ANS -- the issue of unraveling social norms

This is about "unraveling social norms".   That means civilization as we know it is dying.  Apparently, when libertarian types say they want everyone to be on their own, they really mean they want an end to civilization and a return to prehistoric pre-tribal anarchy. 
this is from Doug Muder, and he didn't say it that way, I did.  And this is an excerpt. 
Find it here:  http://weeklysift.com/2013/01/14/too-simple/ 
--Kim



James Fallows suggests The Two Sentences That Should Be Part of All Discussion of the Debt Ceiling:

1. Raising the debt ceiling does not authorize one single penny in additional public spending.
2. For Congress to "decide whether" to raise the debt ceiling, for programs and tax rates it has already voted into law, makes exactly as much sense as it would for a family to "decide whether" to pay a credit-card bill for goods it has already bought.

An analogy I've used before: It's like eating out when you don't have cash, but then refusing to pay with your credit card because you're taking a principled stand against running up more debt. The time to take the principled stand is when you decide what you're going to do, not when the bill comes.

… which once again brings up the issue of unraveling social norms

The coin and the debt-ceiling hostage crisis it's supposed to avert are both examples of something I've tried (and mostly failed) to describe before: unraveling the norms that make society governable. Maybe Chris Hayes expresses it better:

Behavior of individuals within an institution is constrained by the formal rules (explicit prohibitions) and norms (implicit prohibitions) that aren't spelled out, but just aren't done. And what the modern Republican Party has excelled at, particularly in the era of Obama, is exploiting the gap between these two. They've made a habit of doing the thing that just isn't done.

He goes on to give examples: filibustering everything the Senate does, refusing to confirm qualified candidates to positions because you think the position shouldn't exist, and now "using the debt ceiling as a bargaining chip with which to extract ransom".

He might also mention the proposal that Republicans should rig the Electoral College in states where they control the legislature. The point, pretty clearly, is to be able to win presidential elections even if the People vote for the other guy. (That's what would have happened in 2012 under at least one plan: Obama gets 5 million more votes, but Romney becomes president.) It's all perfectly legal, but this is the United States. We don't do things like that. Or at least we didn't used to.

The meta-question of the trillion-dollar coin is whether Democrats should strike back with their own inside-the-rules-but-outside-the-norms actions, recognizing (as Chris puts it) that "There is no way to unilaterally maintain norms."

We need to get a handle on this trend somehow, because it doesn't go anywhere good. That's one of the themes in Colleen McCullough's Masters of Rome series: Ultimately, even respect for the written law is just a norm. At some point you start to think, "Why shouldn't I stick my enemies' heads on spikes and display them in the Forum?"

… and racism

Republicans hate it when you point to the implicit racism in the intensity of their hatred for Obama and all his works. But Colin Powell went there Sunday on Meet the Press, talking about the "dark vein of intolerance" in the Republican Party. He pointed to voter suppression, to racial code phrases like "shucking and jiving" applied to Obama, and to Birtherism.

But racism is also part of the willingness to violate previously accepted norms (that I was just talking about). Republicans feel justified in doing things that just aren't done because (until now) electing and re-electing a black president just wasn't done. Racism is the ultimate root of the Tea Party certainty that we are in uncharted waters that require unprecedented means of resistance. Just voting and campaigning and giving money to your favored candidates isn't enough any more. We need to arm ourselves and prepare for " Second Amendment solutions" because … because why, exactly?

If you doubt the racial subtext here, think about how different it would sound for a black CEO to threaten that if a white president's policy " goes one inch farther, I'm gonna start killin' people." Fox News would play that clip 24/7 for weeks.