It occurs to me in thinking about the post-election world that President-elect Trump is using a technique that anyone who has been in an emotionally abusive relationship will recognize right away: He's using established norms to manipulate behavior.

What do I mean by that? An emotionally abusive person (note, this is NOT only in context of an intimate relationship) knows how to use societal and personal norms to apply pressure on their target to behave in specific ways.

Relatively benign example: Abuser wants something from target, so they ask for it in front of others, thus pressuring the target to comply. The abuser knows that social norms establish the expectation that the abuser wouldn't put someone on the spot like that, therefore the request must be a reasonable one, therefore the target should agree with it. This works especially well when the "ask" is something that seems minimal to others, but that in context of the relationship is actually boundary-crossing, like publicly asking someone to do something they've previously said no to privately. Added bonus is that if the target refuses, the abuser now has witnesses who can back them up when they claim that the target is the one who is behaving unacceptably.

Malignant example: Target objects to something the abuser has done that is well outside the bounds of acceptable behavior. The abuser turns the situation around to focus on how the target's objection is the truly problematic act. "How can you accuse me of that?" [Insert gaslighting about the incident so the target begins to doubt their perceptions.] "I don't know how I can trust you if you would think that of me." [Insert personal sob story designed to get the target to sympathize with the abuser.] "I just hope you won't be such a terrible coworker/friend/partner in the future." [Setting of expectations for future behavior by target and subtle demand for acceptance of new false narrative.] If you've repeatedly found yourself wondering how a discussion of someone else's problematic behavior turned into you apologizing for bringing it up, you know how this goes.

Trump uses this move when he does things like calling out media for being "unfair." We expect fairness from legitimate media (it is a norm), so the accusation, which calls out criticism of Trump's actions and policies by media outlets as unfair, is enough to create a suspicion of illegitimacy on the part of those outlets.

It's also at work in his cabinet appointments. There's an established norm that the Senate might reject an appointment or two, but it would absolutely upturn political norms to reject a whole slate of cabinet appointments. So by appointing a whole slew of completely unqualified and awful cabinet choices, Trump will manage to get more of his choices approved, whereas if he had a cabinet of mostly acceptable choices with a couple of awful ones, he'd be more likely to lose on those couple. And having all terrible choices mean none of them are as easy to highlight as unacceptable. I'd actually argue that by selecting a cabinet where every nominee is massively flawed, he's more likely to win on all of them, both because it will divide opposition and because it's harder to keep fighting on all of them.

One might ask why the norms of political and presidential behavior don't hold the same kind of power to bring Trump's behavior into line, and I have a couple of possible answers for you.

Number one, is that Trump explicitly ran as someone immune to social and political norms. I could not possibly list everything he did in the primary and general election that would've immediately disqualified any other candidate.

But number two is that the Republican party in general has spent the last eight years deliberately tearing down political norms in order to gain power, and have now clearly reached the conclusion that in any choice between upholding norms and increasing their power, they choose power. How else can one understand a party that claims to be for greater national security, but is absolutely fine with Russia meddling with our election as long as it helped their candidate? How else to interpret the decision to make the debt ceiling a political football? Or to prevent, for the first time in our nation's history, a sitting president from making a Supreme Court appointment during his term? Or a party which is fighting in North Carolina to overturn every avenue for the exercise of power by the duly elected Democratic governor before he takes office? These examples are all completely unprecedented, and these are just the ones I could list off the top of my head.

And, just as in an abusive relationship, this way of using and overturning norms leaves the victim in a double-bind. In an abusive relationship, the target is stuck with the choice to either comply with the abuser or look like they are the one in the wrong and face the resulting social blowback.

In this political scenario the opposition party faces the choice of either putting up with the one-sided dissolution of norms and resulting power grab, or has the option to join the fight by ignoring and overturning established norms to exercise their own power. The double-bind here is that it is strong institutions and norms that help prevent an autocrat from consolidating power, so overturning more norms, even if it brings temporary power for an opposition party, makes the future more precarious.

I don't have any great wisdom to share here about our way forward out of that double-bind, but I will say that we should be thoughtful about adding to the process of disintegrating our social and political norms, and that I believe it is possible to defend them while not falling into Trump's trap. The first step, as with the example from the abusive relationship, is recognizing that it isn't an either/or, despite how the abuser is presenting it. Part of the abuser's manipulation is in making it seem like there are only two bad choices, and that the abuser's choice is the easier one in the moment. If you're able to break out of that framing, you can see the other options that exist.