This is a fantastic comment in response to this article since it exemplifies the criticism of the article.

Once upon a time (ie 2 years ago) the President following the law, living up to both implicit and explicit agreements made with foreign nations, not wanting to plaster their own name onto everything, not lying about the citizens of the country, etc would be considered a good thing.

Today, doing the opposite is considered praiseworthy because “at least he’s doing something”.

This is exactly the “anything goes” mentality the author is critiquing.

You like Trump a lot more than anyone who is informed about the things he is actually doing should like him.

But regardless, the same point could have been made about the Republican party in general for decades.

See The Baffler's article titled "The Long Con" for a history. It opens with a now shockingly unshocking list of all the lies Romney told and the prescient claim that this was necessary for Republican voters to like him.

> Mitt Romney is a liar. Of course, in some sense, all politicians, even all human beings, are liars. Romney’s lying went so over-the-top extravagant by this summer, though, that the New York Times editorial board did something probably unprecedented in their polite gray precincts: they used the L-word itself. “Mr. Romney’s entire campaign rests on a foundation of short, utterly false sound bites,” they editorialized. He repeats them “so often that millions of Americans believe them to be the truth.” “It is hard to challenge these lies with a well-reasoned-but- overlong speech,” they concluded; and how. Romney’s lying, in fact, was so richly variegated that it can serve as a sort of grammar of mendacity.

[...]

> All righty, then: both the rank-and-file voters and the governing elites of a major American political party chose as their standardbearer a pathological liar. What does that reveal about them?

-- 2012

https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-long-con

> don’t like Trump, but he’s the first guy in a long long time to actually do things and not just talk about doing things.

Have you really never heard the phrase "it's much easier to tear things down than build them up"? Is the manifest obviousness of that phrase really not obvious to you?

Yes you too can

1. Talk about blowing up buildings

2. Blow up buildings

So he's not the first of anything in any length of time because this is what assholes all around the world do every day.

The article frames the focus on grifting, not institutional rot. I would say that institutional rot enables grifters. But also grifters in leadership positions set examples encouraging others to grift. Heck, this current crop of grifters we've got "leading" us will outright airlift prominent up-and-coming grifters right up into their ranks, Gervais Principle style.

I'd say that institutional rot would be a much better framework for analyzing the situation of all these disabilities being claimed, but that is not where this article goes! Rather the only thing it seemingly offers is that we're just supposed to feel bad and aim to be more like the single person in the one example given, even as our societal leaders crassly do the exact opposite.

(As far as Trump "doing things" - yes, he's doing a lot of grift at the expense of our country. That's kind of the problem, right? Bureaucratic malaise was bad, and this is worse)