Norms are values systems Left, right. Liberal, conservative. We reflexively map out political morphology in America as dichotomies. Us, them. Urban, rural. The problem the country faces as tensions build across the modern political divide is that the framework of the United States of America, flaws and all, is built upon a set of values the framers shared: self-evident truths, unalienable rights, a government built to promote justice, domestic tranquility, the general welfare, etc. Even then, agreement was not universal. The colonies were home to federalists and antifederalists, slave states and free, colonial rebels and Tories/Royalists. Dahlia Lithwick and Michael Podhorzer imply that it was always thus, that the greater “We the People” never really shared those values, the same truths, or else did not view them the same way. How left and right view governance today reflects the same contrasts. Donald Trump saw the Department of Justice as “his” to deploy against enemies. Joe Biden left the prosecutor investigating his own son in place. Attorney General Merrick Garland and special counsel Jack Smith “have taken elaborate care to keep Trump’s criminal investigation at arm’s length from the White House.” Why? Because “Democrats are virtuous and Republicans are hypocrites? Or that Republicans are strategic and Democrats are chumps?” What if we never shared the same value systems? For that is what unwritten norms are. “So we make the mistake of assuming that MAGA voters and their leaders will at some point be persuaded to return to American norms which they…