Now people in the MSM are saying Trump accused Scarborough of murder to distract from the 100,000 milestone. From what I have seen of narcissists, this would be entirely in character.
So does that make the crime less bad, or worse? Do we make allowances for "mixed motives" as Dershowitz argued in the Ukraine impeachment hearings? If there is some iota of public policy rationale, (and re-election seems to be an acceptable one if you buy the Dershowitz line) does that little bit of end justify a massive violation by means? Or does the use of a "fig leaf" of rationale amount to a poisonous cynicism that drags everyone down and needs to be met by particular vigilance?
I tend to say, "both". That we can't rule out balancing tests, but neither can we ignore norm-busting, limit-pushing degradation of the public sphere. The Roy Cohns and Joe McCarthys and Dick Nixons and Elijah Muhammeds and Huey Longs of any culture need to be held at arm's length because buying into their behavior distorts and weakens the people who back them.
I tend to put a lot of faith in the private conversations by which people in authority juggle the various principles at stake. Those conversations can end up endorsing power and its ways, but they do make some room for private conscience and the sensitivity people have to right and wrong. I have seen it at work in Washington - someone putting in a private word, something for others to think about, without trying to "litigate" the issue with arguments that everyone recognizes have a self-serving side.
You can imagine the private conversations among the Republicans around the subject of the Trump Administration. The Devin Nunes "we will lose all this" argument, and the McConnell "don't give an inch" approach, are being tested by the degree of cynicism in the White House. Some never-Trump Republicans are creating super-PACs to oppose Trump, such as the Lincoln Project (featuring George Conway) and its ability to raise $1.4 million by putting an ad on Fox that triggered Trumpian temper.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/27/maga ... ogin=email [paywall after a certain number of stories in a month]
Their party leader has been impeached by a House representing the majority of Americans. And does he soften his approach in response? You must be thinking of the other Donald Trump, the one who understands checks and balances and doesn't fire IG's who irritate him by doing their job. So maybe gerrymandering and voter suppression will buy them some time? But in the meantime, they look worse and worse.
But they all have some conscience - even the narcissist in the Big House has some conscience - and they all know that they could end up like Jeff Sessions or Joe Scarborough for exercising that conscience. Neither Trump nor Murdoch/Ailes nor Rush Limbaugh created such a system, but Dear Leader has scratched and bit and caterwauled to make it as unforgiving as possible, and he regularly recruits worthless sycophants and ruthlessly jesuitical Macchiavellis to staff it out. We can all marvel at the crazy guy in "Cape Fear" who scares us with his sheer determination to extract every pound of flesh he can claim, but would you really want one leading your country?