Yes it has been quite astonishing - and at times quite comical - to witness the spectacle of the perpetual hiring and firing cycles in the present administration. It has become commonplace to observe that "they're dropping like flies," and a sporting past time has emerged to try to predict who is next in line to get the axe, so to speak. Though everyone has observed that such a phenomenon is "not normal," it is apparent that the political mainstream is at least content to sit by, leering with popcorn in hand, passively waiting as the next opportunity arises for the political changing of seats.
This is also completely disastrous though. First of all, the political culture is rapidly changing, with all institutions undergoing delegitimization, and an ideal as rosy as democracy itself quickly deteriorating. We've seen the Republicans in particular grow ever more bold in refusing the reality of basic election rules and outcomes.
We could very well have a couple of political cycles left, but how long can a constant cycling out of opposing parties - parties which also grow markedly similar in their effects - and the constant cycling in and out of individuals in institutional and administrative positions be sustained, before the entire function of the system itself - however ornamental it has become - is completely exhausted?
As we saw with bad assets and bad debt in the financial sphere, the toxic instruments and possessions could be circulated indefinitely as long as they were continuously changing hands, but as soon as their passage seized up, and the fear set in, the entire web of obligations evaporated and the entire financial system seized up. In an economic world now deeply financialized, so little can be done without the impetus for financial gain, so that the system in catastrophic failure had to be propped up by a government that was itself still getting by on fumes of legitimacy. And the financial system still has not been fixed either.
An authoritarian-leaning president has been rapidly shedding the outer layers that are supposed to insulate him from total power, no doubt. And we are left to sit and eat popcorn, and perhaps watch as the fuse burns away, and follow the rope with our eyes, and hope that unlike in the cartoons, the rope isn't connected to some preposterous pile of TNT or some such.
