There has always been an ends-justify-the-means element across the entire electorate and political class. It isn’t unique to MAGA, and it isn’t new.
All of the United States law and jurisprudence is a kludge of principle and practicality and naked self-interest. It’s an accretion of ideals layered onto compromises, expediencies, and power struggles. The Constitution itself is a bundle of moral claims stitched together with practical concessions to slave states, property interests, and elite fears of democracy.
To me, unfortunately, the mid-to-late twentieth century norm of relatively principled incorruptibility now looks less like a permanent achievement and more like a historical exception.
That period stood in contrast to much of American history before it, which was more openly transactional and tolerant of self-dealing. Think robber barons, Jacksonian patronage, open graft, speculative profiteering, outright theft of public funds, Tammany Hall. Against that backdrop, the period from roughly the 1940s to the early 1970s stands out.
What feels so unsettling today may just be a quiet reversion toward older historical norms. I'm sad to think that what once felt like progress was always just a transient anomaly.
All of the United States law and jurisprudence is a kludge of principle and practicality and naked self-interest. It’s an accretion of ideals layered onto compromises, expediencies, and power struggles. The Constitution itself is a bundle of moral claims stitched together with practical concessions to slave states, property interests, and elite fears of democracy.
To me, unfortunately, the mid-to-late twentieth century norm of relatively principled incorruptibility now looks less like a permanent achievement and more like a historical exception.
That period stood in contrast to much of American history before it, which was more openly transactional and tolerant of self-dealing. Think robber barons, Jacksonian patronage, open graft, speculative profiteering, outright theft of public funds, Tammany Hall. Against that backdrop, the period from roughly the 1940s to the early 1970s stands out.
What feels so unsettling today may just be a quiet reversion toward older historical norms. I'm sad to think that what once felt like progress was always just a transient anomaly.