Trump's philosophy of violating norms in plain sight was on full display this week, as was the fatuousness of the GOP senators' arguments that Trump will have "learned a valuable lesson" from his impeachment (and acquittal). Senators Lamar Alexander, Susan Collins, and Lisa Murkowski should be ashamed to show their faces in public after their disgraceful appeasing of the president on the Sunday talk shows last week. Entirely predictably, what Trump did seem to learn was a reinforcement of so many of his earlier life lessons, namely that the powerful can get away with things that ordinary folk can't. That's exactly what anyone with half a brain had been predicting.
Equally unsurprising has been his petty, vindictive acts of retribution. The firing of Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman's brother, Yevgeny, who was not involved in the Ukraine scandal, is a textbook example of Trump's spiteful exercise of power; going after family members (something Trump talked about with respect to terrorists) only makes him look like a tinpot dictator or a mob boss. It should send a chill down the spine of anyone who has one (the GOP clearly don't).
Trump's public meddling in the sentencing of Roger Stone further highlights the danger in which the US system of justice now finds itself. While the judge in Stone's case has little to fear, she cannot be removed without an impeachment, civil servants in the Justice Department are rightly worried that Trump's public statements have compromised the independence of the Justice Department's leadership (which was anway pretty firmly in Trump's camp) and thereby created undue influence in the conduct of their proprietorial duties.
While Trump's misbehavior has highlighted the system's weaknesses there is little sign that the political classes on the left have any solutions, or that those on the right have any interest in eschewing the dog-eat-dog political free-for-all Trump's is ushering in. Many who voted for the Tea Party and then for Trump just wanted to "blow up the system"; it seems as though they are getting what they wanted.
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