We weren’t going to normalize this.
Remember that? Remember the way many of us solemnly vowed we would always maintain the ability to be outraged, hold on to our capacity for shock?
Well, after almost four years that have passed like geologic time, that declaration feels like an artifact from another era, a Polaroid from back when the kids were little and you still had all your hair. It feels like something you said when you were too young to know any better.
The truth of Donald Trump’s untruths is that they have become not simply normal, but taken for granted. Saying that Trump lied is like saying the tide came in or the Cleveland Browns lost. Because, of course. That’s what they do. The paradox is that the sheer volume of his lies seems to keep any one of them from mattering all that much.
A normal presidency in normal times would have been indelibly marked by any one of the thousands of whoppers Trump has excreted. Ask Bill Clinton or Richard Nixon about that.