Yes, the decline of our institutions is more blatant now. But it’s a difference of degree, not of kind.

• Congresspersons, on the left and right, have been insider trading for decades.
• The SCOTUS ruled that corporations are people that have unlimited “free speech” with their money.
• Trump bombed Iran without congressional approval but before this Biden bombed Yemen.
• Bush started targeting terrorists with drones and now the U.S. president can order drone strikes. (Some have called Obama a war criminal due to excessive civilian casualties resulting from drone strikes. But Americans don’t really care about this.)
• Bush sent “enemy combatants” to Guantanamo Bay without due process. Now Trump sends “illegal aliens” to detention camps without due process.
• The CIA has brazenly declassified many covert operations to stop the spread of communism. Including installing brutal dictators and interfering with democratic elections. (They admit to doing this but, again, Americans do not care.)
• Questionable wars in Asia and the Middle East that feed the military industrial complex and make a well-positioned few unimaginably wealthy.
• Bush and Obama both bailed out corporations that are “too big to fail”.

You likely disagree with some of these examples. But my point is only this: Trump is the symptom of a disease that we have ignored for far too long. We all pledged allegiance to the flag in school. We are learned that America stands for liberty, justice, equality, etc. for all. But this country has never lived up to those professed ideals.