Another part of the story of problems that preceded Donald Trump and will survive him unless we do something about them
Sam Smith - I have argued for a long time that America had quietly ended its first republic and that we were in an ill-defined succession perhaps best described in a term used in Latin America: a culture of impunity.
One based on hegemonic liberty i.e. the more power you have the more freedom you have to use it. Traditional external factors such as history, law, community, religion and culture values move to the rear or disappear. As I’ve described it:
In a culture of impunity, rules serve the internal logic of the system rather than whatever values typically guide a country, such as those of its constitution, church or tradition. The culture of impunity encourages coups and cruelty, and at best practices only titular democracy. A culture of impunity differs from ordinary political corruption in that the latter represents deviance from the culture while the former becomes the culture. Such a new culture does not announce itself.
In a culture of impunity, what replaces constitution, precedent, values, tradition, fairness, consensus, debate and all that sort of arcane stuff? Mainly greed. We find ourselves without heroism, without debate over right and wrong, with little but an endless narcissistic struggle by the powerful to get more money, more power, and more press than the next person. In the chase, anything goes and the only standard is whether you win, lose, or get caught.
The major political struggle has become not between conservative and liberal but between ourselves and our political, economic, social and media elites. Between the toxic and the natural, the corporate and the communal, the technocratic and the human, the competitive and the cooperative, the efficient and the just, meaningless data and meaningful understanding, the destructive and the decent.
