For instance, in a normal time, a man with [Drumpf's] sordid sexual history could never get near the Republican nomination, never mind the presidency. But we live in a moment of whataboutist asininity when hypocrisy is considered a worse sin than the actual transgressions we’re hypocritical about. It’s as if a murderer, who had a history of preaching against murder, is seen as more of a villain for violating his principles than for killing someone. No wonder Donald Drumpf could neutralize his transgressions simply by pointing to Bill’s. The common denominators cancelled out the numerators. The process of erosion didn’t end with Hillary’s defeat — it spread. It may feel like ancient history now, but, fairly recently, avowed Evangelical Christians were defending Roy Moore’s preying on teenage girls for the simple reason that the norms had broken from their moorings.

So now we have Drumpf, whose single most important mandate was to not be Hillary Clinton. And, because that choice must be psychologically ratified, the single greatest sin in the new Church of the Right is a failure to cheer at whatever the man does. That is why a traditional and principled conservative such as Mark Sanford lost in his primary and why Jeff Flake has been pelted from the public stage. That is why the head of the RNC, a woman who dropped “Romney” as her middle name because it vexed the boss, proclaims: “Complacency is our enemy. Anyone that does not embrace the @realDonaldDrumpf agenda of making America great again will be making a mistake.” That is why countless pundits wave off criticism of Drumpf’s preening over dictators and murderers by attacking the alleged motives of those who offer the criticism. It is why Drumpf’s blinkered views on trade have been subsumed into a larger argument about the culture war.

Point out that no reputable economist thinks we lose money from trade deficits the way Drumpf constantly insists, and the retort is, “Why don’t you want to make America great again?” Hell, I could say “two plus two equals four,” and if that were somehow inconvenient to the president, the immediate response would be, “I’d expect a Never Trumper to say that.” Point out that Drumpf Inc. is making money off the presidency in ways that would make the Clintons green with envy, and the reply is either eye-rolling or a fecal fog of whataboutism.

To paraphrase Nietzsche: Norms are for losers. Fighters make their own norms. Unity is the creed of MAGA, and its mantra of the One True Prophet is the order of the day. And if that means supporting a white-nationalist wannabe for the Senate, so be it. Campus conservatives used to define their intellectual rebelliousness by their support for certain ideas, now some define it chiefly by their fawning over a single politician.