There was a time when getting caught in a lie ended your public career. Not necessarily a complicated lie. Not even a consequential lie. You said something demonstrably false, it got documented, and you were done.
That time is over. And the crazy part is we just kind of… accepted it. There was no moment of national reckoning where we said "okay, consequences don't apply to certain people anymore." It just gradually became the reality and everyone adjusted.
I run businesses. I've hired people. I've fired people. I know what it looks like when someone isn't held accountable — the behavior escalates. Every time. Without exception. Because why wouldn't it? If there's no cost to the behavior, there's no incentive to change it.
What we are watching in American politics is textbook consequence removal. And we're acting surprised that the behavior keeps escalating.
I don't know when we decided that rules apply to everyone except the loudest people in the room. I don't know when "but he fights" became a complete answer to documented misconduct. But here we are.
The thing that should genuinely scare people isn't any specific bad actor — it's the system that's been built to protect them from consequences. Bad actors will always exist. A functioning society has mechanisms to check them. When those mechanisms stop working, the bad actors aren't the problem anymore. The broken system is.
We have a broken system. This is me saying so.
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