"IF LIBERALS WON'T ENFORCE BORDERS, FASCISTS WILL"
Headline to an article by David Frum, April, 2019 in The Atlantic
It wasn't as if progressive Democrats weren't warned.
There was a failure of process.
David Frum was writing at the high-water moment of social justice consciousness. It was the year when the seeds were sown that created the backlash against that bundle of attitudes and policies, ones that Trump condemns as DEI and "wokeness," ones that Trump is now reversing.
I counted about 16 serious candidates who showed up in Iowa and New Hampshire to speak at events in 2019. It was a heady time. The public was tired of Trump. There was no limit to how not-Trump a candidate could go. Whatever Trump said, do the opposite, and do it louder and stronger. I was there to watch Democratic candidates jostle to get to the left of Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders' people were calling Warren a capitalist, corporation-loving sellout.
Liberal advocacy groups were busy shaming people who failed to adopt the dream-positions of the organizations' most zealous people. This is when Democrats who wanted credibility on climate had to condemn fracking, oil and natural gas drilling, oil pipelines, exporting oil, using oil domestically, natural gas heating and cooking in homes. Anything less, and one was a sellout. Same thing on abortion; be an absolutist or be a disgusting woman-hater. Identity-essentialism became required orthodox thinking, so race explained all outcomes; a candidate who looked to individual merit, effort, or circumstances was failing to understand "intersectionality" and was therefore an apologist -- indeed a promoter -- of racism. Shame!
Does this all sound extreme and overblown? It does, because it was. And in that mix, Democrats looked with horror at the racist dog whistling and policies of then-President Trump to secure the border. In this do-the-opposite-of-Trump era, every Democrat except Joe Biden raised a hand saying that they would decriminalize illegal entry into the country.
Biden was elected in 2020 but then adopted the policies of "immigration progressives" who thought immigration enforcement was unjust per se. Biden let people seeking amnesty game a badly-broken system, which amounted to an immigration free-for all. Democrats made a fatal mistake.I have shown a version of this graph before, but do it again because it shows a problem ignored for almost four years, and then the effect of Trump's intervention. The high values on the right are 200,000 new people a month entering the country illegally during Biden's term of office. Then Trump shut that down.
The numbers have consequence because Trump is seen to have solved a problem that Biden -- and therefore Democrats generally -- did not solve. That makes Trump popular with the public. Americans will ignore some errors and rough edges in how something is done, if it is done on behalf of getting a problem solved.
Trump wrote this Truth Social "truth" last night, complaining about process.
My greatest worry about Trump is his lack of respect for the processes of law. Legal process protects us from tyranny and corruption. Our system of laws is the "secret sauce" that allows our economy to thrive. I fault Trump and I fault his Republican enablers, the representatives and senators who know better, but are letting Trump do what he wants because what Trump is doing is decisive and popular with the GOP primary voter.
I also fault Democrats. Biden failed to defend legal process on the border. It was obvious that the asylum system was not working and that catch-and-release wasn't working. This wasn't a secret and it wasn't just a short-term blip. Biden let a problem grow and fester. It was lawless. A lawless, unaddressed problem created a situation where the public tolerates a lawless autocratic president to deal with it.
I don't excuse Trump. He is dangerous. He is re-shaping our Constitution. But there is a lesson here for Democrats: Obey and enforce the laws. Don't excuse scofflaws who are "on your team." It sets a bad precedent. Worse, it makes a dangerous man like Trump popular when he fixes the problems that Democrats let happen.
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9 comments:
Good points well made. The last comprehensive immigration reform was enacted almost four decades ago. Addressing the issue was long overdue, but Trump twice rejected bipartisan immigration bills – once in his first term and once when he was the Republican cult leader. In other words, Democrats weren’t the only ones at fault here.
Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have been in Congress for more than 12 years each. Name 2 things they've accomplished. You can't, because they've done nothing. Conversely, Trump has done a lot, and Democrats hate that. Democrats are talkers. Trump is a doer. America has lots of problems, and Trump is addressing them.
Yes, the black lives criminality in Portland also added to this theme. You can be a law and order liberal as I am.
The featured Frum quote begs the question, intentionally or not. For most modern progressives, it’s “fascist” to enforce (American and Western European) borders, period. Ultimately, nation-states themselves will become justly obsolete once global resources are equitably redistributed as administered by benevolent centralized authorities. The lion will lie down with the lamb.
Most Americans of all stripes disagree, as a function of history, common sense, and human nature. Trump was the undeserving but opportunistic beneficiary. How pathetic that is, all around.
Mussolini, dictaror of Italy, got the trains to run on time and rid the country of criminal gangs. A few good decisions did not pave the way to avoid plunging the country into fascism and an alliance with the Axis powers in World War II.
We know from past behavior that Trump resembles the leaders the world now calls fascist.
1. The dirty little secret is that undocumented immigrants were WELCOMED in this country, by EVERYONE. They are cheap labor. I've seen them, hundreds of them working in a pork processing plant in Missouri, standing all day cutting up freshly slaughtered pigs. They tore off my roof and put a new one one. Those jobs are available to you if you want.
2. Trump's characterization of them is a lie. It got traction with racists and Republicans went along. Immigrants enter the country through states run by conservatives who also climbed on board. DeSantis and Abbot got cute and sent buses to NY, a political stunt that achieved nothing substantial but made them look "tough".
3. There are 650 million people in Latin America. A fraction of them risked their lives to travel North, leaving everything behind, leaving societies in crisis in the hope of a chance at a better life. Refer back to point 1.
In Trump's first 100 days, he signed just five bills into law - fewer than any other president. All he has supposedly accomplished is issue a bunch of executive orders that are being challenged in court and can be revoked by the next administration (fortunately).
The Democrats became weak and woke; not a winning strategy, as it turned out. Who knew? 🤷♂️😱
We’ll see how weak they are in the midterms. Moody’s just downgraded our credit rating, and the administration is on a crash course with the judiciary. If Democrats can’t beat a bunch of white nationalist oligarchs wreaking havoc with our economy and Constitution, we need a new party. My concern is that even if they do win, Republicans will refuse to concede.
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