I wonder if there’s a “Nixon rule” like Godwin’s rule: “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nixon approaches 1.”

Democracy, I’m told, isn’t just voting every two years.  Our healthy democracy depends on layers of checks and balances, which in turn depend on a raft of democratic institutions.  These institutions aren’t exhaustively defined, but most people agree they include the usual suspects — the federal and state executive, legislature, and judicial branches — along with institutions like the rule of law, free and fair elections (one person; one vote), political parties that rise of fall based on their voters, an economy with clear and fair rules, an active and unrestrained press, and so on.  I’m sure that ‘rational thought’ fits in there somewhere, at least as an unstated assumption.

I’m not pretending that these institutions always work.  There are failures all the time.  We already know many of our communities depend on unfair police enforcement to fund their administrations.  Nixon made the IRS his own personal hit squad, auditing his enemies over and over.  Just thinking about how J. Edgar Hoover distorted our government still gives me the shakes.  Still, when things don’t work, the other institutions are a force that at least tries to push us in the direction of improvement.

I bring up Nixon for more than convenience.  Nixon managed to corrupt a great deal of the executive branch, but he failed because there were institutions still in place — particularly the press, Congress, and the courts — that he couldn’t subvert.

The problem is that those institutions have been weakened, bit by bit, ever since Watergate.  And it’s been disproportionately a Republican priority.

Remember FEMA?  The Federal Emergency Management Agency was humiliated when Hurricane Andrew ripped through Florida, and we found out that President Reagan and George H. W. Bush had hollowed out the non-partisan agency by replacing real professionals with party loyalists.  President Clinton reversed this, replacing political appointees with trained professionals.  And then President George W. Bush swapped out those professionals for his own political loyalists.  And then there was hurricane Katrina.

Hapless Democrats still annoy the crap out of me, but it’s the Republicans who consistently work to subvert every possible branch of government.  On the court, Democrats nominate centrist to moderately liberal jurors; Republicans appoint hard-line ultraconservatives.  Democrats move scientists into scientific positions; Republicans yank them out to make room for industry lobbyists.  For all the noise, Democrats do try to make IRS rules fairer; Republicans stop once they have a special advantage, and criminally underfunded any possible investigations of their corporate backers.  Democrats created the rules that at least try to limit the power of huge corporations; Republicans rip out every protection they can find.

Yes, Trump is accelerating all of that, but that’s how he’s mishandled all the snazzy Republican toys.  When he tilts the scale, there’s no fancy thumb work; he drops a rock on the scale while everyone watches.  He’s the Stupid Watergate guy.

Conservatives have been buying news organizations.  Everyone knows Fox news, but who knows about the Sinclair Broadcast Group?  They’re the second largest television operators group in the US, they’re strongly conservative, and yes, they require their stations to air propaganda pieces they’ve created.  And do you think the Koch family aren’t buying news coverage?

Conservatives got the court decision they wanted, and now they run the Republicans and, to a lesser extent, Democrats.  You can lament the Republicans’ complete lack of backbone, but you can bet that every Republican who votes against Trump will get a surprisingly well-financed primary challenge in their next election.

And conservatives did get the Congress they paid for.  When Republicans lost national elections, they focused on local races.  Good for them, except the moment they won, they rigged the voting system to ensure they’d continue to win elections.  Gerrymandering and voter suppression are hard to defend, but they manage.

Yes, Democrats have a long and sordid history.  Around 150 years ago, Democrats were the rural party of farmers and slavery, and the abolitionist wing of the Whig party split off to create Lincoln’s Republicans.  Good not to forget.  Still, that all changed under President Johnson.  During the fight for civil rights, the segregationist wing of the Democratic party literally walked out of Congress and the party.  The Republicans welcomed them with open arms, and it’s not like they’ve left.  The south still reliably votes Republican, even if they had to rig the system to keep from being voted out.

So, the Republicans and their oligarch backers have control of the executive branch, including most of its agencies, the courts, Congress, news, the economy, voting, policing, science, and now, even the truth.

Hmm.