Apparently exhausted from his hyperventilating freakout last week (“For that matter, what are we going to do?”) Columnist Andrew Sullivan has evidently decided the only way to calm his nerves is by bowing to the sweet siren sounds of appeasement.
After a long, long, apologetic sounding introduction in which he actually partially blames Chuck Schumer for Trump’s child kidnapping scheme, we get this:
So give him his fucking wall. He won the election. He is owed this. It may never be completed; it may not work, as hoped. But it is now the only way to reassure a critical mass of Americans that mass immigration is under control, and the only way to make any progress under this president.
Hahahaha. Sullivan’s apparently forgotten what happens when you try to negotiate with a terrorist. You get more terror.
Trump isn’t owed anything. He’s a money-laundering criminal who conspired with the Russians to steal the Presidency. He's also a bully with a strong streak of sadism. You don’t reward someone like this for his behavior. If you do, he just doubles down. That’s his personality. It’s called “evil.”
And until the white working and middle classes are reassured, we will get nowhere.
Nothing will “reassure” the white working and middle classes that voted for this racist. Sullivan ought to be thinking of who the next social targets of those "poor working class” Trump voters will be. Maybe he should look in the mirror. The hatred of these people will never be assuaged. But even if it could, do we really want to try? Isn’t that just throwing in the towel as a Democrat? What the Hell do you think we stand for?
The Wall is more than a structure—it’s a symbol of hate and evil. Just ask anyone who remembers East Germany. Oh, and it’s a colossal waste of money and won’t work. And Mexico won’t “pay for it.” Ever. But this country would be saddled with that shameful monstrosity until a Democratic President blew it to shards.
Don’t give it to him for nothing, of course. It should come with a full path to citizenship for all DACA immigrants, as in the proposed deal in January that Trump first liked and then reneged on, under Miller’s toxic influence.
Huh? Where do you think Miller is going? There’s no end to the poisonous schemes brewing in that ugly little cranium. He was born to hate. Anyway, a real President already gave DACA immigrants the right to earn citizenship. So, we now have to negotiate for what Trump perfidiously yanked away? By giving him a Wall? You have got to be fucking kidding me. You think Trump would ever do anything that antithetical to his base? Who will vote for him in 2020 if he agreed to what you suggest?
...a legislative fix for Flores; massive new funding for detention facilities, humane family-friendly housing, and, above all, much more money for the immigration legal system, now completely overwhelmed by asylum cases.
Not in this Congress. Those proposals would never see the light of day. If you're talking post-November, and there is a Democratic House, then why would Democrats risk legislating spending sure to be vetoed to trade for a Wall? You think this guy can be trusted to follow through on anything he promises? Explain how you could possibly believe this.
The point is that after this crisis, we have to return this debate to the calm and nitty-gritty area of legislative hearings and compromises, rather than the cable news and social media rhetorical screech of the recent past.
That ship has sailed. And we didn’t steer it. All these people have is their base hate to sustain them. After that is spent, they’ve got nothing. They certainly have no ideas worth listening to. Or maybe you haven’t been paying attention to what's come out of the Congress in the past year. Tax cuts for Billionaires. Gutting Social Security and Medicare. Gutting health care. Suppressing voting rights. Attacking women. No, there won’t be any more “debate” and "calm" until every Republican in office is either kicked out or so cowed that they’ll turn down the Koch Brothers. And that's not going to be for a long time.
At some point, the GOP will need to drop the appearance of bald-faced racism, callousness, and brute force, if they are to survive anywhere outside their base.
Hahahahaha. How else are they going to get elected? That’s their constituency, in case you hadn’t noticed.
If all this sounds like appeasing a bigot, I understand. But better to see it, I think, as a way to address the legitimate concerns, fears, and worries of a large number of Americans who feel like strangers in their own land, and whose emotional response to that has been to empower the white nationalist right.
It doesn’t “sound like” appeasing a bigot. It IS appeasing a bigot. And the “concerns, fears and worries” of people who are apparently DNA-destined to blame others for their problems while ignoring the heavy mental lifting it takes to find the real causes for them --do not interest me.
After this child-snatching abomination, I’ve had it. And so have most Democrats.
There is no “compromise." There is no "deal-making." And there is certainly no "appeasement."
There is only Resistance.