Reading this article makes my heart bleed because I know this cruelty very well. We are the left-behind allies who stood with the American military, and we also faced the exact same broken promises and bureaucratic walls. They used to tell us we are partners, but then they just shut the door and left us to face danger. Now,seeing that they are even denying day care for innocent children born in America just because of their parents, it show that this system don't care about human rights or loyalty at all. When a government makes cruelty its main goal against immigrants and friends, it lose its moral power. If they can treat children like this inside their own country,it is no wonder they abandoned us in Afghanistan without any shame.
I am ashamed that my government has treated you so miserably. Our failure to keep faith with our friends and allies is going to come back to haunt us, I feel sure. I am so very sorry for what has been done to you and others like you.
Thank you so much for your kind and honorable words. Hearing this from a good American citizen like you gives us hope and means the world to us. We worked with your military with pride and loyalty, and we still love the American values. Your empathy shows that the real people of America do not forget their friends, even if the politicians do. Thank you for standing with us in your heart
I stand with you and Dawn, as well. Many of us do. I am working with a national organization to try to take our country back -- the country that did not abandon its allies.
I am utterly ashamed of our government for treating you and your friends and family like this. It is a crime against everything I thought our country has stood for. I weep with you.
I will never forget. I used to buy my gas at at gas station run by Afghan immigrants. They were lovely people, always friendly, and we sometimes talked about this, their families and those they left behind.
Like others my heart breaks with the evil this government is doing to us and to all the other innocent people they have forsaken. Quite simply they do not care about us at all.
I am ashamed of what we as a nation allowed our government to do to the brave Afghans who helped us and trusted us. There will surely be Hell to pay those who made these shameful decisions and sacrificed our allies for their own personal interest. May you prosper and May we someday make payment for what we did to those we left behind😩
I am sorry for you, because the current US administration is so extreme in their focus, with no understanding of keeping promises made to honorable people. Please know that the current administration has taken the federal government hostage and hopefully the people of America will bring the changes necessary to recognize the efforts you’ve made to support the US.
I have a feeling (after reading reports of low birth rates and an aging population in the U.S.) that deporting all immigrants, legal or illegal, is going to be deeply regretted before long.
Who is it that plants and harvests your crops, does your gardening, works in such unpleasant places as meat-packing plants and slaughterhouses? Immigrants! I’ve already seen one video of a farmer outraged because he couldn’t find anyone to plant this year’s soybean crop, and I’ve seen reports that farmers are going broke due to tRump’s tariffs, rising gas and fertilizer prices, etc., and losing their farms to hedge funds and private-equity firms.
I lived in the California desert for 55 years and never once saw a gardener who wasn’t Hispanic. It seems white men consider such jobs beneath them. Same goes for many construction jobs.
These immigrants, moreover, pay taxes but are denied benefits of citizenship in regard to safety nets, such as they remain. Also, they're afraid to report the most cruel crimes of exploitation by their employers, who hold their immigrant status over their heads every single moment of their working lives.
That's actually the system. The GOP loves illegal workers, because they have no rights. That's why ICE isnt rounding up agricultural workers. The entire charade is a scam to keep the moronic MAGA base entertained.
US debt currently sits at about $300k per household. The aging MAGA cultists live in a delusional alternate universe where this gets paid off without immigration. They deserve their fate, but the rest of the US and world doesn't.
The extraterrestrial MAGA species on Earth doesn't want human beings to live in North and South America.
Stopping immigration, business travel, and tourism to the Americas suits them.
The extraterrestrials don't eat what humans eat and could not care less about farmers and plant crops, ranchers, dairy farmers, hens and hen eggs, or immigrants working as field and farm hands. They are sadists, so they derive sexual pleasure from humans' food shortages and starvation.
Your point bothers me for this reason: Why should *anybody* have to seek these back-breaking, low-paying jobs?
This is one place where I really hope the Robotics Revolution can succeed. Then immigrants can truly get on with building the better lives for which they came here.
Alternatively growers could treat workers more humanely and pay them better. Years ago I read an ariclr a out the fact that picking crops often requires skill and a level of knowledge about thr crops being harvested.
I have zero confidence that robots would be programmed to do anything other than the quickest,cheapest way.
I've see some steps in that direction in the Salinas valley of California where strawberries are planted on raised beds so the pickers don't need to bend over so far to pick them. Baby steps, but steps nonetheless.
I don’t doubt that for one millisecond! I was an immigrant myself until 2022 and have Hispanic in-laws and many friends and former colleagues who would be affected. I read the book written about him during his “first term” and he’s a truly evil person.
I realize this doesn't contribute anything substantive to this discussion, but I'd just like to say that Stephen Miller needs to be fed into a wood-chipper, feet first. We could charge admission and make a fortune!
It may be policy carried out on behalf of 340 million Americans, but that doesn't mean that these same people support the policy. Let's keep it real, polling shows most Americans do not support this. And to our Afghan Ally, the MAGAts don't speak for most of us. Thank you for your service and we hope this (inter)national nightmare that is Trump will be over soon.
My colleagues and allies worked tirelessly in 2016, 2020, and 2024 to block this goon/toddler/demented/diapered/ignorant/sociopath from gaining power. We considered leaving the US but cannot manage it economically. We continue our hard work to realign the government with the original promises of liberty and justice for all. Please Do NOT conflate the 49.1% who voted for Trump with the rest of us who put hard work into trying to stop him from ruining the world.
I don't know where you get your voting numbers. It is probable that it depends on where you get those numbers. Here are the number seen in Wikipedia and US News and World Report:
I would add that a people who do not bother to vote, or vote for someone who cannot possibly win, and consequently allow corrupt politicians, thieves and traitors to succeed are also accomplices. Regardless of their pure, high-minded intent. This past election was a 3- alarm disaster poised to happen and they didn’t heed the call. Was Israel taught a lesson? Did the situation improve for the Palestinians? Is the U.S. and the world in a better place?
I so completely get why people are angry about people who are registered voters but did not vote. I don't know why they did what they didn't do. I don't agree with it either. I just don't know why they did what they did. Some may be collaborators, some might have not voted due to laziness, some might have thought their vote would do no good. There are many reasons. I do agree, we should all vote if we are registered. That might be a utopian vision. I have been guilty of that at times. I used to think people care more than they actually do.
People who do not vote are just as responsible as those who do for what we get. They think they are few and it won’t matter if they don’t vote. It matters a great deal.
Now if we can just stop the interference by those deciding whose votes can count, we might have fair elections.
I think it is pretty clear we need to change how we conduct federal elections in this country. I believe the states should devise and implement their own election procedure. The electoral college is an ancient relic and has to go. My opinion. In this free country, we do all have one. This is why we have elections. We have to decide as a crowd. We can and should ask why people vote as they do at the state and federal levels.
Correction, 50.08% of 2024 voters voted for Trump. The 92,345,697 who didn't vote are, by definition NOT voters. Or, if you want to view them as voters anyway, then you'll have to admit that they voted for candidate "Who Gives a Shit?". Either way, it's not a pretty picture.
How about we use clear, precise language, such as: 31.60% of Americans legally eligible to vote or register to vote in the 2024 US Presidential Election cast their vote for Trump in that election.
Of those who did not vote, only 8.3% were registered, so while I share your sentiments, it's not quite fair to say that rest of the non-voters were against Trump.
Polls showing that US Americans do not agree/ disagree with policies (immigration/ the war with Iran, economic management, etc) are fully relevant.
But, it is a fact of democratic government that the elected head of state (Trump) and the administration legitimately chosen to run the state (the Administration) DO govern on behalf of the citizens of that state.
That is real, my discomfort and yours doesn’t change that.
The US’ closest neighbour, Canada, has seen nothing un-real in Trump’s ‘just saying’ commentary about Canada’s sovereignty, the Danes found themselves gaming out how they would shoot at US soldiers should Trump deliver on his ‘just saying’ thoughts about Greenland, and Mr Abrego Garcia was detained and charged by the US Federal Government on behalf of the US.
It’s time to take well intended blinkers off. It’s time to say out loud that the US has turned dark - for real - and to recognise that the US is in deep trouble.
Hi Anthony. I appreciate your rebuttal, but again have to repeat what I said. I didn't argue that a country's leader doesn't govern on behalf of its people. Instead I tried to make the point that governing on my behalf doesn't mean he does so with my support.
Regardless, the day after the election in November 2024 my wife and I decided to get out of Trump hell and moved to Portugal. Irrelevant to your post, but needed to say it was the best decision ever made, we are happy being governed by a different political system.
It is the government of Donald Trump who is governing the Federal Government in Washington. Wishing that fact away is delusion. American voters voted for Donald Trump, twice, over the alternative candidate. That is fact.
The error which I object to you in your opinion, in that of John Dudley (above) and of others is that we can’t absolve ourselves of the outcomes of the Administration’s policies, even when we passionately disagree with them with all our might. It isn’t your responsibility, or mine, or John’s, that US Federal Government policy is as it is, but we will all certainly pay the price for the bad outcomes, whether we passionately vote MAGA or otherwise. That’s the thing about government; good government lifts all craft, bad government corrupts all endeavours, and our individual passionate defence of good government can’t resist that law of governance.
Paul Krugman uses the word ‘pogrom’ over and over again in his post today. My reading of this is that Paul is using the word as a bright red warning flag to make unambiguously clear how far the US has fallen in governance. Any other use of the word is deeply offensive to the tens of thousands, and then millions, of Jews who were hunted down during pogroms, before the rise of Nazism and during the era of Nazi-Fascist governments across Europe during the Twentieth century.
Please re-read Krugman’s post. You will find no room for equivocation between individual Americans’ sentiments and the policies of the US Federal Government.
I am not ‘anti-American. But I see the US as falling through the floor of political morality. This will sweep all before it, me in Scotland, John and his wife in Portugal, you and yours wherever you may be. There is a terrible price coming to be paid for the US’ political suicide.
It is worth noting that the policy is not being carried out on behalf of 340 million Americans. Assuming only half (I've heard it is far less...) of Republicans identify as the red-hat brigade, then the policy is being carried out on behalf of a tenth of the population. We have a tiny minority, comparatively, driving the actions - not a representative policy by any stretch of the imagination.
Let us all fully appreciate the cruel irony of Stephen Miller's neo-Nazi world view. He would not be on Earth at all had his Jewish grandparents not managed to escape Hitler's Germany before WW2. Of all the sick, twisted MAGA zombies, Stephen is the worst of Trump's inhumane attack dogs. If he could include gas chambers in US detention centers, he would.
"Stephen Miller’s maternal ancestors immigrated to the United States from Belarus, which at the time was part of the Russian Empire. His great-great-grandfather, Wolf Laib Glosser, fled anti-Jewish pogroms and arrived at Ellis Island in 1903 to build a new life as a refugee."/google
Most Americans, even Republicans agree that our war partners deserve asylum. However, people like JD Vance, Steven Miller, Vought etc. believe that Islamophobia is too good a tool to put down. If they recognize Afghani immigrants who worked with the American military...and are often sponsored by American friends, they have to admit that all Muslims are not terrorists.
MAGA thrives on fear of the other. Religion is a potent element. They aren't about to lose that weapon just because it's the right thing to do.
Exactly, there are only a few people in the U.S. government who have forgotten the Afghan allies. Not all Muslims are terrorists—terrorists have no place in Islam at all. Islam is a religion of brotherhood and unity.
For twenty years, we worked alongside the U.S. special forces in Afghanistan. We fought against the enemies of both Afghanistan and America like brothers. But today, unfortunately, we have been left alone and abandoned.
The US has a long, sordid history of using political expedience as an excuse to abandon those who they deem no longer useful. All Americans should our heads in shame.
Remember it was Trump’s agreement with the Taliban that started leaving you. If Biden didn’t win the presidency, the withdrawal would have probably been worse.
There is so much hate and fear fomented by those that have no souls…this undercurrent has been there all my life, and this may be even more true for sexism. It is endemic to so much of our culture…Epstein is just a tip of an iceberg of sexualized influencers!
That said the ability to foment programs is beyond the pale!
It’s so Dtephen Miller’s sniveling little shitless!
I am so sorry that our government has lied to you and let you down. That is shameful! I hope you and your family stay safe until our democracy returns to the moral standards it once stood for and you are able to get what you were promised.
You're welcome, and thank you for understanding that many Americans care and feel pain for you. I too pray for peace, safety, and a better future for all of us, the world over.
we are fighting this admin- but bear in mind one should not conflate a rogue goodfellas group with " this Nation" and " the government".. one has to be specific - " this administration " and " admin loyalists "( there are many more than gestapo miller)..
I apologize on behalf of my country! I am disgusted and heartbroken over the cruelty inflicted on you by people who lack the sense of decency that demands that one always honor one's promises and show loyalty to one's allies. We have destroyed all trust in the USA and I dread to see the results of this in our relations with foreign countries. I stand with you.
Thank you so much for your heartfelt words. I truly feel your kindness and honesty.
I don’t blame the American people, because I know many of you still care and feel pain for what has happened. Your support gives me strength in very difficult days, when everything feels uncertain.
For me, respect and humanity are more important than politics. I just hope one day trust can be rebuilt and promises can be honored again.
Thank you again for standing with us and for not forgetting our situation. It really means a lot.
I've long been upset that the American government made it so difficult--next to impossible--for Afghan military allies to immigrate, as you were promised. I know even many of those military you aided were also upset, and still nothing. That this goes back decades is even more shameful. I wish you the best.
Thank you so much for your kind and honest words. It really mean a lot for me.
Sometimes we feel forgotten, but when we hear people like you speak truth like this, it gives us hope again. I understand it is not easy situation for anyone, and I respect your feeling and support deeply.
I just wish one day promises will become reality for all of us who waited long time. Thank you again for not forgetting us and for your good heart.
Horrifying and heartbreaking, but is there anything we can point to from this regime that lifts up people? In any respect? We have become a rogue nation that others mock and despise.
I used to think a lot about mental illness, and evil--what was common, what distinguished one from the other. My active thought about it was initiated by people frequently calling villains some variety of diagnostic category.
My eventual conclusion was that there are two distinct categories--distinct.
Mental illness is not voluntary; no-one wishes to have a diseased mind. There is no inherent fault in being mentally ill. Mental illness can, in some cases, be treated, to some extent. Subsequently, some (former) patients can live in society
Evil, on the other hand, is chosen behaviour. It cannot be treated with any level of success (there are mounds of scholarly studies supporting that statement). Those who choose this option cannot live in a general population. The only appropriate societal response is life-long imprisonment, or the death penalty.
Western societies have moved away from the death penalty, for many sound reasons.
IMO, those reasons are irrelevant in the case of evil persons. There are much more higher-need members of our societies who, IMO, merit the expenditure of scarce public funds than something like the Canadian mass murderers with whom I am familiar.
Would Stephen Miller think this is enough? He’s ultimately a child of immigrants, right?
“Stephen Miller is of Ashkenazi Jewish descent, with a family lineage that emigrated from the Russian Empire (modern-day Belarus) to escape antisemitic pogroms. His maternal great-grandparents arrived in the United States in the early 1900s through Ellis Island.
His heritage has frequently been the subject of public and political discussion. Because his ancestors were refugees and immigrants, his critics – including his own uncle, Dr. David Glosser – have often noted the contrast between his family's chain-migration story and the extreme anti-immigration policies he pushes in the Trump administration.”
It's obvious that Miller is a hypocrite, but it's interesting that he is so devoted to his so-called cause. He will be walking around with a target on his back for the rest of his life, and I think he knows that.
Miller’s early job in DC was with Michele Bachman US Rep MN who claimed in 2014 that gay rights activists want to abolish the age of consent laws in the US so that adults can “prey on little children sexually” which is AOK for the Epstein-Trump class. With her husband, Marcus, who has a PhD with a “concentration in clinical psychology and was not licensed clinical psychologist in MN, practiced conversion therapy. You can’t pray away gay? Miller is today’s version of Roy Cohen (DJT Buddy) with more power. This MF needs to pay for the murders in MN and the deaths in detention facilities. May the Angels in America never give the scum bag peace I Pray 🙏.
And don't forget the spouses of our VP and president. Immigrants and immigrant families. Why isn't this hypocrisy called out more? That 30% need to have to flashing in front of their eyes relentlessly before they connect the dots.
When I read "McMafia" (series of separate chapters about various examples of modern organized crime), one of the anecdotes that really stuck with me was the story about organized crime during the war in 1990s Yugoslavia. The short version being that the big Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian gangsters all had super-close working relationships with each other, at the same time that they had super-close relationships with the genocidal leaders in all three groups. (That's assuming that the gangsters and the genocidal leaders weren't one and the same, which they often were).
It struck me at the time that this was a very unpleasant example of the world our wingnuts and their equivalents in so many other countries want: a universe fully balkanized into ethnostates constantly at each other's throats, along with a transnational elite that's not really part of any country but is at home in all of them.
had same thought/s. how does such atrocious xenophobia-with-devastating-human-toll on behalf of our twisted, demented, president-as-cognifively-compromised-'governing'--not potentially target the obvious immigrant-example of melania trump, elon musk. and what of senior american citizens who came to america as children escaping the holocaust as a horrifying example.
FOX and right wing media have been immigrant bashing for decades. It's their biggest thing. After 911, Muslims became prime targets. Fear sells. Fear engages people and makes them put away any rational thought.
I don't think our current immigrant bashers are really all that anti-immigrant (OK, Maybe Steven Miller) I think it's about riding the tiger of working class/ PMC anger. As the GDI showed (WSJ and Krugman's last post) wage and salary people aren't getting much out of the growth in GDP. A lot are losing because of the cost of living is going up. Immigrants are Hitler's Jews, a scapegoat for what's gone wrong.
She has exceptional credentials and standing. How many have been deluded by the belief that their achievements, pedigrees and actions on behalf of the regime discovered how inperil is their exceptualism and longevity? In a Trump-minute she will be disguarded. With Trump mocking his VP now, I'd check on that partnership she walked away from.
I find this not surprising at all. In Hitler's Germany, the most rabid Nazis oftentimes had a 'questionable' background or heritage, which they attempted to gloss over or iron out by displaying completely over-the-top fanaticism.
See e.g. the infamous Roland Freisler, a real-life caricature of a fanatical, evil Nazi Judge habitually bending the law past the breaking point. Who was rumored to have a Jewish grandmother, and was known to have held the title of "Commissar" in Soviet Russia.
It seems plausible that he simply felt the need to prove his dedication to the cause by out-naziing any Nazi in sight, more so than anyone else without a background like his.
The parallels to Stephen Miller should be obvious.
There must be a psychological term for such a horrific mind. Is it Identification with the Enemy?
As a Jew I'm so ashamed of Stephen Miller and those running and favoring Israel's genocidal policy. I hate when anyone says one Jewish( substitute any group) life is worth ten others? What kind of perversion is that?
"There must be a psychological term for such a horrific mind. Is it Identification with the Enemy?"
I never heard that variant precisely. You probably think of "Identification with the Aggressor" which is a term commonly associated with Psychoanalysis. I'm not sure Psychoanalysis is helpful here, though.
Is it not the same survival mechanism that Hoverflies use? (cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoverfly) You don't need Psychoanalysis to explain that either, I suppose.
Here's hoping that you don't get blamed for Bibi's policies like I'm afraid some nutjobs are wont to do.
Heydrich apparently had a Jewish grandmother or great-grandmother named, I think, Sarah. See "The SS: Alibi of a Nation" by Gerald Reitlinger. And there was some suspicion that Hitler had "Jewish blood." The SS Racial Office classified Hitler (confidentially) as a "typical crossbreed" based on his physical appearance.
What's really crazy about Miller is that somehow he thinks that after the White Christian Nationlists get rid of the Blacks, they won't come after the Jews. Talk about useful idiots!
It's insane and ironic, isn't it? Does he really think that supporting right-wing radicals who chant "Jews will not replace us" have his best interests in mind? Has he learned nothing from history?
Yeah. Miller is like Clarence Thomas. They both seem to think that if they hang around White Christian Nationalists long enough - do them enough favors and advance their racial agenda - they’ll be made honorary members of the club. They won’t have to be Black or Jewish anymore! It’s a really pathetic display - like some bizarre reality show inspired by Phillip Roth.
That's true and I can't understand how he got to where he is. For that matter, two of Trump’s wives were immigrants as was his mother and paternal grandfather
I don't think trump cares about immigration. He discovered (accidently, most likely) that it's an issue he can use to balkanize the population and be performatively malicious, so he found one of the most racist/antiimmigrant people he could find, who had the zeal of the newly converted, to keep that issue on the front burner.
Crimes against humanity, probably. I don’t see the case for war crimes though. That applies to Trump, Hegseth and any soldiers obeying their illegal commands (like murdering fishermen in international waters).
I never voted for Trump and am a proud Democrat. Those who believe Miller is a war criminal are being silly. One of the reasons he currently has power is because Biden and Harris were completely ineffective in controlling the border in the first three years of their administration. Steven Miller is wrong to deny child care funding to children of illegal immigrants, but he will never ever be sent to Guantanamo or to The Hague, not even under President AOC!
This is false. That “open borders” narrative is false; Biden deported a lot of people. And mostly he treated migrants humanely. Harris has been mocked as the “border czar” but mostly what she was tasked with was working on push factors in the countries people were leaving; it’s weedy and abstract. Nobody is to blame for the Trump/Miller cruelty but Trump, Miller, and their enablers.
But you are probably right that Miller is likely to escape legal consequence, because a lot of what he has done is probably not actually illegal, or Trump will pardon everyone in his circle.
However, Miller is a young man who should never be able to live down his disgrace.
You don’t know what you are talking about. Yes, Biden did deport many illegal immigrants, but in the last year of his administration he and Harris finally got serious about the problem.
You conveniently forget the BIPARTISAN Congressional law reforming immigration was sidelined by Trump in 2022 because if passed his main campaign platform would have been blown away. Trump has NO platform to campaign on but hate and racism, no cogent statement on the issues of our time.
As I recall there was a “little” problem with a COVID pandemic that killed over a million US citizens going on at the beginning of Biden’s term that the previous administration screwed up and needed immediate attention.
Miller has worked closely with DHS. Immigrants are currently being tortured in U.S. concentration camps: filthy conditions, inedible food, zero medical care because this regime refuses to pay medical personnel to oversee medical care. As a result, detained immigrants have died. Miller's involvement cannot be dismissed.
I'd like to read a factual account of the Biden immigration policy. Open borders is a propaganda invention for sure. Biden did not open the border. My recollection is that he reversed a lot of the illegal Trump measures and tried to follow the law. When someone shows up at the border and claims asylum they have a right to a hearing. That's the way the law is written but then that uncorked the bottle.
The real problem is immigration reform needs to be enacted. Republicans are in charge and have done nothing since it takes away one of their issues. They like things just as they are.
Propaganda invention? Even the NYT published a story, conveniently after Harris lost the election, about the unprecedented wave of migration the Biden administration let in during his term. It was Trump's strongest issue until a year ago. Definite reform is needed and Republicans are dishonest actors.
I'm referring to Biden's "open borders" which implies no border enforcement and the barn doors were left open. That was not true and a Republican made up talking point.
I'll give you the unprecedented surge, and that Biden took too long to respond. The approach seemed to be to try and fix the problem at the source in the immigrant's home country and reduce the pressure while still following the asylum law. But that was a mistake and it took a response at the border to stem the tide, which if I recall wasn't too far off of Trump's detention policy in Mexico.
What the Biden Administration did was - in response to people massing at the border - to take the CPBOne app and let people apply for asylum interviews before they came to the border. Maybe from home, maybe from Mexico. Point it, make appointment first, them come for the interview. Then most of them - after the interview - would get paroled into the country while their cases proceeded. And they proceeded slowly because we don't have enough immigration judges. But also, people represented by a lawyer at their hearing (the government isn't required to provide one but many pro-bono lawyers work on this) tend to have a high rate of getting their asylum claim proved.
In any case, people came into the country legally via an interview scheduled on the CBPOne app. Some might still be climbing over a wall or going through the desert, but Biden created a legal and professional way for them to begin the asylum-claim process. Granted, many of these people probably didn't have solid claims - especially since our asylum criteria still tend to be modeled on people fleeing communism rather than drug gangs or corrupt police - but they were in a legal process. And Trump came in, Noem cancelled CPBOne, and ICE has been going after these people who are now - thanks to Biden - in the asylum claim process. Literally detaining and deporting people who have a legal right to pursue their asylum application. One of the goals in the detention facilities is to make it so miserable that people decide it would be better to go home rather than pursue a claim they have a legal right to pursue.
If you're a "proud" Democrat then you should have no problem signing this petition. Miller is not innocent, he has lied about immigrants, particularly those deported to El Salvador and openly defied judges decisions regarding several immigrant cases, including Abrego Garcia. He has said habeas corpus should not exist. He has been instrumental in orchestrating child separation and openly celebrates children being taken from their immigrant parents, etc., etc. He is inhuman scum.
Petition from Move-On
"Senior Trump advisor Stephen Miller is the self-proclaimed driving force behind the so-called "zero-tolerance" immigration policy, the current enforcement of which has seen the morally abhorrent separation of children from undocumented and asylum seeking immigrant parents. Under Article 7 of the Rome Statute, the founding document of the International Criminal Court, Crimes Against Humanity are defined as a "widespread attack against a civilian population," characterized by, inter alia, "imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty in violation of fundamental rules of international law," and "other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health." "Zero tolerance's" separation and detention of minors fits squarely within these parameters. As Americans, we cannot permit cowardly, sadistic, racist ideologues like Stephen Miller to perpetrate this inhumane viciousness. Although the United States has not endorsed the ICC, I believe that it is imperative that we as U.S. citizens demand those in power in our country be held to the standards of international law. Americans must let Mr. Miller know that he is a criminal, and that in a truly just world he would be treated as such. Please add your name to this petition as a sign that you demand that he, and his kind, be brought to account."
The numbers are in - even with all the cruelty, terror and lawlessness the number of deported immigrants in 2025 was lower than under previous administrations.
Deporting Miller is not sufficient. To clean the "stain" from America you will have to try him for "conspiracy to commit crimes against humanity". With the "trumpian" cabal in the dock beside him.
let us analyze the chain- some incompetent plying out gestapo game on us- how did he get there? a twice indicted convicted felon got voted in to PoTUS ... but who were the voters?
Ah, for that answer, friends of PK , pl check out Rachel Maddow discussing Steve J Ross' last book ....answer is in those modulated winds...
Waiting for my delayed flight last night, the MAGA guy sitting behind me was ranting about how the country had truly gone to shit because of performers refusing to do Trump's birthday bash. According to him, there are no more real patriots because they're all too committed to making sure the evil immigrants can just take everything for free. He thought the best thing that could happen was ICE and the police to just start mowing down the protesters and maybe doing a "final solution" thing with the detainees.
I fear this individual is a perfect representative of about 27% of our voting population. And right now, that crazy 27% has control of all three branches of our government.
Wow, this doesn’t really surprise me, but the hatred and racism is breathtaking. It’s hard to believe a third of our citizens are so full of hate and revenge and are so much like Trump and Stephen Miller and gang, that makes me grateful I’m old.
In surgeries I have been attended by medical staff from Cote de Ivorie, Philipines, Palestine, Lebanon, Mexico, Laos, Nigeria, Hondorus, Belize, USA, and other countries. All have been kind and very competent.
HATE is the point. I am amazed and disheartened by the constant level of hate that comes from the mouths of MAGA. Without hatred, MAGA has nothing to rally around.
Horribly sad. And equivalent to those forced marches by US Army personnel of polite, wouldn’t-hurt-a-church mouse’ German citizens of the death camps which those same citizens remarkably failed to ever notice before….
I’m with you Derelict in suspecting that we’re observers of the same wilful disinterest and corrosive complicity today as it was expressed seventy years ago.
A German friend whose business is based in Austin (TX) - Austin!, bastion of ‘liberalism’! - commented recently how difficult it is to continue to do business there because of the same attitudes which your MAGA person expound as a matter of acceptable small talk.
Great comments. I’ll just add that I live in Austin. To me the liberal label on Austin is bullshit. It’s run by the same rich elite. The liberal greenwash is a smokescreen.
We need to revisit McCarthyism and forcefully declare that "the commies" weren't - and aren't - nearly the threat that the Nazis and other reichwing, fascist extremists are.
Horrifying. I’ve been struck by the demonization of both immigrants and trans people. It’s the Jews in Nazi Germany all over again. Also a strong resemblance to lynching campaigns against Blacks. Terrorizing a harmless, vulnerable minority.
That hatred and bigotry existed in the United States long before Hitler. Take a look at the anti-immigrant sentiment in the mid-nineteenth century anti-Irish anti-Catholic, anti-anyone who wasn't from Britain or Northetn Europe.
Demagogues and authoritarian always work from the same playback. Whip up fear and hatred of the "other".
And firing squads now legal in Idaho and a UFC cage fight on the WH lawn. They aren't the same thing, maybe not even connected; but just now they came together in my mind.
In my Pollyanna world, everyone in hearing distance of this would have stood up and shamed him to his face. This is what it’s going to take to lessen the acceptability of hatred in our society.
Good luck. Four generations removed from the Civil War, my mother still had most of the attitudes of the southern participants in the battles. "Bring up a child in the way the he should [not] go, and when he is old," he not only will not depart from it but he will teach his grandchildren the same garbage.
I don't think it's impossible. The Union really dropped the ball in Reconstruction. They should've driven home the message that the Confederates were defeated - and driven it forcefully.
If/when we defeat the MAGA cult and its fascist state, we need to defeat them roundly and soundly.
It was inevitable. Back in '53, there was so much obsession and effort to "stop the commies" that the reichwing literally ignored the fact that we'd just came out of the biggest war of all time to put a stop to the Nazis. They also conveniently ignored the fact that we had Nazis right here in the US.
They flourished here, mostly quietly, for decades. Now the infection has burst out into the open in the form of the MAGA cult.
I don't think he's representative of 27%. Less than that. Most are your garden variety prejudiced people who watch FOX. Very ill informed, but not malicious. But I do think he's part of a frightening group who support the Proud Boys and their ilk. The ones Trump wants to pay off so he can use their services when the time comes.
About two weeks ago I had an even worse experience with a MAGA guy sitting next to me on a flight from Dallas to Austin. He wouldn't shut up about how the Democrats have caused all the trouble in the country. Mercifully the flight was only an hour long, but yet an hour of my life that I would rather have spent in just about any other way. Why must the MAGA crowd inflict their poisonous blather on innocent neighbors?
The real question is whether America can still organize a society capable of absorbing immigrants.
Historically, the United States was able to absorb immigration on a large scale not simply because it was “open,” but because it once had three absorption mechanisms: an expanding industrial system, a rising wage structure, and relatively sufficient housing and public-service provision. After arriving in America, immigrants could enter factories, construction, transportation, services, and the urban economy. Their children could move upward through public education, home ownership, and the labor market. This mechanism turned immigration from a simple population inflow into productive capacity, tax base, and national expansion power.
The problem today is that this mechanism is deteriorating. The United States still needs immigrants to replenish its labor force, support consumption, and ease population aging. But it is also facing manufacturing hollowing-out, severe housing shortages, strained urban public services, local fiscal pressure, educational fragmentation, and class ossification. In this situation, immigrants are no longer entering a powerful absorption machine. They are entering an already highly stressed social distribution system.
Exclusionary politics has a market because grassroots society really does feel that carrying capacity is declining. When rents rise, schools become crowded, hospitals face long queues, low-end job competition intensifies, and anxiety over community security grows, politicians can easily turn complex failures of state capacity into a simple immigrant scapegoat narrative.
So what America truly needs to discuss is how to rebuild the institutional capacity to absorb immigrants. This means expanding housing supply, restoring infrastructure investment, rebuilding vocational education and industrial jobs, strengthening the fiscal capacity of local public services, improving urban governance, and allowing immigrants to enter the productive system rather than just low-wage services and informal labor markets. Without these mechanisms, openness becomes a moral posture of the elite, while the costs are borne by grassroots communities.
At a deeper level, the immigration issue exposes the deterioration of American state capacity. A strong state can convert population inflows into industrial expansion, fiscal revenue, urban renewal, and social mobility. A weakened state turns population inflows into housing pressure, cultural conflict, low-wage competition, and political polarization. Immigration itself is not the cause of American decline, but the deterioration of America’s absorption mechanisms can turn immigration into fuel for the politics of decline.
America certainly needs to guard against exclusionary politics and dehumanizing language. But simply condemning right-wing incitement is not enough. If the United States cannot rebuild its industrial society, housing system, public services, and local governance capacity, it will struggle to maintain a model of high immigration, high openness, and high social stability over the long run. The real foundation of immigration openness has never been slogans. It is state organizational capacity.
Leon - terrific observations here. Of your three absorption mechanisms, I believe the key component of public-service provision historically was our public schools. The youngest immigrants had opportunities to learn English & US culture along with their school subjects. Our system was local & decentralized - could have the advantage of meeting local needs & conditions, but of course suffered from issues around local funding & attitudes.
Since the 1970s we've seen more attacks on our public schools. The same Dept of Education that was created to better coordinate federal funding & resources can be flipped to administer with an iron fist and weaponize programs against the executive's disfavored. Organized interest groups target our schools for blame for every social problem. Home schooling & for-profit charter schools siphon students into narrower experiences that have agendas other than public benefit. This key component that once helped weave our social fabric is being neglected, demeaned, and dismantled
The concept of "United States" fogs the truth about the Federal governments ability to administer anything uniformly and well. Observe the efficiency of China to organize and define the bottom line of laws and civic behavior.
Much of what you say about the economy-manufacturing, housing, infrastructure, etc is accurate. What is not accurate is your attributing any of this to immigration, or even suggesting that immigration makes things worse. Immigrants boost the economy, they create jobs, they enrich our culture. There has always been an anti-immigrant movement in the US, claiming that immigrants were a scourge and a drain on our economy. That wasn’t true in the 1850s or the 1880s or the 1920s. Or today.
Let me quote a renowned economist on the effects of immigration in the US, “…this seems like a good time to point out that negative views of the economics of immigration are all wrong. Far from taking jobs away, foreign-born workers have played a key role in America’s recent success at combining fast growth with a rapid decline in inflation. And foreign-born workers will also be crucial to the effort to deal with our country’s longer-term problems.” That economist? Paul Krugman.
We've tested this on the micro scale again and again, where one of the easiest ways for those poor unfortunate dying small towns we're always hearing about to reverse its decline is simply to... try to attract immigrants.
Some declining cities have had success encouraging immigrants to settle there. Dayton and Springfield, Ohio (where JD Vance lied that they “eat the pets”), for two. Lewiston, Maine for another.
IIRC, during the urban crime waves of the mid-sixties through mid-nineties, there were a lot of neighborhoods in a lot of cities where newly arrived immigrants were literally the only ones keeping the lights on.
While the phrase "they enrich our culture" is often used in this discourse, we rarely define which cultural contributions are currently lacking. Perhaps we should approach this like an ecologist analyzing a habitat—identifying areas of imbalance and determining what is needed to restore a more functional and desirable equilibrium.
none of this is the fault of immigrants but instead caused by the steady decline of the american working class due to the financialization of everything, inequality, stagnant wages while productivity soars, rigged tax code and the deity of wall street, hedge funds and equity monsters destroying the fabric of our once great economy
These are good points, but they are not only about immigrants. The decline in these systems has also hurt a large portion of Americans. Fear led to shame and anger which led to a large portion of those hurt eventually turning to MAGA. It is proving the demise of us all. A breakdown of the education system - an understanding of government and civics, learning to critically think, identifying information bias - is a major factor. They knew it which is why they’ve been chipping away at education for decades. Consolidation of media outlets and many turning away from reporting and toward opining, which now includes vast swaths of online content, was also a slow slide and now they control the narrative. This rise of unregulated tech - algorithms that create echo chambers, abdication of responsibility to fact check and regulate conduct, data mining - allows more control whether that be pushing things to the top or suppressing things. Many, many factors that basically boil down to not enough guardrails placed on capitalism. Too much money, which eventually turns into power, concentrated among the few. It should be no surprise that such a place will turn ugly toward “other”. What people don’t realize is that “other” doesn’t just mean immigrants. It can and will turn into anything - black and brown American citizens, poor (which to the ultra rich mean most of us, even middle/upper middle class), women, children, religion, region, etc.
In essence, Americans need intelligent governance, capable of solving social problems, elected by a discerning electorate. Are Americans’ lives so filled by entertainment that they have no capacity for civic awareness?
So long as they (the Proles) continued to work and breed, their other activities were without importance. Left to themselves, like cattle turned loose upon the plains of Argentina, they had reverted to a style of life that appeared to be natural to them, a sort of ancestral pattern...Heavy physical work, the care of home and children, petty quarrels with neighbors, films, football, beer and above all, gambling filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult. George Orwell, 1984
Thank you for this thoughtful comment. I would raise an issue that is beyond the questions addressed, but may need to be considered in parallel, as it was in some past administrations, but may be a key to the future of civilization in this interconnected world (appropriately by some now called a fused world). The need for people to emigrate, and others to provide a welcoming environment, is the basis of the problem. The world is home for all with sufficient, but limited, resources. The distribution of these resources, and peoples expectations for receipt of them, underpins much of life. A Hobbesian world of tribes fighting for the resources led by people who want to collect the lions share and bask in the adoration of the many will not find a solution. Great leaders have suggested other paths. Certainly the words Jesus spoke suggest he would have had people share their goods, help strangers and respect the common good.
The complexity of the world driven by technological advances has enhanced the need for sharing of resources and created dangers, as well as opportunities, to a better world for all,but also a world dominated by a few capitalizing on (as Franklin called it) the wolves in peoples nature. We appear to be at a turning point in world history catalyzed by rapid technological change coupled by greed overcoming virtue in our leaders. How to effect change on a global scale with deterioration in the former main pillar of global stability and only the weakest of global governance is the issue. The example of the incredible event of the reforming a government of the USA that occurred in Philadelphia, when a group of people crystallized some enlightenment ideas into a government system to replace the Articles of Confederation will not happen on a global stage. The best we can hope for is another change in this country (USA) to again assume a mantel of leadership rather then the chain of a wrecking ball, and work toward a peaceful, balanced world where all people will have basic needs, including food and housing security, addressed while technological progress benefits all, not risks destroying all. It may be a simplistic but logical ask; however, implementation in a dystopian world may be beyond reach.
And yet the US is undergoing the same lack of replacement births needed to maintain the population, a trend that is happening globally. We see reports of schools closing due to a lack of children to educate. Getting rid of immigrants, especially younger ones, just exacerbates this trend.
What is the "plan" here? To replace workers with AI and force the displaced into caring for the elderly, and doing the low-paid, high-touch work? As the housing stock becomes larger than needed, the rentiers will lose their power to raise rents.
We need to defeat those who would want to return the US to the Confederacy.
For the poorly educated masses, immigrants have always been a convenient scapegoat for problems that at base is caused by other things. It is very easy and convenient for a politician to claim "it's the immigrants fault, not mine". The ignorant and xenophobic segment of the public are jumping at the chance to blame immigrants - even when stopping immigration doesn't solve the problem. Look at the plunge in job creation and increased problems with housing and inflation, and slowly increasing unemployment - even after Trump closed the border.
In 2002 I visited Singapore, probably the most managed society possible. We were told that Singapore workers would not do the more menial work so Hindu workers were imported from India. Only men were allowed, as Singapore didn’t want them to start families and stay. The men all lived together in one part of the city, which allowed brothels “only for the foreign workers.” The government showed movies in a vacant lot, but the movie is always preceded with instructional videos about living a clean, healthy, safe life.
I suspect even this approach would be considered intolerable by Miller &Company.
However, both sexes are allowed to enter countries like the Emirates for work. My wife was over there for a consulting gig a bit more than 15 years ago. One of her best friends at the time was a Chinese woman, who was there semi-permanently.
Historically, the jobs were in mines, steel mills, construction essentially heavy industry with low pay, dangerous conditions, company owned housing, long hours, no health care, brutal responses to unions. Given that profit is the bottom line, your suggestions are pie in the sky
because that would be an ideal forward-looking solution. That is the capitalist model.
Granted, deterioration of state capacity makes it very hard on both legal and illegal immigrants, and we have reams of evidence of hardship on native born americans also.
I don't think your comment is looking at the US economy in its current configuration. Immigrants aren't working in industry, they are being entrepreneurs.
Ultimately it's xenophobia - the "jews (black, browns, etc.) shall not replace us" type of primordial fear. They have this fear that a tribe of "others" will become so strong and dominant that they harm "us". They are trying to cover it under different justifications, but underneath is just a standard variety xenophobic panic attack. Fuelled by demographic changes.
I recently responded to a commentor on a NYT article that was giving the "If only immigrants came here the right way" and "immigrants don't assimilate" kind of speech. I was having none of it, so I basically said when someone gives lines like those, they are xenophobic at a minimum and racist at worst, and that to come here the "right way" is already extremely difficult. They were clutching at pearls for me being so presumptuous about them. Sure, in hind sight maybe I was being harsh, but the point stands though. Trying to sound reasonable while passing off racially coded language is not acceptable!
I completely agree that this "right way" or "legal" is just pure bunk - and an attempt to not reveal the racist xenophobia that is the real driver. But we should call them out for their BS and hypocrisy.
I have tried countless times to get people to stop calling asylum seekers "illegal". They are actually coming here the "right" and "legal" way. Sure a lot of them will eventually be denied the asylum. But they are here legally and the wast majority leave the country after their case has been rejected.
Putting these asylum seekers into camps rather than letting them go out and more than pay for their own temporary stay in the country, is insane on so many levels. It's even more costly than putting them on "welfare". But as Krugman and others have pointed out "the cruelty IS the point". It is meant to scare off others from coming and to get some of those already here to just self deport.
Unfortunately for those in a racist/xenophobic panic attack the cost, even to themselves (taxpayers), is more than worth it.
Putting asylum seekers in detention camps run by for-profit companies works for Trump as he's benefiting his corporate donors. He's a cruel, ugly old man
Yes indeed, for Trump it's just another opportunity for funneling taxpayer money into his family and friend's pockets. When it's all over and counted up, we will likely be looking at the first ever $ trillion corruption. But for the MAGA cult member it's xenophobic panic. He is a brilliant conman - the one thing he is actually very good at.
Yes indeed, the $70. billion could be used to give food and health care to 12 million US children - instead it's another case of Trump draining tax payers money into the pockets of his friends and family, while driving the price of Tomatoes up to record levels. Not quite as open about it as he was with the oil industry (remember "give me a billion and I will take care of you") who currently are harvesting record levels of profit.
There are people whose registries on Ellis Island literally reads "stowaway" for their method of arrival and yet still weren't sent back.
We passed laws "solving" a nonexistent problem, and the fact that these are just taken unquestioningly as The Way Things Are (except that somehow, these laws always have to be tightened, never loosened) is a ridiculous commentary on us, particularly since immigration enforcement's far more outrageous levels of lawbreaking put the lie to any claim that it was ever about "following the law."
Nobody judges the people who continued to drink booze during Prohibition, and illegal immigrants are in the exact same place. Except their reasons for breaking the law are far more serious than "I had a shit day and I just need a drink."
The administration has made this impossible. They have shutdown immigrations & cancelled the entry of those who have been through the process, passed every test & requirement, obtained a visa & then their entry has been cancelled for no given reason. Don't tell them to "enter the right way."
So explain to me the "right way"? Was it how your ancestors (presumably) came into the country when you basically just needed to show up? Does deporting people that are here legally constitute the "right way"? Asylum seekers and people with green cards are those that are here properly, and yet we are doing all that we can to make their lives miserable? Why? What benefit does that provide to the US?
I will mention this, just like I did to the person in the NYT article. Using "right way" is a means to sound reasonable. Ultimately, immigration reform needs to happen so that people can come here the "right way" and be guaranteed rights.
Personal anecdote: my Grandmother came to the US from Belgium via Canada around WWI as an infant. She never had a job and was a stay at home mom. In the 80s, she and my Grandfather wanted to go out of the country on vacation so applied for passports. However, my grandmother never had "proper documentation" . Should she have been deported back to Belgium in spite of her living her entire life in the US? That would just be insane. Fortunately, the US did not deport her then. Today...it would be dicey.
And all those asylum seekers that got in under Biden, did it exactly the legal and "documented" way (even though Faux news called them "illegals").
They may have taken advantage of the fact that GOP refused to fund enough immigration courts to bring the claim processing times down from 5-8 years. But asylum seekers cannot be blamed for our political dysfunction - nor for "taking advantage" of weaknesses in our laws.
Most taxpayers are taking all the deductions they are entitled to, even if they are resulting from political dysfunction.
Even "taking advantage" is giving the ICE crowd far more credit than it deserves. If you show up and go to court, you're not taking advantage of anything, you're literally following the law perfectly.
Yes, but there were also millions of immigrants who flooded into the United States illegally under Biden, peaking in 2022-2023. I don't know why so many of my progressive friends are in denial about this. Thousands of them were literally dumped by the busload into my city during those years -- without jobs, without housing, without medical insurance, and without any family connections here.
I am proud of my city for stepping up and providing emergency human services to assist those immigrants (most of whom came from Venezuela). But the massive influx torpedoed our city budget, as we did not anticipate and were not prepared for that flood of immigrants. The emergency funds had to come out of other city programs, already stretched thin, such as for the homeless, for parks, for climate action, for drug programs, for libraries, for public transit.
It was simply an unsustainable situation -- with no thanks to our city's suburbs, who happily lived their idyllic little suburban lives without suffering any of the consequences, nor contributing anything meaningful toward the solution. Mainly they stayed away from downtown and quit spending their money in our city, fearful of all those scary immigrants and homeless encampments ... which only compounded our city's fiscal crisis. (I hope you weren't one of those privileged people in an insulated suburban community)
This is big reason why Biden/Harris lost the 2024 election to a corrupt authoritarian fascist. Millions of Americans felt our southern border situation was out of control and, for a while, it was. The Biden/Harris efforts to correct the situation in 2023-2024 were, unfortunately, too little too late, as by that time the GOP had them backed into a losing corner.
The people from Venezuela came to the border, crossed, and filed for asylum - then were immediately released. They were almost all LEGAL asylum seekers (currently still about 600,000 unprocessed claims, just from Venezuela). It would have been very ignorant of them to cross illegally and risk immediately to be send back or be arrested. Venezuela was one of the countries where there was a potential credible claim to be made. I know that the press called them illegal but that was for 90% of them a convenient lie that helped make corporate media money by peddling rage news, rather than informing people with the real news.
Biden was seeking money to help an overwhelmed border patrol deal with this influx, but Trump ordered his minions in congress to block their own deal with democrats - because he needed the election issue. So with no money to create housing and no money to process the claims, legal asylum seekers, were released with a minimum amount of resources and became a burden on the border communities.
I fully understand the frustration with that situation, but let's not place blame where it doesn't belong. Biden could not refuse potentially valid asylum seekers without breaking US law - GOP reused to change that law. Biden didn't have enough detention center spaces or other resources to deal humanely with the problem - GOP even refused to give him money to build more detention centers. Biden had no other legal option but to release them into border communities with a small amount of money for a bus ticket and some food.
GOP and corporate media has been so addicted to creating rage news that even liberals have been hoodwinked by right wing stories about Biden creating open borders for "illegals". The truth is that GOP created and dumped a huge problem on the border states and communities, in order to score political wins. Unfortunately the corporate media were more than happy to help them - as long as they could make some coin on the rage.
The bottom line was that we had an out-of-control situation at our southern border for a couple of years that was causing serious headaches and creating serious fiscal problems not only for cities near the border, but also for cities like Chicago, D.C., Denver, Saint Louis.
And Biden was president.
For better or worse (mostly worse), Trump has demonstrated what a president can do about illegal immigration if they have the will and take the problem seriously. Biden had the opportunity to act much earlier. But he blew it.* The impression he gave to aspiring immigrants when he was president was that he was throwing open our borders, and the immigrants responded en masse.
Why do progressives keep denying this? This is why we lose elections to fascists like Trump. We can't admit our own mistakes.
*(2024 was too late ... your comment "Biden was seeking money to help an overwhelmed border patrol deal with this influx, but Trump ordered his minions in congress to block their own deal with democrats - because he needed the election issue" happened in 2024 and was too little too late ... as I said, MAGA already had Biden & Harris backed into a corner by then. And here we are. With a racist, hateful president doing pretty much whatever the hell he wants)
Trump had used the Covid emergency to lock down the border, instead of negotiating a permanent solution with Democrats.
After Biden took over, a judge basically overruled the idea that Covid was still an emergency - and demanded that the law should be followed (and asylum seekers allowed their day in court).
Biden negotiated for a long time with the GOP to find a solution that was not breaking the law. When Biden finally managed to get a deal by giving GOP 80% of what they wanted - Trump decided that GOP could not vote for their own solution (he needed the issue for the election).
Sallie, is it not possible for me to hold both of these thoughts in my head at the same time?
"I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask that immigrants who enter this country do so legally and with appropriate documentation."
and
"It is absolutely unacceptable for this Administration to harass people who are here legally and appropriately, and it is outrageous that they are putting them in concentration camps and sending them to countries in which they've never lived."
When you play Monopoly with your kids, don’t you sometimes jointly make up new rules? If the new rule doesn’t work as intended, you jointly agree to change it or discard it, don’t you? Why can’t we wait for Congress to make new immigration laws instead of flipping the Monopoly board and ruining the game for everyone?
If 'they" did assimilate our ethnic cuisine would be bangers, shepard's pie, fish and chips, mutton, afternoon tea, Guiness etc and no pizza, tacos, spaghetti, vindaloo, sushi, crepes, pesto, burritos, lomein, BBQ, okra, el al.
YouGov et al, estimate the number of strong MAGA supporters to be between 50 and 65 million citizens in the U.S. Though its membership is not monolithic—there is a common thread—sadistic cruelty. It is not to deport or scare away “foreigners” though that is an outcome. It is the dopamine high that at least 55 million of our fellow citizens feel as they torture the less fortunate among us. This affectation will outlast Trump. More generally, it is resistant to deprogramming. We will have to live with as the Germans did after WW2.
I was working in Atlanta in 1979. The evangelicals and mainstream Baptists were upset that the birthrate in the black communities was higher than in whites. The preachers were pushing the idea that it was the duty of white women to produce more children than black women could. That's the first exposure I had to what is now called the "replacement theory."
I once tried arguing with one of these people. Why, I asked, would Jews want to destroy the country by bringing in these supposedly country-destroying people? I mean, the Jews live here too.
There are few ways to peacefully remove Nazis from power.
They use the desire of the non-Nazis for freedom of speech and thought to spread hate and fear with the goal of convincing them violence against the Nazi's (many) enemies is the only way to be safe.
That is what is happening in the US right now. Unfortunately our national media just ignores or sanewashes the murder and mayhem the current Nazi regime is inflicting on the people. This is clearly a recipe for disaster on a global scale.
I look on it with more negative feelings than even you do, Phil.
Trumpism/ MAGA/ and all of that, have ‘captured’ US institutions to a frightening degree. True, there are plenty of Americans who are clear in their understanding that this is wrong. But what has this achieved to date?
Humankind is not gifted with foresight; at best, we have a 50% chance of guessing some of what is likely to happen. Perhaps this is too negative a view, but I see no flicker of light at the end of the tunnel when a regime has overturned and captured the levers of power and the checks & balances with such shameless determination. I see no blush of recognition of their anti-democratic actions on SCOTUS’ faces towards the citizens who they should ‘serve’ for example.
The extreme division of US society has inevitably deepened under Trump; he’s a dealer as well as a user of hate and misinformation of exceptional influence. But democracy depends on ‘working across the aisle’.
I fear that there is no reconciliation coming down the line for the US (regardless of reason and flexibility in argument such as those put forward by Pete Buttigieg for example). The Constitution has become a bridge-to-far thanks to the Supreme Court, and the partisanship of Congress above their duties to the Constitution, and it makes it look very dark from the here and now.
They say, ‘the age of miracles is not over’: well, the US needs an extraordinary ‘miracle’ now, or democracy in the US us dead.
Yes Anthony, we do need an extraordinary miracle. It looks dark from wherever you fortunately live, but you can't imagine what it is like to live in this darkness here. I do pray for a miracle. Too bad we've "rightfully" alienated all of our allies with our ignorance, greed and immoral values.
If/ when the US turns herself around towards a more decent future, she will find that allies return.
I am conscious that this is exquisitely awkward/ painful for US Americans (it’s at best a well intended guess to try to frame criticism in the right language( but ‘we’ (all of us) share one, ever-smaller, planet and just one life each on it, to make the best of it.
Amen, Dr. K. Thanks for your bravery in continuing to speak truth to power. We all need to keep resisting, in any small ways that we can. We will continue to fight. We will strive for justice, even though the arc of justice is long, as Dr. King said. We will not stop. We will never forget. We will be patient, but we will not stop. This intolerance, hatred and inhumanity will not win. As Woody Guthrie said, all these fascists bound to lose.
This kind of transcendent idealism is deeply moving. The oaks of history often grow in the dead of night. To push back against systemic disorder, raw passion and remembrance are simply not enough; we need to build antifragile resilience and the strategic wisdom of long term game playing. The arc of the moral universe is long precisely because it constantly wrestles with the darker sides of human nature. The absolute certainty that comes only after seeing through the chaos is the ultimate form of resistance
I’m in Poland at the moment. I have an apartment here and have been coming nearly every year since 2000 and have been here at least every other year since 1987. Until now—even all the way through the first Trump administration—most Poles had a favorable impression of the U.S., whether they were on the left or the right. Many of them made a point of saying they envied me, and that always made me feel vaguely uncomfortable. Well, nobody envies me now. Several close friends have told me they pity me.
It's wild watching the global currency of American admiration tank in real time, and honestly, pity is a much heavier anchor than hatred. When even your most loyal buffer states start looking at you with genuine compassion, the hegemony isn't just fading, it's structurally broke
This is one of the more fearless, informed, bold and clarifying presentation of truths about ICE detention, it's motoives and intent that I've read to date. Keep it up. People who know about pogroms, concentration camps, and forced relocations ('reservations') have a duty to warn those who don't just what we're dealing with from this administration and it's paid-well enablers.
I note your choice of wording: ‘pogrom’ is a specific word, used out of context here, with a pointed direction to readers: ‘blinkers off’.
Time to call a spade a spade, time to call racism what it is.
The previous choice of Trump’s administration to selectively accept White South Africans was a tell, not a distraction.
Vance’s ridiculous criticism of the head of the Catholic Church, a US American who criticises this racism and cruelty, a tell not a distraction.
The US has sunk below the floor of acceptable behaviour; the rest of the world looking on is … moving on. We cannot form an alliance with such a ‘regime’ without lasting damage to our own fragile democracies. Again, I point to PM Carney’s speech at Davos.
The awkward question is:
- what is wrong in the soul of America that so many decent, educated, intelligent Americans hold their noses and quietly acquiesce with this?
- what is wrong with American democrats that so many hold their noses and quietly acquiesce with this corrosion of liberty, equality, and - ha! - fraternity?
Why has the ‘American Dream’ failed so totally, utterly, and shamelessly?
Why does it fall to Paul Krugman and some others to light the warning torch in a free society of a little less than 350 million citizens? Where is the overdue outrage and action?
It is indeed infuriating, tragic, and desperately sad that such feelings persist in many American hearts, especially in the current government. Fortunately, those feelings and actions do not represent the majority of the American People, and I believe this scenario will change in the upcoming America 250 and mid-term elections. I am deeply hopeful that a fairer and more just America will emerge starting in November. Fingers crossed!
It’s not just Miller and the trump regime. The republicans could stop this anytime but they won’t because this is who they are and who they have always been. It’s all out in the open for everyone who isn’t in the cult to see. Grotesque levels of cruelty that is only destroying us all. The good news is that there are more people who are against this, but I will never get over how many people don’t just like this, but cheer it on.
If they were to do that, my response would be the clip from Planet of the Apes. “You maniacs! You blew it up! Ah damn you! GODDAMN YOU ALL TO HELL…!!!”
Republican should look to one of their own - Margret Chase Smith - for inspiration to stand up to facists. A nod to Heather Cox Richardson for reminding us of what real courage is.
Equally reprehensible to the cruelty is profiteering by companies operating the detention centers. And then there’s the hypocrisy—who amongst us is not a descendant of immigrants?
Right. What is the current portion of Native Americans? And look at how we treat them, from the moment the first immigrant set foot on this land right up until this very moment.
Reading this article makes my heart bleed because I know this cruelty very well. We are the left-behind allies who stood with the American military, and we also faced the exact same broken promises and bureaucratic walls. They used to tell us we are partners, but then they just shut the door and left us to face danger. Now,seeing that they are even denying day care for innocent children born in America just because of their parents, it show that this system don't care about human rights or loyalty at all. When a government makes cruelty its main goal against immigrants and friends, it lose its moral power. If they can treat children like this inside their own country,it is no wonder they abandoned us in Afghanistan without any shame.
I am ashamed that my government has treated you so miserably. Our failure to keep faith with our friends and allies is going to come back to haunt us, I feel sure. I am so very sorry for what has been done to you and others like you.
Thank you so much for your kind and honorable words. Hearing this from a good American citizen like you gives us hope and means the world to us. We worked with your military with pride and loyalty, and we still love the American values. Your empathy shows that the real people of America do not forget their friends, even if the politicians do. Thank you for standing with us in your heart
I stand with you and Dawn, as well. Many of us do. I am working with a national organization to try to take our country back -- the country that did not abandon its allies.
Thank you so much that standing with me very appreciate.
There are many of us Americans who stand with you in our hearts. I too am so ashamed of our government and how it has treated you.
It is not your fault. I truly love the people of America. This is the betrayal of the current U.S. government that has been done against us….
But American citizens, I believe, will have to actively rise up against the fascist government that has taken over their country.
I am utterly ashamed of our government for treating you and your friends and family like this. It is a crime against everything I thought our country has stood for. I weep with you.
I am truly grateful from the heart that you are showing sympathy for us. This is something that shows the American people have not forgotten us yet.
I will never forget. I used to buy my gas at at gas station run by Afghan immigrants. They were lovely people, always friendly, and we sometimes talked about this, their families and those they left behind.
Yes still many of us left behind.
Like others my heart breaks with the evil this government is doing to us and to all the other innocent people they have forsaken. Quite simply they do not care about us at all.
Please remain hopeful. It's one thing they can't take away from us even though they're trying really hard to.
remain hopeful, VOTE, and urge others to do the same. there is a tsunami forming and we need to all ride that wave,
I am ashamed of what we as a nation allowed our government to do to the brave Afghans who helped us and trusted us. There will surely be Hell to pay those who made these shameful decisions and sacrificed our allies for their own personal interest. May you prosper and May we someday make payment for what we did to those we left behind😩
Rise up, however you can, and take back your country.
How? The majority of us hate Trump but that doesn’t matter because he has the support of the powerful.
"Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields."
John McCrae, 1872-1918
I am sorry for you, because the current US administration is so extreme in their focus, with no understanding of keeping promises made to honorable people. Please know that the current administration has taken the federal government hostage and hopefully the people of America will bring the changes necessary to recognize the efforts you’ve made to support the US.
We are also waiting for a big change by the votes of American people, so that Afghan allies can finally be safe.
I have a feeling (after reading reports of low birth rates and an aging population in the U.S.) that deporting all immigrants, legal or illegal, is going to be deeply regretted before long.
Who is it that plants and harvests your crops, does your gardening, works in such unpleasant places as meat-packing plants and slaughterhouses? Immigrants! I’ve already seen one video of a farmer outraged because he couldn’t find anyone to plant this year’s soybean crop, and I’ve seen reports that farmers are going broke due to tRump’s tariffs, rising gas and fertilizer prices, etc., and losing their farms to hedge funds and private-equity firms.
I lived in the California desert for 55 years and never once saw a gardener who wasn’t Hispanic. It seems white men consider such jobs beneath them. Same goes for many construction jobs.
These immigrants, moreover, pay taxes but are denied benefits of citizenship in regard to safety nets, such as they remain. Also, they're afraid to report the most cruel crimes of exploitation by their employers, who hold their immigrant status over their heads every single moment of their working lives.
That's actually the system. The GOP loves illegal workers, because they have no rights. That's why ICE isnt rounding up agricultural workers. The entire charade is a scam to keep the moronic MAGA base entertained.
But who's going to wipe their children's behinds or cut their poisoned lawns, or change their bedpans? Moronic is the word.
A travesty of justice - among the many.
Yes, we are shooting ourself in the knees! This is all showmanship for the ignorant.
Indeed, immigrants are key
to U.S. prosperity!
US debt currently sits at about $300k per household. The aging MAGA cultists live in a delusional alternate universe where this gets paid off without immigration. They deserve their fate, but the rest of the US and world doesn't.
The extraterrestrial MAGA species on Earth doesn't want human beings to live in North and South America.
Stopping immigration, business travel, and tourism to the Americas suits them.
The extraterrestrials don't eat what humans eat and could not care less about farmers and plant crops, ranchers, dairy farmers, hens and hen eggs, or immigrants working as field and farm hands. They are sadists, so they derive sexual pleasure from humans' food shortages and starvation.
Anne The same comment applies to gardeners and field workers in the Sonoran Desert of Southern Arizona🥲🌵
You’re absolutely right. And any other state or country where crops need to be planted, weeded and harvested.
Your point bothers me for this reason: Why should *anybody* have to seek these back-breaking, low-paying jobs?
This is one place where I really hope the Robotics Revolution can succeed. Then immigrants can truly get on with building the better lives for which they came here.
Alternatively growers could treat workers more humanely and pay them better. Years ago I read an ariclr a out the fact that picking crops often requires skill and a level of knowledge about thr crops being harvested.
I have zero confidence that robots would be programmed to do anything other than the quickest,cheapest way.
I've see some steps in that direction in the Salinas valley of California where strawberries are planted on raised beds so the pickers don't need to bend over so far to pick them. Baby steps, but steps nonetheless.
Hello Anne... Consider that in Stephen Miller's Fevered Wet Dreams, that SM would like to Deport at least 100-Million Americans...
I don’t doubt that for one millisecond! I was an immigrant myself until 2022 and have Hispanic in-laws and many friends and former colleagues who would be affected. I read the book written about him during his “first term” and he’s a truly evil person.
They’re letting Stephen Miller, a white nationalist, make the rules.
That's why the oligarchs chose him!
Yep. Especially Elon Musk.
And Peter Thiele…and the 3rd S.Afrikaner rich twit, whose name I forget gladly.
I read recently that Peter Tiel has moved to Argentina to live. Hope he stays there!
I realize this doesn't contribute anything substantive to this discussion, but I'd just like to say that Stephen Miller needs to be fed into a wood-chipper, feet first. We could charge admission and make a fortune!
They , trump and co. Do not keep promises at all.
Thanks Afghan Ally.
That’s the tell - ‘shameless’.
There is nothing accidental here, it is policy carried out on behalf of ALL US Americans, 340+ million.
Shameless…
Anthony (in Scotland)
It may be policy carried out on behalf of 340 million Americans, but that doesn't mean that these same people support the policy. Let's keep it real, polling shows most Americans do not support this. And to our Afghan Ally, the MAGAts don't speak for most of us. Thank you for your service and we hope this (inter)national nightmare that is Trump will be over soon.
My colleagues and allies worked tirelessly in 2016, 2020, and 2024 to block this goon/toddler/demented/diapered/ignorant/sociopath from gaining power. We considered leaving the US but cannot manage it economically. We continue our hard work to realign the government with the original promises of liberty and justice for all. Please Do NOT conflate the 49.1% who voted for Trump with the rest of us who put hard work into trying to stop him from ruining the world.
I don't know where you get your voting numbers. It is probable that it depends on where you get those numbers. Here are the number seen in Wikipedia and US News and World Report:
US News & World Report https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2024-11-15/how-many-people-didnt-vote-in-the-2024-election
Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election
Their numbers:
92,346,697 Total votes not cast 37.74%
77,302,580 Trump voters 31.60%
75,017,613 Harris voters 30.66%
244,666,890 Total # of Voters 100.00%
167,364,310 Voters who did not authorize Trump and crew to take over the US and run it like a Dictatorship 68.40%
Only 31.60% of US voters wanted Trump.
A people that elect corrupt politicians, imposters, thieves and traitors are not victims... but accomplices George Orwell
I would add that a people who do not bother to vote, or vote for someone who cannot possibly win, and consequently allow corrupt politicians, thieves and traitors to succeed are also accomplices. Regardless of their pure, high-minded intent. This past election was a 3- alarm disaster poised to happen and they didn’t heed the call. Was Israel taught a lesson? Did the situation improve for the Palestinians? Is the U.S. and the world in a better place?
See my answer above.
But the ones who didn't bother to vote are collaborators, in the Nazi sense.
I so completely get why people are angry about people who are registered voters but did not vote. I don't know why they did what they didn't do. I don't agree with it either. I just don't know why they did what they did. Some may be collaborators, some might have not voted due to laziness, some might have thought their vote would do no good. There are many reasons. I do agree, we should all vote if we are registered. That might be a utopian vision. I have been guilty of that at times. I used to think people care more than they actually do.
5 million votes were thrown out, too.
People who do not vote are just as responsible as those who do for what we get. They think they are few and it won’t matter if they don’t vote. It matters a great deal.
Now if we can just stop the interference by those deciding whose votes can count, we might have fair elections.
I think it is pretty clear we need to change how we conduct federal elections in this country. I believe the states should devise and implement their own election procedure. The electoral college is an ancient relic and has to go. My opinion. In this free country, we do all have one. This is why we have elections. We have to decide as a crowd. We can and should ask why people vote as they do at the state and federal levels.
Correction, 50.08% of 2024 voters voted for Trump. The 92,345,697 who didn't vote are, by definition NOT voters. Or, if you want to view them as voters anyway, then you'll have to admit that they voted for candidate "Who Gives a Shit?". Either way, it's not a pretty picture.
How about we use clear, precise language, such as: 31.60% of Americans legally eligible to vote or register to vote in the 2024 US Presidential Election cast their vote for Trump in that election.
Where did you get your numbers?
Of those who did not vote, only 8.3% were registered, so while I share your sentiments, it's not quite fair to say that rest of the non-voters were against Trump.
https://www.kff.org/state-health-policy-data/state-indicator/number-of-voters-and-voter-registration-in-thousands-as-a-share-of-the-voter-population/?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Location%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D
I am going to have to spend time looking at this link and the numbers. Thanks for sharing.
Hi John and fellow readers.
I disagree with your well-intended comment.
Polls showing that US Americans do not agree/ disagree with policies (immigration/ the war with Iran, economic management, etc) are fully relevant.
But, it is a fact of democratic government that the elected head of state (Trump) and the administration legitimately chosen to run the state (the Administration) DO govern on behalf of the citizens of that state.
That is real, my discomfort and yours doesn’t change that.
The US’ closest neighbour, Canada, has seen nothing un-real in Trump’s ‘just saying’ commentary about Canada’s sovereignty, the Danes found themselves gaming out how they would shoot at US soldiers should Trump deliver on his ‘just saying’ thoughts about Greenland, and Mr Abrego Garcia was detained and charged by the US Federal Government on behalf of the US.
It’s time to take well intended blinkers off. It’s time to say out loud that the US has turned dark - for real - and to recognise that the US is in deep trouble.
Regards,
Anthony
Hi Anthony. I appreciate your rebuttal, but again have to repeat what I said. I didn't argue that a country's leader doesn't govern on behalf of its people. Instead I tried to make the point that governing on my behalf doesn't mean he does so with my support.
Regardless, the day after the election in November 2024 my wife and I decided to get out of Trump hell and moved to Portugal. Irrelevant to your post, but needed to say it was the best decision ever made, we are happy being governed by a different political system.
I think you are wrong. A corrupt government, however 'legitimately' it may be chosen, DOES NOT "govern on behalf of the citizens of that state."
Dear Judith,
It is the government of Donald Trump who is governing the Federal Government in Washington. Wishing that fact away is delusion. American voters voted for Donald Trump, twice, over the alternative candidate. That is fact.
The error which I object to you in your opinion, in that of John Dudley (above) and of others is that we can’t absolve ourselves of the outcomes of the Administration’s policies, even when we passionately disagree with them with all our might. It isn’t your responsibility, or mine, or John’s, that US Federal Government policy is as it is, but we will all certainly pay the price for the bad outcomes, whether we passionately vote MAGA or otherwise. That’s the thing about government; good government lifts all craft, bad government corrupts all endeavours, and our individual passionate defence of good government can’t resist that law of governance.
Paul Krugman uses the word ‘pogrom’ over and over again in his post today. My reading of this is that Paul is using the word as a bright red warning flag to make unambiguously clear how far the US has fallen in governance. Any other use of the word is deeply offensive to the tens of thousands, and then millions, of Jews who were hunted down during pogroms, before the rise of Nazism and during the era of Nazi-Fascist governments across Europe during the Twentieth century.
Please re-read Krugman’s post. You will find no room for equivocation between individual Americans’ sentiments and the policies of the US Federal Government.
I am not ‘anti-American. But I see the US as falling through the floor of political morality. This will sweep all before it, me in Scotland, John and his wife in Portugal, you and yours wherever you may be. There is a terrible price coming to be paid for the US’ political suicide.
Regards
The MAGAs may not speak for most of us, but clearly a majority of us voted them into power. Please please help us make sure that doesn't happen again.
It is worth noting that the policy is not being carried out on behalf of 340 million Americans. Assuming only half (I've heard it is far less...) of Republicans identify as the red-hat brigade, then the policy is being carried out on behalf of a tenth of the population. We have a tiny minority, comparatively, driving the actions - not a representative policy by any stretch of the imagination.
I wish we had a tiny minority. I can't believe that this administration's approval rating hasn't dropped to 5%. That's a tiny minority!!
Well said!
Let us all fully appreciate the cruel irony of Stephen Miller's neo-Nazi world view. He would not be on Earth at all had his Jewish grandparents not managed to escape Hitler's Germany before WW2. Of all the sick, twisted MAGA zombies, Stephen is the worst of Trump's inhumane attack dogs. If he could include gas chambers in US detention centers, he would.
💯
"Stephen Miller’s maternal ancestors immigrated to the United States from Belarus, which at the time was part of the Russian Empire. His great-great-grandfather, Wolf Laib Glosser, fled anti-Jewish pogroms and arrived at Ellis Island in 1903 to build a new life as a refugee."/google
Most Americans, even Republicans agree that our war partners deserve asylum. However, people like JD Vance, Steven Miller, Vought etc. believe that Islamophobia is too good a tool to put down. If they recognize Afghani immigrants who worked with the American military...and are often sponsored by American friends, they have to admit that all Muslims are not terrorists.
MAGA thrives on fear of the other. Religion is a potent element. They aren't about to lose that weapon just because it's the right thing to do.
Exactly, there are only a few people in the U.S. government who have forgotten the Afghan allies. Not all Muslims are terrorists—terrorists have no place in Islam at all. Islam is a religion of brotherhood and unity.
For twenty years, we worked alongside the U.S. special forces in Afghanistan. We fought against the enemies of both Afghanistan and America like brothers. But today, unfortunately, we have been left alone and abandoned.
The US has a long, sordid history of using political expedience as an excuse to abandon those who they deem no longer useful. All Americans should our heads in shame.
Remember it was Trump’s agreement with the Taliban that started leaving you. If Biden didn’t win the presidency, the withdrawal would have probably been worse.
There is so much hate and fear fomented by those that have no souls…this undercurrent has been there all my life, and this may be even more true for sexism. It is endemic to so much of our culture…Epstein is just a tip of an iceberg of sexualized influencers!
That said the ability to foment programs is beyond the pale!
It’s so Dtephen Miller’s sniveling little shitless!
I am so sorry that our government has lied to you and let you down. That is shameful! I hope you and your family stay safe until our democracy returns to the moral standards it once stood for and you are able to get what you were promised.
Thank you so much for your kind and honest words. It really touches my heart.
I don’t blame normal people like you, because I know many Americans still care and feel pain for us. Your support gives me hope in very hard days.
I just pray for peace, safety and better future for all of us. Thank you again for not forgetting your promise and for standing with humanity.
You're welcome, and thank you for understanding that many Americans care and feel pain for you. I too pray for peace, safety, and a better future for all of us, the world over.
Thank you so much God bless you.
Exactly!
But, But, But!
This is NOT getting a large enough airing on US media including such vaunted papers as the NYT's.
Spread the word.
republicans are bad people!
It is just that simple.
Thank you so much for your help! We are SO sorry that the current regime is so criminal and horrible.
we are fighting this admin- but bear in mind one should not conflate a rogue goodfellas group with " this Nation" and " the government".. one has to be specific - " this administration " and " admin loyalists "( there are many more than gestapo miller)..
I apologize on behalf of my country! I am disgusted and heartbroken over the cruelty inflicted on you by people who lack the sense of decency that demands that one always honor one's promises and show loyalty to one's allies. We have destroyed all trust in the USA and I dread to see the results of this in our relations with foreign countries. I stand with you.
Thank you so much for your heartfelt words. I truly feel your kindness and honesty.
I don’t blame the American people, because I know many of you still care and feel pain for what has happened. Your support gives me strength in very difficult days, when everything feels uncertain.
For me, respect and humanity are more important than politics. I just hope one day trust can be rebuilt and promises can be honored again.
Thank you again for standing with us and for not forgetting our situation. It really means a lot.
I've long been upset that the American government made it so difficult--next to impossible--for Afghan military allies to immigrate, as you were promised. I know even many of those military you aided were also upset, and still nothing. That this goes back decades is even more shameful. I wish you the best.
Thank you so much for your kind and honest words. It really mean a lot for me.
Sometimes we feel forgotten, but when we hear people like you speak truth like this, it gives us hope again. I understand it is not easy situation for anyone, and I respect your feeling and support deeply.
I just wish one day promises will become reality for all of us who waited long time. Thank you again for not forgetting us and for your good heart.
Horrifying and heartbreaking, but is there anything we can point to from this regime that lifts up people? In any respect? We have become a rogue nation that others mock and despise.
I am so sorry that our country has let you down
I used to think a lot about mental illness, and evil--what was common, what distinguished one from the other. My active thought about it was initiated by people frequently calling villains some variety of diagnostic category.
My eventual conclusion was that there are two distinct categories--distinct.
Mental illness is not voluntary; no-one wishes to have a diseased mind. There is no inherent fault in being mentally ill. Mental illness can, in some cases, be treated, to some extent. Subsequently, some (former) patients can live in society
Evil, on the other hand, is chosen behaviour. It cannot be treated with any level of success (there are mounds of scholarly studies supporting that statement). Those who choose this option cannot live in a general population. The only appropriate societal response is life-long imprisonment, or the death penalty.
Western societies have moved away from the death penalty, for many sound reasons.
IMO, those reasons are irrelevant in the case of evil persons. There are much more higher-need members of our societies who, IMO, merit the expenditure of scarce public funds than something like the Canadian mass murderers with whom I am familiar.
deport steven miller
Would Stephen Miller think this is enough? He’s ultimately a child of immigrants, right?
“Stephen Miller is of Ashkenazi Jewish descent, with a family lineage that emigrated from the Russian Empire (modern-day Belarus) to escape antisemitic pogroms. His maternal great-grandparents arrived in the United States in the early 1900s through Ellis Island.
His heritage has frequently been the subject of public and political discussion. Because his ancestors were refugees and immigrants, his critics – including his own uncle, Dr. David Glosser – have often noted the contrast between his family's chain-migration story and the extreme anti-immigration policies he pushes in the Trump administration.”
It's obvious that Miller is a hypocrite, but it's interesting that he is so devoted to his so-called cause. He will be walking around with a target on his back for the rest of his life, and I think he knows that.
Stephen Miller is a sociopath who gets off on cruelty.
…That and gay conversion therapy.
Miller’s early job in DC was with Michele Bachman US Rep MN who claimed in 2014 that gay rights activists want to abolish the age of consent laws in the US so that adults can “prey on little children sexually” which is AOK for the Epstein-Trump class. With her husband, Marcus, who has a PhD with a “concentration in clinical psychology and was not licensed clinical psychologist in MN, practiced conversion therapy. You can’t pray away gay? Miller is today’s version of Roy Cohen (DJT Buddy) with more power. This MF needs to pay for the murders in MN and the deaths in detention facilities. May the Angels in America never give the scum bag peace I Pray 🙏.
I suspect he's in the closet.
Why do you say that?
You may be right. I don't think he's been clinically diagnosed, though.
Miller will emigrate to Israel. He will feel right at home in their right wing religious Zionisphere.
The sooner he leaves the better, IMO. But I doubt he's leaving even after his days in power are over.
And don't forget the spouses of our VP and president. Immigrants and immigrant families. Why isn't this hypocrisy called out more? That 30% need to have to flashing in front of their eyes relentlessly before they connect the dots.
When I read "McMafia" (series of separate chapters about various examples of modern organized crime), one of the anecdotes that really stuck with me was the story about organized crime during the war in 1990s Yugoslavia. The short version being that the big Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian gangsters all had super-close working relationships with each other, at the same time that they had super-close relationships with the genocidal leaders in all three groups. (That's assuming that the gangsters and the genocidal leaders weren't one and the same, which they often were).
It struck me at the time that this was a very unpleasant example of the world our wingnuts and their equivalents in so many other countries want: a universe fully balkanized into ethnostates constantly at each other's throats, along with a transnational elite that's not really part of any country but is at home in all of them.
had same thought/s. how does such atrocious xenophobia-with-devastating-human-toll on behalf of our twisted, demented, president-as-cognifively-compromised-'governing'--not potentially target the obvious immigrant-example of melania trump, elon musk. and what of senior american citizens who came to america as children escaping the holocaust as a horrifying example.
FOX and right wing media have been immigrant bashing for decades. It's their biggest thing. After 911, Muslims became prime targets. Fear sells. Fear engages people and makes them put away any rational thought.
I don't think our current immigrant bashers are really all that anti-immigrant (OK, Maybe Steven Miller) I think it's about riding the tiger of working class/ PMC anger. As the GDI showed (WSJ and Krugman's last post) wage and salary people aren't getting much out of the growth in GDP. A lot are losing because of the cost of living is going up. Immigrants are Hitler's Jews, a scapegoat for what's gone wrong.
Definitely Stephen Miller.
The president's spouse, at least, looks Aryan enough to attract Hitler. MAGA probably cannot see past that.
Hitler considered Slavs inferior. That would include Melania.
True, but I think the modern white nationalists are different.
Yes, it’s basically old fashioned racism.
She has exceptional credentials and standing. How many have been deluded by the belief that their achievements, pedigrees and actions on behalf of the regime discovered how inperil is their exceptualism and longevity? In a Trump-minute she will be disguarded. With Trump mocking his VP now, I'd check on that partnership she walked away from.
"Stephen Miller is of Ashkenazi Jewish descent"
I find this not surprising at all. In Hitler's Germany, the most rabid Nazis oftentimes had a 'questionable' background or heritage, which they attempted to gloss over or iron out by displaying completely over-the-top fanaticism.
See e.g. the infamous Roland Freisler, a real-life caricature of a fanatical, evil Nazi Judge habitually bending the law past the breaking point. Who was rumored to have a Jewish grandmother, and was known to have held the title of "Commissar" in Soviet Russia.
It seems plausible that he simply felt the need to prove his dedication to the cause by out-naziing any Nazi in sight, more so than anyone else without a background like his.
The parallels to Stephen Miller should be obvious.
There must be a psychological term for such a horrific mind. Is it Identification with the Enemy?
As a Jew I'm so ashamed of Stephen Miller and those running and favoring Israel's genocidal policy. I hate when anyone says one Jewish( substitute any group) life is worth ten others? What kind of perversion is that?
"There must be a psychological term for such a horrific mind. Is it Identification with the Enemy?"
I never heard that variant precisely. You probably think of "Identification with the Aggressor" which is a term commonly associated with Psychoanalysis. I'm not sure Psychoanalysis is helpful here, though.
Is it not the same survival mechanism that Hoverflies use? (cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoverfly) You don't need Psychoanalysis to explain that either, I suppose.
Here's hoping that you don't get blamed for Bibi's policies like I'm afraid some nutjobs are wont to do.
Heydrich apparently had a Jewish grandmother or great-grandmother named, I think, Sarah. See "The SS: Alibi of a Nation" by Gerald Reitlinger. And there was some suspicion that Hitler had "Jewish blood." The SS Racial Office classified Hitler (confidentially) as a "typical crossbreed" based on his physical appearance.
I wouldn't be surprised if Miller doesn't hate himself and his lineage. It doesn't jibe with his Uebermensch world view
unter?
What's really crazy about Miller is that somehow he thinks that after the White Christian Nationlists get rid of the Blacks, they won't come after the Jews. Talk about useful idiots!
It's insane and ironic, isn't it? Does he really think that supporting right-wing radicals who chant "Jews will not replace us" have his best interests in mind? Has he learned nothing from history?
Yeah. Miller is like Clarence Thomas. They both seem to think that if they hang around White Christian Nationalists long enough - do them enough favors and advance their racial agenda - they’ll be made honorary members of the club. They won’t have to be Black or Jewish anymore! It’s a really pathetic display - like some bizarre reality show inspired by Phillip Roth.
Definitely! He’s very naive. White nationalists tend to be very antisemitic.
That's true and I can't understand how he got to where he is. For that matter, two of Trump’s wives were immigrants as was his mother and paternal grandfather
I don't think trump cares about immigration. He discovered (accidently, most likely) that it's an issue he can use to balkanize the population and be performatively malicious, so he found one of the most racist/antiimmigrant people he could find, who had the zeal of the newly converted, to keep that issue on the front burner.
How melania got her Einstein visa is questionable as is her chain migration of parents and sister.
To Belarus right? 😜😭😂
He's all but explicitly renounced his background.
Steven Miller is a war criminal. He needs to be tried in the Hague like Radovan Karadžić.
Crimes against humanity, probably. I don’t see the case for war crimes though. That applies to Trump, Hegseth and any soldiers obeying their illegal commands (like murdering fishermen in international waters).
Unfortunately the Hague moves too slowly.
I'd try him OK corral-style.
A lot of people in this administration need to be deported — to Gitmo.
yess: se my list in one response here
Niedermeyer.
I never voted for Trump and am a proud Democrat. Those who believe Miller is a war criminal are being silly. One of the reasons he currently has power is because Biden and Harris were completely ineffective in controlling the border in the first three years of their administration. Steven Miller is wrong to deny child care funding to children of illegal immigrants, but he will never ever be sent to Guantanamo or to The Hague, not even under President AOC!
This is false. That “open borders” narrative is false; Biden deported a lot of people. And mostly he treated migrants humanely. Harris has been mocked as the “border czar” but mostly what she was tasked with was working on push factors in the countries people were leaving; it’s weedy and abstract. Nobody is to blame for the Trump/Miller cruelty but Trump, Miller, and their enablers.
But you are probably right that Miller is likely to escape legal consequence, because a lot of what he has done is probably not actually illegal, or Trump will pardon everyone in his circle.
However, Miller is a young man who should never be able to live down his disgrace.
You don’t know what you are talking about. Yes, Biden did deport many illegal immigrants, but in the last year of his administration he and Harris finally got serious about the problem.
You conveniently forget the BIPARTISAN Congressional law reforming immigration was sidelined by Trump in 2022 because if passed his main campaign platform would have been blown away. Trump has NO platform to campaign on but hate and racism, no cogent statement on the issues of our time.
As I recall there was a “little” problem with a COVID pandemic that killed over a million US citizens going on at the beginning of Biden’s term that the previous administration screwed up and needed immediate attention.
Miller has worked closely with DHS. Immigrants are currently being tortured in U.S. concentration camps: filthy conditions, inedible food, zero medical care because this regime refuses to pay medical personnel to oversee medical care. As a result, detained immigrants have died. Miller's involvement cannot be dismissed.
I'd like to read a factual account of the Biden immigration policy. Open borders is a propaganda invention for sure. Biden did not open the border. My recollection is that he reversed a lot of the illegal Trump measures and tried to follow the law. When someone shows up at the border and claims asylum they have a right to a hearing. That's the way the law is written but then that uncorked the bottle.
The real problem is immigration reform needs to be enacted. Republicans are in charge and have done nothing since it takes away one of their issues. They like things just as they are.
Propaganda invention? Even the NYT published a story, conveniently after Harris lost the election, about the unprecedented wave of migration the Biden administration let in during his term. It was Trump's strongest issue until a year ago. Definite reform is needed and Republicans are dishonest actors.
I'm referring to Biden's "open borders" which implies no border enforcement and the barn doors were left open. That was not true and a Republican made up talking point.
I'll give you the unprecedented surge, and that Biden took too long to respond. The approach seemed to be to try and fix the problem at the source in the immigrant's home country and reduce the pressure while still following the asylum law. But that was a mistake and it took a response at the border to stem the tide, which if I recall wasn't too far off of Trump's detention policy in Mexico.
What the Biden Administration did was - in response to people massing at the border - to take the CPBOne app and let people apply for asylum interviews before they came to the border. Maybe from home, maybe from Mexico. Point it, make appointment first, them come for the interview. Then most of them - after the interview - would get paroled into the country while their cases proceeded. And they proceeded slowly because we don't have enough immigration judges. But also, people represented by a lawyer at their hearing (the government isn't required to provide one but many pro-bono lawyers work on this) tend to have a high rate of getting their asylum claim proved.
In any case, people came into the country legally via an interview scheduled on the CBPOne app. Some might still be climbing over a wall or going through the desert, but Biden created a legal and professional way for them to begin the asylum-claim process. Granted, many of these people probably didn't have solid claims - especially since our asylum criteria still tend to be modeled on people fleeing communism rather than drug gangs or corrupt police - but they were in a legal process. And Trump came in, Noem cancelled CPBOne, and ICE has been going after these people who are now - thanks to Biden - in the asylum claim process. Literally detaining and deporting people who have a legal right to pursue their asylum application. One of the goals in the detention facilities is to make it so miserable that people decide it would be better to go home rather than pursue a claim they have a legal right to pursue.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/11/briefing/us-immigration-surge.html
Largest in history.
*snort* “proud Democrat” from where? Belarus? So transparent.
If you're a "proud" Democrat then you should have no problem signing this petition. Miller is not innocent, he has lied about immigrants, particularly those deported to El Salvador and openly defied judges decisions regarding several immigrant cases, including Abrego Garcia. He has said habeas corpus should not exist. He has been instrumental in orchestrating child separation and openly celebrates children being taken from their immigrant parents, etc., etc. He is inhuman scum.
Petition from Move-On
"Senior Trump advisor Stephen Miller is the self-proclaimed driving force behind the so-called "zero-tolerance" immigration policy, the current enforcement of which has seen the morally abhorrent separation of children from undocumented and asylum seeking immigrant parents. Under Article 7 of the Rome Statute, the founding document of the International Criminal Court, Crimes Against Humanity are defined as a "widespread attack against a civilian population," characterized by, inter alia, "imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty in violation of fundamental rules of international law," and "other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health." "Zero tolerance's" separation and detention of minors fits squarely within these parameters. As Americans, we cannot permit cowardly, sadistic, racist ideologues like Stephen Miller to perpetrate this inhumane viciousness. Although the United States has not endorsed the ICC, I believe that it is imperative that we as U.S. citizens demand those in power in our country be held to the standards of international law. Americans must let Mr. Miller know that he is a criminal, and that in a truly just world he would be treated as such. Please add your name to this petition as a sign that you demand that he, and his kind, be brought to account."
https://sign.moveon.org/petitions/charge-stephen-miller
why? Q28 answer will clarify it. The whole chain needs a Nuremberg Trial... I state the Chain in a response elsewhere...
The numbers are in - even with all the cruelty, terror and lawlessness the number of deported immigrants in 2025 was lower than under previous administrations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niedermeyer ??
https://national-lampoons-animal-house.fandom.com/wiki/Neidermeyer
Deporting Miller is not sufficient. To clean the "stain" from America you will have to try him for "conspiracy to commit crimes against humanity". With the "trumpian" cabal in the dock beside him.
What destination would accept him?
CECOT
Hades.
Not there - Satan is afraid he would take over.
The Moon.
Congo?
Unfortunately: Netanyahu's Israel
Gaza would welcome him.
We should keep him in one of his own "detention centers", under the exact same conditions.
Millers grew up in Santa Monica. His ancestors escaped from Russia in WW 2. I think his relatives in SM are ashamed of him.
let us analyze the chain- some incompetent plying out gestapo game on us- how did he get there? a twice indicted convicted felon got voted in to PoTUS ... but who were the voters?
Ah, for that answer, friends of PK , pl check out Rachel Maddow discussing Steve J Ross' last book ....answer is in those modulated winds...
Title of book?
No, execution is far better or maybe slow torture…either works for me.
With or after Musk?
Amen 🙏
Waiting for my delayed flight last night, the MAGA guy sitting behind me was ranting about how the country had truly gone to shit because of performers refusing to do Trump's birthday bash. According to him, there are no more real patriots because they're all too committed to making sure the evil immigrants can just take everything for free. He thought the best thing that could happen was ICE and the police to just start mowing down the protesters and maybe doing a "final solution" thing with the detainees.
I fear this individual is a perfect representative of about 27% of our voting population. And right now, that crazy 27% has control of all three branches of our government.
Wow, this doesn’t really surprise me, but the hatred and racism is breathtaking. It’s hard to believe a third of our citizens are so full of hate and revenge and are so much like Trump and Stephen Miller and gang, that makes me grateful I’m old.
"Beyond trying to make daily life for immigrants impossible, the Trump administration is trying to terrorize immigrants into leaving."
This is absolutely true.
My housecleaner's husband, a construction worker and father of three, was "persuaded" to self-deport, leaving his family behind.
My massage therapist, highly-skilled, super-religious, and loving mother of 3, "vanished" from the company and they could tell me nothing about why.
It's all about setting up apartheid here in America. And Stephen Miller, of all people, should recognize the evil of that kind of legacy.
Stephen Miller looks in the mirror and sees an Aryan demigod instead the Gollum or Wormtongue that he is.
Miller is not a student of history. They always eventually come after the Jews.
being able to enact extreme evil is available to anyone with great power- it all goes back to how horrible a person one is.
In surgeries I have been attended by medical staff from Cote de Ivorie, Philipines, Palestine, Lebanon, Mexico, Laos, Nigeria, Hondorus, Belize, USA, and other countries. All have been kind and very competent.
These people have always been among us. They knew to share their views in private; Trump has given them permission to speak their hate publicly.
I just posted the same. Evil exists all over the world. They goal should be not to let it be in control, as it is today in America.
Nailed it!
HATE is the point. I am amazed and disheartened by the constant level of hate that comes from the mouths of MAGA. Without hatred, MAGA has nothing to rally around.
Anger is addictive. It gives you a great adrenaline rush. As long as you keep that rush going, there's no down side.
It’s so horrific
Horribly sad. And equivalent to those forced marches by US Army personnel of polite, wouldn’t-hurt-a-church mouse’ German citizens of the death camps which those same citizens remarkably failed to ever notice before….
I’m with you Derelict in suspecting that we’re observers of the same wilful disinterest and corrosive complicity today as it was expressed seventy years ago.
A German friend whose business is based in Austin (TX) - Austin!, bastion of ‘liberalism’! - commented recently how difficult it is to continue to do business there because of the same attitudes which your MAGA person expound as a matter of acceptable small talk.
It’s awful.
Regards, Anthony (in Scotland).
Great comments. I’ll just add that I live in Austin. To me the liberal label on Austin is bullshit. It’s run by the same rich elite. The liberal greenwash is a smokescreen.
That's the most depressing thing I've read all week.
The entirety of the country is run by the rich, I consider them not "elite" merely because they have money.
I meant elite in a power sense. And you’re right… every job every place I’ve lived has been dominated by let’s call em rich scumbags.
True and terrifying. How do we rid ourselves of this cancer?
We need to revisit McCarthyism and forcefully declare that "the commies" weren't - and aren't - nearly the threat that the Nazis and other reichwing, fascist extremists are.
Sad, but true; I hope you didn’t have to sit near him on the plane…
Horrifying. I’ve been struck by the demonization of both immigrants and trans people. It’s the Jews in Nazi Germany all over again. Also a strong resemblance to lynching campaigns against Blacks. Terrorizing a harmless, vulnerable minority.
That hatred and bigotry existed in the United States long before Hitler. Take a look at the anti-immigrant sentiment in the mid-nineteenth century anti-Irish anti-Catholic, anti-anyone who wasn't from Britain or Northetn Europe.
Demagogues and authoritarian always work from the same playback. Whip up fear and hatred of the "other".
and anti-asian
And firing squads now legal in Idaho and a UFC cage fight on the WH lawn. They aren't the same thing, maybe not even connected; but just now they came together in my mind.
Both are from the same warped mindset.
Well said. Thank you for explaining why the two things seem so related to me!
Which fits because much of, if not most of, the MAGA cult are either from old Confederate stock, or from old Nazi stock.
In my Pollyanna world, everyone in hearing distance of this would have stood up and shamed him to his face. This is what it’s going to take to lessen the acceptability of hatred in our society.
To shame someone, they have to have a core of decency. Miller doesn't. ICE doesn't. Trump doesn't.
Glendower: Why, I can teach you, cousin, to command the devil
Hotspur And I can teach thee, coz, to shame the devil—By telling the truth. Tell truth and shame the devil
Hi Comcast.
I’ve a hunch that Pollyanna was right (!).
I think those folks have always been here. They are everywhere around the world. Unfortunately, here they control our country.
We need to rectify that situation.
Good luck. Four generations removed from the Civil War, my mother still had most of the attitudes of the southern participants in the battles. "Bring up a child in the way the he should [not] go, and when he is old," he not only will not depart from it but he will teach his grandchildren the same garbage.
I don't think it's impossible. The Union really dropped the ball in Reconstruction. They should've driven home the message that the Confederates were defeated - and driven it forcefully.
If/when we defeat the MAGA cult and its fascist state, we need to defeat them roundly and soundly.
It was inevitable. Back in '53, there was so much obsession and effort to "stop the commies" that the reichwing literally ignored the fact that we'd just came out of the biggest war of all time to put a stop to the Nazis. They also conveniently ignored the fact that we had Nazis right here in the US.
They flourished here, mostly quietly, for decades. Now the infection has burst out into the open in the form of the MAGA cult.
There was also the Know Nothings in the 19th century, who were obsessed with Catholic migrants.
I don't think he's representative of 27%. Less than that. Most are your garden variety prejudiced people who watch FOX. Very ill informed, but not malicious. But I do think he's part of a frightening group who support the Proud Boys and their ilk. The ones Trump wants to pay off so he can use their services when the time comes.
About two weeks ago I had an even worse experience with a MAGA guy sitting next to me on a flight from Dallas to Austin. He wouldn't shut up about how the Democrats have caused all the trouble in the country. Mercifully the flight was only an hour long, but yet an hour of my life that I would rather have spent in just about any other way. Why must the MAGA crowd inflict their poisonous blather on innocent neighbors?
Because when you know you're wrong, you cover for it by being loud.
It’s so disturbing that so many people are so inhumane, almost impossible to believe until you hear that kind of shit.
That’s exactly how they talk.
What was the reaction of the people around you?
They were apparently all his friends and family, so they laughed and nodded along.
Oh God, you mean they breed????
Get Apple EarPods Pro with noise canceling.
The problem is it's not so easy to "noise cancel" the attitude he expressed which supports these vile policies.
In fact it is virtually impossible so best not to aggravate oneself especially given all the other annoyances of air travel.
Still had to be able to hear the gate announcements, so couldn't put my headphones on.
The real question is whether America can still organize a society capable of absorbing immigrants.
Historically, the United States was able to absorb immigration on a large scale not simply because it was “open,” but because it once had three absorption mechanisms: an expanding industrial system, a rising wage structure, and relatively sufficient housing and public-service provision. After arriving in America, immigrants could enter factories, construction, transportation, services, and the urban economy. Their children could move upward through public education, home ownership, and the labor market. This mechanism turned immigration from a simple population inflow into productive capacity, tax base, and national expansion power.
The problem today is that this mechanism is deteriorating. The United States still needs immigrants to replenish its labor force, support consumption, and ease population aging. But it is also facing manufacturing hollowing-out, severe housing shortages, strained urban public services, local fiscal pressure, educational fragmentation, and class ossification. In this situation, immigrants are no longer entering a powerful absorption machine. They are entering an already highly stressed social distribution system.
Exclusionary politics has a market because grassroots society really does feel that carrying capacity is declining. When rents rise, schools become crowded, hospitals face long queues, low-end job competition intensifies, and anxiety over community security grows, politicians can easily turn complex failures of state capacity into a simple immigrant scapegoat narrative.
So what America truly needs to discuss is how to rebuild the institutional capacity to absorb immigrants. This means expanding housing supply, restoring infrastructure investment, rebuilding vocational education and industrial jobs, strengthening the fiscal capacity of local public services, improving urban governance, and allowing immigrants to enter the productive system rather than just low-wage services and informal labor markets. Without these mechanisms, openness becomes a moral posture of the elite, while the costs are borne by grassroots communities.
At a deeper level, the immigration issue exposes the deterioration of American state capacity. A strong state can convert population inflows into industrial expansion, fiscal revenue, urban renewal, and social mobility. A weakened state turns population inflows into housing pressure, cultural conflict, low-wage competition, and political polarization. Immigration itself is not the cause of American decline, but the deterioration of America’s absorption mechanisms can turn immigration into fuel for the politics of decline.
America certainly needs to guard against exclusionary politics and dehumanizing language. But simply condemning right-wing incitement is not enough. If the United States cannot rebuild its industrial society, housing system, public services, and local governance capacity, it will struggle to maintain a model of high immigration, high openness, and high social stability over the long run. The real foundation of immigration openness has never been slogans. It is state organizational capacity.
Income inequality is a major contributing factor in the politics of decline.
Leon - terrific observations here. Of your three absorption mechanisms, I believe the key component of public-service provision historically was our public schools. The youngest immigrants had opportunities to learn English & US culture along with their school subjects. Our system was local & decentralized - could have the advantage of meeting local needs & conditions, but of course suffered from issues around local funding & attitudes.
Since the 1970s we've seen more attacks on our public schools. The same Dept of Education that was created to better coordinate federal funding & resources can be flipped to administer with an iron fist and weaponize programs against the executive's disfavored. Organized interest groups target our schools for blame for every social problem. Home schooling & for-profit charter schools siphon students into narrower experiences that have agendas other than public benefit. This key component that once helped weave our social fabric is being neglected, demeaned, and dismantled
The concept of "United States" fogs the truth about the Federal governments ability to administer anything uniformly and well. Observe the efficiency of China to organize and define the bottom line of laws and civic behavior.
Much of what you say about the economy-manufacturing, housing, infrastructure, etc is accurate. What is not accurate is your attributing any of this to immigration, or even suggesting that immigration makes things worse. Immigrants boost the economy, they create jobs, they enrich our culture. There has always been an anti-immigrant movement in the US, claiming that immigrants were a scourge and a drain on our economy. That wasn’t true in the 1850s or the 1880s or the 1920s. Or today.
Let me quote a renowned economist on the effects of immigration in the US, “…this seems like a good time to point out that negative views of the economics of immigration are all wrong. Far from taking jobs away, foreign-born workers have played a key role in America’s recent success at combining fast growth with a rapid decline in inflation. And foreign-born workers will also be crucial to the effort to deal with our country’s longer-term problems.” That economist? Paul Krugman.
You can read the rest of that oped here:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/05/opinion/immigration-republicans-economy.html?unlocked_article_code=1.m1A.0MKU.BxyIPBfF0q2t&smid=nytcore-ios-share
We've tested this on the micro scale again and again, where one of the easiest ways for those poor unfortunate dying small towns we're always hearing about to reverse its decline is simply to... try to attract immigrants.
Of course, most of them never do.
Some declining cities have had success encouraging immigrants to settle there. Dayton and Springfield, Ohio (where JD Vance lied that they “eat the pets”), for two. Lewiston, Maine for another.
IIRC, during the urban crime waves of the mid-sixties through mid-nineties, there were a lot of neighborhoods in a lot of cities where newly arrived immigrants were literally the only ones keeping the lights on.
While the phrase "they enrich our culture" is often used in this discourse, we rarely define which cultural contributions are currently lacking. Perhaps we should approach this like an ecologist analyzing a habitat—identifying areas of imbalance and determining what is needed to restore a more functional and desirable equilibrium.
If you bring in the migrants too quickly, you can definitely get shortages. This happened in Canada and it cost Trudeau his job.
none of this is the fault of immigrants but instead caused by the steady decline of the american working class due to the financialization of everything, inequality, stagnant wages while productivity soars, rigged tax code and the deity of wall street, hedge funds and equity monsters destroying the fabric of our once great economy
These are good points, but they are not only about immigrants. The decline in these systems has also hurt a large portion of Americans. Fear led to shame and anger which led to a large portion of those hurt eventually turning to MAGA. It is proving the demise of us all. A breakdown of the education system - an understanding of government and civics, learning to critically think, identifying information bias - is a major factor. They knew it which is why they’ve been chipping away at education for decades. Consolidation of media outlets and many turning away from reporting and toward opining, which now includes vast swaths of online content, was also a slow slide and now they control the narrative. This rise of unregulated tech - algorithms that create echo chambers, abdication of responsibility to fact check and regulate conduct, data mining - allows more control whether that be pushing things to the top or suppressing things. Many, many factors that basically boil down to not enough guardrails placed on capitalism. Too much money, which eventually turns into power, concentrated among the few. It should be no surprise that such a place will turn ugly toward “other”. What people don’t realize is that “other” doesn’t just mean immigrants. It can and will turn into anything - black and brown American citizens, poor (which to the ultra rich mean most of us, even middle/upper middle class), women, children, religion, region, etc.
In essence, Americans need intelligent governance, capable of solving social problems, elected by a discerning electorate. Are Americans’ lives so filled by entertainment that they have no capacity for civic awareness?
So long as they (the Proles) continued to work and breed, their other activities were without importance. Left to themselves, like cattle turned loose upon the plains of Argentina, they had reverted to a style of life that appeared to be natural to them, a sort of ancestral pattern...Heavy physical work, the care of home and children, petty quarrels with neighbors, films, football, beer and above all, gambling filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult. George Orwell, 1984
Thank you for this thoughtful comment. I would raise an issue that is beyond the questions addressed, but may need to be considered in parallel, as it was in some past administrations, but may be a key to the future of civilization in this interconnected world (appropriately by some now called a fused world). The need for people to emigrate, and others to provide a welcoming environment, is the basis of the problem. The world is home for all with sufficient, but limited, resources. The distribution of these resources, and peoples expectations for receipt of them, underpins much of life. A Hobbesian world of tribes fighting for the resources led by people who want to collect the lions share and bask in the adoration of the many will not find a solution. Great leaders have suggested other paths. Certainly the words Jesus spoke suggest he would have had people share their goods, help strangers and respect the common good.
The complexity of the world driven by technological advances has enhanced the need for sharing of resources and created dangers, as well as opportunities, to a better world for all,but also a world dominated by a few capitalizing on (as Franklin called it) the wolves in peoples nature. We appear to be at a turning point in world history catalyzed by rapid technological change coupled by greed overcoming virtue in our leaders. How to effect change on a global scale with deterioration in the former main pillar of global stability and only the weakest of global governance is the issue. The example of the incredible event of the reforming a government of the USA that occurred in Philadelphia, when a group of people crystallized some enlightenment ideas into a government system to replace the Articles of Confederation will not happen on a global stage. The best we can hope for is another change in this country (USA) to again assume a mantel of leadership rather then the chain of a wrecking ball, and work toward a peaceful, balanced world where all people will have basic needs, including food and housing security, addressed while technological progress benefits all, not risks destroying all. It may be a simplistic but logical ask; however, implementation in a dystopian world may be beyond reach.
And yet the US is undergoing the same lack of replacement births needed to maintain the population, a trend that is happening globally. We see reports of schools closing due to a lack of children to educate. Getting rid of immigrants, especially younger ones, just exacerbates this trend.
What is the "plan" here? To replace workers with AI and force the displaced into caring for the elderly, and doing the low-paid, high-touch work? As the housing stock becomes larger than needed, the rentiers will lose their power to raise rents.
We need to defeat those who would want to return the US to the Confederacy.
The response to fear/panic has no plan - it's mindless destruction.
Ain't seein' how AI could pick strawberries or blue berries.
Thoughtful
Do not scapegoat immigrants for these societal problems. Our money-driven politics are largely to blame.
For the poorly educated masses, immigrants have always been a convenient scapegoat for problems that at base is caused by other things. It is very easy and convenient for a politician to claim "it's the immigrants fault, not mine". The ignorant and xenophobic segment of the public are jumping at the chance to blame immigrants - even when stopping immigration doesn't solve the problem. Look at the plunge in job creation and increased problems with housing and inflation, and slowly increasing unemployment - even after Trump closed the border.
In 2002 I visited Singapore, probably the most managed society possible. We were told that Singapore workers would not do the more menial work so Hindu workers were imported from India. Only men were allowed, as Singapore didn’t want them to start families and stay. The men all lived together in one part of the city, which allowed brothels “only for the foreign workers.” The government showed movies in a vacant lot, but the movie is always preceded with instructional videos about living a clean, healthy, safe life.
I suspect even this approach would be considered intolerable by Miller &Company.
the arab countries do something similar - the kafala system
However, both sexes are allowed to enter countries like the Emirates for work. My wife was over there for a consulting gig a bit more than 15 years ago. One of her best friends at the time was a Chinese woman, who was there semi-permanently.
Historically, the jobs were in mines, steel mills, construction essentially heavy industry with low pay, dangerous conditions, company owned housing, long hours, no health care, brutal responses to unions. Given that profit is the bottom line, your suggestions are pie in the sky
because that would be an ideal forward-looking solution. That is the capitalist model.
Granted, deterioration of state capacity makes it very hard on both legal and illegal immigrants, and we have reams of evidence of hardship on native born americans also.
I don't think your comment is looking at the US economy in its current configuration. Immigrants aren't working in industry, they are being entrepreneurs.
Ultimately it's xenophobia - the "jews (black, browns, etc.) shall not replace us" type of primordial fear. They have this fear that a tribe of "others" will become so strong and dominant that they harm "us". They are trying to cover it under different justifications, but underneath is just a standard variety xenophobic panic attack. Fuelled by demographic changes.
I recently responded to a commentor on a NYT article that was giving the "If only immigrants came here the right way" and "immigrants don't assimilate" kind of speech. I was having none of it, so I basically said when someone gives lines like those, they are xenophobic at a minimum and racist at worst, and that to come here the "right way" is already extremely difficult. They were clutching at pearls for me being so presumptuous about them. Sure, in hind sight maybe I was being harsh, but the point stands though. Trying to sound reasonable while passing off racially coded language is not acceptable!
I completely agree that this "right way" or "legal" is just pure bunk - and an attempt to not reveal the racist xenophobia that is the real driver. But we should call them out for their BS and hypocrisy.
I have tried countless times to get people to stop calling asylum seekers "illegal". They are actually coming here the "right" and "legal" way. Sure a lot of them will eventually be denied the asylum. But they are here legally and the wast majority leave the country after their case has been rejected.
Putting these asylum seekers into camps rather than letting them go out and more than pay for their own temporary stay in the country, is insane on so many levels. It's even more costly than putting them on "welfare". But as Krugman and others have pointed out "the cruelty IS the point". It is meant to scare off others from coming and to get some of those already here to just self deport.
Unfortunately for those in a racist/xenophobic panic attack the cost, even to themselves (taxpayers), is more than worth it.
Putting asylum seekers in detention camps run by for-profit companies works for Trump as he's benefiting his corporate donors. He's a cruel, ugly old man
Yes indeed, for Trump it's just another opportunity for funneling taxpayer money into his family and friend's pockets. When it's all over and counted up, we will likely be looking at the first ever $ trillion corruption. But for the MAGA cult member it's xenophobic panic. He is a brilliant conman - the one thing he is actually very good at.
It does make big bucks for the private prison people running these places. I understand they’re big Republican donors.
That's how they landed those contracts.
Yes indeed, the $70. billion could be used to give food and health care to 12 million US children - instead it's another case of Trump draining tax payers money into the pockets of his friends and family, while driving the price of Tomatoes up to record levels. Not quite as open about it as he was with the oil industry (remember "give me a billion and I will take care of you") who currently are harvesting record levels of profit.
There are people whose registries on Ellis Island literally reads "stowaway" for their method of arrival and yet still weren't sent back.
We passed laws "solving" a nonexistent problem, and the fact that these are just taken unquestioningly as The Way Things Are (except that somehow, these laws always have to be tightened, never loosened) is a ridiculous commentary on us, particularly since immigration enforcement's far more outrageous levels of lawbreaking put the lie to any claim that it was ever about "following the law."
Nobody judges the people who continued to drink booze during Prohibition, and illegal immigrants are in the exact same place. Except their reasons for breaking the law are far more serious than "I had a shit day and I just need a drink."
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask that immigrants who enter this country do so legally and with appropriate documentation.
The administration has made this impossible. They have shutdown immigrations & cancelled the entry of those who have been through the process, passed every test & requirement, obtained a visa & then their entry has been cancelled for no given reason. Don't tell them to "enter the right way."
So explain to me the "right way"? Was it how your ancestors (presumably) came into the country when you basically just needed to show up? Does deporting people that are here legally constitute the "right way"? Asylum seekers and people with green cards are those that are here properly, and yet we are doing all that we can to make their lives miserable? Why? What benefit does that provide to the US?
I will mention this, just like I did to the person in the NYT article. Using "right way" is a means to sound reasonable. Ultimately, immigration reform needs to happen so that people can come here the "right way" and be guaranteed rights.
Personal anecdote: my Grandmother came to the US from Belgium via Canada around WWI as an infant. She never had a job and was a stay at home mom. In the 80s, she and my Grandfather wanted to go out of the country on vacation so applied for passports. However, my grandmother never had "proper documentation" . Should she have been deported back to Belgium in spite of her living her entire life in the US? That would just be insane. Fortunately, the US did not deport her then. Today...it would be dicey.
they may deport you because your GM was an illegal
And all those asylum seekers that got in under Biden, did it exactly the legal and "documented" way (even though Faux news called them "illegals").
They may have taken advantage of the fact that GOP refused to fund enough immigration courts to bring the claim processing times down from 5-8 years. But asylum seekers cannot be blamed for our political dysfunction - nor for "taking advantage" of weaknesses in our laws.
Most taxpayers are taking all the deductions they are entitled to, even if they are resulting from political dysfunction.
Even "taking advantage" is giving the ICE crowd far more credit than it deserves. If you show up and go to court, you're not taking advantage of anything, you're literally following the law perfectly.
and getting taken away by ice after showing up for your judicial appt
Yeah, that too.
Yes, but there were also millions of immigrants who flooded into the United States illegally under Biden, peaking in 2022-2023. I don't know why so many of my progressive friends are in denial about this. Thousands of them were literally dumped by the busload into my city during those years -- without jobs, without housing, without medical insurance, and without any family connections here.
I am proud of my city for stepping up and providing emergency human services to assist those immigrants (most of whom came from Venezuela). But the massive influx torpedoed our city budget, as we did not anticipate and were not prepared for that flood of immigrants. The emergency funds had to come out of other city programs, already stretched thin, such as for the homeless, for parks, for climate action, for drug programs, for libraries, for public transit.
It was simply an unsustainable situation -- with no thanks to our city's suburbs, who happily lived their idyllic little suburban lives without suffering any of the consequences, nor contributing anything meaningful toward the solution. Mainly they stayed away from downtown and quit spending their money in our city, fearful of all those scary immigrants and homeless encampments ... which only compounded our city's fiscal crisis. (I hope you weren't one of those privileged people in an insulated suburban community)
This is big reason why Biden/Harris lost the 2024 election to a corrupt authoritarian fascist. Millions of Americans felt our southern border situation was out of control and, for a while, it was. The Biden/Harris efforts to correct the situation in 2023-2024 were, unfortunately, too little too late, as by that time the GOP had them backed into a losing corner.
The people from Venezuela came to the border, crossed, and filed for asylum - then were immediately released. They were almost all LEGAL asylum seekers (currently still about 600,000 unprocessed claims, just from Venezuela). It would have been very ignorant of them to cross illegally and risk immediately to be send back or be arrested. Venezuela was one of the countries where there was a potential credible claim to be made. I know that the press called them illegal but that was for 90% of them a convenient lie that helped make corporate media money by peddling rage news, rather than informing people with the real news.
Biden was seeking money to help an overwhelmed border patrol deal with this influx, but Trump ordered his minions in congress to block their own deal with democrats - because he needed the election issue. So with no money to create housing and no money to process the claims, legal asylum seekers, were released with a minimum amount of resources and became a burden on the border communities.
I fully understand the frustration with that situation, but let's not place blame where it doesn't belong. Biden could not refuse potentially valid asylum seekers without breaking US law - GOP reused to change that law. Biden didn't have enough detention center spaces or other resources to deal humanely with the problem - GOP even refused to give him money to build more detention centers. Biden had no other legal option but to release them into border communities with a small amount of money for a bus ticket and some food.
GOP and corporate media has been so addicted to creating rage news that even liberals have been hoodwinked by right wing stories about Biden creating open borders for "illegals". The truth is that GOP created and dumped a huge problem on the border states and communities, in order to score political wins. Unfortunately the corporate media were more than happy to help them - as long as they could make some coin on the rage.
The bottom line was that we had an out-of-control situation at our southern border for a couple of years that was causing serious headaches and creating serious fiscal problems not only for cities near the border, but also for cities like Chicago, D.C., Denver, Saint Louis.
And Biden was president.
For better or worse (mostly worse), Trump has demonstrated what a president can do about illegal immigration if they have the will and take the problem seriously. Biden had the opportunity to act much earlier. But he blew it.* The impression he gave to aspiring immigrants when he was president was that he was throwing open our borders, and the immigrants responded en masse.
Why do progressives keep denying this? This is why we lose elections to fascists like Trump. We can't admit our own mistakes.
*(2024 was too late ... your comment "Biden was seeking money to help an overwhelmed border patrol deal with this influx, but Trump ordered his minions in congress to block their own deal with democrats - because he needed the election issue" happened in 2024 and was too little too late ... as I said, MAGA already had Biden & Harris backed into a corner by then. And here we are. With a racist, hateful president doing pretty much whatever the hell he wants)
Many corps brought "illegals" here to cheap labor and union bust and yet the employers who knowingly hired"illegals" are not sanctioned or convicted.
I think there was a big uptick after Covid and Biden wasn’t prepared.
Trump had used the Covid emergency to lock down the border, instead of negotiating a permanent solution with Democrats.
After Biden took over, a judge basically overruled the idea that Covid was still an emergency - and demanded that the law should be followed (and asylum seekers allowed their day in court).
Biden negotiated for a long time with the GOP to find a solution that was not breaking the law. When Biden finally managed to get a deal by giving GOP 80% of what they wanted - Trump decided that GOP could not vote for their own solution (he needed the issue for the election).
Okay. But those legal and appropriate people are being put in what is in effect concentration camps.
are there any "whites" illegals in those CCs? I think not!
O, we are now importing white south africans who are seeking asylum
Actually there are a few. I’ve read articles about them.
Sallie, is it not possible for me to hold both of these thoughts in my head at the same time?
"I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask that immigrants who enter this country do so legally and with appropriate documentation."
and
"It is absolutely unacceptable for this Administration to harass people who are here legally and appropriately, and it is outrageous that they are putting them in concentration camps and sending them to countries in which they've never lived."
These are not contradictory positions.
When you play Monopoly with your kids, don’t you sometimes jointly make up new rules? If the new rule doesn’t work as intended, you jointly agree to change it or discard it, don’t you? Why can’t we wait for Congress to make new immigration laws instead of flipping the Monopoly board and ruining the game for everyone?
It seems to be impossible. Biden did try.
Yes, I see that argument about the “right way” constantly. So why is Trump now going after LEGAL immigrants?
and bragging about doing it.
If 'they" did assimilate our ethnic cuisine would be bangers, shepard's pie, fish and chips, mutton, afternoon tea, Guiness etc and no pizza, tacos, spaghetti, vindaloo, sushi, crepes, pesto, burritos, lomein, BBQ, okra, el al.
YouGov et al, estimate the number of strong MAGA supporters to be between 50 and 65 million citizens in the U.S. Though its membership is not monolithic—there is a common thread—sadistic cruelty. It is not to deport or scare away “foreigners” though that is an outcome. It is the dopamine high that at least 55 million of our fellow citizens feel as they torture the less fortunate among us. This affectation will outlast Trump. More generally, it is resistant to deprogramming. We will have to live with as the Germans did after WW2.
The white nationalist crowd, while no doubt having sadistic tendencies, is obsessed with removing non whites.
I was working in Atlanta in 1979. The evangelicals and mainstream Baptists were upset that the birthrate in the black communities was higher than in whites. The preachers were pushing the idea that it was the duty of white women to produce more children than black women could. That's the first exposure I had to what is now called the "replacement theory."
I once tried arguing with one of these people. Why, I asked, would Jews want to destroy the country by bringing in these supposedly country-destroying people? I mean, the Jews live here too.
I got no answer.
By "US" they mean WASPs
Yes
If it talks like a Nazi
Fills concentration camps like a Nazi
Murders citizens like a Nazi
Must be a Nazi.
This is horribly close to the truth, even ‘though said with levity to raise our mood.
I wonder how this will end?
There are few ways to peacefully remove Nazis from power.
They use the desire of the non-Nazis for freedom of speech and thought to spread hate and fear with the goal of convincing them violence against the Nazi's (many) enemies is the only way to be safe.
That is what is happening in the US right now. Unfortunately our national media just ignores or sanewashes the murder and mayhem the current Nazi regime is inflicting on the people. This is clearly a recipe for disaster on a global scale.
I look on it with more negative feelings than even you do, Phil.
Trumpism/ MAGA/ and all of that, have ‘captured’ US institutions to a frightening degree. True, there are plenty of Americans who are clear in their understanding that this is wrong. But what has this achieved to date?
Humankind is not gifted with foresight; at best, we have a 50% chance of guessing some of what is likely to happen. Perhaps this is too negative a view, but I see no flicker of light at the end of the tunnel when a regime has overturned and captured the levers of power and the checks & balances with such shameless determination. I see no blush of recognition of their anti-democratic actions on SCOTUS’ faces towards the citizens who they should ‘serve’ for example.
The extreme division of US society has inevitably deepened under Trump; he’s a dealer as well as a user of hate and misinformation of exceptional influence. But democracy depends on ‘working across the aisle’.
I fear that there is no reconciliation coming down the line for the US (regardless of reason and flexibility in argument such as those put forward by Pete Buttigieg for example). The Constitution has become a bridge-to-far thanks to the Supreme Court, and the partisanship of Congress above their duties to the Constitution, and it makes it look very dark from the here and now.
They say, ‘the age of miracles is not over’: well, the US needs an extraordinary ‘miracle’ now, or democracy in the US us dead.
Anthony
Yes Anthony, we do need an extraordinary miracle. It looks dark from wherever you fortunately live, but you can't imagine what it is like to live in this darkness here. I do pray for a miracle. Too bad we've "rightfully" alienated all of our allies with our ignorance, greed and immoral values.
Hi Lilla,
If/ when the US turns herself around towards a more decent future, she will find that allies return.
I am conscious that this is exquisitely awkward/ painful for US Americans (it’s at best a well intended guess to try to frame criticism in the right language( but ‘we’ (all of us) share one, ever-smaller, planet and just one life each on it, to make the best of it.
So, I also ‘pray’ for a miracle.
Regards, Anthony
Thanks for your reply Anthony. I so look forward to the day we in the U.S. turn things around and so hope that our allies will return!
abolish citizens united and the electoral college to truly establish democracy
It's crazy because history doesn't even bother to rhyme anymore, it's just straight up copying and pasting the darkest chapters
As someone I read on the Internet a decade ago put it:
"Nazi isn't something you are. It's something you do."
Amen, Dr. K. Thanks for your bravery in continuing to speak truth to power. We all need to keep resisting, in any small ways that we can. We will continue to fight. We will strive for justice, even though the arc of justice is long, as Dr. King said. We will not stop. We will never forget. We will be patient, but we will not stop. This intolerance, hatred and inhumanity will not win. As Woody Guthrie said, all these fascists bound to lose.
This kind of transcendent idealism is deeply moving. The oaks of history often grow in the dead of night. To push back against systemic disorder, raw passion and remembrance are simply not enough; we need to build antifragile resilience and the strategic wisdom of long term game playing. The arc of the moral universe is long precisely because it constantly wrestles with the darker sides of human nature. The absolute certainty that comes only after seeing through the chaos is the ultimate form of resistance
I’m in Poland at the moment. I have an apartment here and have been coming nearly every year since 2000 and have been here at least every other year since 1987. Until now—even all the way through the first Trump administration—most Poles had a favorable impression of the U.S., whether they were on the left or the right. Many of them made a point of saying they envied me, and that always made me feel vaguely uncomfortable. Well, nobody envies me now. Several close friends have told me they pity me.
It's wild watching the global currency of American admiration tank in real time, and honestly, pity is a much heavier anchor than hatred. When even your most loyal buffer states start looking at you with genuine compassion, the hegemony isn't just fading, it's structurally broke
This is one of the more fearless, informed, bold and clarifying presentation of truths about ICE detention, it's motoives and intent that I've read to date. Keep it up. People who know about pogroms, concentration camps, and forced relocations ('reservations') have a duty to warn those who don't just what we're dealing with from this administration and it's paid-well enablers.
So well said Leigh. Thanks.
Thank you Paul.
I note your choice of wording: ‘pogrom’ is a specific word, used out of context here, with a pointed direction to readers: ‘blinkers off’.
Time to call a spade a spade, time to call racism what it is.
The previous choice of Trump’s administration to selectively accept White South Africans was a tell, not a distraction.
Vance’s ridiculous criticism of the head of the Catholic Church, a US American who criticises this racism and cruelty, a tell not a distraction.
The US has sunk below the floor of acceptable behaviour; the rest of the world looking on is … moving on. We cannot form an alliance with such a ‘regime’ without lasting damage to our own fragile democracies. Again, I point to PM Carney’s speech at Davos.
The awkward question is:
- what is wrong in the soul of America that so many decent, educated, intelligent Americans hold their noses and quietly acquiesce with this?
- what is wrong with American democrats that so many hold their noses and quietly acquiesce with this corrosion of liberty, equality, and - ha! - fraternity?
Why has the ‘American Dream’ failed so totally, utterly, and shamelessly?
Why does it fall to Paul Krugman and some others to light the warning torch in a free society of a little less than 350 million citizens? Where is the overdue outrage and action?
Anthony
Anthony, you are asking all the right questions! Mainly, "Where is the overdue outrage and action???? I'm waiting....
they haven't come for my family yet, is the reason
It is indeed infuriating, tragic, and desperately sad that such feelings persist in many American hearts, especially in the current government. Fortunately, those feelings and actions do not represent the majority of the American People, and I believe this scenario will change in the upcoming America 250 and mid-term elections. I am deeply hopeful that a fairer and more just America will emerge starting in November. Fingers crossed!
It’s not just Miller and the trump regime. The republicans could stop this anytime but they won’t because this is who they are and who they have always been. It’s all out in the open for everyone who isn’t in the cult to see. Grotesque levels of cruelty that is only destroying us all. The good news is that there are more people who are against this, but I will never get over how many people don’t just like this, but cheer it on.
"Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free."
Will the current Administration simply chisel this off the Statue of Liberty? Sans permission from any other branch of our government?
If they were to do that, my response would be the clip from Planet of the Apes. “You maniacs! You blew it up! Ah damn you! GODDAMN YOU ALL TO HELL…!!!”
"Six weeks locked in a hold with one toilet. Rice and a little fish to eat. Lousy deal for thirty-five grand a head."
"Thirty-five grand? Where'd they get that kind of money?"
"Didn't. Got to work it off. The snakeheads, the smugglers, they sell 'em as cheap labor."
"Sell 'em?"
"Like slaves."
"Guess these must be the lucky ones, huh?"
"Ah, they'll claim asylum. Say they were persecuted like everybody else. And we'll send them packing. Cost you and me a goddamn fortune."
"What happened to bring me your tired, your poor, your wretched masses yearning to breathe free?"
"Now it reads No Vacancies."
"I guess your parents were Native Americans?"
Republican should look to one of their own - Margret Chase Smith - for inspiration to stand up to facists. A nod to Heather Cox Richardson for reminding us of what real courage is.
Here is Heather's post that David J Reeder references:
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/may-31-2026
(And agreed, David... it's another of her terrific pieces.)
Equally reprehensible to the cruelty is profiteering by companies operating the detention centers. And then there’s the hypocrisy—who amongst us is not a descendant of immigrants?
Right. What is the current portion of Native Americans? And look at how we treat them, from the moment the first immigrant set foot on this land right up until this very moment.
Impeach Trump
It's been done.
Twice.
What we need are convictions, not impeachments...