“So… it didn’t work to change the culture temporarily, to deal with Trump, that horribly abnormal President. The old culture didn’t just pop back into place when Trump was gone. You have to take care of a culture and maintain its values in good times and bad.”

—Retired law professor and active blogger Ann Althouse, reflecting on how the cultural norms violated by the Left to “get” Donald Trump didn’t recover once he was out of the White House.

Ann warrants a Super Bingo for this. It neatly fits in with the EA post about what we are facing once the courts make it official that Presidents can be prosecuted for their acts while in office. Her observation—spot on—was prompted by the Politico piece, “Bosses in the Biden admin are pressed over young staffers’ anonymous letters/Protest letters, like those over Israel, were rare in past administrations. White House veterans can barely contain their disdain over how times have changed”. Ethics Alarms posted many articles about how members of Trump’s staff and other officials in his administration, including former Attorney General Bill Barr, behaved unethically by abusing their positions of trust, leaking confidential information, and working behind the scenes to sabotage their superiors. The government simply cannot function without government staff and subordinates accepting the basic principle that while they are employed, as Paul Begala (the loyal Clinton henchman) says, “If confronted with a decision that crosses one’s ethical, moral, social, political lines, the choice is clear: Shut up and support it, or resign.”

An especially destructive feature of the still rampaging 2016 Post-election Ethics Train Wreck is that the “resistanc”e and Democrats laid waste to many political culture traditions and practices that had served the nation well (usually) in order to cripple the Trump Presidency. But the culture didn’t “pop back,” and if they understood how culture works, they would have known it wouldn’t “pop back,” the reckless morons. Maybe they did understand, but didn’t care, choosing short term objectives over long-term stability and democratic health.

That’s probably the more likely explanation. There are so many past examples; surely Trump’s foes couldn’t have missed the lesson? Before Robert Bork was “borked,” a President could have any qualified SCOTUS nominee he chose confirmed, regardless of the composition of the Senate. The end of that cultural norm led to Mitch McConnell refusing to consider Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland. The GOP pursuit of Bill Clinton with a free-wheeling investigation continuing through most of his 8 years in office undoubtedly opened the door for the Russian collusion investigation of Trump. Right now, the Democrats are destroying the tradition of not using criminal prosecutions of Presidential candidates as a political weapon—and I guarantee, they will regret it.

Cultural norms and traditions can work better than laws, but they are also easier to destroy, and much harder to repair.