POTUS, SCOTUS, and the Danger of Normalcy Bias

The Republican Party is not normal. Please stop pretending it is.

Unless this is your first time on the internet, you’ve probably seen this meme more times than you can count.  

This snippet from the “On Fire” comic strip is used across social platforms to represent everything from enduring a difficult college semester to living through the noticeable deterioration of American society. It’s a dark humor depiction of the dangers of Normalcy Bias, a cognitive bias in which people minimize or disregard threats in favor of perceived normality and safety. While the term began as a way to describe why some people fail to act during disasters, I fear Normalcy Bias is now a societal issue, paralyzing many Americans, especially those in the political class, from properly responding to the dangers posed by the Republican Party.

A man sits beneath the smoking World Trade Center on 9/11. Normalcy Bias was first documented as the tendency to insist things are normal even in the face of grave danger.

Last week, the Supreme Court handed down a 9-0 verdict in Trump v. Anderson ruling states cannot cite Donald Trump’s attempted insurrection as justification to remove him from their 2024 Presidential election ballots. The decision wasn’t a surprise, as Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Coney Barrett needed to thank Trump for giving them the easiest job in America and Clarence Thomas wasn’t going to indict his wife. However, the unanimity of the decision raises concern. In their six-page concurrence, the liberal justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson claimed allowing states to disqualify Trump would “create a chaotic, state-by-state patchwork” of presidential contenders. This argument is on its face nonsensical, as that’s how the Presidential election already works. States are responsible for administering their federal elections and come Election Day, each state has different candidates on their ballot. Given their farcical justification, we can only conclude the liberal justices didn’t want states to exclude Trump for fear it would set off a political firestorm. But what the liberals fail to realize is that, just like our aforementioned cartoon pup, we’re already on fire. 

RFK Jr. is on the ballots in select states because the U.S. Presidential Election is already the “patchwork system” the Supreme Court claims it wants to avoid.

It’s a fact that Donald Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election. Colorado gave him a trial, he offered a defense, and a court found him guilty of an insurrection, which has a clear penalty laid out in the Constitution. Instead of addressing the grave danger posed by the Republican nominee, the Supreme Court’s liberal justices were swayed not by their colleagues, but by their internal yearnings for normalcy. Writing a dissent that called Donald Trump an insurrection-stoking fascist would be a tough pill to swallow, especially for justices who have spent their lives deifying the American government as an infallible system of checks and balances that promotes “liberty and justice for all.” Dissenting would have also required the liberals to admit that the approximately 40% of the country that comprises the Republican Party is not “normal” but antidemocratic and inclined towards fascism. It was much simpler for them to, as Amy Coney Barrett wrote in her opinion, “turn the national temperature down.” By refusing to dissent and claim Trump was legally disqualified, the liberals followed Barrett’s advice, ignoring the fascist flames while pretending they had turned down the heat.

We saw the same instance of Normalcy Bias on full display during the State of the Union. In an attempt to win the votes of ostensibly moderate Republicans, President Biden has lurched to the right on immigration. Last month he offered Republicans their border wishlist in a bipartisan bill, but they refused to take yes for an answer. Biden reiterated his pivot during his speech, brandishing a pin given to him by Marjorie Taylor Greene and saying, “Lanken (Laken) Riley, an innocent young woman… was killed by an illegal.” (This is speculation, as there has yet to be a trial.)

Biden holds up a pin given to him by MTG.

Like his other attempts to reach across the aisle, Biden’s rightward turn on immigration stems from his belief that somewhere under the MAGA fat is a healthy, “normal” GOP filled with honest actors who want to solve problems and better the country. He’s not the only one who thinks this way, as aging Democrats and Never Trump Republicans alike have clamored for a return to the “normal Republican Party” ever since Trump descended the golden escalator in 2016. In their view, Donald Trump is an opportunistic pirate, hijacking the “Party of Lincoln” and leading gullible voters on a wayward course. 

But the GOP has never been normal. Since William F. Buckley realigned the Party to counter the civil rights movement, it’s been the political home of Christian Nationalists, segregationists, and Neo-Nazis. The political class can clamor for a return to the “sane” Republican Party of Ronald Reagan (who Biden quoted in his SOTU speech) but that Party never existed. It’s a figment of their imagination; Normalcy Bias cemented by rose-tinted hindsight. After all, Reagan launched his 1980 general election campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, a town of 7,000 residents known for only one thing: the lynching of three civil rights activists.

The three civil rights activists killed by the KKK Sheriff in Philadelphia. Ronald Reagan launched his 1980 campaign from Philadelphia with a speech about “states rights.”

The Republican Party has never been normal. Not fifty years ago, not today, and probably not tomorrow. It’s rife with fascism, racism, and a desire for Christian theocracy. Even if Donald Trump dropped dead today, the Republican Party would not return to “normalcy” — Not because it can’t find its way home, but because it was never normal to begin with.