A Tale of Two Men

Look at MAGA family values, in all its repellent splendor.

Real men play videogames instead of parenting their children, I guess? (BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)

1. Manliness

We are all learning about Kilmar Abrego Garcia today, thanks to the Atlantic.

Abrego Garcia’s story is something most middle-aged American men would recognize. He is in his early thirties. He had a job and a wife and a kid. Middle-class life was there for the taking. But sometimes the road is tougher than it looks.

His kid had special needs. His boy, now 5 years old, is autistic and has hearing problems. He’s nonverbal. All of those Hallmark visions of fatherhood? First steps, first words, first game of catch, first day of school—those don’t happen with special-needs kids. You get a different road. We’re supposed to say, “Oh, it’s different, but it’s wonderful in its own way.” And that’s true. But let’s not pretend it’s easy, because it’s not. Families with special-needs kids walk a harder path.

That’s just reality.

There’s a reason that divorce rates are higher for couples with special-needs kids.¹

But when the Lord sent Abrego Garcia a special needs kid, he didn’t run. He stuck. Which is what fathers are supposed to do.

It’s what a man does.

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Like I said, Abrego Garcia’s story is familiar. Except for one thing.

Abrego Garcia didn’t win the geographical lottery. He was born in El Salvador and grew up in constant fear of gang violence.² He didn’t join the jackals, though, and he didn’t give up, either. He fought his way to America and sought asylum.

Can you imagine what that was like? Making your way thousands of miles to a foreign country as a teenager? I can’t.

As messed up as our immigration system is, Abrego Garcia navigated it. He followed every instruction America gave him. Our legal system agreed with his asylum claim and granted him protected status. He continued to comply with every law. He paid his taxes. He’s a member of a union.

So that’s one story.

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This week we also learned something new about Elon Musk. I’ll let him tell it:

Just a guy who has no idea whether or not a child is his and does not seem to be in a hurry to find out. He cuts a couple checks and goes on with his day.

Musk has 13 other children by a number of different women. He does not appear to be terribly involved with any of them. He is actively hostile to one of them. He seems to spend more time—much, much more time—playing video games than parenting.

Like Abrego Garcia, Musk is an immigrant. Except that he did not have to scrap his way to America. Musk was born wealthy, in South Africa, and came here to attend an Ivy League school on a student visa.

One of these individuals is a paragon of manliness; the other is an effete parasite. The fact that the MAGA movement has them confused is a problem.

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The bigger problem, however, is the federal government.

Because the government took one of these individuals and shipped him to a foreign gulag at the same time that it was granting the other one permission to pillage the government itself.

That’s America in 2025. MAGA’s pathologies have metastasized so that its warped views on virtue, manliness, and family values are now official government policy.

Even if they are against the law.

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2. Strength

One last thing. The federal government now stipulates that it was wrong to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia to a foreign prison. It admits that it broke the law.

But instead of trying to remedy its error, our government is going to the mat in an attempt to prevent remedy. The government claims in a filing that the president of the United States has no power—none!—over the sovereign nation of El Salvador and could not possibly coerce the country into returning Abrego Garcia to America.

Here’s the government’s stated position:

Plaintiffs admit—as they must—that the United States does not have custody over Abrego Garcia. They acknowledge that there may be “difficult questions of redressability” in this case, reflecting their recognition that Defendants do not have “the power to produce” Abrego Garcia from CECOT in El Salvador. . . . But even more, they concede that Abrego Garcia is not in Defendants’ custody. . . . Despite their allegations of continued payment for Abrego Garcia’s detention, Plaintiffs do not argue that the United States can exercise its will over a foreign sovereign. The most they ask for is a court order that the United States entreat—or even cajole—a close ally in its fight against transnational cartels.

That is an actual legal argument made by Yaakov M. Roth (acting assistant attorney general, Civil Division), Erez Reuveni (acting deputy director, Office of Immigration Litigation), and Christopher Ian Pryby (trial attorney, Office of Immigration Litigation).

America cannot possibly importune the government of El Salvador for the return of this man because we have no authority over them and El Salvador is a close ally we cannot afford to annoy.

These motherfuckers are making this argument at the same time as they are dispatching the vice president to stand on foreign soil and threaten a formal treaty ally with territorial annexation.

They are doing this while telling Ukraine to submit to Russia because morality and law are immaterial and the only thing that matters is strength—if you don’t hold “the cards” then you do what the more powerful country tells you to do.

Well tell me, counselors, what cards does El Salvador hold that it can’t be made to do what America demands?

But that’s it, isn’t it? Our government won’t demand the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia because it doesn’t want him here. It wants him disappeared.

Because his everyday manliness is an embarrassment to them. It makes Elon Musk—and Yaakov Roth, Erez Reuveni, and Christopher Ian Pryby—look pathetic and weak by comparison.

May God have mercy on their miserable souls.

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3. “Oopsie”

If you haven’t read the Atlantic piece by Nick Miroff, please do. It’s sickening and important.

Abrego Garcia’s family has had no contact with him since he was sent to the megaprison in El Salvador, known as CECOT. His wife spotted her husband in news photographs released by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on the morning of March 16, after a U.S. district judge had told the Trump administration to halt the flights.

“Oopsie,” Bukele wrote on social media, taunting the judge.

Abrego Garcia’s wife recognized her husband’s decorative arm tattoo and scars, according to the court filing. The image showed Salvadoran guards in black ski masks frog-marching him into the prison, with his head shoved down toward the floor. CECOT is the same prison that Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem visited last week, recording videos for social media while standing in front of a cell packed with silent detainees.

If the government wants to deport someone with protected status, the standard course would be to reopen the case and introduce new evidence arguing for deportation. The deportation of a protected-status holder has even stunned some government attorneys I’ve been in touch with who are tracking the case, who declined to be named because they weren’t authorized to speak to the press. “What. The. Fuck,” one texted me.

Read the whole thing.

1. You will see many references to the divorce rates of parents with ASD kids being 80 percent. That does not seem to have any data behind it. There have been a number of studies on the question and they come up with different numbers. The best guess is that there is a moderate, but observable, increase in divorce rate for parents of special-needs kids.

Which makes intuitive sense. But also: We should not expect that this number would remain constant since parental expectations and the existence and accessibility of outside supports are constantly evolving.

2. The gangs targeted him—threatening to kidnap or kill him—in order to extort his parents.