Excellent piece. Most people in America have no idea what dictatorship is really like. They've been spoiled by 250 years of human rights invented by founding fathers who introduced the idea to the world. They don't really understand the threat on a gut level because they take a representative, non-militarized society for granted. I fear they're about to learn the hard truth, but, as always in dictatorships, too late to do anything about it.
You're forgetting that Biden is already guilty of violating the 1st Amendment and censoring the Free Speech of Americans by suppressing truthful information and pushing false information about both the pandemic and the Hunter Biden laptop story, BOTH affecting the outcome of the 2020 election.
You're forgetting that the leader of the free world did this, performing the actions of an authoritarian dictator, while accusing his enemy to be one all while politically persecuting him.
You're forgetting that this same leader coerced people to push an experimental drug into their veins. A drug that was neither as safe nor as effective as he said it was.
You're forgetting that the Left told everyone Biden was competent when anyone older than a toddler could see that he is unable to walk a straight line, speak a sentence or tie his shoes.
They have literally lied, coerced, tricked and abused the public for 4 years, all while ruining the economy and allowing in illegals.
NOBODY can refute these things.
But yeah, the boogeyman is bad because he's orange. Leftists are RIDICULOUS for pretending the emperor is clothed.
As much as you should know I hate Trump Robert, and loathe RD’s not responding to anything you actually wrote, but just making like Tony Sopranos and pulling from the bottom of the deck, misplaying the “WHATABOUTISM” card…it would have been nice to bear witness to you actually refuting his argument than saying his suffers from Bush, I mean Trump Derangement Syndrome. We are both old enough to remember that canard, just, speaking of link to the Biden Administration grotesque violation of Berney’s first amendment right to be unPopulist, I mean violation of free speech true…or not true…like Joes actually saying with emphasis, on the public stage, something the wannabe President KNEW was not true about is fing turd son’s lab top
The Democrat led media, including Biden himself were saying that if you got the shot, you wouldn't get Covid but the fact that the Covid vaccines were NOT AS EFFECTIVE AS WE WERE TOLD should be plain when you were told you would need 3-4 booster in 2021, and that effectively waned after 3 months AND that people who were vaccinated were still getting Covid. The majority of people in hospitals WITH COVID after the vaccination campaigns were vaccinated people. Do you need me to get the proof?
And they were not as safe as we were told, as proven by the record number of people who were affected by the vaccines. My children making up that cohort.
And Biden is obviously cognitively impaired, which is why the Dems dropped him as a hot potato as soon as his debate with Trump was over.
Look, you sound really angry, and I get it. But I think your anger is misdirected. You're upset about emails and that the media didn't trumpet what could have easily been disinformation at the time it was released. And you seem upset that vaccines, a modern miracle that saves millions of lives, are helped by booster shots. And you're upset that federal employees were required to get vaccinated to keep their jobs (unless they had religious or health exceptions), along with health workers, and workers for big companies. I get it.
But you're missing the big picture. Joe Biden is not a dictator with a lust for power. (Plus, Joe Biden is out of the picture!) Harris also isn't an authoritarian dictator who wants to warp representative government to become Queen. They are standard, typical, ho-hum politicians. I'm not a fan of most politicians, but they are entirely different animals from Trump who explicitly wants to be a dictator and will burn the Constitution to the ground to get the personal power that his psychotic narcissistic personality demands.
In my view, dictatorship is 100x worse than big government. To be clear, I'm not a Democrat. I'm for incredibly small government that merely protects our civil rights from criminals and invaders. But representative "big government", for all its faults, still presents a process for voting people in and out. It still, in principle, puts the people first as legal equals, raising no one legally above others, so there is no one, in principle, to whom we must bend our knee.
Dictatorship is the opposite. Dictatorship's fundamental premise is that you WILL bend the knee, and you will bend it to one person and his whims. In dictatorship, laws don't matter anymore because only the dictator's whims matter. That's what Trump wants with all his soul, and he has the brazen shamelessness to do it. (He proved this in 2020 by refusing a peaceful transfer of power, and by designing a false slate of electors intended to subvert the will of the people.) Dictatorship is what he lusts after. And that's why Trump is 100x more of a threat than any standard big-government politician.
Your focus is currently myopic. You're looking through a microscope. Stand back and look at the big picture.
You didn't refute a single point of mine but instead started your reply with a personal attack.
The President of the United States, Joe Biden, suppressed Free Speech and censored the speech of Americans through his office.
If that alone doesn't scare the heck out of you, but a bunch of unsubstantiated claims about an Orange man who wasn't a dictator in his 1st 4 years in office MIGHT do, well then I don't think you understand what critical thinking is.
I've offered sources and evidence for all my claims. If you're not educated on these things, you're probably voting in ignorance.
This is not about Biden. There are many things about Biden I dislike. There are many things about most politicians I dislike, including Harris. But please try to focus here. Biden is not trying to be dictator here; nor is Harris. Trump is. Trump is the one with an unquenchable thirst for power and the shamelessness to pursue it by any means necessary.
If you are as well informed (and unbiased) as you say you are, then you know this. If you don't know this, then you are not as well informed as you say or you are biased. Or perhaps both?
Linking to negative articles about Biden is irrelevant. Biden isn't running.
Or were you not aware of that?
You also haven't addressed my points (including, ahem, Trump's attempt to subvert the peaceful transfer of power).
You're focused on nitpicking about a president who isn't running, and then using hyperbole about the nits you've picked.
Meanwhile you're totally fine with a clear dictator taking power.
I thought you might be open to reason, but you're clearly not. You are not arguing in good faith, so I'm done expending effort on you. I'll move on to the millions of people who are more reasonable.
I’m sorry but does anyone think that 20 million legal immigrants and Latino citizens are going to stand by while the jackboots take our people away? What happens when national peaceful resistance gets in the way of the jackboot thugs? What happens if Trump orders the police and Guard to do their jobs and they refuse ? What happens when someone (a jackboot) or a racist follower of the jackboots decides to take the law into his own hands with a firearm. I’ll tell you what-bloodshed that will make Kent State seem like a picnic.
Ready to round up some brown folks (even some US citizens)? Trump is. You may want to stop tanning, and be sure to have your documents with you at all times! Nothing says “Land of the Free” like military in the streets!
I was interested in this article until I clicked on the linked quote “dictator on day one” which took me to the AP article where the quote is “Except for day one,” and “You’re not going to be a dictator, are you?’ I said: ‘No, no, no, other than day one. We’re closing the border, and we’re drilling, drilling, drilling. After that, I’m not a dictator.’”
The first thing he would do when he becomes “dictator on day one,” he has stated, are mass deportations. I stopped reading at that point. If you are going to quote someone and use a link to substantiate your quote, make sure they match. I have enjoyed reading this Substack but now not so much much.
It is unprecedented for a presidential candidate to do anything other than completely disavow the very idea of being a dictator. No candidate who respects this nation’s history, and its uniquely anti-dictatorial legacy, would go anywhere near claiming to be a dictator for any spell of time. Yet Donald Trump has insisted he will be a dictator on day one of his presidency. Hannity even tried to walk him back, to give him an off ramp, but Trump wouldn’t take it. He insisted that for at least one day he will act like a dictator. Your reaction to that is not to be scandalized by it, or even to be troubled by it in the slightest, but to raise a concern over our smoothing out his barely grammatical quote into a coherent sentence. That’s the part, in all of this, that really rankles you. Wow.
I like your comment. Don't worry about RD's reply. I didn't realize it before (which is why I bothered replying to him), but RD is a troll. He posted the exact same response to my comment. RD is crazed Trump-bot. :-)
False. My responses were extremely meaningful. He has yet to respond to the biggest issue I brought up: Trump's two-month attempt to subvert the will of the people in 2020. Compiling a fake slate of electors? Who does that? Oh, that's right: true dictator wannabes. :-)
You're forgetting that Biden is already guilty of violating the 1st Amendment and censoring the Free Speech of Americans by suppressing truthful information and pushing false information about both the pandemic and the Hunter Biden laptop story, BOTH affecting the outcome of the 2020 election.
You're forgetting that the leader of the free world did this, performing the actions of an authoritarian dictator, while accusing his enemy to be one all while politically persecuting him.
You're forgetting that this same leader coerced people to push an experimental drug into their veins. ILLEGALLY, because the mandates ended up being ILLEGAL. A drug that was neither as safe nor as effective as he said it was.
You're forgetting that the Left told everyone Biden was competent when anyone older than a toddler could see that he is unable to walk a straight line, speak a sentence or tie his shoes.
They have literally lied, coerced, tricked and abused the public for 4 years, all while ruining the economy and allowing in illegals.
NOBODY can refute these things.
But yeah, the boogeyman is bad because he's orange. Leftists are RIDICULOUS for pretending the emperor is clothed.
There is a good reason I have been referring to The Don as formerly the world’s biggest Twitter troll…for years. Speaking of Trump Derangement Syndrome, as much as I hate, and, forgive me Jesus, I do mean mean HATE TRUMP, Kevin’s take on NOT taking the Tony Soprano, in the flesh, wannbe serious is far more coherent then your partisan hackery Berny. If you were not such of weak mind and character yourself, you should welcome an unPopulist view. As well as you should preach there is no such thing as committing pre crimes in a Democracy. And, like I told every single one of my progressive friends that parrot the lie that Trump is going to be a Dick Tator (hat tip Jonah Goldberg), with all due respect to Leviticus 19:33-35, of which I heard the Trump Bible edited out, over my dead body. But like the former and incoming Commander and Chief, I have no doubt if I were caught in the line of fire from some brown shirts …you would make like The Don and have my back, literally. Free speech for Berny, but not for me (“user banned indefinitely” for having the audacity of dope to poke fun at Walter Olson’s very weak arguments…and that’s the part that really rankled you Belvedere). Not that you care, Joe Biden KNEW it was Hunters lab top when he peddled the lie about 51 intelligence experts during the so called debate…let alone, Matthew Yglesis being completely full of his own shitte in your interview when touting the Trump vaccine, I mean the Biden administration’s Chinese Communist Corona Party protocols. Not that you care, everything the U.S. Big Government did was an hysterical overreaction to a man made virus that escaped a Chinese lab…and your patron Saint Fauci KNEW that fact all along…just like the Trump dumpster fire “my friend Xi” did. Not that you find anything I said coherent because you can’t help but NOT think outside your own self contained Jack in the box… just like The Don himself. Happy New Year. Gotta run on. Thanks for taking my rant, for now, as you and I KNOW you will make just like the Biden Administration when you do not care for being made fun of by an honest interlocutor. God help U.S.
The threat of militarizing federal, state and local law enforcement (with which, for example, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and others have pledged to cooperate) in order to achieve mass deportation is caused by--- Democrats and Rachel Levine? Really?
Of course not. That was just a list of a few of the problems that the Democrats have some responsibility for. And that motivates those who think -- like Andrew Sullivan -- that Trump is the still lesser of two weevils.
But you might note my earlier comment on deportations here:
"Operation Wetback" led to the deportation of several million Mexicans in the early 1950s, all, apparently, without massive "militarizing federal, state and local law enforcement".
Maybe moot as to what is the optimal solution, but hard not to get the impression that the Democrats have done diddly-squat to fix it.
Removed your previous comment because it was totally off-topic. Will do so again if you insist on doing so again. As for Operation Wetback, if you had bothered to check the hyperlink we provided comparing Obama's deportation record to other presidents you would have found that Eisenhower removed 110,000 immigrants. The largest numbers I have seen are 200,000. Millions is a gross exaggeration. https://www.cato.org/blog/deportation-rates-historical-perspective
For Trump and company the massive militarization is a feature not a problem. It is in fact largely the entire point. It has a sacramental quality--- the outward and visible sign of the strong man's inward and spiritual potency. Just like the missiles paraded through Red Square in Soviet times. Trump wanted the same militarist spectacle that North Korea's Dear Leader enjoys.
The only thing that matters is that significant numbers of bodies are seen being shipped out of the country.
As long as the problem is perceived as a Democratic or Republican problem and not a bipartisan national security issue diddly squat will ever get done. And every bipartisan plan has been killed by--- Republicans.
Trump is hare-brained, immoral, and a constitutional threat, and mass deportation of millions probably would require something that looks like a militarized state. And I chuckled at “Schrödinger s Immigrant.” But how do you write “only 11 million” as if that’s not a significant number or issue? Yes, 11 million is less than 20 million, but in what thinking analysis of this issue is either number preceded by the word “only”? Don’t let your TDS cloud your judgment. Immigration is so much more than a jobs numbers issue, and so while Schrödinger’s Immigrant is good for humorously illustrating Trumpian nonsense, it doesn’t get us very far in addressing the challenges of our unwillingness and/or inability to control our own border. I am a huge fan of orderly immigration for many reasons (well articulated by Caplan), and the fact that Trump is simply stupid about the issue doesn’t mean that any of the rest of us should be, or that valid concerns about the issue should be dismissed.
It is a concern. It has been a concern for the last 30 years. It was a concern when the bipartisan "Gang of 8" came up with a bipartisan start toward orderly immigration (hardly a solution) in the second term of Obama--- but Boehner refused to bring it to the floor because--- well Obama.
The bipartisan plan of 2023 (even less of a solution but still more helpful than the nothing being done for three decades) was also killed by Republicans at the behest of their "Dear Leader" so as not to lose the political advantage of a dysfunctional immigration system.
We were promised a wall (paid for by Mexico apparently through tariffs that Mexico doesn't pay but never mind) and they had control of Congress for two years and yet did nothing to build a wall or seize revenues from Mexico to build it. No funding for the project by the Republican Congress.
We are now promised the mass deportation of really an unknown number of immigrants. I have been trying to calculate how many cattle cars will be needed to transport them and what international agreements Trump is planning to execute on "Day One" in order to deport them back to wherever.
None of what Trump proposes will enable us to control our own BORDERS. The pull of our economy which attracts and rewards immigrants and the push of the hideous conditions from which immigrants are leaving are too great to deter them. The importation of illicit drugs are a demand issue--- not a supply issue which ending the "War on Drugs" would remedy better than beefed up border security. I can only laugh when Republicans wring their hands over the problem of "illegal gun trafficking" because the weapons are smuggled out of the US and then smuggled back in. After all people are illegal not guns.
"Operation Wetback was an immigration law enforcement initiative created by Joseph Swing, a retired United States Army lieutenant general and head of the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). The program was implemented in June 1954 by U.S. Attorney General Herbert Brownell.[1] The short-lived operation used military-style tactics to remove Mexican immigrants—some of them American citizens—from the United States. .... Overall, there were 1,074,277 'returns', defined as 'confirmed movement of an inadmissible or deportable alien out of the United States not based on an order of removal' in the first year of Operation Wetback. ...."
Excellent piece. Most people in America have no idea what dictatorship is really like. They've been spoiled by 250 years of human rights invented by founding fathers who introduced the idea to the world. They don't really understand the threat on a gut level because they take a representative, non-militarized society for granted. I fear they're about to learn the hard truth, but, as always in dictatorships, too late to do anything about it.
Freedom is like air. You don't notice it until it's gone.
You're forgetting that Biden is already guilty of violating the 1st Amendment and censoring the Free Speech of Americans by suppressing truthful information and pushing false information about both the pandemic and the Hunter Biden laptop story, BOTH affecting the outcome of the 2020 election.
You're forgetting that the leader of the free world did this, performing the actions of an authoritarian dictator, while accusing his enemy to be one all while politically persecuting him.
You're forgetting that this same leader coerced people to push an experimental drug into their veins. A drug that was neither as safe nor as effective as he said it was.
You're forgetting that the Left told everyone Biden was competent when anyone older than a toddler could see that he is unable to walk a straight line, speak a sentence or tie his shoes.
They have literally lied, coerced, tricked and abused the public for 4 years, all while ruining the economy and allowing in illegals.
NOBODY can refute these things.
But yeah, the boogeyman is bad because he's orange. Leftists are RIDICULOUS for pretending the emperor is clothed.
Wow. Literally everything you said was false. Talk about Democrat Derangement Syndrome! :-)
The irony of Trump Derangement Syndrome is that the term is used exclusively by those who are suffering from it.
As much as you should know I hate Trump Robert, and loathe RD’s not responding to anything you actually wrote, but just making like Tony Sopranos and pulling from the bottom of the deck, misplaying the “WHATABOUTISM” card…it would have been nice to bear witness to you actually refuting his argument than saying his suffers from Bush, I mean Trump Derangement Syndrome. We are both old enough to remember that canard, just, speaking of link to the Biden Administration grotesque violation of Berney’s first amendment right to be unPopulist, I mean violation of free speech true…or not true…like Joes actually saying with emphasis, on the public stage, something the wannabe President KNEW was not true about is fing turd son’s lab top
Please refute my claims and sources. Thanks.
What was false?
Biden violated the 1st amendment. It was stated by the courts.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/09/08/5th-circuit-ruling-covid-content-moderation/
The media suppressed the Hunter Biden laptop before the 2020 election and it affected the outcome of the election. How can anyone deny this?
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-nyt-now-admits-the-biden-laptop
https://nypost.com/2024/10/30/us-news/fbi-tried-to-minimize-hunter-biden-laptop-bombshell-days-before-scoop-as-facebook-exec-warned-against-offending-dems/
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/article-on-joe-and-hunter-biden-censored
The vaccine mandates were ILLEGAL. These were overturned by several levels of Government.
https://law.stanford.edu/2022/01/20/a-look-at-the-supreme-court-ruling-on-vaccination-mandates/
The Democrat led media, including Biden himself were saying that if you got the shot, you wouldn't get Covid but the fact that the Covid vaccines were NOT AS EFFECTIVE AS WE WERE TOLD should be plain when you were told you would need 3-4 booster in 2021, and that effectively waned after 3 months AND that people who were vaccinated were still getting Covid. The majority of people in hospitals WITH COVID after the vaccination campaigns were vaccinated people. Do you need me to get the proof?
And they were not as safe as we were told, as proven by the record number of people who were affected by the vaccines. My children making up that cohort.
And Biden is obviously cognitively impaired, which is why the Dems dropped him as a hot potato as soon as his debate with Trump was over.
Please refute any of my sources. Thanks.
Look, you sound really angry, and I get it. But I think your anger is misdirected. You're upset about emails and that the media didn't trumpet what could have easily been disinformation at the time it was released. And you seem upset that vaccines, a modern miracle that saves millions of lives, are helped by booster shots. And you're upset that federal employees were required to get vaccinated to keep their jobs (unless they had religious or health exceptions), along with health workers, and workers for big companies. I get it.
But you're missing the big picture. Joe Biden is not a dictator with a lust for power. (Plus, Joe Biden is out of the picture!) Harris also isn't an authoritarian dictator who wants to warp representative government to become Queen. They are standard, typical, ho-hum politicians. I'm not a fan of most politicians, but they are entirely different animals from Trump who explicitly wants to be a dictator and will burn the Constitution to the ground to get the personal power that his psychotic narcissistic personality demands.
In my view, dictatorship is 100x worse than big government. To be clear, I'm not a Democrat. I'm for incredibly small government that merely protects our civil rights from criminals and invaders. But representative "big government", for all its faults, still presents a process for voting people in and out. It still, in principle, puts the people first as legal equals, raising no one legally above others, so there is no one, in principle, to whom we must bend our knee.
Dictatorship is the opposite. Dictatorship's fundamental premise is that you WILL bend the knee, and you will bend it to one person and his whims. In dictatorship, laws don't matter anymore because only the dictator's whims matter. That's what Trump wants with all his soul, and he has the brazen shamelessness to do it. (He proved this in 2020 by refusing a peaceful transfer of power, and by designing a false slate of electors intended to subvert the will of the people.) Dictatorship is what he lusts after. And that's why Trump is 100x more of a threat than any standard big-government politician.
Your focus is currently myopic. You're looking through a microscope. Stand back and look at the big picture.
You didn't refute a single point of mine but instead started your reply with a personal attack.
The President of the United States, Joe Biden, suppressed Free Speech and censored the speech of Americans through his office.
If that alone doesn't scare the heck out of you, but a bunch of unsubstantiated claims about an Orange man who wasn't a dictator in his 1st 4 years in office MIGHT do, well then I don't think you understand what critical thinking is.
I've offered sources and evidence for all my claims. If you're not educated on these things, you're probably voting in ignorance.
This is not about Biden. There are many things about Biden I dislike. There are many things about most politicians I dislike, including Harris. But please try to focus here. Biden is not trying to be dictator here; nor is Harris. Trump is. Trump is the one with an unquenchable thirst for power and the shamelessness to pursue it by any means necessary.
If you are as well informed (and unbiased) as you say you are, then you know this. If you don't know this, then you are not as well informed as you say or you are biased. Or perhaps both?
Linking to negative articles about Biden is irrelevant. Biden isn't running.
Or were you not aware of that?
You also haven't addressed my points (including, ahem, Trump's attempt to subvert the peaceful transfer of power).
You're focused on nitpicking about a president who isn't running, and then using hyperbole about the nits you've picked.
Meanwhile you're totally fine with a clear dictator taking power.
I thought you might be open to reason, but you're clearly not. You are not arguing in good faith, so I'm done expending effort on you. I'll move on to the millions of people who are more reasonable.
I’m sorry but does anyone think that 20 million legal immigrants and Latino citizens are going to stand by while the jackboots take our people away? What happens when national peaceful resistance gets in the way of the jackboot thugs? What happens if Trump orders the police and Guard to do their jobs and they refuse ? What happens when someone (a jackboot) or a racist follower of the jackboots decides to take the law into his own hands with a firearm. I’ll tell you what-bloodshed that will make Kent State seem like a picnic.
Ready to round up some brown folks (even some US citizens)? Trump is. You may want to stop tanning, and be sure to have your documents with you at all times! Nothing says “Land of the Free” like military in the streets!
I was interested in this article until I clicked on the linked quote “dictator on day one” which took me to the AP article where the quote is “Except for day one,” and “You’re not going to be a dictator, are you?’ I said: ‘No, no, no, other than day one. We’re closing the border, and we’re drilling, drilling, drilling. After that, I’m not a dictator.’”
The first thing he would do when he becomes “dictator on day one,” he has stated, are mass deportations. I stopped reading at that point. If you are going to quote someone and use a link to substantiate your quote, make sure they match. I have enjoyed reading this Substack but now not so much much.
It is unprecedented for a presidential candidate to do anything other than completely disavow the very idea of being a dictator. No candidate who respects this nation’s history, and its uniquely anti-dictatorial legacy, would go anywhere near claiming to be a dictator for any spell of time. Yet Donald Trump has insisted he will be a dictator on day one of his presidency. Hannity even tried to walk him back, to give him an off ramp, but Trump wouldn’t take it. He insisted that for at least one day he will act like a dictator. Your reaction to that is not to be scandalized by it, or even to be troubled by it in the slightest, but to raise a concern over our smoothing out his barely grammatical quote into a coherent sentence. That’s the part, in all of this, that really rankles you. Wow.
I like your comment. Don't worry about RD's reply. I didn't realize it before (which is why I bothered replying to him), but RD is a troll. He posted the exact same response to my comment. RD is crazed Trump-bot. :-)
He isn’t a troll, he’s posting coherent fact based arguments and you are failing to respond in any meaningful way.
False. My responses were extremely meaningful. He has yet to respond to the biggest issue I brought up: Trump's two-month attempt to subvert the will of the people in 2020. Compiling a fake slate of electors? Who does that? Oh, that's right: true dictator wannabes. :-)
You're forgetting that Biden is already guilty of violating the 1st Amendment and censoring the Free Speech of Americans by suppressing truthful information and pushing false information about both the pandemic and the Hunter Biden laptop story, BOTH affecting the outcome of the 2020 election.
You're forgetting that the leader of the free world did this, performing the actions of an authoritarian dictator, while accusing his enemy to be one all while politically persecuting him.
You're forgetting that this same leader coerced people to push an experimental drug into their veins. ILLEGALLY, because the mandates ended up being ILLEGAL. A drug that was neither as safe nor as effective as he said it was.
You're forgetting that the Left told everyone Biden was competent when anyone older than a toddler could see that he is unable to walk a straight line, speak a sentence or tie his shoes.
They have literally lied, coerced, tricked and abused the public for 4 years, all while ruining the economy and allowing in illegals.
NOBODY can refute these things.
But yeah, the boogeyman is bad because he's orange. Leftists are RIDICULOUS for pretending the emperor is clothed.
There is a good reason I have been referring to The Don as formerly the world’s biggest Twitter troll…for years. Speaking of Trump Derangement Syndrome, as much as I hate, and, forgive me Jesus, I do mean mean HATE TRUMP, Kevin’s take on NOT taking the Tony Soprano, in the flesh, wannbe serious is far more coherent then your partisan hackery Berny. If you were not such of weak mind and character yourself, you should welcome an unPopulist view. As well as you should preach there is no such thing as committing pre crimes in a Democracy. And, like I told every single one of my progressive friends that parrot the lie that Trump is going to be a Dick Tator (hat tip Jonah Goldberg), with all due respect to Leviticus 19:33-35, of which I heard the Trump Bible edited out, over my dead body. But like the former and incoming Commander and Chief, I have no doubt if I were caught in the line of fire from some brown shirts …you would make like The Don and have my back, literally. Free speech for Berny, but not for me (“user banned indefinitely” for having the audacity of dope to poke fun at Walter Olson’s very weak arguments…and that’s the part that really rankled you Belvedere). Not that you care, Joe Biden KNEW it was Hunters lab top when he peddled the lie about 51 intelligence experts during the so called debate…let alone, Matthew Yglesis being completely full of his own shitte in your interview when touting the Trump vaccine, I mean the Biden administration’s Chinese Communist Corona Party protocols. Not that you care, everything the U.S. Big Government did was an hysterical overreaction to a man made virus that escaped a Chinese lab…and your patron Saint Fauci KNEW that fact all along…just like the Trump dumpster fire “my friend Xi” did. Not that you find anything I said coherent because you can’t help but NOT think outside your own self contained Jack in the box… just like The Don himself. Happy New Year. Gotta run on. Thanks for taking my rant, for now, as you and I KNOW you will make just like the Biden Administration when you do not care for being made fun of by an honest interlocutor. God help U.S.
Look like they have their thumbs -- to the elbows -- on the scales ...
Yeah, we’re the problem—not the guy who has vowed to be a dictator on day one of his presidency.
The threat of militarizing federal, state and local law enforcement (with which, for example, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and others have pledged to cooperate) in order to achieve mass deportation is caused by--- Democrats and Rachel Levine? Really?
Of course not. That was just a list of a few of the problems that the Democrats have some responsibility for. And that motivates those who think -- like Andrew Sullivan -- that Trump is the still lesser of two weevils.
But you might note my earlier comment on deportations here:
https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/trumps-mass-deportation-plans-will/comment/73848331
"Operation Wetback" led to the deportation of several million Mexicans in the early 1950s, all, apparently, without massive "militarizing federal, state and local law enforcement".
Maybe moot as to what is the optimal solution, but hard not to get the impression that the Democrats have done diddly-squat to fix it.
Removed your previous comment because it was totally off-topic. Will do so again if you insist on doing so again. As for Operation Wetback, if you had bothered to check the hyperlink we provided comparing Obama's deportation record to other presidents you would have found that Eisenhower removed 110,000 immigrants. The largest numbers I have seen are 200,000. Millions is a gross exaggeration. https://www.cato.org/blog/deportation-rates-historical-perspective
Andrew Sullivan has endorsed Harris for President (albeit "as the lesser of two evils") -- NOT Trump!
For Trump and company the massive militarization is a feature not a problem. It is in fact largely the entire point. It has a sacramental quality--- the outward and visible sign of the strong man's inward and spiritual potency. Just like the missiles paraded through Red Square in Soviet times. Trump wanted the same militarist spectacle that North Korea's Dear Leader enjoys.
The only thing that matters is that significant numbers of bodies are seen being shipped out of the country.
As long as the problem is perceived as a Democratic or Republican problem and not a bipartisan national security issue diddly squat will ever get done. And every bipartisan plan has been killed by--- Republicans.
Trump is hare-brained, immoral, and a constitutional threat, and mass deportation of millions probably would require something that looks like a militarized state. And I chuckled at “Schrödinger s Immigrant.” But how do you write “only 11 million” as if that’s not a significant number or issue? Yes, 11 million is less than 20 million, but in what thinking analysis of this issue is either number preceded by the word “only”? Don’t let your TDS cloud your judgment. Immigration is so much more than a jobs numbers issue, and so while Schrödinger’s Immigrant is good for humorously illustrating Trumpian nonsense, it doesn’t get us very far in addressing the challenges of our unwillingness and/or inability to control our own border. I am a huge fan of orderly immigration for many reasons (well articulated by Caplan), and the fact that Trump is simply stupid about the issue doesn’t mean that any of the rest of us should be, or that valid concerns about the issue should be dismissed.
It is a concern. It has been a concern for the last 30 years. It was a concern when the bipartisan "Gang of 8" came up with a bipartisan start toward orderly immigration (hardly a solution) in the second term of Obama--- but Boehner refused to bring it to the floor because--- well Obama.
The bipartisan plan of 2023 (even less of a solution but still more helpful than the nothing being done for three decades) was also killed by Republicans at the behest of their "Dear Leader" so as not to lose the political advantage of a dysfunctional immigration system.
We were promised a wall (paid for by Mexico apparently through tariffs that Mexico doesn't pay but never mind) and they had control of Congress for two years and yet did nothing to build a wall or seize revenues from Mexico to build it. No funding for the project by the Republican Congress.
We are now promised the mass deportation of really an unknown number of immigrants. I have been trying to calculate how many cattle cars will be needed to transport them and what international agreements Trump is planning to execute on "Day One" in order to deport them back to wherever.
None of what Trump proposes will enable us to control our own BORDERS. The pull of our economy which attracts and rewards immigrants and the push of the hideous conditions from which immigrants are leaving are too great to deter them. The importation of illicit drugs are a demand issue--- not a supply issue which ending the "War on Drugs" would remedy better than beefed up border security. I can only laugh when Republicans wring their hands over the problem of "illegal gun trafficking" because the weapons are smuggled out of the US and then smuggled back in. After all people are illegal not guns.
The dump promised to do many things when he was running for puppet-in-chief in 2016. How many promises did the dump keep?
I recall that the first thing the dump did toward "draining the swamp" was to pack his cabinet with swamp critters.
Remember, the dump is a Democratic Party member who patched over to the Republican Party so he could run for puppet-in-chief.
Y'all might be interested in a bit of history:
"Operation Wetback was an immigration law enforcement initiative created by Joseph Swing, a retired United States Army lieutenant general and head of the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). The program was implemented in June 1954 by U.S. Attorney General Herbert Brownell.[1] The short-lived operation used military-style tactics to remove Mexican immigrants—some of them American citizens—from the United States. .... Overall, there were 1,074,277 'returns', defined as 'confirmed movement of an inadmissible or deportable alien out of the United States not based on an order of removal' in the first year of Operation Wetback. ...."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Wetback
Responded above. But here's another source: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2015/nov/11/donald-trump/trump-eisenhower-deported-15-million-immigrants/
Hey the Supreme Court was already on board before the Barret appointment:
https://www.yalelawjournal.org/forum/trump-v-hawaii
Five questions. Do you favour:
1. War: Yes or no?
2. Inflation: Yes or no?
3. Mass uncontrolled migration: Yes or no?
4. Unelected, unpopular candidate: Yes or no?
5. Continued cancer-like growth of the Blob: Yes or no?
This is exactly wrong. More people, fewer problems. People solve more problems than they create.