This is not normal
Today’s Washington Post print front page looks different from its online landing page. The print edition features stories about starvation in Gaza, Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s life growing up among violent gangs, and Russia’s war on Ukraine. The lead online post is about Americans with bad credit scores.
Politico leads with a story about state of politics in Canada.
The New Yorker’s landing page features a story about guitar heroes.
The mundaneness of it all has a creepiness to it. We are This-is-not-normalled out.
Again yesterday (it’s happened before), I sat reviewing the state of the country with a colleague over a beer, glanced around the joint and pointed out, “so this is life under fascism.”
People go about their business. Business goes on. Store shelves are not empty … yet. Nothing seems particularly different on the surface. Like the Post’s lead online story. People are having credit-score trouble! No one I know has been arrested yet, says virtually the entire country.
The change is almost imperceptible for those who don’t pay attention (or don’t want to). My friend says her bestie is aligned with her but not particularly political. Doesn’t want to think too hard about the deconstruction of the country we’ve grown up in or the destruction of the rule of law as both crumble.
But that’s not exactly right. It’s not that there is no rule of law. It’s just that Trumpism takes its cue from Peruvian authoritarian and former president Oscar Benavides: “For my friends, everything. For my enemies, the law.”
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