When Protocol Bends to Personal Allegiance

There’s something deeply fascinating about watching power structures contort themselves around personal relationships. We like to believe our systems operate on clear, objective rules—that there’s a protocol for everything, from mourning to military action. But time and again, we see these structures bend until they’re nearly unrecognizable, shaped not by principle but by personal allegiance and political convenience.

Take the official response to a certain political commentator’s death. The immediate lowering of flags to half-staff raised eyebrows because it seemed to violate established norms about who receives such honors. The flag code isn’t some obscure document—it’s literally written down, specifying exactly which government officials and public servants merit this recognition. Yet here we are, watching as those clear lines get blurred because someone was friends with the right people.

What’s particularly interesting is how this contrasts with other recent tragedies. When elected officials were targeted in political violence just months earlier, the response was noticeably more muted. No flags were lowered, no high-profile consolations offered. The discrepancy speaks volumes about how we value different lives based on their political utility rather than their humanity.

The Theater of Strength

Meanwhile, on the international stage, we’re witnessing a different kind of rule-bending. The justification for military actions against foreign vessels has shifted from legal frameworks to what might charitably be called ‘vibes-based governance.’ The administration’s own supporters openly admit they don’t care about international law—they just want to see strength demonstrated, consequences be damned.

This isn’t new, exactly. Every administration engages in some degree of realpolitik. But there’s something particularly brazen about the current approach—the almost theatrical disregard for established norms, the celebration of extra-legal action as somehow more authentic than working within the system. It’s like watching someone break the rules of a game and then claim they’ve invented a better game.

The most telling moment came when a high-ranking official was asked about potential war crime allegations and responded with what amounted to ‘I don’t give a shit.’ That’s not just a rejection of specific laws—it’s a rejection of the entire concept that rules should apply equally to everyone.

Media’s Complicity in the Spectacle

Of course, none of this happens in a vacuum. The media landscape has become perfectly optimized for this kind of norm-breaking spectacle. When a controversial figure dies, we don’t get sober reflection—we get days of wall-to-wall coverage that often feels more like sports commentary than news analysis. Everyone picks their team, and suddenly we’re not talking about a human being’s death but about scoring points in some imaginary culture war.

The most revealing moments often come from what gets emphasized versus what gets ignored. Certain quotes get amplified while context gets stripped away. Complex figures get reduced to caricatures—either heroes or villains, with no room for the messy reality in between.

And when media organizations do try to provide that context? Well, we’ve seen what happens. The pressure to fall in line becomes immense, from both internal and external forces. It creates this bizarre situation where speaking truth to power becomes itself a performative act—something to be celebrated when it targets opponents and condemned when it questions allies.

The Personalization of Power

What ties all these threads together is the increasing personalization of power. Institutions matter less than personal loyalty to specific individuals. Rules matter less than whether the right people like you. Objective standards matter less than whether you’re on the right team.

This isn’t entirely new either—power has always had a personal dimension. But there’s something particularly naked about how it’s operating right now. The subtext has become text: who you know matters more than what you’ve done, and loyalty is valued above competence or principle.

We’re watching what happens when a political movement becomes a personality cult. The normal rules don’t apply because the leader’s whims become the highest law. And everyone else has to decide whether they’re going to play along or stand on principle—knowing full well that principle might cost them their position, their platform, or worse.

The Unwritten Rules

So what are the actual rules then? If the written protocols can be ignored when inconvenient, what actually governs behavior?

From what I can observe, the real rules seem to be:

• Loyalty to the leader supersedes all other considerations
• Perceived strength matters more than legal justification
• Personal relationships trump institutional norms
• The appearance of action is often valued above actual results
• Consistency is less important than immediate political advantage

These aren’t written down anywhere, but they’re arguably more powerful than any official protocol. They determine who gets honored, who gets protected, and who gets thrown under the bus.

What’s particularly fascinating is watching people navigate these unwritten rules while maintaining the fiction that the written rules still matter. The cognitive dissonance required to hold both ideas simultaneously would be impressive if it weren’t so concerning.

The Cost of Norm-Breaking

There’s always a cost to breaking norms, even if it’s not immediately apparent. Every time we bend the rules for convenience, we weaken them for everyone. Every time we prioritize personal loyalty over institutional integrity, we make our systems more fragile.

The strange thing is that the people most enthusiastic about norm-breaking often seem to believe they’re the exception—that the rules will still protect them when they need protection. But rules don’t work that way. Once you’ve established that rules are optional, you can’t suddenly demand they be enforced when it’s convenient.

We’re already seeing the consequences. Trust in institutions continues to decline. Political violence becomes increasingly normalized. The very concept of objective truth becomes contested territory.

And through it all, the spectacle continues—the flags lowered for friends, the bombs dropped on enemies, the media coverage that amplifies the drama while missing the substance. It’s all connected, part of the same pattern where personal allegiance matters more than principle, and performance matters more than substance.

What happens when we’ve broken so many norms that we can’t even remember what they were supposed to protect us from? That’s the question we should be asking—not just about specific incidents, but about the overall direction we’re heading.