Wednesday, May 04, 2022

Institutionalism

Pareene.
This is the mindset of the institutionalist. It is important that people retain faith in our institutions, which does not mean that our institutions should work to earn people’s faith, but instead that people shouldn’t hear about it when they don’t. This attitude is especially common in lawyers, who, as a profession, turned “nothing is true, everything is permitted” into a professional ethic. And of course, many elected officials, and especially many Democrats, are lawyers.
A lot of this was explicitly said after Bush v. Gore, a very small amount of (quiet voice) this is bullshit accompanied by a lot of THE IMPORTANT THING IS THE PEOPLE HAVE FAITH THAT THE INSTITUTIONS WORK AND THEY ARE GOOD. Criticizing Bush v. Gore was almost dangerous, as it might suggest our unelected corrupt priesthood that we have increasingly granted dictatorial powers might, somehow, be flawed in concept and execution.

But not just the Supreme Court. It is a general "protect the reputations of elites with this as an excuse" which seems to get worse and worse.