John Lennon's words are, I think, appropriate in the current situation.
When it gets down to having to use violence, then you are playing the system’s game. The establishment will irritate you – pull your beard, flick your face – to make you fight. Because once they’ve got you violent, then they know how to handle you. The only thing they don’t know how to handle is non-violence and humor
There are situations when there are no other options, but I don't think we are anywhere close to that now.
As an aside, this has always been one of my issues with antifa and similar. The folks they want to fight would like nothing better than an opportunity to get into it with them. It's kind of what they live for.
Why give them what they want?
For folks heading out to No Kings tomorrow, stay safe and to whatever degree you can bring joy to it. I'm sorry to say I won't be out there, I have another commitment for the weekend of long standing.
Grand jury would not indict, which has become a way for regular folks to resist bullshit acts of overzealous or punitive prosecution by the current DOJ.
Ironically, the guy was a DOJ employee, and was subsequently fired.
One point to make regarding doxxing in our current environment is that any real harm done to an ICE agent will just become an excuse for the feds to double down.
Trump is looking for any excuse to invoke the Insurrection Act, which would allow him to legally (for some readings of "legally") deploy the military domestically. Which would basically be ICE on steroids.
Trump has an army, folks opposed to his policies don't. And Trump is eager for any pretext to use it, against people in this country who are opposed to his policies and actions.
I'm opposed to doxxing, of anyone and of any kind, for all of the obvious ethical reasons. But all of that aside, as a purely strategic matter, it's a really bad idea to give Trump any reason to send the army into your city or town.
Here is where I am today as regards calling a thug a thug.
This week we had folks in the Young Republicans organization telling us they love Hitler and who should be sent to the gas chanbers. The folks involved included a Vermont state Senator and the head of staff of a NY Assemblyman. The latter was the guy who "loved Hitler".
Not fringe people.
Today I see that Mike Davis, former chief counsel for Chuck Grassley, former clerk for Gorsuch, and current head of the conservative Article III Project, decided to call House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries "George Soros' house slave" in a post on X.
We also have a photo from the office of Congressman Dave Taylor, (R) Ohio, showing a picture pinned to a bulletin board with an American flag modified to include a swastika.
Plus all the ICE bullshit. Plus all the "manosphere" crap.
If you don't want to be called Nazis, don't be Nazis.
If you don't want to be associated with Nazis, don't associate with Nazis.
If you don't want to be called fascist, don't behave like a fascist regime.
If you don't want to be called thugs, don't send thugs in your employ into our cities and neighborhoods to abuse people.
If you don't want to be called misogynist, don't joke about rape being "epic".
A hit dog will holler.
I'm not interested in dialog with people who consider folks who don't look like them are some lower order of being. I don't even know where the conversation could begin.
I'm not referring to bc, I do not get that vibe from him.
But it's rampant in the right wing. Which owns the (R) party and the "conservative" name right now.
If you don't like that, you need to take it back from them. I can't do that, you can.
Clean your damned house. You have rats in the walls.
3 links seems too few, 5 seems like a better compromise between overly strict and being exposed to spam.
14 days is probably too short - some threads seem to want to go on longer. 21? A month? But longer than a month seems unnecessary - usually if a thread goes on that long it's because it's wandered off onto a different topic that probably deserves its own post.
Don't know what I think about the subscriber thing. What does it give you that you don't get by just walking up to the site? Not having to re-enter name and password each time would be handy, but not sure if that alone is worth the extra fuss.
My biggest ask would be to make "Oldest" the default sort order. I (personally) find it confusing to go bottom-up to follow the chronological sequence of posts. But others may prefer the current default.
As always, thank you all for keeping this place alive!
Thank you for your thoughtful response! I'll try to reply briefly.
I think you are correct as regards the law. The severity of the offense depends on whether someone came through a federal entry point vs. just walking across the border somewhere, and also whether someone is trying to re-enter illegally after having been deported.
Thank you for the clarification and correction, I appreciate it.
First, we are on the same page as regards people with criminal histories or demonstrable gang affiliation. I would except folks whose "criminal history" is a moving violation, but certainly crimes against persons or property are legitimate grounds for deportation or refusal of entry.
I don't actually prefer the folks who are here without legal status to the 5 million waiting in line. If I understand the estimates of the size of the "no legal status" numbers, they actually include many of those 5 million - people waiting for an asylum ruling, people here under TPS, basically anyone who has not yet been granted permanent legal residency.
For folks who did straight-up sneak in or overstay their visa - people who are *not* in the pipeline - it's legitimate to deport them, or at least require them to justify their presence here on some legitimate basis (fear of being killed if they return, frex). But I also think we need to be realistic about what we can do without turning the country into a police state. Reagan offered amnesty, we've since had Dreamers, those are both programs intended to deal with the situation humanely and realistically. Don't know if they are appropriate to the current situation.
I personally would be fine with defining a structured path to residency for folks who have been here for some time - 5 years? pick a number - and who have no criminal record. Especially folks who are in families of mixed immigration status - right now we are deporting people who have kids here, and who have been here for years and years. That doesn't seem right, to me.
I'm curious to understand your point about the folks "waiting in line" a little more clearly. Are they "waiting in line" here in this country, i.e., their status is in process but not yet granted? Are they waiting in some other country for a request to immigrate to be granted? I want to understand how the presence of an undocumented person here harms them, or is unfair to them in some tangible way.
Purely from a practical point of view, the focus should be on people who are here with no legal status and who are making trouble. Criminals, gang members. And I agree that the DHS numbers are BS. My understanding, based on cites of ICE's own statistics, is that 80% of the people being held in the Burlington facility near me have no criminal record.
Lastly, I agree that if ICE folks didn't wear masks, they would be at risk of being doxed, and that there is potential for harm there. I would counter that *if they weren't acting as they are acting*, that risk would be significantly reduced. Cops, FBI, etc. generally don't find it necessary to wear masks. ICE's own behavior - their violence and total disregard for due process - is what creates, or at least exacerbates, that risk. They are lawless.
I agree that it's a hard problem, and that there is no perfect solution. But what we are doing right now is nuts. Not "nuts" as in "silly and amusing", but "nuts" as in harmful and destructive, not just to immigrants, but to all of us.
Due process applies to everyone, or else we are all at risk of losing it.
You'd think Hitler would be a bright line. Wouldn't you? What the hell is funny about gas chambers?
My father, step-father, father-in-law, and uncle, all fought in WWII. Uncle didn't make it back. They would freaking puke to see this.
They think this crap is funny. "Edgy". It's all a joke, right? Owning the libs for fun and lols.
And now they're all gonna whine because they've been outed and some of them are losing their jobs.
I affirm the idea that we don't want to dehumanize other folks. That said, these folks dehumanize themselves.
And I understand that there are Good And Reasonable Conservatives, but there are a hell of a lot of folks like this. These are not "fringe" characters, they are leaders in the Young Republican movement. Leaders.
Good And Reasonable Conservatives, if you want to engage in civil and constructive dialog with your counterparties, you need to get people like this the hell out of your party and your movement. I know I sure as hell have nothing to say to them, and am not interested in anything they might want to say to me.
To borrow wonkie's language, they can fuck right off.
I can't make them go away. You - reasonable conservatives, wherever you are - can. Or at least you can try. They do not deserve a place in governance, in political leadership, or in public conversation.
If you want people to stop calling MAGAs and conservatives in general Nazis, STOP INDULGING THE NAZIS IN YOUR COMMUNITY. If you can't do that, the rest of us can't believe you when you say they "have no part" of your world. They do have a part of it, they are right there in plain sight.
That number sounds like a lot, but if I follow it all correctly it includes folks who may not have been granted permanent residency but who are protected from deportation for any of a variety of reasons.
Those folks, who actually are trying to "come here the right way" according the the policies in place when they came, make up about 40% of the 14 million. A lot of the policies that grant them protection from deportation were instituted by Biden, and are being removed by Trump. So who knows what will happen to them.
Net/net, as your correction indicates (thank you!), we grant permanent legal residency - a green card, with permission to live and work here - to about one-third of one percent of the overall population.
We're not in danger of being replaced, or overwhelmed with sneaky illegal votes. There are places in the country that *are* stressed by the levels of immigration we see now - I live in one - but in most places even that is not an issue. Or at least is being managed effectively.
Trump doesn't like brown people. Miller doesn't like brown people. So they want to throw the brown people out. And they are hiring / have hired a bunch of out of control yahoos to make that happen.
Mostly I stepped on them. For the ones that got away, I watched where they ran to, and am gonna follow up with a heavy treatment of boric acid.
But yeah, they take a licking and keep on ticking. 6' 2", 215 lbs, jumped on those little bastards with my full weight, and some of them still walked away.
We have had an on again / off again water issue in the basement - for years - that finally got bad enough that we decided to do something about it. Did some looking around, figured out it was coming from the bulkhead, called a basement guy. A crew will be here second week of November to do the french drain / sump pump thing.
To get ready, we moved a bunch of stuff out of that part of the basement. And... found a bunch of black mold. Yecch!
Tore out some sheetrock, tore out a workbench that had some rotten moldy MDF, pulled up some vinyl tile. Off to the dump with all of that.
But in the process of tearing out the workbench, we discovered that it had been the favorite hiding space for critters. Centipedes (my wife HATES HATES HATES HATES HATES them) and spiders (my spirit animal, according to Facebook).
I tried to work around the spiders, with mixed success. There was no mercy for the centipedes. They're not bad critters, more or less apex predators in the creepy crawly world, but they freak my wife the hell out, so they had to go.
Got all the mold either physically removed from the house or treated thoroughly (vinegar + borax + dish soap + water + a scrub brush). Now I get to put everything back together again - new sheetrock and insulation, build a new workbench, replace vinyl tile, skim coat the new rock, prime and paint everything in sight. But the "putting back together" stuff is very enjoyable for me. My wife is heading out to Ohio tomorrow for a crafting class, so I'll be down in the basement making the world a better place for everything other than centipedes.
A lot of places in the world are stressed, for a lot of different reasons. Poverty, environmental issues caused by climate change, war and general anarchic violence.
We're very lucky to live where we do.
All of the above is going to result in people wanting to emigrate. To go somewhere else where they will not be subject to violence, not be desparately poor. Not be miserable in any of a thousand ways.
All of that is not necessarily new, but the scale of it is likely to change. Is, in fact, changing. And there are a lot more ways to get from one place to another now.
We need an intelligent immigration policy. One that recognizes the realities named above. One that recognizes the value of immigrants to this country. One that isn't rooted in the mythology of white supremacy - that recognizes that "real Americans" come, and have always come, in all colors creeds and nationalities.
One that is sane and humane. One that is enforceable without descending into a police state, which is where we are, right now.
It's where we are, right now.
People are gonna try to come here. The overwhelmingly vast majority of them - overwhelmingly - want to come, work, and make a decent life.
That is how most of us ended up here.
We let a bit more than a million folks a year into this country as lawful permanent residents. That's generous! A lot! Especially by international standards.
But it's about 3% of the population. We could increase that significantly and not get close to "they're gonna replace us" levels.
It's an issue that IS NOT going to go away. Folks are going to migrate, because if the alternative is getting killed or starving, you will take your chances.
So we need to find a constructive way to deal with that. One that does not require masked anonymous agents in full military kit breaking into homes and smashing car windows to grab random people because they are brown.
Which is what we do now.
Do we really want to live like this?
The church I attend locks the doors during services because ICE is perfectly likely to march in and start grabbing people. It's not an overreaction, it's a realistic assessment of where we are right now.
The purpose of the guidelines is to provide direction to ICE to help them prioritize who they will pursue, and why. The guidelines state that enforcement should be directed toward people who *pose a threat* to the public.
Mayorkas further observes, correctly, that there are 11 million undocumented people in the US. I hope we can all agree that it's not practical to find and deport 11 million people. So choices have to be made.
Go after people who are a threat.
I live very close to large immigrant communities. For a number of years, I lived in the Point neighborhood in Salem MA, which was then and still is a largely Dominican community. I attend a church that has about a 60% Latino congregation. I've volunteered at a local food bank whose clientele includes Dominicans, Brazilians, Haitians, Russians and other Eastern European folks. Also plain old white bread Americans who need access to free or cheap food.
I am aware of the issues around immigration, aware in general of the problems it creates, and also aware of how we benefit from immigrants.
The sticking point for immigration - the place where it is hugely problematic, rather than just one of several issues to deal with - is at the southern border. Because it's closer to the countries that many migrants come from, and because people can basically just walk there.
I absolutely understand that the issues facing someone living in a border area in TX or AZ or CA are different than the issues facing me. I'm surrounded by migrants, but they aren't wandering homeless through my neighborhood in large numbers. Or any numbers.
It's a problem of a different quality.
My understanding is that the Biden policies exacerbated the problem *at the southern border*. Maybe exacerbated it a lot, i don't have numbers. If you want to blame him for that, I will recognize that as a fair point. He did take steps to remedy that, as you point out "because of an election". He recognized he was vulnerable there.
And Trump prevented those changes from taking place. Because of an election.
Politicians' minds are concentrated by elections. Not ideal, but that's the reality.
The approach Trump and Miller are taking right now is creating holy f***ing havoc where I live. People afraid to leave their homes, afraid to send their kids to school, afraid to go to work. Not just illegal people, but literally anybody brown, anyone who speaks Spanish or speaks English with an accent.
People who were born in this country, and who have lived all their lives here. Afraid to go out of the house. Because ICE under Trump and Miller are a freaking terroristic goon squad.
Illegals are seized, citizens are seized, anybody who looks like they might possibly by Latino.
I sometimes attend a standing weekly demonstration at the local ICE facility in Burlington MA. It's basically an office building, with no facilities for holding people. The agreement ICE has with either the leaseholder or the town (not sure which) is that nobody will be held overnight, or at least for more than a day.
People are held there for many days. Weeks in some cases. They sleep on a concrete floor with a Mylar blanket. Many in one big room, with one toilet that offers minimal privacy. No place to shower. No medical facilities. No kitchen.
Undocumented people, people who are not citizens but have legal status, and citizens. All picked up and held in this shithole.
ICE has been unresponsive to requests from the town to inspect the facility. They have refused entry to members of Congress.
They are an unaccountable violent militarized goon squad.
I'm sympathetic to folks who live in southern border areas. I have family that lives in a southern border area, and they often feel that things are out of control.
But what Trump and MIller are doing is not making things any better. It's freaking mayhem.
Long post, sorry for that. Need to get some of this crap off my chest.
Wjca summed up my own response about Afghanistan. The only thing I'd add is that blame could be assigned not just to Biden, not just to Trump, but also to Bush II who got us into that war without a clear mission.
Were we after Al Qaeda? The Taliban? Were we there just to eliminate a threat to the US? Or are we going to transform Afghanistan into a modern liberal republic?
I'd add Rumsfeld, who had his own vision and agenda for "modernizing the military" which ended up leaving the effort short on resources.
And I'd add all the war mongering creeps in the Bush II administration who took 9/11 as their free pass to invade Iraq.
So, all of them.
And if you want to keep the (D) vs (R) score even I'll add Carter, who funded and armed the mujahadin - the proto-Taliban - to stick it to Russia.
That's about 50 years of history landing in Biden's lap. It was a mess, because everything about our engagement with Afghanistan has been a mess. He did well to get us the hell out of there.
On a different topic, I'm all in favor of "green pork". The fossil industries have had a stranglehold on our public energy policy for decades, they are going to do everything they can to make sure every freaking ounce of fossil fuel that is still in the ground gets extracted and burned, because most of the book value of those companies is based on doing exactly that.
We've passed several milestones in the advent of our new climate, and we don't appear to be making much progress in slowing any of that down. The market does not appear to be getting it done, so I'm fine with the public sector - government - stepping in.
When is it appropriate for a nation to borrow? What is accomplished with the money that is borrowed?
The feds spent a lot of money under Biden. We took on a lot of debt. And for that, we came out of the COVID pandemic with a robust economy, much more so that peer nations. Big investments in infrastructure.
Trump is loading the country up with debt in the interest of making Trump's 2017 tax cuts permanent. Qui bono? I mean, we'd all like more cash in hand at the end of the month, but what are we cutting to make that happen? If you're making a middle class wage and you end up with an extra 3% a year, but your local hospital closes and your health insurance premium doubles and your public infrastructure in general goes to shit, are you better off?
And FWIW, the highest level of debt-to-GDP ratio in recent years was first quarter of 2020 - 132.8%. Who was POTUS then? Also FWIW, I don't have a problem with the national debt spiking up 1Q 2020 because we were in the middle of a freaking plague. Nonetheless, those are the numbers.
When the nation borrows, what is done with the money? Are we investing in the future? Or are we starving the public sector and assuming the public sector will just pick up the slack? And if so, will it?
By my iights, this administration is doing damage to this country that will take generations, literally generations, to repair. Some of it may never be repaired.
If that prompts the "it all sucks anyway, just tear it down" response, I'd say that is profoundly nihilistic. And, I doubt the folks saying that are really gonna want to live in a world where it's "all torn down".
BIllionaires and centi-billionaires excepted. They have, as the colloquial expression goes, fuck you money. They'll be fine no matter what.
I'd add to Pro Bono's list the decline in our standing internationally, and the consequences *for everybody in the world*, not to exclude us, that are gonna follow on from that.
Trump has, in nine months, pissed away what took 80 years to build. Who is going to trust this country after this mess? Foreign relations at this point are devolving into pure transactional scratch-my-back-I'll-scratch-yours deal making.
Give me a shiny plane and I'll let you build a base in Idaho. It ain't show friends, it's show business. Right? That's where we are headed, or perhaps already are. It's not a good basis for anything like national security.
The administration is deeply and thoroughly corrupt, and they are corrupting the country.
First, bc, thank you for chiming in. I always appreciate what you have to say, if only to keep myself honest.
Some of the stuff on Ackman's list make sense to me (immigration), some seem motivated more by a specific agenda of Ackman's (Israel / Gaza), some seem to ignore a broader context (withdrawal from Afghanistan, inflation). And for Ackman, specifically, as for much of the technorati, my sense is that a significant factor for him and them is "I want to do cool tech stuff and the feds won't get out of my way!".
But many or most are legitimate concerns, even if they either aren't concerns of mine personally, or I land in a different place than Ackman does regarding them.
My question for Ackman, and for supporters of Trump generally, is less "Why did you vote for him?" and more "Why are you still supporting him?".
Why are they still supporting him? Ackman I understand, Trump is gonna give the tech bros free rein. Ackman's gonna have fun and make a lot of money.
But I don't get rank and file MAGA. As far as I can tell, they're getting screwed. And yet, they love him.
Until they lose it, or can't afford it. Especially if they or someone they care about has an expensive and / or chronic illness.
I also disagree with nous' thought that health care "codes" as a management issue. At the policy level, it does. At the level of "do I have to choose between health insurance and rent" it does not.
IMO (D)'s do well to hammer the hell out of this one.
I second wjca's thought that most people aren't really motivated by the whole "threat to democracy" thing. "People Like Me" might be, most people aren't. The connection between that and their daily life is not always clear.
I'd go so far as to say if you give a lot of people a choice betwen democracy and a basic level of personal and financial security, they would choose the latter without a second thought.
"Democracy" is kind of abstract. "My job is going away" is not. "I can't afford insulin" is not. "My hospital closed and the nearest one now is an hour away (or two hours away, or not even in my state)" is not. "I can't afford to not work, but I can't afford to pay for care for my kid" is not. "I work a full time job and have to take care of my disabled kid / my parent with Alzheimers / my partner who had a stroke" is not.
The price of eggs is too small bore. Have you lost your job? Are you clinging to a job you don't really like because you don't know if you can find another one? Do you make enough to buy a house? Do you make enough to start a family? Do you have a kid that needs any kind of special ed? Trump just took that away. Can your kids afford to go to college without taking on six figures of debt? If they don't go to college, can they find a job - not just a "job", but a career, a path in life - that will give them a decent quality of life?
Does your life feel stable? Can you see a path forward for yourself and your family, if you have one? Can you see a path forward to the life you thought you might have?
How worried are you about your future?
When I listen to folks, especially young folks (which for me at this point is basically anybody 45 or younger) this is the stuff that nags at them.
(D)'s should absolutely give zero ground on basic human rights. Women'sLGBTQ, trans people, black people, Latinos, immigrants of any stripe.
Defend them all. Do not give an inch.
But that needs to happen in a context that makes people understand that those folks' rights are not being defended at the expense of everybody else. That the (D)'s are not forgetting the folks who aren't "marginal" - not a member of a non-mainstream demographic.
I.e., to more or less stereotype it, people who might self-describe as more or less a plugger. Someone trying to do the right things, trying to "play by the rules". Someone who isn't trying to change the world, they're just trying to take care of themselves and their family. And who nonetheless finds themselves lying awake at night trying to figure out how to make it work.
(D)'s should be able to chew gum and walk at the same time. They should be able to say "those people who aren't like you are no threat to you, they're just living their lives" AND ALSO say "we see how tentative life is for you, here is what we will do to help that".
Not either / or.
It's a really unsettled time, people are worried, and everything Trump does makes it worse. Hammer that, every single day.
If you aren't rich, Donald J Trump is making your life worse. Less secure.
Are you rich? What exactly are you getting out of this administration?
My go-to lately for listening is Milt Jackson. Been trying to get some vibes happening, he's more or less the beginning of the modern period on that instrument.
Have also been stumbling through a lot of jazz standards on the piano. Not to perform - I will never be a competent pianist - but just to get an understanding of the harmonic language.
Don't know if I'll live long enough to get anywhere that all of that, but I like it.
Other than pedagogical listening, I continue to be drawn to early European art music. Basically the modal counterpoint from the very late middle ages to the early pre-Baroque Renaissance. Dufay, Machaut, et al. That music is sophisticated but so accessible, and has (to my ear) a very direct emotional impulse. My wife sings with a choir whose director is also a fan of that period, I sometimes get to provide percussion accompaniment, which is always a lot of fun.
I wonder if a useful approach might be to ask, not why they are afraid, but why they are concerned.
An excellent suggestion, and one I will use.
To wonkie's point about MAGAs being no more forgotten or neglected than anyone else - that seems correct to me, but I'm not sure it matters if their sense of threat or concern makes sense. Or even whether it's sincere, or just a justification for less sympathetic reasons.
It's a place to start that isn't focused on fingerpointing. I'm prone to that, as well as to the "go piss up a rope" response. Those aren't that constructive, so I'm looking for other approaches.
To me MAGA just seems like an expression of stuff that's always been in our national character. Nativism, xenophobia, white (especially Anglo) hegemony. Endless arguments about who gets to be a "real" American. I don't think it will ever go away, really. The name will change but the sensibility has always been part of the mix.
I just want to return to the day when "the Paranoid Style" was not seen as something to aspire to and embrace.
I'm pretty much happy to talk to anybody about whatever, but I more or less insist on sticking to reality. If folks insist on doubling down on stuff that is simply factually wrong, I excuse myself from the conversation.
What I take away from most of my fairly limited collection of conversations with MAGAs is that they feel threatened. They are afraid. I don't really understand why, and the reasons are probably different for different people. That is what I'd really like to talk to them about, but it's hard to steer the conversation in that direction.
Nobody likes to admit they're basically just afraid.
I was at a local ICE office yesterday for a protest and noticed that they've begun putting badging and insignia on their vehicles. Some of them, anyway, some are still unmarked.
One of the slogans on the vehicles reads "Defending the homeland". And it just kind of made me laugh. Defending the homeland from the guy who mows your lawn? Your waiter? The woman taking care of your grandmother in the nursing home? The people picking lettuce?
What's the threat?
The Stephen Millers Kristi Noems and Kash Patels of the world understand and work on that sense of threat by making absurd claims. 5% of the population of Chicago are violent antifa extremists! Tren de Agua has taken over downtown Portland!
It's risible, but it resonates with people who are already afraid. I want to understand why they're afraid. But it's hard to get the conversation to that point.
There's also the whole nativist / nationalist streak in American history and in our national character. It's been there from the get. The early English folks looked down on and were suspicious of the German immigrants. Then both were suspicious of the Irish. Then all of them were suspicious of the eastern and southern Europeans. Then the Hispanics. Everybody hated the Chinese until pretty recently. And everybody has always had issues with black people, who have been here longer than almost everyone else, and mostly had no choice about being here in the first place.
The endless argument about who is a "real American".
I'm still trying to understand WTF people are on about when they talk about "western civilization", which of course is yet another thing that is always on the verge of being subsumed by the latest wave of People Who Are Not Like Us.
It's all fear. Toxic, destructive fear.
I would like to talk to MAGAs about what the hell it is they are afraid of. What is that they think is going to happen. What precious thing are they going to lose.
I'm not sure how to get to that conversation. I sure as hell am tired to debating with them about crap like whether the Haitians are eating their pets, or whether blacks are roaming the streets looking for white people to assault. Or whether ICE are engaged in nightly hand to hand combat with the armies of antifa.
What's going on is too fraught right now to waste time on bullshit.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “What’s up, doxx?”
John Lennon's words are, I think, appropriate in the current situation.
There are situations when there are no other options, but I don't think we are anywhere close to that now.
As an aside, this has always been one of my issues with antifa and similar. The folks they want to fight would like nothing better than an opportunity to get into it with them. It's kind of what they live for.
Why give them what they want?
For folks heading out to No Kings tomorrow, stay safe and to whatever degree you can bring joy to it. I'm sorry to say I won't be out there, I have another commitment for the weekend of long standing.
I'll be there for the next one.
"
then couldn’t get the charge to stick?
Grand jury would not indict, which has become a way for regular folks to resist bullshit acts of overzealous or punitive prosecution by the current DOJ.
Ironically, the guy was a DOJ employee, and was subsequently fired.
One point to make regarding doxxing in our current environment is that any real harm done to an ICE agent will just become an excuse for the feds to double down.
Trump is looking for any excuse to invoke the Insurrection Act, which would allow him to legally (for some readings of "legally") deploy the military domestically. Which would basically be ICE on steroids.
Trump has an army, folks opposed to his policies don't. And Trump is eager for any pretext to use it, against people in this country who are opposed to his policies and actions.
I'm opposed to doxxing, of anyone and of any kind, for all of the obvious ethical reasons. But all of that aside, as a purely strategic matter, it's a really bad idea to give Trump any reason to send the army into your city or town.
Things are bad enough as it is.
On “Let’s start calling a thug a thug”
Here is where I am today as regards calling a thug a thug.
This week we had folks in the Young Republicans organization telling us they love Hitler and who should be sent to the gas chanbers. The folks involved included a Vermont state Senator and the head of staff of a NY Assemblyman. The latter was the guy who "loved Hitler".
Not fringe people.
Today I see that Mike Davis, former chief counsel for Chuck Grassley, former clerk for Gorsuch, and current head of the conservative Article III Project, decided to call House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries "George Soros' house slave" in a post on X.
We also have a photo from the office of Congressman Dave Taylor, (R) Ohio, showing a picture pinned to a bulletin board with an American flag modified to include a swastika.
Plus all the ICE bullshit. Plus all the "manosphere" crap.
If you don't want to be called Nazis, don't be Nazis.
If you don't want to be associated with Nazis, don't associate with Nazis.
If you don't want to be called fascist, don't behave like a fascist regime.
If you don't want to be called thugs, don't send thugs in your employ into our cities and neighborhoods to abuse people.
If you don't want to be called misogynist, don't joke about rape being "epic".
A hit dog will holler.
I'm not interested in dialog with people who consider folks who don't look like them are some lower order of being. I don't even know where the conversation could begin.
I'm not referring to bc, I do not get that vibe from him.
But it's rampant in the right wing. Which owns the (R) party and the "conservative" name right now.
If you don't like that, you need to take it back from them. I can't do that, you can.
Clean your damned house. You have rats in the walls.
On “Opinions on settings”
3 links seems too few, 5 seems like a better compromise between overly strict and being exposed to spam.
14 days is probably too short - some threads seem to want to go on longer. 21? A month? But longer than a month seems unnecessary - usually if a thread goes on that long it's because it's wandered off onto a different topic that probably deserves its own post.
Don't know what I think about the subscriber thing. What does it give you that you don't get by just walking up to the site? Not having to re-enter name and password each time would be handy, but not sure if that alone is worth the extra fuss.
My biggest ask would be to make "Oldest" the default sort order. I (personally) find it confusing to go bottom-up to follow the chronological sequence of posts. But others may prefer the current default.
As always, thank you all for keeping this place alive!
On “Let’s start calling a thug a thug”
Hello bc -
Thank you for your thoughtful response! I'll try to reply briefly.
I think you are correct as regards the law. The severity of the offense depends on whether someone came through a federal entry point vs. just walking across the border somewhere, and also whether someone is trying to re-enter illegally after having been deported.
Thank you for the clarification and correction, I appreciate it.
First, we are on the same page as regards people with criminal histories or demonstrable gang affiliation. I would except folks whose "criminal history" is a moving violation, but certainly crimes against persons or property are legitimate grounds for deportation or refusal of entry.
I don't actually prefer the folks who are here without legal status to the 5 million waiting in line. If I understand the estimates of the size of the "no legal status" numbers, they actually include many of those 5 million - people waiting for an asylum ruling, people here under TPS, basically anyone who has not yet been granted permanent legal residency.
For folks who did straight-up sneak in or overstay their visa - people who are *not* in the pipeline - it's legitimate to deport them, or at least require them to justify their presence here on some legitimate basis (fear of being killed if they return, frex). But I also think we need to be realistic about what we can do without turning the country into a police state. Reagan offered amnesty, we've since had Dreamers, those are both programs intended to deal with the situation humanely and realistically. Don't know if they are appropriate to the current situation.
I personally would be fine with defining a structured path to residency for folks who have been here for some time - 5 years? pick a number - and who have no criminal record. Especially folks who are in families of mixed immigration status - right now we are deporting people who have kids here, and who have been here for years and years. That doesn't seem right, to me.
I'm curious to understand your point about the folks "waiting in line" a little more clearly. Are they "waiting in line" here in this country, i.e., their status is in process but not yet granted? Are they waiting in some other country for a request to immigrate to be granted? I want to understand how the presence of an undocumented person here harms them, or is unfair to them in some tangible way.
Purely from a practical point of view, the focus should be on people who are here with no legal status and who are making trouble. Criminals, gang members. And I agree that the DHS numbers are BS. My understanding, based on cites of ICE's own statistics, is that 80% of the people being held in the Burlington facility near me have no criminal record.
Lastly, I agree that if ICE folks didn't wear masks, they would be at risk of being doxed, and that there is potential for harm there. I would counter that *if they weren't acting as they are acting*, that risk would be significantly reduced. Cops, FBI, etc. generally don't find it necessary to wear masks. ICE's own behavior - their violence and total disregard for due process - is what creates, or at least exacerbates, that risk. They are lawless.
I agree that it's a hard problem, and that there is no perfect solution. But what we are doing right now is nuts. Not "nuts" as in "silly and amusing", but "nuts" as in harmful and destructive, not just to immigrants, but to all of us.
Due process applies to everyone, or else we are all at risk of losing it.
"
the group texts of Young Republicans.
You'd think Hitler would be a bright line. Wouldn't you? What the hell is funny about gas chambers?
My father, step-father, father-in-law, and uncle, all fought in WWII. Uncle didn't make it back. They would freaking puke to see this.
They think this crap is funny. "Edgy". It's all a joke, right? Owning the libs for fun and lols.
And now they're all gonna whine because they've been outed and some of them are losing their jobs.
I affirm the idea that we don't want to dehumanize other folks. That said, these folks dehumanize themselves.
And I understand that there are Good And Reasonable Conservatives, but there are a hell of a lot of folks like this. These are not "fringe" characters, they are leaders in the Young Republican movement. Leaders.
Good And Reasonable Conservatives, if you want to engage in civil and constructive dialog with your counterparties, you need to get people like this the hell out of your party and your movement. I know I sure as hell have nothing to say to them, and am not interested in anything they might want to say to me.
To borrow wonkie's language, they can fuck right off.
I can't make them go away. You - reasonable conservatives, wherever you are - can. Or at least you can try. They do not deserve a place in governance, in political leadership, or in public conversation.
If you want people to stop calling MAGAs and conservatives in general Nazis, STOP INDULGING THE NAZIS IN YOUR COMMUNITY. If you can't do that, the rest of us can't believe you when you say they "have no part" of your world. They do have a part of it, they are right there in plain sight.
"
I think that should be 0.3% (1 million per 340 million)
Argh. Yes, you are correct!
The 3% is the number of undocumented aliens in the US - in recent years somewhere around 11+ million, growing to about 14 million now.
https://www.pewresearch.org/race-and-ethnicity/2025/08/21/u-s-unauthorized-immigrant-population-reached-a-record-14-million-in-2023/
That number sounds like a lot, but if I follow it all correctly it includes folks who may not have been granted permanent residency but who are protected from deportation for any of a variety of reasons.
Those folks, who actually are trying to "come here the right way" according the the policies in place when they came, make up about 40% of the 14 million. A lot of the policies that grant them protection from deportation were instituted by Biden, and are being removed by Trump. So who knows what will happen to them.
Net/net, as your correction indicates (thank you!), we grant permanent legal residency - a green card, with permission to live and work here - to about one-third of one percent of the overall population.
We're not in danger of being replaced, or overwhelmed with sneaky illegal votes. There are places in the country that *are* stressed by the levels of immigration we see now - I live in one - but in most places even that is not an issue. Or at least is being managed effectively.
Trump doesn't like brown people. Miller doesn't like brown people. So they want to throw the brown people out. And they are hiring / have hired a bunch of out of control yahoos to make that happen.
That's where we are at.
On “Bathtub Bug is Dead”
Indeed.
Mostly I stepped on them. For the ones that got away, I watched where they ran to, and am gonna follow up with a heavy treatment of boric acid.
But yeah, they take a licking and keep on ticking. 6' 2", 215 lbs, jumped on those little bastards with my full weight, and some of them still walked away.
I'm glad they aren't bigger.
"
We have had an on again / off again water issue in the basement - for years - that finally got bad enough that we decided to do something about it. Did some looking around, figured out it was coming from the bulkhead, called a basement guy. A crew will be here second week of November to do the french drain / sump pump thing.
To get ready, we moved a bunch of stuff out of that part of the basement. And... found a bunch of black mold. Yecch!
Tore out some sheetrock, tore out a workbench that had some rotten moldy MDF, pulled up some vinyl tile. Off to the dump with all of that.
But in the process of tearing out the workbench, we discovered that it had been the favorite hiding space for critters. Centipedes (my wife HATES HATES HATES HATES HATES them) and spiders (my spirit animal, according to Facebook).
I tried to work around the spiders, with mixed success. There was no mercy for the centipedes. They're not bad critters, more or less apex predators in the creepy crawly world, but they freak my wife the hell out, so they had to go.
Got all the mold either physically removed from the house or treated thoroughly (vinegar + borax + dish soap + water + a scrub brush). Now I get to put everything back together again - new sheetrock and insulation, build a new workbench, replace vinyl tile, skim coat the new rock, prime and paint everything in sight. But the "putting back together" stuff is very enjoyable for me. My wife is heading out to Ohio tomorrow for a crafting class, so I'll be down in the basement making the world a better place for everything other than centipedes.
The joys of home ownership. :)
On “From the archive: hilzoy on Avian Flu (9 Oct 2005)”
If we only knew what was coming
On “Let’s start calling a thug a thug”
A final thought, or comment, about immigration.
A lot of places in the world are stressed, for a lot of different reasons. Poverty, environmental issues caused by climate change, war and general anarchic violence.
We're very lucky to live where we do.
All of the above is going to result in people wanting to emigrate. To go somewhere else where they will not be subject to violence, not be desparately poor. Not be miserable in any of a thousand ways.
All of that is not necessarily new, but the scale of it is likely to change. Is, in fact, changing. And there are a lot more ways to get from one place to another now.
We need an intelligent immigration policy. One that recognizes the realities named above. One that recognizes the value of immigrants to this country. One that isn't rooted in the mythology of white supremacy - that recognizes that "real Americans" come, and have always come, in all colors creeds and nationalities.
One that is sane and humane. One that is enforceable without descending into a police state, which is where we are, right now.
It's where we are, right now.
People are gonna try to come here. The overwhelmingly vast majority of them - overwhelmingly - want to come, work, and make a decent life.
That is how most of us ended up here.
We let a bit more than a million folks a year into this country as lawful permanent residents. That's generous! A lot! Especially by international standards.
But it's about 3% of the population. We could increase that significantly and not get close to "they're gonna replace us" levels.
It's an issue that IS NOT going to go away. Folks are going to migrate, because if the alternative is getting killed or starving, you will take your chances.
So we need to find a constructive way to deal with that. One that does not require masked anonymous agents in full military kit breaking into homes and smashing car windows to grab random people because they are brown.
Which is what we do now.
Do we really want to live like this?
The church I attend locks the doors during services because ICE is perfectly likely to march in and start grabbing people. It's not an overreaction, it's a realistic assessment of where we are right now.
Is this how we want to live?
"
His administration (Mayorkas) stated that the unlawful presence was not by itself a basis for an enforcement action.
People LIke Me always make this point when immigration comes up, but since I am a Person LIke Me, I guess I'll make it again.
Being in the United States without some kind of legal status is a civil, not a criminal, violation.
Law enforcement, at all levels, needs to prioritize where they will direct their efforts. Resource are not infinite, so choices have to be made.
Here is a discussion of the policies instituted under Mayorkas:
https://www.valverdelaw.com/unlawful-status-alone-should-not-be-the-basis-for-an-enforcement-action-under-new-guidelines
The purpose of the guidelines is to provide direction to ICE to help them prioritize who they will pursue, and why. The guidelines state that enforcement should be directed toward people who *pose a threat* to the public.
Mayorkas further observes, correctly, that there are 11 million undocumented people in the US. I hope we can all agree that it's not practical to find and deport 11 million people. So choices have to be made.
Go after people who are a threat.
I live very close to large immigrant communities. For a number of years, I lived in the Point neighborhood in Salem MA, which was then and still is a largely Dominican community. I attend a church that has about a 60% Latino congregation. I've volunteered at a local food bank whose clientele includes Dominicans, Brazilians, Haitians, Russians and other Eastern European folks. Also plain old white bread Americans who need access to free or cheap food.
I am aware of the issues around immigration, aware in general of the problems it creates, and also aware of how we benefit from immigrants.
The sticking point for immigration - the place where it is hugely problematic, rather than just one of several issues to deal with - is at the southern border. Because it's closer to the countries that many migrants come from, and because people can basically just walk there.
I absolutely understand that the issues facing someone living in a border area in TX or AZ or CA are different than the issues facing me. I'm surrounded by migrants, but they aren't wandering homeless through my neighborhood in large numbers. Or any numbers.
It's a problem of a different quality.
My understanding is that the Biden policies exacerbated the problem *at the southern border*. Maybe exacerbated it a lot, i don't have numbers. If you want to blame him for that, I will recognize that as a fair point. He did take steps to remedy that, as you point out "because of an election". He recognized he was vulnerable there.
And Trump prevented those changes from taking place. Because of an election.
Politicians' minds are concentrated by elections. Not ideal, but that's the reality.
The approach Trump and Miller are taking right now is creating holy f***ing havoc where I live. People afraid to leave their homes, afraid to send their kids to school, afraid to go to work. Not just illegal people, but literally anybody brown, anyone who speaks Spanish or speaks English with an accent.
People who were born in this country, and who have lived all their lives here. Afraid to go out of the house. Because ICE under Trump and Miller are a freaking terroristic goon squad.
Illegals are seized, citizens are seized, anybody who looks like they might possibly by Latino.
I sometimes attend a standing weekly demonstration at the local ICE facility in Burlington MA. It's basically an office building, with no facilities for holding people. The agreement ICE has with either the leaseholder or the town (not sure which) is that nobody will be held overnight, or at least for more than a day.
People are held there for many days. Weeks in some cases. They sleep on a concrete floor with a Mylar blanket. Many in one big room, with one toilet that offers minimal privacy. No place to shower. No medical facilities. No kitchen.
Undocumented people, people who are not citizens but have legal status, and citizens. All picked up and held in this shithole.
ICE has been unresponsive to requests from the town to inspect the facility. They have refused entry to members of Congress.
They are an unaccountable violent militarized goon squad.
I'm sympathetic to folks who live in southern border areas. I have family that lives in a southern border area, and they often feel that things are out of control.
But what Trump and MIller are doing is not making things any better. It's freaking mayhem.
Long post, sorry for that. Need to get some of this crap off my chest.
"
Wjca summed up my own response about Afghanistan. The only thing I'd add is that blame could be assigned not just to Biden, not just to Trump, but also to Bush II who got us into that war without a clear mission.
Were we after Al Qaeda? The Taliban? Were we there just to eliminate a threat to the US? Or are we going to transform Afghanistan into a modern liberal republic?
I'd add Rumsfeld, who had his own vision and agenda for "modernizing the military" which ended up leaving the effort short on resources.
And I'd add all the war mongering creeps in the Bush II administration who took 9/11 as their free pass to invade Iraq.
So, all of them.
And if you want to keep the (D) vs (R) score even I'll add Carter, who funded and armed the mujahadin - the proto-Taliban - to stick it to Russia.
That's about 50 years of history landing in Biden's lap. It was a mess, because everything about our engagement with Afghanistan has been a mess. He did well to get us the hell out of there.
On a different topic, I'm all in favor of "green pork". The fossil industries have had a stranglehold on our public energy policy for decades, they are going to do everything they can to make sure every freaking ounce of fossil fuel that is still in the ground gets extracted and burned, because most of the book value of those companies is based on doing exactly that.
We've passed several milestones in the advent of our new climate, and we don't appear to be making much progress in slowing any of that down. The market does not appear to be getting it done, so I'm fine with the public sector - government - stepping in.
YMMV, that's how I see it.
"
"No one else will lease us enough space for the air base we operate there."
Thank you Michael. That makes sense, and I appreciate your calling it out.
"
"I think Biden was far worse than Trump."
When is it appropriate for a nation to borrow? What is accomplished with the money that is borrowed?
The feds spent a lot of money under Biden. We took on a lot of debt. And for that, we came out of the COVID pandemic with a robust economy, much more so that peer nations. Big investments in infrastructure.
Trump is loading the country up with debt in the interest of making Trump's 2017 tax cuts permanent. Qui bono? I mean, we'd all like more cash in hand at the end of the month, but what are we cutting to make that happen? If you're making a middle class wage and you end up with an extra 3% a year, but your local hospital closes and your health insurance premium doubles and your public infrastructure in general goes to shit, are you better off?
And FWIW, the highest level of debt-to-GDP ratio in recent years was first quarter of 2020 - 132.8%. Who was POTUS then? Also FWIW, I don't have a problem with the national debt spiking up 1Q 2020 because we were in the middle of a freaking plague. Nonetheless, those are the numbers.
When the nation borrows, what is done with the money? Are we investing in the future? Or are we starving the public sector and assuming the public sector will just pick up the slack? And if so, will it?
"
The request for a training facility was made in 2017
Noted, and a fair call. I stand corrected.
What are your thoughts about the unilateral defense agreement with Qatar?
"
What Pro Bono said.
By my iights, this administration is doing damage to this country that will take generations, literally generations, to repair. Some of it may never be repaired.
If that prompts the "it all sucks anyway, just tear it down" response, I'd say that is profoundly nihilistic. And, I doubt the folks saying that are really gonna want to live in a world where it's "all torn down".
BIllionaires and centi-billionaires excepted. They have, as the colloquial expression goes, fuck you money. They'll be fine no matter what.
I'd add to Pro Bono's list the decline in our standing internationally, and the consequences *for everybody in the world*, not to exclude us, that are gonna follow on from that.
Trump has, in nine months, pissed away what took 80 years to build. Who is going to trust this country after this mess? Foreign relations at this point are devolving into pure transactional scratch-my-back-I'll-scratch-yours deal making.
Give me a shiny plane and I'll let you build a base in Idaho. It ain't show friends, it's show business. Right? That's where we are headed, or perhaps already are. It's not a good basis for anything like national security.
The administration is deeply and thoroughly corrupt, and they are corrupting the country.
"
First, bc, thank you for chiming in. I always appreciate what you have to say, if only to keep myself honest.
Some of the stuff on Ackman's list make sense to me (immigration), some seem motivated more by a specific agenda of Ackman's (Israel / Gaza), some seem to ignore a broader context (withdrawal from Afghanistan, inflation). And for Ackman, specifically, as for much of the technorati, my sense is that a significant factor for him and them is "I want to do cool tech stuff and the feds won't get out of my way!".
But many or most are legitimate concerns, even if they either aren't concerns of mine personally, or I land in a different place than Ackman does regarding them.
My question for Ackman, and for supporters of Trump generally, is less "Why did you vote for him?" and more "Why are you still supporting him?".
Why are they still supporting him? Ackman I understand, Trump is gonna give the tech bros free rein. Ackman's gonna have fun and make a lot of money.
But I don't get rank and file MAGA. As far as I can tell, they're getting screwed. And yet, they love him.
On “The Mother-in-law defense”
Shorter me:
Pick any Trump policy or action. Call attention to it.
Then ask the question "How is that making your life better"?
Unless you're rich or wanna-be rich, it's not. And even if you're just wanna-be rich, it likely is not.
"How is [insert Trump policy here] making YOU'RE life better"?
I can't think of a single Trump policy or action that passes that test.
"
Until they lose it, or can't afford it. Especially if they or someone they care about has an expensive and / or chronic illness.
I also disagree with nous' thought that health care "codes" as a management issue. At the policy level, it does. At the level of "do I have to choose between health insurance and rent" it does not.
IMO (D)'s do well to hammer the hell out of this one.
I second wjca's thought that most people aren't really motivated by the whole "threat to democracy" thing. "People Like Me" might be, most people aren't. The connection between that and their daily life is not always clear.
I'd go so far as to say if you give a lot of people a choice betwen democracy and a basic level of personal and financial security, they would choose the latter without a second thought.
"Democracy" is kind of abstract. "My job is going away" is not. "I can't afford insulin" is not. "My hospital closed and the nearest one now is an hour away (or two hours away, or not even in my state)" is not. "I can't afford to not work, but I can't afford to pay for care for my kid" is not. "I work a full time job and have to take care of my disabled kid / my parent with Alzheimers / my partner who had a stroke" is not.
The price of eggs is too small bore. Have you lost your job? Are you clinging to a job you don't really like because you don't know if you can find another one? Do you make enough to buy a house? Do you make enough to start a family? Do you have a kid that needs any kind of special ed? Trump just took that away. Can your kids afford to go to college without taking on six figures of debt? If they don't go to college, can they find a job - not just a "job", but a career, a path in life - that will give them a decent quality of life?
Does your life feel stable? Can you see a path forward for yourself and your family, if you have one? Can you see a path forward to the life you thought you might have?
How worried are you about your future?
When I listen to folks, especially young folks (which for me at this point is basically anybody 45 or younger) this is the stuff that nags at them.
(D)'s should absolutely give zero ground on basic human rights. Women'sLGBTQ, trans people, black people, Latinos, immigrants of any stripe.
Defend them all. Do not give an inch.
But that needs to happen in a context that makes people understand that those folks' rights are not being defended at the expense of everybody else. That the (D)'s are not forgetting the folks who aren't "marginal" - not a member of a non-mainstream demographic.
I.e., to more or less stereotype it, people who might self-describe as more or less a plugger. Someone trying to do the right things, trying to "play by the rules". Someone who isn't trying to change the world, they're just trying to take care of themselves and their family. And who nonetheless finds themselves lying awake at night trying to figure out how to make it work.
(D)'s should be able to chew gum and walk at the same time. They should be able to say "those people who aren't like you are no threat to you, they're just living their lives" AND ALSO say "we see how tentative life is for you, here is what we will do to help that".
Not either / or.
It's a really unsettled time, people are worried, and everything Trump does makes it worse. Hammer that, every single day.
If you aren't rich, Donald J Trump is making your life worse. Less secure.
Are you rich? What exactly are you getting out of this administration?
Hammer that.
On “Brought to you by your latest captain of industry”
This seems exactly right to me. Thanks for this, it crystalizes a lot of things in my thinking.
On “…..”
No prize for Donald. The world is so unfair, to him most of all.
Better luck next year.
On “Weekend music thread #1”
My go-to lately for listening is Milt Jackson. Been trying to get some vibes happening, he's more or less the beginning of the modern period on that instrument.
Have also been stumbling through a lot of jazz standards on the piano. Not to perform - I will never be a competent pianist - but just to get an understanding of the harmonic language.
Don't know if I'll live long enough to get anywhere that all of that, but I like it.
Other than pedagogical listening, I continue to be drawn to early European art music. Basically the modal counterpoint from the very late middle ages to the early pre-Baroque Renaissance. Dufay, Machaut, et al. That music is sophisticated but so accessible, and has (to my ear) a very direct emotional impulse. My wife sings with a choir whose director is also a fan of that period, I sometimes get to provide percussion accompaniment, which is always a lot of fun.
On “Let’s start calling a thug a thug”
I wonder if a useful approach might be to ask, not why they are afraid, but why they are concerned.
An excellent suggestion, and one I will use.
To wonkie's point about MAGAs being no more forgotten or neglected than anyone else - that seems correct to me, but I'm not sure it matters if their sense of threat or concern makes sense. Or even whether it's sincere, or just a justification for less sympathetic reasons.
It's a place to start that isn't focused on fingerpointing. I'm prone to that, as well as to the "go piss up a rope" response. Those aren't that constructive, so I'm looking for other approaches.
To me MAGA just seems like an expression of stuff that's always been in our national character. Nativism, xenophobia, white (especially Anglo) hegemony. Endless arguments about who gets to be a "real" American. I don't think it will ever go away, really. The name will change but the sensibility has always been part of the mix.
I just want to return to the day when "the Paranoid Style" was not seen as something to aspire to and embrace.
"
I'm pretty much happy to talk to anybody about whatever, but I more or less insist on sticking to reality. If folks insist on doubling down on stuff that is simply factually wrong, I excuse myself from the conversation.
What I take away from most of my fairly limited collection of conversations with MAGAs is that they feel threatened. They are afraid. I don't really understand why, and the reasons are probably different for different people. That is what I'd really like to talk to them about, but it's hard to steer the conversation in that direction.
Nobody likes to admit they're basically just afraid.
I was at a local ICE office yesterday for a protest and noticed that they've begun putting badging and insignia on their vehicles. Some of them, anyway, some are still unmarked.
One of the slogans on the vehicles reads "Defending the homeland". And it just kind of made me laugh. Defending the homeland from the guy who mows your lawn? Your waiter? The woman taking care of your grandmother in the nursing home? The people picking lettuce?
What's the threat?
The Stephen Millers Kristi Noems and Kash Patels of the world understand and work on that sense of threat by making absurd claims. 5% of the population of Chicago are violent antifa extremists! Tren de Agua has taken over downtown Portland!
It's risible, but it resonates with people who are already afraid. I want to understand why they're afraid. But it's hard to get the conversation to that point.
There's also the whole nativist / nationalist streak in American history and in our national character. It's been there from the get. The early English folks looked down on and were suspicious of the German immigrants. Then both were suspicious of the Irish. Then all of them were suspicious of the eastern and southern Europeans. Then the Hispanics. Everybody hated the Chinese until pretty recently. And everybody has always had issues with black people, who have been here longer than almost everyone else, and mostly had no choice about being here in the first place.
The endless argument about who is a "real American".
I'm still trying to understand WTF people are on about when they talk about "western civilization", which of course is yet another thing that is always on the verge of being subsumed by the latest wave of People Who Are Not Like Us.
It's all fear. Toxic, destructive fear.
I would like to talk to MAGAs about what the hell it is they are afraid of. What is that they think is going to happen. What precious thing are they going to lose.
I'm not sure how to get to that conversation. I sure as hell am tired to debating with them about crap like whether the Haitians are eating their pets, or whether blacks are roaming the streets looking for white people to assault. Or whether ICE are engaged in nightly hand to hand combat with the armies of antifa.
What's going on is too fraught right now to waste time on bullshit.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.