Like, Cox is correct here. It would be an abdication of some basic moral responsibilities to let these go unpunished. I think pro-decency discourse has gone beyond "the fight will be long and hard" to the romance of fighting the long defeat, rhetorically.

(laudatory)

(to finish the thought, this was prescient about both our algorithmic FYP/choose-your-own-reality problem and our elite-group-chat-hive-mind problem)

The saddest words in any language.

*It's hard! Ds have been fighting for a long time to conserve norms and institutions against R attacks! Those habits are *really* difficult to break. They require basic changes in style and rhetoric. Hell, I'm yelling about this all the time, but I often "snap back"... and I'm just an armchair prof!

5. FWIW, that's also why, if the pro-Constitutional Democracy factions of the U.S. political order ever get the trifecta, they can't wait to pass their reforms. They can't spend time hashing them out in committee. They need prêt à passer legislation.

4. Indeed, you also need to shift politics *within* the party coalition.

Think about how the Liberals abandoned electoral reform in Canada. Real change is politically risky. It's easy for your opponents to demagogue. It's easy for your elected officials to balk.

3. That's another reason why anti-corruption is so central to the current political moment, and why Democrats need to discard their institutionalist dispositions* in favor of a "burn it all down, scorched-earth" attack on the regime that Trump and the GOP have created.

2. There's another crucial dimension: creating groundwork — even over the long haul — for reforms that will trigger opposition from entrenched interests, including oligarchs & plutocrats.

My preference, of course, is joining the ICC, but if this is bureaucratically easier to swing that's fine.