There is a quiet phenomenon reshaping politics, technology, media, and even global stability. It is not a law. It is not a vote. It is not a constitutional crisis announced on television. It is something subtler, and in many ways more corrosive:
The ability to turn the outrageous into the ordinary simply by doing it often enough.
Shock fades.
Reaction weakens.
Standards collapse.
And suddenly, what should be unthinkable becomes “just how things are now.”
This is not theoretical anymore.
We are living inside it.
When Illegality Becomes a Trial Balloon — and Then Becomes Policy
In the United States we saw this transformation begin domestically. Actions that would have once triggered emergency hearings, legal interventions, and bipartisan condemnation were floated casually, repeated constantly, and eventually treated as debatable policy instead of obvious violations.
Using the military against Americans.
Sending National Guard forces into states uninvited.
Openly threatening governors.
Mocking the rule of law.
Defying court orders.
Treating constitutional restraints as annoying suggestions rather than binding law.
These are not slips of the tongue.
They are test balloons.
They are conditioning exercises.
Say it once and people are horrified.
Say it ten times and it becomes “controversial.”
Say it fifty times and it becomes “politics.”
Normalization weaponized through exhaustion.
And now something even more alarming is happening:
Donald Trump is no longer limiting that normalization of illegality, cruelty, and authoritarian impulse to American borders.
He is exporting it.
From Domestic Abuses to International Projection
The United States has always had outsized influence on the world stage. Traditionally, that influence has been (at least aspirationally) tied to democracy, law, diplomacy, and restraint.
Trump has replaced that with something else entirely.
He has begun exporting:
• his domestic lies
• his contempt for democratic constraints
• his “strongman” performance politics
• and his willingness to abuse systems simply because he can
…into international affairs.
Case in point: Venezuela.
Whether the headline is:
– threats of force
– unilateral action without transparency
– disregard for international process
– or backroom bravado wrapped in patriotic chest-beating
…it is the same behavioral pattern we watched develop domestically.
Trump says “we’ll run Venezuela.”
Translation: Trump thinks he’ll run Venezuela. How do you know it’s either a lie or delusion? When Trump says he’ll “run” anything.
History shows he only breaks what he touches.
Test the limits.
Ignore precedents.
Rebrand recklessness as strength.
Rely on spectacle over strategy.
Assume accountability will never arrive.
This is not diplomacy.
This is destabilization masquerading as leadership.
And it does not merely target other governments. It threatens civilians, migrants, dissidents, political prisoners, and entire populations—people who do not get a vote in our politics but pay the price for our political theater.
Authoritarian style is now an export product.
That should terrify anyone paying attention.
Meanwhile: The Technology Version of Normalized Dysfunction
Parallel to this political normalization is the technological one.
We now live in a world where systemic failure is treated as charming.
News programs lose expert guests mid-sentence because of failing remote tech.
Economists freeze on screen.
Doctors vanish during breaking news.
Connections collapse live on-air.
Networks scramble like amateur livestreamers.
And we all shrug.
This would once have been unacceptable. It would have been called embarrassing. It would have resulted in sweeping upgrades and accountability.
Now?
We laugh.
We meme it.
We accept it.
We have normalized incompetence.
We have normalized low standards.
We have normalized the idea that even institutions responsible for informing the public can be held together with duct tape and prayer.
And while that seems harmless, it isn’t.
Because when the infrastructure of reliability disappears, authority collapses with it.
And into that vacuum steps chaos.
Lower Expectations = Easier Control
There is a psychological truth at work here:
People who expect reliability, competence, legality, and stability push back when it disappears.
People who have been trained not to expect it?
They adapt downward.
They normalize failure.
They accept outrage fatigue.
They begin to believe that nothing can be better, so why fight?
That is the true danger of normalization.
Once people give up on expecting standards, they stop defending them.
And that is when powerful people stop pretending to care about limits at all.
None of This Is Accidental
“New normals” are not natural evolutions.
They are engineered.
They are repeated into existence.
They are pushed until resistance breaks.
Domestically.
Technologically.
Internationally.
We are now watching a political figure who has already conditioned a nation to tolerate behavior once considered unacceptable — now applying that same “shock until numbness” strategy beyond our borders.
That does not just reshape America.
It reshapes the world order.
Where This Leaves Us
We do not have to accept:
• domestic authoritarian trial balloons
• government by threat and intimidation
• exporting lawlessness to international policy
• media treating dysfunction as inevitable
• technology lowering standards while pretending it is progress
The unthinkable only becomes normal when enough people stop reacting.
We didn’t just normalize glitchy Zoom interviews — we’ve normalized failing tech everywhere. Cell service that drops calls. Coverage worse than countries with fewer resources. Streaming services that glitch or lock us out.
And that’s before even getting into email phishing, fraud schemes, ransomware attacks, hospitals being held hostage, and nonstop attempts to steal money or blackmail people. We didn’t just get more relaxed — we accepted a level of dysfunction and danger we never should have.
Decades now of software being released before it was fully vetted, fully debugged, etc. AI? May help with that now. Oddly, in that it's also now arguably our greatest threat.
Individuals and systems threaten us, defraud us, break on us and, we just...shrug?
Relaxing was good. Lowering expectations this much, not so much.
The world has seen what happens when toxic capitalism, dysfunction, abuse and authoritarian behavior stops being confined and becomes contagious.
History is not subtle about where this road leads.
The danger is not the outrageous act.
The danger is the moment society stops...flinching.
Because once that happens?
Anything can be justified.
Anywhere.
And that is when democracies, societies fail, not with a dramatic collapse…
…but with yet another mere shrug.
Interesting times people...
Cheers! Sláinte! Na zdravie!
.jpg)