We’re All Rats Now

Time to take a stand, again, against racism

Zohran Mamdani’s upset victory in New York’s Democratic primary has created panic in MAGAland. Stephen Miller, the architect of Donald Trump’s deportation policies, waxed apocalyptic:

Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary, declared that New York is about to turn into “Caracas on the Hudson.”

And Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama basically declared New York’s voters subhuman, saying:

These inner-city rats, they live off the federal government. And that’s one reason we’re $37 trillion in debt. And it’s time we find these rats and we send them back home, that are living off the American taxpayers that are working very hard every week to pay taxes.

These reactions are vile, and they’re also dishonest. Whatever these men may claim, it’s all about bigotry.

Miller isn’t concerned about the state of New York “society.” What bothers him is the idea of nonwhite people having political power.

Bessent isn’t really deeply worried about Zamdani’s economic ideas. But he feels free, maybe even obliged, to slander a foreign-born Muslim with language he would never use about a white Christian politician, even if that politician were (like some of his colleagues in the Trump administration) a total crackpot.

And while Tuberville stands out even within his caucus as an ignorant fool, his willingness to use dehumanizing language about millions of people shows that raw racism is rapidly becoming mainstream in American politics.

Remember, during the campaign both Trump and JD Vance amplified the slanders about Haitians eating pets.

And now that they’re in office, you can see the resurgence of raw racism all across Trump administration policies, large and small. You can see it, for example, in the cuts at the National Institutes of Health, which are so tilted against racial minorities that a federal judge — one appointed by Ronald Reagan! — declared

I’ve never seen a record where racial discrimination was so palpable. I’ve sat on this bench now for 40 years. I’ve never seen government racial discrimination like this.

You can see it in the renaming of military bases after Confederate generals — that is, traitors who fought for slavery.

You can even see it in a change in the military’s shaving policy that is clearly custom-designed to drive Black men — who account for around a quarter of the Army’s new recruits — out of the service.

So racism and bigotry are back, big time. Who’s safe? Nobody.

Are you a legal immigrant? Well, the Supreme Court just allowed Trump to summarily strip half a million U.S. residents of that status, and only a fool would imagine that this is the end of the story. Anyway, when masked men who claim to be ICE agents but refuse to show identification are grabbing people off the streets because they think those people look illegal, does legal status even matter? Does it even matter if you’re a U.S. citizen?

And the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is set to massively increase ICE’s funding — basically setting up a huge national secret police force.

Now, maybe you imagine that you yourself won’t suffer from this new reign of bigotry and imagine that everyone you care about is similarly safe. But if that’s what you think, you’re likely to face a rude awakening.

I personally don’t have any illusions of safety. Yes, I’m a native-born white citizen. But my wife and her family are Black, and some of my friends and relatives are foreign-born U.S. citizens.

Furthermore, I’m Jewish, and anyone who knows their history realizes that whenever right-wing bigotry is on the ascendant, we’re always next in line. Are there really people out there naïve enough to believe MAGA’s claims to be against antisemitism, who can’t see the transparent cynicism and dishonesty?

The fact is that the Trump administration already contains a number of figures with strong ties to antisemitic extremists. The Great Replacement Theory, which has de facto become part of MAGA’s ideology, doesn’t just say that there’s a conspiracy to replace whites with people of color; it says that it’s a Jewish conspiracy.

So I’m definitely scared of what the many antisemites inside or with close ties to the Trump administration may eventually do. And no, I’m not frightened at all by the prospect that New York may soon have a somewhat leftist Muslim mayor.

Anyway, my personal fears are beside the point. Everyone who cares about keeping America America needs to take a stand against the resurgence of bigotry. Because the truth is that we’re all rats now.

MUSICAL CODA