Institutional Serial Killer

 According to Richardson's research, ICE is responsible for killing 10 people on the streets of America. In ICE run detention centers - outside of the public eye - another 21 people have died this year.

The tactical decision to throw the outright Nazi, Greg Bovino, out the door has reduced the rhetorical temperature and some of the more egregious public displays of force in American cities. This has not meant a change in culture within Trump's Brown Shirts. They can't help but feel that they are immune to public accountability, as the killers of Renee Good and Alex Pretti are still shielded from the consequences of their actions.

The killing yesterday of Juan Sebastian Guerrero in Maine is a sadly typical extrajudicial killing for ICE. They targeted the wrong person based on appearance - a Kavanaugh Stop - and then got trigger happy. Guerrero was shot in the head in front of his 3 year old daughter. Guerrero is legally able to work in the US, but for the Nazis like Stephen Miller, it is not his legal status but his skin color that makes him a target. His crime was not crossing a line on a map without paperwork, but being brown skinned.

It is worth noting that this happened in Maine. Susan Collins will not have the luxury of facing a rapist with a Nazi tattoo. Maine Democrats will select a replacement soon, but Collins will have to go before the voters of Maine and explain her support for an organization that has killed 31 people in about six months. 

According to the Gestapo's own statistics, there have been 9 killings (including manslaughter) by undocumented aliens so far this year. From 2023-25, the number ranged from 23 to 29. That means ICE is responsible for more deaths than the so-called "dangerous aliens" that they have purportedly mobilized against. At this pace, they will extinguish the lives of about 60 human beings, which is an par with the worst surge of violence committed by undocumented people during the crisis of 2021-2.

ICE is often compared to a criminal gang, but I also think they are like an institutional serial killer. They operate across geographic distance to dilute their crimes, they prey on a certain ethnic group, they escape accountability for far too long.

We are governed by psychopaths. 

It Doesn't Have To Be Like This

 As Trump slides further into senescence and mental incompetency, his once feared ability to hang a demeaning nickname on opponents feels tired and listless. Jon OssJackOff? WTF? His speech is narrowing into a handful of elementary school level diction and playground insults. The trailer park aesthetics that he has brought to the South Lawn and the Reflecting Pool are just a visual manifestation of the garish, childish nature of the mewling man-baby in the People's House.

Meanwhile, yesterday gave us another vision, a reminder of public rhetoric that soared rather than demeaned, that tried to draw us together rather than tear us apart. 

Zohran Mamdani is a legitimate political talent, and his speech at the Knicks celebration was not only expertly crafted, but delivered with an optimistic brio that was incredibly infectious. Meanwhile, the dedication of the Obama Presidential Library reminded us of what it was like to hope and come together. That many attendees wore tan suits to remind us of how petty and mean-spirited the criticisms were of Obama - criticisms rooted the refusal to believe a Black man could be president, including Trump's birther movement - and how far we've fallen in terms of the standards to which we hold the Chief Magistrate of the land.

Mamdani is sadly unable to pursue the White House, but there are others who can try and point us to a better, more wholesome future than the degraded troll squatting in the Oval Office. Biden was a good "prime minister" working his thin majorities to pass important legislation, but he was simply not the man to rally people to a great cause. 

We can find that person again and be that country again.

The Lies That Bind

 Martin Longman looks at the tactical bind that the GOP is in this November. The basic issue is this: MAGA is centered in "low information" voters. These are people who do not think in especially ideological terms, but rather respond to various cues about the world in a less systematic way. Trump, in this telling, is simply one of dozens of global leaders who have risen to power because the "system" sucks and they want someone to upset the apple cart. It's broadly populist in its contempt for governing expertise and compromise, because they just want to burn the whole thing down.

Trump is currently burning the whole thing down.

Turns out, though, that burning the whole thing down is actually really damaging to a lot things that MAGA likes. Additionally, MAGA is now invested in the arsonist. They simply don't vote in the same numbers in special elections certainly, but also the midterms. Democrats did surprisingly well in the 2022 midterms, despite Biden's low approval ratings, because Trump's GOP really are only TRUMP'S GOP. Without him on the ballot, Republicans could suffer in the turnout war.

The problem - as Longman and others have identified - is that Trump is incredibly unpopular. What's more, he's really unpopular on the issues that people care the most about. Then you add in him saying shit like he doesn't care about the economy or the midterms (his way of preemptively deflecting the stench of coming defeat) and why would anyone come out and vote for the GOP. 

Susie Wiles is talking about a convention in August or September to rally the MAGA faithful. The problem is that he's becoming increasingly toxic. If you are the Democrats, you WANT to run against Trump, against gas prices, against corruption. By all means, re-center Trump in the popular imagination. Democratic partisans are going to crawl through broken glass and lemon juice to vote this November. Blacks are pissed at the gutting of the Voting Rights Act. Hispanics are pissed at the wanton cruelty of ICE. Suburbanites are repelled by the corruption and incompetence. The idea that they can rally these infrequent voters who often back Trump seems false on the face of it.

Unless they are hardcore MAGA, they wanted the price of stuff to come down. Inflation is not only had right now, but it looks to get worse over the course of the next six months. Oil prices won't come down for a year or more even if the war ended tomorrow. Fertilizer prices are going to create chaos on the Farm Belt and the grocery store.

Wiles may feel like her only avenue is to "let Trump be Trump" but that seems foolish.

Racist In Chief

 Richardson's Recap began with cataloguing Trump's insane Tweet-stream over the course of an hour on Saturday. Included were these chestnuts:

Then, at 11:13, Trump posted an image of House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), who is Black, holding a baseball bat. The caption calls Jeffries “low IQ,” “a THUG,” and “a danger to our Country.”

...

Then, at 11:40, he posted an image of what appeared to be the reflecting pool full of algae next to one that appeared to be the reflecting pool clean and with a bright blue color. Above the dirty image was the label “Hussein Obama,” and below it, the caption “Photo taken Sept[ember] 29, 2012”; the clean one was labeled with “Trump” and “Coming Soon.” Over the two together, the caption read: “This is what our Country was before, and after, “TRUMP!”

We can talk all we want about Trump's devastating impact on policy. Richardson notes his apparent plans to draw down American troops in Germany, because the German Chancellor pointed out - correctly - that America has no strategic vision for the war in Iran. That's really bad!

However, any discussion of Trump's impact on America - and an impact that will sadly, I believe, outlast him - is how he has dragged all sorts of slurs and nastiness out into the open again. Social media has been flooded with the war "retard" as a slur, which is really pretty appalling. It's not just MAGA that uses the word, either. 

The racism that Trump mainlines into public discourse would have ended a career 20 years ago. As he spiral into narcissistic wounds from his collapsing support as he awful policies become real, he leans more and more into the transgressive nature of his poisonous discourse. This thrashing about is going to get worse and he will get worse until we get the inevitable moment when Mike Johnson will explain that he hasn't seen the quote where Trump used the N-word five times in a single sentence.

I remain convinced that Trump remains an avatar for about a quarter of the American people and the rest of his support is just partisanship. That quarter of the American people can go fuck themselves.

A Most Unamerican Speech; A Most American Speech

 Donald Trump, yesterday, droned the words that Stephen Miller wrote for him about America being a racial project. He basically asserted that America was a nation-state for white, Anglo-Saxons. There's a version of this speech - delivered with the King Charles standing next to him - that might have made sense. 

In fact, Charles later gave that speech to Congress.

Where Trump spoke of some sort of racial and genetic connection - "Their veins ran with Anglo-Saxon courage." - Charles spoke of American ideals, including the value of bringing diverse voices together in a national project. If there was a connection between Britain and America, it was in the preservation of liberty through checks on Executive power, as was written into the Magna Carta and the Constitution. (In fact, the Magna Carta is somewhat more prominent a document in America than Britain.) Where Trump intoned the idea that America was a project of white Anglo-Saxons, Charles said "the essence of our two Nations is a generosity of spirit and a duty to foster compassion, to promote peace, to deepen mutual understanding and to value all people, of all faiths, or none."

The King of England continued: “Our common ideals were not only crucial for liberty and equality, they are also the foundation of our shared prosperity. The Rule of Law: the certainty of stable and accessible rules, an independent judiciary resolving disputes and delivering impartial justice. These features created the conditions for centuries of unmatched economic growth in our two countries.”

It was telling that when he affirmed support for Ukraine, he received a standing ovation. This, while Trump and Netanyahu move closer to Putin.

Trump's virulent social media team released a picture of Charles and Trump that read "TWO KINGS." While this is a direct troll of the No Kings protest movement, it is also the agenda to destroy checks and balances and create a form of personal rule that would be indistinguishable from a monarchy.

TL;DR: The King of England - the descendant of King George - gave a more American speech than the "president" of the United States.

The Hungarian Model

 For years, conservatives have looked at Viktor Orban's competitive authoritarianism as a model for what they wish to accomplish in the US. They want a white, ethno-state with an enriched elite that buttresses a patrimonial strongman who will prevent them from having to press 1 for English.

The rout of Orban's Fidesz party a few weeks back, however, is now the model for the pro-democracy forces in America. Yesterday, the "Supreme" Court - in yet another lawless, ahistorical nullification of American law - decided to effectively end the Voting Rights Act. Florida moved quickly to change its maps in seeming violation of its state constitution. I would expect Tennessee to follow suit. (All of this is downstream from Rucho, which ruled that partisan gerrymanders were legal, which might be up there with Dred Scott as the worst SCOTUS decisions of all time.)

In order to squeeze more Republican seats out of already gerrymandered states, Texas and Florida have risked "dummymanders." These are gerrymanders that dilute the strength of "red" districts to create more "purple" ones, and in return are susceptible to being overwhelmed in a wave election. If you take an R+15, a D+7 and a D+15 set of districts and create a D+25, an R+8 and R+7 set, you risk losing that original R+15 district in a wave year.

That's what happened to Fidesz and Orban. They has so squeezed the gerrymander and rigged the map that when a true mass mobilization occurred, it carried away those +10 districts.

It is not an exaggeration to say that Democrats winning the House this fall is likely the moment where we will know if America remains a democracy. Trump is almost certain to be less popular in November than he is now. Gas prices are not going to come down. He, himself, is insulated within his fantasy ballroom and his coterie of sycophants. 

I'm not especially concerned with the generic ballot right now, because I think people don't like the Democrats but absolutely HATE Trump, and that shows up in soft support for the Democratic Party that will not dissuade people from either swinging back to Democrats or simply staying home if they are Republicans.

Still, it could require a D+10 wave to overwhelm the efforts of the Supreme Court to end American democracy.

Going Down With The Ship

 Morris has the tale of Trump's truly abysmal approval ratings. He's underwater among almost every demographic except "people who voted for him 2024" and "men over 65." Even "white, non-college" is basically 50-50. Even his voters - and I think over time, people will not admit to voting for him - are at only 84% approval. Even the motivated reasoning of justifying your choice isn't enough.

My general feeling as an historian is that - as Adam Smith said - there's a lot of ruin in a nation. We will come out of this period weakened, fractured, degraded, but over time, we can recover - as long as we put it behind us.

However, our school has been hit roughly every year with an instance of hate speech. It's anonymous, it's racist and/or homophobic and/or sexist. In other words, it's like so much of the vile corners of our internet culture. But more significantly, it has happened every year since 2017. 

Since 2017.

Look, the racism, sexism and homophobia were always there. I'm not naive. What this villain has done is brought that language, that hatred, that bigotry out of the shadows and made it acceptable. I would point to his video that depicted the Obamas as monkeys, as just one of a million examples that - in a moral nation - would be the end of this guy.

Yeah, He's A Racist

 Yesterday, Trump retweeted an incredibly racist "meme video" of the Lion King that depicted Barack and Michelle Obama as apes. (There are no apes in the Lion King.) For those of us not in the cult or not in the Very Serious Media that cannot fathom that Donald Trump (Central Park Five, firing Black dealers at his casino, Birtherism, Charlottesville, yada yada yada) might actually be a seething racist this was hardly a surprise. 

Somewhat surprising was the host of usually sycophantic Republican legislators saying "This is racist, take this down." When a Republican Senator from Mississippi say, "I dunno, but this is pretty racist" then it's a pretty good bet that it's racist.

Also less surprising was the inevitable journey that the White House embarked on when called on this. 

"This video isn't racist. You woke snowflakes in the media can't tell a joke."

"OK, this racist video was actually posted by a staffer who has access to the President's social media accounts at 12:30AM."

Then they ask Trump: "Yeah, I posted it. So what?"

A-plus work everyone. 

This feels similar to the Alex Pretti video where they initially went into attack mode, realized it wasn't playing well AT ALL and then actually seemed to lose support in certain segments of MAGALAND/GOP.

Again, I feel like pointing out that the GOP does not have to actually put up with this shit. When Nixon went off the rails, they cut him loose, because the country and even the party came first. This bloated narcissistic racist piece of shit does, indeed, seem to win elections that he should lose, but this iteration is WAAAAAAY worse that the last time - and getting worse by the day.

They own this fucking guy.

Simplest Demand

 Democrats are going to try and reform ICE in the coming weeks, as they have a two week CR on DHS funding to try and hammer out some guardrails for the increasingly lawless agency.

Some of these suggestions are well and good, but I think one thing they HAVE to demand is that Border Patrol returns to the border. 

The "Border" is arguably the one issue that Trump still has positive approval ratings, as crossings have indeed decreased. Still, Alex Pretti was shot by two BP agents, not "ICE" agents. We have largely conflated the two for ease, but Border Patrol is really where the worst, trigger happy assholes reside. Long time ICE agents don't want to ride with them, because they are the ones most likely to pull their service weapon. They are routinely arrested for various violent crimes like spousal abuse.

The quickest way to both de-escalate what's happening in places like Minneapolis and deprive the purges of needed manpower is to deny Border Patrol from operating more than 15 miles from the actual border.

There's Something Happening Here

 Yesterday, there was a special election in a Texas state Senate race. Trump carried the district by 17 points in 2024. Yesterday, the Democrat won by 14 points, a 31 point swing. Democrat Taylor Rehmet spent almost no money compared to his well-funded and Trump-endorsed opponent and still won a landslide. Rehmet is an Air Force veteran and union leader and the sort of male-coded candidate that I personally think will overperform, due to vibes about Democrats being too female, too minority centered. 

Fox News actually does respectable polling, and they have Democrats winning the generic ballot by 6 points, the highest they've ever recorded. As Morris notes, generic ballot polling doesn't tell us what will happen this November, but the party that doesn't control the White House usually picks up about 6 points between January polling and November voting. They start this cycle in the strongest position that they have ever been in. 

Republicans are doubling down, in many ways, on the racism of their immigration policies. Even Americans who might support tighter border controls are not thrilled with the images coming from Minnesota. Trump (or Miller) thinks that they can just change the optics by firing Bovino and his Nazi wardrobe, but that's actually not the imagery that has people enraged. It's five year old Liam Conejo Ramos being arrested for the crime of being brown. 

Meanwhile, with Republicans falling further and further underwater, the slow leak of Epstein files show that that story isn't going away either. As I wrote on Friday, Trump's policies are even less popular than he is himself. Oddly, with Democrats it's usually the opposite. Democratic policies are generally pretty popular - healthcare, taxing the rich, actual infrastructure spending, better education - but Dem pols usually poll worse. Once Trump's personality cult has to assimilate the fact that he really is a pedophile and rapist - if they even can assimilate that information - then the bottom truly does fall out. 

The prevailing fear many of us have right now as we look at the political dynamic is that Trump will throw everything at the wall to try and subvert the midterms in nine months. As of now, he has been largely confined to more or less "legal" attempts like gerrymandering mid-decade. As America rejects him, he will grow more and more dangerous, Stephen Miller will get more and more fevered in his assault on the Constitution. 

However, last night's election results could mean that they won't be able to pull it off. 

Can The Supremes Actually Apply The Text?

 Yglesias summarizes the Trump Administration's war on birthright citizenship. By just about any standard - the text of the XIVth amendment, the existing precedents, basic bureaucratic paperwork, federalism and the issuing of birth certificates - this should be an open and shut case. There is no defensible position to revoke the plain text of the XIVth, besides racist beliefs in the status of non-white people. 

Ideally, this could be an opportunity to the Sycophantic Six to show that they can actually apply the law as it was intended, rather than giving Trump whatever he wants. They seem to be leaning that way when it comes to the Federal Reserve's independence; they could do the same here.

The Court is so degraded right now, that it is hard to take anything for granted. I do wonder if things like yesterday's protests in Minneapolis could signal to the Court just how fragile their legitimacy is right now. The foundations of Constitutional governance are quaking under our feet right now, and the question is whether the Sycophantic Six will be pallbearers or paladins. 

Hopeful

 Richardson flags something I missed. SCOTUS ruled that Trump could not deploy the National Guard without satisfying the stringent requirements of the Posse Comitatus Act. Basically, unless Congress authorizes martial law, the President may not nationalize the National Guard for law enforcement purposes. What Richardson flagged was Brett "I Like Beet" Kavanaugh wrote in a footnote.

Earlies, Kavanaugh had written a decision allowing people to be stopped for the probable cause of their ethnicity. Guilty on account of being Brown. These became known as "Kavanaugh Stops" which must have stung a bit, because the new footnote reads as follows.

The Fourth Amendment requires that immigration stops must be based on reasonable suspicion of illegal presence, stops must be brief, arrests must be based on probable cause, and officers must not employ excessive force. Moreover, the officers must not make interior immigration stops or arrests based on race or ethnicity.”

We have work to do when it comes to restoring meaningful democracy in this country and for the most part SCOTUS - with its 6-3 Republican majority - stands in the way of that. 

However, Kavanaugh clearly amended his previous position either because he felt he was misinterpreted or because the phrase "Kavanaugh Stops" stung. 

You can't shame MAGA. Their shamelessness is their super power. But maybe you can shame some of the Republicans that are otherwise enabling this shitshow.

Thanks, SCOTUS

 The Kavanaugh Stops - Brown skin is probable cause - are having exactly the sort of effect that one would imagine. Bovino is one of the full on fascists that Trump has empowered through Stephen Miller. I wish I was sanguine that these blatantly unconstitutional efforts would actually move voters, but maybe it will only be when so many Brown people stop coming work that the country slides further into recession that people will realize that terrorizing people is economically counterproductive. Enough people clearly do not care about the human suffering involved.

Speaking of Brown people, glad to see that there are no negative consequences to letting any asshole own weapons of war.

The Senate

 Winning the Senate is harder for Democrats than winning the House, despite Republican efforts to gerrymander House districts. The reason has to do with Democratic strength in urban and suburban areas not mattering in places like Nebraska. Dems can win Omaha, but not the state at large.

Yglesias catches on to the idea that this electoral environment puts the Senate in play for Democrats, despite it being an unfavorable map. The map is always unfavorable, frankly, but it's especially tough this year. Most of the races are in the South or the western bank of the Mississippi. 

The recent lessons from special elections is that people are not at all happy with Republican rule. Whether that translates into votes for a Senate candidate in Kansas or not is arguable, but I'd look at Tennessee 7th last week as offering two lessons.

The first, obviously, is compete everywhere. Recruit good candidates and put effort into every single race. This is especially true in the Senate, where terms last 6 years. Winning during a Blue Tsunami means that seat is yours for six years.

Secondly, make sure the candidate matches the district. Aftyn Behn was not really a great match for that district. Would a more moderate, safer candidate have won? Impossible to say, but it likely would have been closer.

Which brings me to Texas. The promise of flipping Texas has been out there for over a decade. The last time we came close was in 2018 during Trump's first midterm shellacking. Otherwise, it's like Florida: tantalizing but perpetually just out of reach. Still, we are seeing real cratering in support for Republicans among Hispanic groups. Yesterday, Democrats flipping the mayor's office in Miami for the first time in 30 years, because Cubans and other Hispanics are pissed.

Now, maybe that's good enough to flip Texas with any Democrat, but Jasmine Crockett seems like a candidate to rile up Democrats and alienate exactly the sort of middle of the road, low information, small-c conservative voters that you are going to need to win in Texas.

Yes, because she's a Black Woman. Sorry. It's not something you're supposed to say out loud, but Crockett's strength as a back-bench, mediagenic brawler makes for great news clips, but isn't going to flip the Houston and Dallas suburbs. What's more, most voters make decisions on pretty dumb metrics.

In her piece, Richardson talks about the Morris piece I wrote on yesterday. She goes further and looks at how Roger Ailes manipulated that irrational tendency of voters to respond to negative imagery. Democrats keep thinking that they can win with bold policy papers, when people really just react to things like how a candidate looks or talks. What makes Crockett so appealing to Democratic voters is how she taps into the outrageous racism, sexism, corruption and stupidity of the Trump Administration.

The problem is that the majority of voters in Texas are Republican voters - at least in the immediate past. Does she give them permission to swap allegiances? I just doubt it. 

I want to be clear, I'm not endorsing the racism and sexism that exist deep in the brains of American voters. I would note that Harris lost Biden voters who were Black, because it's buried THAT deep.

Leftists will argue that we need candidates like Crockett or Platner that excite the base. I think Trump has done all the partisan motivating we need. The 2026 election will be a persuasion election because we will be competing in R+10 districts and states.

I'd rather elect a White Guy Democrats who will vote for things that help minorities than nominate a candidate that represents those minority groups and loses.

Today In White Supremacy

 The 2025 National Security Strategy document came out and...boy howdy. It's a fevered wet dream is racism and imperialism. It's one of the many instances during Trump 2.0, when it feels like a policy decision was made with the sole purpose of pissing people off. As Richardson notes, it's full of the sort of racial and ethnic panic that Stephen Miller has put at the center of American government. It abandons NATO in fundamental ways. It suggests that we will be doing some incredibly unsavory things in Latin America, that the Venezuela Boat Murders are only hinting at.

Not racist enough for you? The National Parks are - and amazingly this is true - no longer offering free admission on MLK Day and Juneteenth. Instead, Trump's birthday will be a fee holiday in the park system. This really combines the two of the three themes of Trumpistan: Trump's narcissism and Trump's racism. (Trump's corruption is the third.) Let's denigrate Martin Fucking Luther King and elevate Trump. I guess MLK's Nobel Peace Prize isn't as good as Trump's FIFA Peace Prize.

It is difficult frankly to completely catalog how awful the petty stuff is. The Park stuff is just lame. The NSS document is way more concerning, and I wonder how much that stuff is coordinated. Do they pair idiotic nonsense like the Park stuff with the NSS in order to hide the manifest evil in the former?

Anyway, if Congress was alive right now, they might have been angry at this. The reality is that no one votes on the issue of defending NATO, but they do vote the economy. When the economy is bad, they tend to turn on the foreign policy stuff ex post. Power is unitary and so on.

Let's hope the stirring of Congress will arrest this abject surrender to Putin.

What Would Donald Trump Do...

 ...if he were alive today? Do you think he would be angry at that ambulatory sack of hate Stephen Miller for starting a status war with South Korea? I mean, Trump's whole thing is bringing back manufacturing jobs, presumably.

There are a number of reasons that democracy is preferable to autocracy, and one underrated one is that democracies are better at self-correcting. If someone in a normal administration had fucked up as bad as Miller did with this Hyundai raid, he'd be fired. But you can't fire someone if your whole shtick is being Dear Leader.

Let's see if foreign companies get the message.

The Shooter Was Turned In By His Family

 The FBI didn't "get him" because they were running around spreading false shit about trans stuff on bullet casings. 

There will be a lot of bullshit, lies and misconceptions in the next 24 hours as they piece this guy together and figure out why he did it. The early returns appear to show at...wait for it!...highly confusing set of beliefs and actions. There are rumors he's a registered Republican who donated to Trump's campaign. There are rumors he's a groyper, which is a fringe neo-Nazi group led by Nick Fuentes and famous for the Pepe the Frog meme. Fuentes and Kirk were enemies for a time.

We see all the usual signs: excessively online, too many guns and a valorization of gun culture, at least a little alienated.

What we do not see is a trans person, a blue-haired bisexual barista, a cringey liberal wine mom, a Democratic official, an immigrant or a racial minority. 

I would not be at all surprised if we find out he had some left wing views on something like wealth inequality. Horseshoe theory and all that. However, the disgusting smear by just about every member of the Trump Administration that this was "radical left lunatics" is - at first blush - completely untrue.

UPDATE: It seems that there's a very, very good chance that this guy was indeed a Groyper. My worry is that a politicized FBI will not allow that conclusion to reach the living rooms of the average American.

All Of The Strawmen

 Yglesias makes a point about how "National Conservatism" is deeply un-American. In his piece, though, he nods at a reality that hampers Democrats. He does a reflexive attack on some Leftist frame of American history as being representative of Democratic politicians. This is the same frame that has a questionnaire that Harris filled out about Trans rights becoming the entirety of her governing priorities. Even more so, it's taking something a fringe academic might have said and making it the Democratic Party platform.

The asymmetry here is that at this moment the very most extreme fringes of "movement conservatism" are pretty much running the Republican Party. Yes, the trend of calling every little thing racist definitely blunts the impact of that word. However, the actual GOP is pretty damned racist right now.  

To make your point to be about how Democratic politicians have to embrace American patriotism is just a weird place to plant your flag in September 2025.

Groypers

 Richardson unpacks both a subtly inflammatory social media post from Homeland Security and JD Vance's rejection of American ideals.

One reason it's inflammatory is that it makes use of coded Nazi language (twin capital Hs, 14 words). One of the problems with Naziism, especially since World War II but even then, is that Fascists use "humor" and sarcasm to make outrageous statements and then deride people who take their words seriously. All the while this advances certain ideas and words that start out as "jokes" but become acceptable discourse through repetition. 

Recently, Musk and other Rightists have been resurrecting the word "retard" online as a slur. Given the fascination that everyone RFK to Trump to many many others have with genetics and even eugenics, it's hard not to see where they could be going with this. First, you use it as a slur, an insult to someone who you think is stupid, then it's not that far down the road to dehumanizing the developmentally disabled and embracing eugenics and forced sterilization.

We've done it before.

All Of The Above

 Richardson points out something that I think really needs to resonate with those who are trying to oppose Trump and his cabal of fascists. There's a question as to whether to focus on the oligarchic concentration of wealth, the authoritarian anti-constitutionalism or the racism. As HCR notes, they are mutually reinforcing. You could argue that one could not exist without the other. 

The rather blatant racism - like the kind exhibited in the Oval Office the other day - is not popular beyond the base, but threatening demagoguery about immigrants works, right up until someone's friend gets deported. Same with the corruption, few people think it's OK. 

What you wind up relying on is the authoritarian forms of government. Yesterday's assault on Harvard is a good example of this dynamic. This can't possibly be legal, but by attacking with the resources of the Federal government, they hope to cow other institutions. Browbeating opponents creates a reflexive crouch that they can exploit to do really, really unpopular things. In the end, too, they are cruel people; cruel people are usually stupid but arrogant. 

It all goes together.