When Monsters Flee

What is different is these are NOT the Never Trumper types. These are people who have fully thrown their lot in with Trump but are legitimately worried about his receptivity to Flynn and Powell’s ideas and conspiracy theories. One month seems like an eternity in this context. https://t.co/7t5oWkg1ht

— Jonathan Swan (@jonathanvswan) December 19, 2020

As a leader sinks deeper and deeper into tyranny, fantasy, and fuckery, the "opposition" comes to include an increasing number of bona fide extremists who won't go THAT extreme.

Michael Cohen is not a great guy. John Bolton is not a great guy. Georgia governor Kemp is as Trumpy as Desantis. I welcome them all to the fight without reservation (we've begged insiders to "speak up" for years, so we mustn't rebuff those who do), but it's a fantastic study in relativism.

We talk about the "lobster boil" effect: if you raise water temperature gradually enough, lobsters never realize they're being cooked. We are adaptable creatures, which is a blessing and a curse. It can be hard to gauge where we’re at.

But here's the yardstick: gauge by the awfulness of the characters peeling off and saying “enough”. When monsters flee in disgust - when even a Bill Barr gets fed up - that’s a problem.


And, again, let's welcome the monsters back to civilization. Monster repatriation is a wonderful saving grace of this sort of crisis. Monsters gaining perspective is even better than monsters shunned and shamed.