This is a good thread and I wanted to tie it back into my grand unified theory of Reaganism -- this sense that with DJT we've fully entered a kind of second stage -- https://twitter.com/vexwerewolf/status/1293864956362985472

The GWB administration was terrible in just about every possible way, but they still seemed to maintain a sense that part of their purpose was "keep the system from collapsing entirely" & they would act to do that.

But the three purposes of government under Reaganism (military, money & power to rich people, prevent effective opposition to Reaganism) don't actually specify "keep the whole system running"

I think it might be one of those things -- like, "by the way, also don't blow the place up" that nobody bothers to call out specifically because it never occured to them that anybody WOULD blow the place up.

That is, I think for years, the people in government who were following Reaganism operated under a shared, vague, general, largely unspoken principle that their dictates *included* "maintain the whole system," but DJT clearly does not think that.

However! Reaganism has no enforcement mechanism built in for anything other than violating the *explicit* terms of Reaganism, and DJT isn't doing that at all.

In order to stop or punish DJT, you would have to step *outside* of the boundaries of Reaganism -- which is forbidden by Reaganism, because it violates rule #3.

This, I believe, is why all our institutions -- which have, over the past 40 years, ben entirely taken over by Reaganism -- are basically staring at DJT helplessly while he wrecks the place.

I think a lot of them don't even know that's why they can't do anything about it.

Reaganism isn't just a political philosophy, it's a political BELIEF system, a kind of religion, very similar to evangelical Christianity in its structure.

And, like evangelical Christians, the faithful of Reaganism treat their own doctrines as inevitable, objective, self-evident -- not as one philosophical position among many that might be debated, but as THE truth, all other "truths" are satanic.

The quasi-religious nature of Reaganism cleared the pathway for Qanon, which appears to be a Reaganism offshoot.

I keep harping on this Reaganism thing because I think it parallels the way we need to, and are just barely starting to, talk about evangelical Christianity --

Where for years both (supposedly neutral) news outlets and general social norms dictated that we allow evangelical Christians to basically drive the conversation & set the terms.

You know, where if they start a crusade against contraception rights, we can debate THAT (using their terms: pro life or pro choice) but never push harder & ask "but isn't all of that just cover for racial discrimination?"

Similarly, we've spent 40 years in a social landscape where you're either a "traditionalist" (Reaganite) or a "radical leftist" (anything else) and the debates always happen along those lines -- which of course are entirely defined BY the Reaganite side.

For example: we can stop accepting the premise that "tax cuts" are good for the economy -- either in fact or intent.

We can stop accepting the premise that police should function as military occupiers. We can stop accepting the premise that the military is inherently good and useful and that spending public money on the military benefits us as a nation.

We can stop accepting the premise that taxing the extremely wealthy at a fair rate would be "communism" and therefore satanic.

And we can definitely stop accepting the premise that Reaganism is the norm, default & center from which all other political opinions deviate.

Addendum: when I say "stop accepting the premise" I mean in a George Lakoff "framing" sense, which, if you're not familiar with it, is a really powerful concept in rhetoric. https://georgelakoff.com/tag/framing/ 

A very basic way to understand how framing works is the "have you stopped beating your spouse?" question. Which, of course, presupposes that you have, in the past, beaten your spouse -- and in fact presupposes that you made a habit of it.

Another one I remember from my evangelical childhood, Pascal's Wager, which goes something like --

"The only rational choice is to behave as if God exists, because if he doesn't, the cost isn't much, but if he DOES, the cost (ie hell) is infinite."

Can you spot the presupposition?

A lot of framing ideas are baked very deep into our culture and the right, in particular, is good at exploiting them.