This photo taken on Jan. 6, 2023 shows the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., the United States. [Photo/Xinhua]
There's a powerful case
that at the heart of the American people's uneasiness is a widespread sense that politics just isn't normal anymore, reported The Washington Post on Sunday in an Opinion article titled "There's a war raging. It's against normal politics."
"The obvious example: Normal means accepting the outcome of a legitimate election your side lost and offering no sanction to a violent mob attack on the U.S. Capitol to overturn the result," said the report.
Yet a recent CBS News/YouGov poll found that 69 percent of Republicans and those who lean their way don't believe U.S. President Joe Biden is a legitimate president, and 75 percent say the idea that Donald Trump won in 2020 is a reason to vote for him, according to the report.
The breakdown of normal has been a long time in gestation. Matthew Dallek, a historian at George Washington University, sees the end of the Cold War as having had a destabilizing effect on politics, weakening the ability of Republican establishment figures to contain their fringe, it said.
"The disintegration of normal has, not accidentally, coincided with the disintegration of norms," Nicole Hemmer, a historian at Vanderbilt University, was quoted as saying.
