Your points are mostly fair that this kind of behavior has precedents. But I’m a libertarian so saying the other team is doing the same thing doesn’t convince me much that it’s not bad. From my viewpoint, the current administration has more of a plan of ignoring rules, laws, the constitution, etc. than most previous. Each incident has antecedents, and I can see how people on the red team might think “we’re just doing to them what they’ve been doing to us”, but what I see is a more concerted effort to undermine the rule of law.
The behavior of ICE (masks, lack of visible ID, ignoring warrant requirements, ignoring judicial orders) seems beyond the pale, even if the rules (deportation) they’re enforcing are on the books. The way they use self-declared emergencies are more extreme than previous administrations, but you’re right, “everyone does it”.
Your example about RR joking about nuking Russia seems clearly different than Trump’s repeated threats. An off-the-cuff remark doesn’t carry the same weight as Trump’s persistent prodding on this subject.
I’m not sure whether jawboning done behind the scenes is worse than taking partial control and ownership of private companies in the broad light of day. I’m a libertarian, so both free speech and private property are pretty important values to me. They weren’t proud enough of the Jawboning to do it in public, and I think they backed off when it became public. Continuing to insist that individuals and companies accede to his demands for tribute seems different.
But thanks for giving the other point of view. I can see that others see it differently.
I was responding to the question “What is that something and why does it make you so worried?” I would have been able to give a shorter list for any recent administration.
Judea Pearl’s Causal Models are new and very influential in all modern reasoning about causal inference: figuring out which actions might be the causes of which others. Reducing discussions of causality to a graphical notation was an enormous breakthrough.