Tom Friedman just wrote a column comparing Trump’s wink wink on Hillary and the 2nd Amendment to what happened with Rabin. What he writes is true — but it’s also true that lots of people on the left (myself included) have been calling Trump literally Hitler, which carries the unspoken insinuation that if you were around in the 30’s it would have been the right thing to kill him.
Trump has started to play a different game, and though I’m sure Clinton and the rest of the establishment’s preference was to remain civil they know that they have to fight fire with fire. Since Trump ‘went there’ in appealing to our basest psychological fears, mainstream politicians have had to bring out the rhetorical atom bombs as well (like the Hitler analogy) to stay competitive. The Overton window has expanded dramatically and will likely stay wider for a long time. (Anyone know of studies on how Overton windows shrink?)
Daniel Hanson is onto something. Compared to US history and that of other democracies, we have it just about as good as anyone ever has. What’s more, the resting equilibrium of the ‘decency’ level of American politics was pretty high for a pretty long time. Really ugly stuff has happened (hello 2000 SC GOP primary, and not to pick on SC but anyone remember Alvin Greene?) but on really important things the post-war national security consensus you still recently heard folks like Boehner saying ‘politics stops as the water’s edge’.
I have no idea where the new equilibrium will turn out but we’re not going back to those halcyon days of early 2015 bipartisan comity anytime soon.