This column, by Alexander Burns, the head of news at Politico, is a rich example of the DC logic that only Democrats have agency and it’s only to Democrats that standards, norms, rules or whatever else apply. “Joe Biden’s Parting Insult: The president delivered a vote of no confidence in a justice system preparing for siege.”

It is a rich gift to those who want to blow up the justice system as we know it, and who claim the government is a self-dealing club for hypocritical elites. It is a promise-breaking act that subjects Biden’s allies to yet another humiliation in a year packed with Biden-inflicted injuries.

Republicans are like the weather. Destructive and unpredictable, perhaps capricious and sometimes dangerous. But who shouts at the rain? Those are the deeply carved grooves into which our elite media narratives all turn. How else do you explain the vastly bigger press uproar over Biden’s pardon than a notorious charlatan who’s promised to abuse his power at every opportunity being on a fast track to take over federal law enforcement?

People are scared and upset about Kash Patel becoming FBI director. There’s good reason to be. But the language illustrates problems we should have learned about during the election. I hear that he’s an “extremist,” that’s he’s a “norm-busting” pick, that he’s inexperienced, that he’s a “hardcore MAGA loyalist.” This all sounds like yada, yada, yada to me. In one ear and out the other.

What I want to hear Democrats saying is that Patel has literally promised to abuse his power as soon as he’s sworn into office. He’s said that repeatedly over the last year. I want to hear Democrats saying they don’t want an FBI director who has promised to abuse the powers of his office as soon as he’s sworn in. To me, that’s not complicated. That’s pretty straightforward. Everyone can understand it.

Over the past couple weeks, the thought of President Biden pardoning his son entered my head a few times. I tossed it around: good or bad idea? I could see it both ways. I still can. But I am fine with his decision. I’m glad he did it. Biden learned the right lesson: no one gives a fuck about norms. It’s unquestionably true that Hunter Biden wouldn’t be in this position if not for his dad. That’s basically the justification Biden gave. And he’s right. It may sound angry or cynical to say “no one gives a fuck.” But I mean it both in a general way and in this particular way: the reason for Biden not to do this was to allow his son to remain collateral damage of the GOP war against his presidency and to leave him in the hands of the Trump DOJ for at least the next four years all to make a point of principle about being better, different, more righteous, more norm-honoring than Donald Trump.

Truly. No one gives a fuck. If anything, that logic I just laid out sounds like one of those fastidious, hyper-process-oriented and baroque bits of reasoning that have of late left Democrats mesmerized while the real world is passing them by.

Either you know the difference or you don’t. This doesn’t shift the balance in anyone’s head.

Ever since Elon Musk bought Twitter two years ago, those who despise his evolving mix of predatory trolling, stunted emotional development and right-wing extremism have been hoping for an alternative. There was “Post”; Meta got into the act with “Threads”; another entity of at first uncertain origins actually got its start with one of Twitter’s former CEOs, Jack Dorsey. That was Bluesky. There was also Mastodon, a sort of Linux of social media networks. Part of the problem there was that you may not be familiar enough with Linux to understand the analogy. And if you do, you’re part of a potential community not nearly big enough to sustain a mass adoption social media platform. Each in succession thoroughly failed to dislodge or even make much of a dent in Twitter’s disordered and Frankensteinian dominance. It’s the power of network effects. Everyone can want to leave (or at least a big chunk of users can want that) and yet everyone is simultaneously trapped. It’s a collective action problem.

A perennial feature of Trumpism is that Trump is constantly launching threats and shiny objects of all sorts. Some of those he’ll follow through on; most he won’t. They all put opponents back on their heels. And that is, of course, the point. Trump lets it all ride and acts on what seems to serve his interests in the moment. Or maybe he doesn’t. That’s also the point. He’s the actor; his opponents are the reactors.

That spurs a knock-on feature of Trumpism. His opponents are among the biggest proponents of the seriousness of his threats. We’ll come back to that.

Polls have come out in the days since the election showing clear majorities favoring Trump’s “mass deportation” plans. Or at least they seem to. One I saw over the weekend asked if respondents supported Trump’s plan start “a national program to find and deport all immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally.” 57% of respondents to a CBS/YouGov poll said they supported that. But let’s note that this is already U.S. government policy. There is a question of what’s prioritized, just what lengths the government goes to to find people. But the question in the poll described what is actually current policy. When asked how he plans to start “mass deportation,” incoming “Border Czar” Tom Homan says they’ll focus first on criminals and terrorist undocumented immigrants. Well, that is especially current U.S. policy.