I certainly didn’t mean to imply otherwise, I apologize if that was not clear. The contrast I was trying to draw was between the German situation(where ‘the rules’ are apparently actually fairly strict; and short of an ECHR ruling or similar, disciplined mostly by the good taste and discretion of people in German political life); and the American situation(where we have to be bailed out of some mind-boggling attempt at atrocious assholery on a fairly regular basis; but what we lack in political decorum is, in part, ameliorated by the First Amendment and smackdowns issued on its behalf).
In terms of ‘so, how dysfunctional is the political system?’ having a near-constant stream of trivially unconstitutional bullshit being advanced is hardly a flattering sign; but it does have the advantage of ensuring that nobody expects ‘good faith’ or ‘reasonable discretion’ or anything like that to be a bulwark against abuse. This provides a high degree of resistance to attacks from people who have somehow gained standing; but are outside of the local political culture.
A political culture where ‘discretion’ and ‘decency’ and ‘that might theoretically be legal; but to harass a satirist just because he has embarrassed a politician? That’‘s just not done!’ arguably speaks well(or at least better) of the local political culture; but it creates a dangerous vulnerability if someone(whether acclimatized to a different culture or just a ghastly rules-lawyering asshole who, at long last, indeed has no decency) decides to crash the party and demand that the law be applied as it is written, without regard for any cultural norms that govern how the law is applied in practice.
It isn’t a good thing that the American judicial branch has to spend so much time beating first amendment 101 into censorious assholes; but the fact that we are knee deep in domestic censorious assholes provides a robust immune response to any outside attempt to be a censorious asshole. Germany’s situation sounds like it involves a somewhat less poxed political culture; but, since it is less poxed, one with relatively few formal defenses if somebody just ignores the tacit rules and demands the full force of the explicit ones, as Erdogan is certainly doing.
