the easiest way for someone to be better on the measure "reactions to X" is not to do X
Yes? Just like the easiest way for someone to avoid criminal convictions is to not do crimes. Not a guarantee but it helps.
Ultimately, any metric does need to be contextualized and interpreted. Supposing metrics can be agreed upon, it’s another big step to cross the is-ought gap, even with a shared moral framework.
I agree with another commenter that the original post is a good candidate for adversarial collaboration.
Yeah, I can see that. Unfortunately, "how much should we be scared of him" doesn't have direct metrics, so we have to come up with proxies of some kind.
Do you have any suggestions that don't feel cherry-picked? What we likely need is input from some good historians. I don't think I can escape my recency bias well enough.
Potential metrics
These metrics may not be available farther into the past.
I'm unclear what institution is directly implicated in the Afghanistan withdrawal, so I don't have an opinion on whether it qualifies as erosion or not.
Abolishing ICE would be taking down an institution, I suppose. I take (what I assume is your implicit) point that preserving an institution isn't per se virtuous. Perhaps ICE is beyond reform and would need to be abolished and replaced instead, and perhaps the same is true of the institutions Trump is attacking?
A few of these are, if somewhat unprecedented, not really institutional erosion, because they have a legitimate constitutional basis.
These are not mutually exclusive.
The qualification of appointments is just opinion and not institutional erosion.
I disagree. If you appoint a leader of an institution with no experience related to that institution (Rex Tillerson: Secretary of State, Dr. Mehmet Oz: CMS Administrator), or who believes that institution doesn't exist (Rick Perry: Department of Energy, Mick Mulvaney: CFPB, Betsy DeVos: Department of Education), they are highly likely to erode that institution, whether intentionally or through incompetence.
Not all appointments require extensive experience within that institution, but some positions should have deep domain expertise, unless their purpose is to serve as a wrecking ball appointment.
Thanks for the perspective. I would like to note that pointing out earlier instances of bad behavior is important historical context, but doesn't make more recent bad behavior any less bad. The USA has some really dark stuff in its past. We should remember and do better.
One major category of concern is institutional erosion. Here are a few salient examples:
This is a small sampling; a comprehensive account would be far longer.
For example, what kind of coalition would be able to actually update that Trump is less bad than it thinks if your current fears don't come to pass?
The things that have already come to pass are already deeply damaging to our institutions. We are not in 2016 when we could only extrapolate how he would behave as president. We have a decade of evidence since then. He may not play out every single thing people fear, but, like, if he doesn't end up trying to acquire Greenland by force, that's not much of an update. Not everything worth worrying about comes to pass. It's absurd that such a thing is plausible for him, even if it's not probable.
My first thought was Amazon leveraging this for drone delivery.
Somewhat serendipitously, Spencer Greenberg just released a Clearer Thinking podcast episode interviewing Colin DeYoung on this topic just a few days ago. Worth a listen, IMO.
https://podcast.clearerthinking.org/episode/298/colin-deyoung-are-personality-types-a-statistical-mirage/