The Globe’s Jeff Jacoby parks one on the “cycle of selective outrage and partisan blindness” that’s destroying our body politic. … I now mostly try to tune out people who can’t separate partisanship from their views. I already know what they’re going to say. … 

Soon after reading Jeff Jacoby’s column (see post above), I resumed reading Mike Duncan’s terrific “The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic.” By pure coincidence, I stumbled across a passage about ancient Rome’s own bout with Partisan Hypocrisy Derangement Syndrome (as I’ll now refer to it here on in). Duncan notes how a brutal fight over land reform and other bitter disputes in Rome revealed that politically “it was no longer a specific issue that mattered so much as the urgent necessity to triumph over rivals.”

And then Duncan quotes Sallust, a Roman historian who lived through the final turbulent years of the Republic, as writing:

“It is this spirit which has commonly ruined great nations, when one party desires to triumph over another by any and every means and to avenge itself on the vanquished with excessive cruelty.” 

I can be dismissive about Josh Kraft’s apparent decision to challenge Mayor Michelle Wu this fall, as the Globe reports.  But these are strange, norm-busting political times. So maybe his candidacy isn’t the Thanks-Dad joke as I previously thought. … 

It’s less than what the state would have had to pay without a last-minute deal with the outgoing Biden administration, so we should be thankful for that. But it still leaves the state owing $2.1 billion to the feds for a rather spectacular unemployment bookkeeping mistake – and it will still hurt businesses. And, of course, the Baker administration still owns this accounting blunder. … Via SHNS at WBUR.

These are far worse (NYT) than Biden’s disgraceful pre-emptive pardons. … Listen: I understand why so many people are frustrated with Democrats and voted for Trump. I really do. But this? This isn’t about inflation or immigration or DEI/woke-ism or other issues that fueled Trump’s narrow victory over Kamala Harris. He just pardoned political violence. … See my ‘mos maiorum’ Biden post below. 

“I felt then, and believe even more so now, that my life was saved for a reason. I was saved by God to make America great again.” – Donald Trump, on surviving the Butler PA assassination attempt in July, via NYT.

“I take it as a confirmation of the mission of Providence to continue to pursue my life purpose, as I have done so far.” – A certain ex-corporal, on surviving an assassination attempt many years ago.

P.S. – There’s also this from the latter: “Must I not recognize therein the governance of a higher power which protects me, so that I can lead the German people to victory? Providence has frustrated all attempts against me. That can have only one historical meaning, that it has elected me to lead the German people.”

Sorry for the you-know-what comparison. I usually hate it when others do it. But Trump’s inaugural remarks just begged for a comparison.

In his excellent book “The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic,” Mike Duncan writes that one of the key things that ultimately brought an end to the Roman Republic, and ushered in the era of emperors, was a breakdown in what the Romans called “mos maiorum,” or the unwritten rules, traditions and time-honored principles that helped govern Roman political life. … I thought of “mos maiorum” today after reading this NYT piece about President Biden’s pre-emptive pardons issued just prior to Donald Trump’s inauguration. From the Times: “Mr. Biden effectively turned the president’s constitutional power of forgiveness into a protective shield against what he maintains would be politically motivated vengeance. No other president has employed executive clemency in such a broad and overt way to thwart a successor he believes would abuse his power.”

And thus yet another wise unwritten political tradition is shattered in America. What a disgrace. … I distinctly recall many expressing concern that Trump might take the unprecedented step of issuing himself a pardon (NYT) after the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol. Hey, what’s now stopping Trump from issuing himself a future pardon, a form of personal immunity not covered by the presidential immunity magically found and granted last year by SCOTUS? … Every time these ever-warring political classes violate our contemporary version of “mos maiorum,” they weaken our Republic. And that’s what Biden just did with his pardons (which include members of his family, as the Times reports). … Stay tuned for more outrageous, norm-busting pardons under Trump II.

It starts today at noon. Donald Trump’s second term as president. There’s going to be so many issues and controversies to follow over the next four years, from immigration to Ukraine to the state of American democracy. Here’s a business issue to put on your watch list: cryptocurrency. … The president-elect is now hawking his very own cryptocurrency token, as the AP reports, and it’s disturbing even some of the most enthusiastic cryptocurrency enthusiasts, as Politco reports. … But I’m going to try to keep an open mind about Trump. I don’t want to be one of those who finds outrage (or feigns outrage) to everything he says and does. I’m tired of that first-term, semi-hysterical approach. But I gotta say: he sure has started his second term in a weird way! … Aha! That’s not outrage. It’s calm and cool cynicism. 

Edward Luce, US national editor for the Financial Times, had a local lunch and talk (sub. required) with historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. I liked this from the piece:

“Trump’s return does not fit easily into Goodwin’s America. I suggest that an era that does echo today is when the Carnegies, Rockefellers and Vanderbilts – the Elon Musks, Mark Zuckerbergs and Jeff Bezoses of their age – were redefining what it meant to be wealthy. Goodwin likes that comparison. ‘The robber barons probably looked in the mirror and thought they were God too.’”