rallies or something agitating for this shift in norms?

Why the assumption it was driven bottom up? The most obvious explanation seems to be that the establishment wanted to protect Clinton and now wants to go after Trump.

I'm not assuming anything, I'm asking about where this apparent shift came from.

But why suggest chants at rallies as the mechanism for change, or that the change in messaging implies a shift in values rather being an expression of current objectives?

That was one theory but I'm open to others, hence the question. Just because I don't mention other explanations doesn't mean I've already dismissed them as possibilities.

Why not post your theory in full instead of just hinting at it?

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