There is no “recovery.” There is only reconciliation. Just as slavery, Japanese internment, the fire bombings, Vietnam, and so much more…there is no erasing them from our collective conscience and history. Only the chance for a decent nation to understand the sins of their past and resolve to be a better people. That is the cause which should drive us forward.
These are good points, and I agree with the premise. But as I mentioned yesterday in this space, when we speak of the Japanese experience during the World War II era, we engage in selective recognition and justice. Tens of thousands of German and Italian legal resident aliens, and their American-born offspring, also were arrested and interned during the time, often on dubious grounds and with little regard for the rights and freedoms that we take for granted. I realize that many people are unaware of this, so poorly has the teaching of this overall experience been handled in our nation. But that is all the more reason to bring light to it here, and elsewhere, as opportunity allows. There are still some of them who are alive among us and deserve to see that dark chapter of their lives formally acknowledged. Their story needs to be told. If not now, then when?
Many families also stopped speaking Italian. It started earlier that WWII because of the prejudice against Italians (and others). My great grandmother, before she died would mix Italian and English. My grandparents understood some Italian but didn't speak it. My mom didn't speak it nor do my siblings and I.
Similar for me. My mother knew some Italian, but never spoke it. I am no linguist, but amazingly words and phrases of Italian have from time to time burst forth from me, gotten God knows how.
There is a weird and strange history of suppression of German culture in the US in the 20th century. Some of it seems to be anti-Catholicism, some anti-Socialism. I ran into a lot of it researching the French and Indian War in my neck of the woods. Western NY and Pennsylvania were basically settled by Germans, but you'd never guess that today.
I am very fortunate in that Rochester NY is open about our history, and I can access local history for free through the library system. Interestingly, during WW2, our Italian population was so large they basically liberated the local POW camp.
One resident recalls people coming to the encampment at Cobbs Hill with gift bundles for the internees: "They'd throw it up over the fence....It was like a picnic when they brought the food....It was like they were all relatives, you know. And they talked in Italian."
They felt very differently about the German POWs. Very, very differently.
That would be so nice. Unfortunately, I’m housebound due to autoimmune in viral conditions. I live in Charlotte Square downtown and it’s wonderful, but my health is ridiculous. What’s fun to know someone else is from here!
I suspect it was due in part to the legacy of World War I as well and the anti-German hysteria of the time -- renaming streets and even foods, banning German language instruction, taking German-language books from the shelves of libraries, driving the German-American press underground, and so on, all in the name of defeating "the Huns" here and abroad and taking it to the Kaiser in absentia. All in all a very sad and unnecessarily divisive chapter in our nation's history.
What you say is true, though this is not as well covered generally. It's the same with the Holocaust. Most recognize it as genocide perpetrated against the Jews (and it certainly was), but it was also against the Roma people, Gays and Lesbians, disabled people, Pols, etc., etc. Is the only way to note these events correctly to list out every single name? I dunno.
Greg's comment was overall a good one. Reconciliation is the only, best way forward. I believe JVL covered this a bit a few weeks ago in a Triad talking about de-Ba'athification, IIRC.
Until recently, I believed we were, as a people, on the path of Reconciliation for our past. What I don't think folks were counting on, myself included, was how uncomfortable that path would be and they've recoiled against that discomfort...but the only way to it, is through it.
Yes, indeed they were, and you are correct that most Americans have little idea that other people besides Japanese Americans were interned.
Pieces of our past like this were not fully covered when I was a student learning history—but at least we studied history in both grade school and high school!
History, like the arts and music, has been jettisoned for STEM and teaching to the test. Yet despire all the emphasis on STEM we are seeing our nation crap on science and the people who devote their lives to learning and research and sharing that knowledge. It's maddening.
How did we get this willfully stupid? My parents and grandparents didn't go to college; my grandfather dropped out of school as a child to work in the mines as a breaker boy to support his family, and my father quit school his senior year to fight in World War II. Yet all of them respected learning and education; they read books and the newspaper, which came twice a day! They watched the news. They encouraged us to do well in school. My grandmother bought my brother subscriptions to Look, Life, and Time magazine, and they got Readers' Digest condensed books that I inhaled along with stacks borrowed from the library.
What the hell has happened to us? Many Americans don't have a clue as to the basics of our nation, whether it's the branches of government or what the Bill of Rights is and why it is so important. Nor do they care. But ask them about some arcane sports rule or the latest reality tv show gossip and they're all over it.
THIS! They won't listen to anything about politics or history ("soooooo boring, ugh"), but are all in on the Housewives/Fiancee/Whatever Other Nonsense thing.
Bruh. Actually READ some history and you will realize that ain't no drama like what's in our nation's (and world's) past. So much popcorn, so much "NO WAY." "WAY!"
The history I learned, in the US midwest of the 60s, comports with the following summary from a query into ChatGPT. My query inquired as to the numbers and treatment of German and Italian nationals, and German or Italian citizens, arrested, detained and interned in the US during WWII. I will leave it to the reader/inquirer as to whether this constitutes "selective recognition." I also defer to Tim's earlier comment about the grievance culture in which we live.
ChatGPT conclusion:
While both German and Italian nationals residing in the U.S. faced arrest and internment under wartime policies, German nationals were interned in greater numbers than Italian nationals, and both were treated less harshly than Japanese Americans. American citizens of German or Italian descent were rarely interned, with a few exceptions based on perceived security risks. Racial and cultural perceptions, political calculations, and the size and integration of immigrant communities played major roles in these distinctions.
I should add that numbers were cited in both narrative and tabular form, but the reader can seek these on their own should they be interested or incited to riot.
This is not a bad summary, and essentially accurate, but the devil is in the details. For example, why were the last German internees released as late as June 1948 -- three years after the end of the war? There never has been a definitive response from the government to that. Then there is the problematic issue of Public Law 100-383 (1988), which afforded the Japanese-American community a formal apology and remaining survivors a $20,000 reparation payment for their wartime ordeal. The Germans and Italians were not included in that and have never received the formal acknowledgment that the federal government gave to the Japanese. None of this is meant to delegitimize that the Japanese were accorded the treatment, only to acknowledge the incomplete nature of it. None of the German former internees whom I interviewed said that they wanted a cash payment. They simply asked that the government put it on the official record that it happened to them too. It seems to be a very reasonable and fair request, one that as I recall only two U.S. senators (Ted Kennedy and Russ Feingold) were willing to get behind and push publicly. Sadly, it went nowhere, and so today few people know the story. It was a big missed opportunity to bring some needed closure to those people.
It looks to me like "what happened to them" was different in an important way. Japanese were interned due to their race, while Germans and Italians were interned on an individual basis for a reason. I can't say whether those reasons were good or bad ones, only that the latter cases were on an individual basis,
There is little doubt that racism played a factor at the time. And the Japanese experience was harsher for having American citizens interned as well, whereas German and Italians who were American citizens almost exclusively were interned on a voluntary basis (such as children who wanted or needed to be with their parents). But no matter what ethnicity or how many, it still was a hardship and, in most cases, a miscarriage of fundamental justice.
I've held back from bringing up the issue with regard to the current matter of migrant detention and deportation, and places like the Alligator Alcatraz, because the situations are not exactly the same. But they are similar enough in some ways to warrant a look back at history and to see how, to some extent, it is repeating itself now. We are outraged at how the nonviolent migrants now are being targeted and rounded up, and what it says about our government and our society. It is less about the numbers and more about the mindset and the process. I've been waiting for MAGA to say "it's just a few of them out of the millions of Hispanics who are here, so what's the big deal?". The big deal is that we are dealing with human lives, not pieces of property. We tend to look past the World War II era today, but how would most people here respond to that way of thinking now, about the current situation? I'm guessing there would be more anger and disgust.
The number of German Nationals (German Citizens) detained was 11K, or 1/10 the number of Japanese Americans (American Citizens) forcibly removed to internment camps. The number of German Americans detained was only a few hundred. The number of Italian Nationals + Italian American Citizens was likewise, just a few hundred. The FBI was watching German Nationals and Citizens who had professed Nazi sympathies. One suspects those held until 1948 may have been investigated for espionage or complicity in war crimes. I would need more than a few anecdotes from interviews to be convinced that German American citizens suffered harm during WWII.
It's neither my goal nor my responsibility to convince you. I simply present the evidence as it exists. You are free to draw your own conclusions about it. But if you'd like my credentials on the topic, for several decades, message me privately and I will give you information on my background that I do not wish to put into print here. It is more than just casual reading and learning, and I did not limit my research and findings to just "a few anecdotes." It was deemed scholarly sound by people in the know and in peer review. That should suffice.
I'll simply say here that while the 11,000 figure is close to accurate for internment, it does not take into account all of those who were targeted and arrested/detained at the local (not federal) level as well, as well as a subcategory of South American Germans who were expatriated and sent here and forcibly detained and interned, ostensibly to be traded for Americans caught behind enemy lines after war broke out between the nations. And the FBI's method of targeting individuals was not as simple as who professed Nazi sympathies (e.g. German-American Bund members). Look for the term ABC List from the era to see how they were categorized, with Bundists and others who were openly pro-Germany usually in the A group. It is a complicated narrative when evaluating the B and C categories and how many people there got called in, even for something as small as a German-language newspaper or magazine subscription, being a friend or family member of someone in the A group, or having a neighbor with whom they were not friendly seeking to do them harm. In a time of war, that sometimes was all it took when police and government/military authorities sometimes acted first and thought later, if at all.
I've never been sympathetic to the "it was just a few of them" argument (define few, precisely, and why that number) or comparison, as if it is were some sort of contest after the fact to see who had it worse. It's easy for us to judge from afar and with the benefit of time. The reality is that no matter what the number is, on any side, many good people lost jobs, lost homes and their personal possessions save for what could fit into a suitcase, were separated from family and friends, had their loyalties unnecessarily called into question, and had to pick up the pieces on their own after the war and try to get new jobs and reestablish their lives with the internment experience on their permanent record. How many wrongfully detained is too many? I say: one. That's all it takes to be a problem. One ... one hundred .. one thousand ... one million ... it was a human hardship that, in way too many cases, did not need to happen and should not have happened. That is my bottom line.
From what I've seen and heard, the vast majority of those detained until 1948 were targeted for deportation to Europe shortly after the war but the government dragged its feet on the matter, with more important fish to fry. Not spies and not war criminals. Mostly just people who got lost in a system that had little interest in dealing with them. I have copies of paperwork for a lot of these matters -- the Freedom of Information Act is our friend -- buried in boxes somewhere deep in the basement after years away from it. But the information is out there for anyone who seeks it and is willing to do the legwork.
Let me add, in looking back, that the initial thread began with the idea that there was no recovery, only reconciliation. One way of reconciliation, it would seem, would be one of my grandparents who claimed German ancestry until his decease in 1956 -- even as his father and mother were both born in Luxembourg. We gather that there were advantages for him in so claiming this in the Wisconsin of his era -- he certainly never claimed himself a victim.
Then it shall be a very long struggle. I use the term “reconciliation” not in a “all is forgiven let’s get along” way. More of “accepting the truth as it is” and moving forward with eyes open.
I mean, as a Christian, I can get behind what you say. But then I think of the number of people who deny the truth about the Civil War and about the backlash to the Civil Rights movement. There may be no reconciliation.
This. Our fellow Americans have removed their hoods, and we can't un-see and un-hear and un-know. I want nothing more to do with these people, EVER, and would 1000% be in favor of splitting this baby tomorrow. UNTIE US FROM THESE CRUEL FOOLS. We haven't been actual United states in a very long time, maybe ever. Time to realize that our differences are irreconcilable. I'm willing to negotiate with (boycott TFO of) the red states on trade, but otherwise, f*ck 'em. Let's split the country, let everyone move to the red/blue states of their choice, then see who has the actual power. Most people don't want Gilead N*zi Germany, so let Red America wither and die.
I did just as you suggested. Last year I sold my Texas home and moved to a very blue state. I kept hoping that before I left, the Texas GOP would come through on its perpetual offer to hold a referendum on leaving the Union. I was hoping I could vote in favor before leaving the state.
I am not looking for reconcilliation with MAGA. The Democrat who gets my vote is the one who promises to be *my* retribution.
I am at the same place. I am having more and more trouble convincing myself that it is the wrong move at this point, too, even though the 'smart' people say splitting the country would be a disaster. I don't know anymore. I can't live with these people who want to subjugate me and create something akin to the Taliban in Afghanistan. CA, NY, Washington, VT, etc. should join Canada. Let people figure out where they want to go. I know it's crazy, but is it crazier than what is happening now?
That is how it feels. It’s such a foreign concept to me, to want to rule over someone else. Meanwhile the side that wants to legislate a better life for all is seen as losers, and empathy is now “weakness”.
I was 1000% done with these people when that smug Heritage POS Kevin Roberts uttered the words "the revolution will be bloodless...if the left allows it." Mmmkay, it's on. There will be no reconciliation EVER. These people are doing every cruel thing they can think of, and their fans are screaming their admiration and mocking people with empathy for being upset that people are needlessly suffering. K, consider me "owned." We are never, ever, EVER getting back together. I will boycott red state everything until the end of time.
The whole problem is a lack of understanding of punishment or penalty. Since there has never been any punishment or penalty for Trump and other cronies, the behavior will continue. Even if Democrats win the behavior will continue. You have to punish people. No one gets that.
Yea. People here are forgetting that the rule of law also includes accountability and punishment. It also allows for reconciliation and reintegration into society, but only if there is accountability and acknowledgment of wrongdoing and commitment to changed behavior.
I have thought for some time that when prosecuting MAGA gangsters, they should offer them exceedingly generous deals--a slate totally wiped clean!--in exchange for thorough allocutions. I wonder how many would take it.
Decades ago a quotation caught my eye that I still have in a file somewhere. It was something to the effect of: "A society cannot function if its members are not held accountable for their actions."
The next Democratic President won't be able to dodge the question of holding Trump accountable. If I were running, one of my principle promises would be to reinstate the Jack Smith investigation and revive the charges. If I won, I would not visit the White House nor permit Trump to attend the inauguration. There would be no kumbaya or "hey, sorry about all that stuff I said during the campaign, nothing personal you know, just politics". I would treat him like the enemy scum he is.
Where is the Democrat saying: 'All the crimes you are committing now will be punished. All the corruption. All the ethics violations. All the shakedowns. Pardons will not save you. The Supreme Court will not save you. We have over 1200 whistleblowers reporting your activities to us. We have contemporaneous notes taken to prosecute you. You are warned.'
Punishing others goes along with wanting to rule others. Viewed through history it seems an obvious and regular human failing. That our system at least purported to be different was a very thin facade. I feel so naive; I thought it was a sincerely held goal, that we wanted to lift all boats.
I guess I got off on a tangent of MAGA-style punishment, when it’s unevenly applied, and heavily laden with cruelty. These people love punishment for its own sake. They are more than a little sadistic.
Seeing the Carville quote above reminded me of my own version for the last ~8 years, "It's the voters, stupid." The sad irony is that, had any Never-Trump politician committed half of what Trump has been convicted or indicted for, Trump voters would demand he be put in jail for life. The double-standard is beyond outrageous. Sure, many Never-Trump voters have their own double-standards, but in MAGA world it's off the charts. 8 years ago I started using the word "cult" in jest, but in the last 4 years we can all use it in the literal sense.
People like Andry are frankly too good for this country.
Is it possible to have negative patriotism? Because that's what I feel after reading Tim's article. Mark Twain said, "Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it."
But my country chose this government. They cheer it's cruelty. They buy and wear apparel celebrating Alligator Alcatraz, which is one hurricane or wildfire away from being a mass murder crime scene.
I haven't listened to the interview with Andry yet. I'm not in the right head space for that.
I think of the outrage machine on the right and I'm like, how do people like that have that much energy to care about (insert stupid things that don't impact your life here)? How sad and depressed are you? Go get some antidepressants and run around a park or something.
No wonder we have nanny state rules that require teachers to out kids... These people are so stupidly angry their kids don't want to talk to them.
I often have those same thoughts. Like, don't you have a life? Who has time to sit around shitposting, making stuff up, being grievance-filled from morning until night? Not people who have a life. And I mean a real life, not a fake Twitter life.
I think for some older people, they can't do much. They can't travel to see family, they can't focus on reading long novels anymore, they can't do close work like sewing anymore, and gardening almost kills them. In my grandparents' time, people in their 80s turned to religion to while away the hours. My parents pooh-poohed that and turned to FOX. Many such cases, as they say.
I don't know why younger people turn to this, but I don't think they will for much longer. Time will tell.
It is moving to read the story of Andry and his empathy and compassion for others. But it will be lost upon the people who most need to hear it, because they are not listening. Their minds are made up that these immigrants who flee from dire circumstances are bad people. They have no right to seek the freedoms and opportunities that we take for granted, even if they have to resort to illegal measures to attain them, because, hey, the law, and the process, and (probably) the skin color.
Their beliefs aside, I often wonder how many of those self-proclaimed patriots have even the remotest of ideas what it is like to grow up and live in true hardship and repression, that what Andry and others are doing is a human act of desperation, not a foreign one. What would they do if it were them in the same situation? Do they realize how hard it is to leave everything and everybody behind from your entire life in seeking safe harbor elsewhere? Do they not feel the same survival instincts for themselves, and the same protective urges for their children? Have they ever lived with the fear that one day someone will come for them and take them away without any ability to even say goodbye to loved ones, maybe feed and arrange care for their pets, and safeguard what little of value they may own?
Likely the answer is "no" to all of the above. And that will not change as long as they have a protector in the White House who both enables and encourages the lack of empathy and understanding. He has successfully made it They against We, and We must fight to prevent They from ruining our lives, so black-and-white, coldly and extremely, is the issue being handled. Supporters ask no questions as human lives, of often good people, increasingly become mere statistics -- how many rounded up, how many deported, how many are in the quota. It remains incomprehensible to me how so many of these Americans among us will volunteer time, labor, and money at a moment's notice when their friends and neighbors are in need, and when natural disasters occur, but that spirit of cooperation and friendly assistance turns to stone cold anger and indifference when those others are of a different national background and moved to flee by desperate circumstances, and holding presumed different political beliefs -- egged on by someone who may well go down in history as the worst American ever. There are many good Americans out there, of all types and political persuasions. But maybe, possibly, perhaps as a whole we are not as good of Americans as we think we are. Or used to be. Or could be. Or should be. We can learn to be better. The willingness to do so is another matter altogether.
I find Andry's attitude remarkable given what has happened to him. I remember many years ago Jeb Bush said immigrants come here out of love. Love for their families, love for their new country to which they are fleeing to.
In our enormous country, it is problematic to generalize news about skin color. Obviously, we have extreme bigots in our government. Here in eastern Massachusetts, the majority of people appear to see other people for who they are not how tanned they are. We live in a CCRC, a senior community of 500 people of whom 400 live in independent apartments. We appreciate we are fortunate to grow older in a healthy way. Still, you would be amazed how many of the people here are actively working to bring back our democracy and moderate climate change. By writing postcards, emails, making calls and even appearing at activist sites, these great friends from 75 to 100yrs are making a difference.
Older people remember what America once was and what it should be. They remember their parents enduring the Great Depression, World War II, Korea, and for their own generation, Vietnam. They remember Ike, and JFK, and MLK and all of the social change that happened from the end of the 50s onward. They remember both the good and bad: the assassinations, the Moon landing, the 72 Olympics, highjackings, Watergate, Patty Hearst, Reagan, Iran Contra, Challenger, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Gulf War, Ruby Ridge, Waco, OKC, the blue dress, Ken Starr, the Brooks Brothers Riot, 9/11, Afghanistan, and the Iraq War, computers, Steve Jobs, smartphones. They have witnessed and experienced so much. And they want future generations to enjoy the same rights and opportunities they had.
I'm tired of the ageism and younger people blaming Baby Boomers (I am at the very tail end) for all the world's problems.
Yeah, I don't like to generalize generations too much. I'm older Gen X and did not fail to notice that half the people at the last protest were older than I am.
It doesn’t take much to trigger the tribal instincts. I think sports is a method of trying to tame that instinct into a harmless outlet. But the urge lurks just beneath the surface, apparently.
Unfortunately instead of sports taming that instinct, they just turned politics into a team sport. They're so intent on "owning the Libs" and "winning", they don't give a crap abut the destruction to our country.
Yes, I agree. Politics has morphed into sport and entertainment - which is saying the same thing. I long for the days when politics and governance was boring, and not revenge blood sport.
"This avalanche of trauma was piled onto him because the luckiest people in the history of the world were convinced that the immigrant down the street might eat their cat."
We can't have a first-rate country with third-rate citizens.
Assuming your conclusion is accurate, what is the solution to the problem? Settle for a third rate country? Try to motivate the third-raters to move up a notice to second place? Or, the nuclear option, get rid of the third-raters ... somehow?
Unfortunately it seems too many people like to be third rate. They want someone else to do their thinking for them and someone to tell them who to blame for their problems. That's what happens when the GOP defunds public education. The magat party wants to make it worse. Is there such a thing as fourth rate?
If we knew the solution . . . I find myself almost stunned by the swiftness and extremity of it all. I’m in a defensive crouch, without a plan to fix it that doesn’t involve money I don’t have (referring to endless requests for donations). Sarah said recently in a podcast that her focus group member expressed “uncertainty” as being their overwhelming burden. It’s not just business entities that hate uncertainty.
OK, but there are only two certainties and one is taxation.
Understanding your concern, part of the plan was to overwhelm the defenses by attacking on all fronts simultaneously, creating a deer in the headlights reaction. At least that seems to have been part of Project 2025. I can not believe that the Felon would have come up with that idea on his own.
Regardless, an old military axiom is appropriate: Any action, even if ultimately wrong, is better than inaction. There have to be others in your area who see the situation as you do. You need to find them and band together to plan whatever kinds of guerilla-type actions (or out in the open) you can think of to show your resistence.
Yes, I agree with all that. We have a vacuum of leadership on our side. It’s odd, because as you say, this strategy was laid out for all to see in Project 2025, and still we are stunned, without a coherent plan. I attend every protest. I have changed my donation patterns away from political campaigns (I can’t compete with the big donors) and instead I’m focusing on my local community needs that have intensified because of Project 2025; public broadcasting, food bank, and the Q community.
David, that's a great question. I never thought that the US would end up lost in this particular wilderness, but here we are. I'm not sure of the way out, but the first step in solving a problem is to understand its nature. And the problem is not really Donald Trump or the cowardly and morally decrepit Republicans in Congress. It's the citizens who voted for them. And no amount of tinkering with the system will protect us from voters who don't know any better.
I grew up in a small city in the heart of rural Maga America. A few years ago, I went back for a class reunion. While a few of us had left, most of my classmates had never gone anywhere, even briefly. Many had started working for small local businesses in high school. Several decades later, they were still working at mind-numbing, soul-crushing jobs. You might wonder what they are curious about. Have you ever had a conversation with someone, and you think they are making jokes about Bigfoot; and then you suddenly realize they are true believers? It's disorienting.
The challenges they face are real. We have always had haves and have-nots. Over my lifetime, there has been a systematic shift in wealth from a growing number of have-nots to the smaller in number but much wealthier haves. Those left behind feel what is happening, but they truly have no idea why. We are dealing with widespread generational ignorance. When someone tells them the reason their lives are hard is because of "those people" (immigrants, gays, socialists, Muslims, minorities, academics, Jews, libs), they believe it. They are angry, and they are fine with hurting the people they think have screwed up their lives. Someone who believes Bigfoot is an actual hairy beast hanging out in the forest isn't going to waste energy questioning the narrative.
Maybe the answer is a Democratic party advocating policies that help most people. But I don't know how they penetrate the Maga information bubble. The people they are trying to reach just won't listen. I'm not sure they are even capable of listening. A better political answer is to give an alternate reason for their lives being hard: that corporate America has bought off politicians to do things that help them instead of their constituents. It has the benefit of being true, but it doesn't help that Democrats have been in on the grift. (I know it's not equivalent. Trump takes millions of dollars in cash, while Democrats mostly have taken traditional, legal payoffs in campaign contributions. But still.)
For many of us, the answer will be personal. I see you had an exit strategy and have acted on it. My children and grandchildren all have their passports. I no longer have the energy for that, and I am along for the ride.
James, another bubble busted: I have lived overseas since Peanut challenged Pea Brain, and won. My current strategy, as it has been for years, is to stay here, with my "socialized medicine" that does not cost an arm and a leg for an MRI + a C-scan because they are already paid for over the years of not unreasonable insurance premium fees.
It's amazing how Republicans have demonized "socialized medicine" as something evil. Socialized medicine is just like our medicine, except it's better and cheaper. We can't have that!
Perhaps it is because American "Conservatives" need an enemy in some form against whom to "conserve" their own power. Call it communism, fascism (although that has returned as the "ism" of choice to emulate), socialism, "wokism", anything to focus the rubes against. Even Ds succumb to needing an opponent to be against rather than something to be for, which seldom works, as 2024 showed us.
Try to motivate the third-raters to move up a notch is the most morally satisfying solution. Don't ask me how, because I have no idea. Probably something to do with making good values cool and fun? Send some well-spoken Democrats on Joe Rogan's show?
Good question. Motivating them depends on what percentage of the country is third-rate. I went into the 2024 election believing it was a minority because political psychologist Karen Stenner, who studies the authoritarian disposition, claims it is about a third of any society. The election results told me it was much more than a third. If it's indeed half, motivating them won't work because we first-raters can't get control of the federal government.
So it's either settle or war, a civil war. I don't think the first-rate voting Americans have the stomach for that.
I truly appreciate the interview with Andry. Every day I struggle with not letting myself fall into a pool of red hot hatred for all of the people who have brought this country to the place we are at. I keep telling myself ‘I will not let them make me be just like them’ since I will always believe that the deciding factor for Trump being president now is hatred. Some days are easier than others and yesterday was a very horrible day. Watching Andry this morning really highlighted how important it is not to give in to hate. I am in awe of how he has come through his ordeal. I hope we hear more from him going forward.
Ah, you just hit on something I was noticing about my own feelings of red hot hatred. My better angels are in hiding. But then how am I not just like MAGAs? I would claim that my hatred is based on their genuine immorality and evil acts, whereas their hatred is based on superficial traits like skin color and gender. All the past leaders of the light, have stressed nonviolence in the face of actual violence. As many before me have learned, it’s crushingly difficult to live up to.
On yesterday's pod with Tim, where Anne Applebaum relayed the result of Trump's demolishing USAID, she noted the good people of Sudan whose leaders are engaged in a civil war: "The Sudanese have begun to organize themselves. There's a movement called the emergency response movement and they create soup kitchens and raise money to help feed people. And so, you know, when everything disappeared, when the whole infrastructure fell apart and the government disappears and there's no international groups there, what you do still find are these local organizations."
These, of course, are the better angels of our nature. They are an outlier in any society. The average person's fear can be exploited by the demagogues leading the war. But those better angels are there. We need to hear more about them. That will keep us from giving in to hate, I think.
So, thanks to Tim for telling us about Andry. It would be great if you had one pod a week that highlighted the better angels in the US.
Most white people in the middle of the country, especially those who hardly know any immigrants and no people of color, believe they are part of the protected class. after all, they have been discriminated against since 1964.
A legitimate concern. It's already happening. I think life is too good for most Americans to be bothered with civic norms. They used to matter. But the participation in face-to-face community groups, where behavioral norms matter, has been in decline for decades. The anonymity of social media has destroyed civic norms.
You are right. It’s exasperating that these people don’t realize how good they have it and how much those norms have shielded them from the kind of corruption and abuse people in third world countries face. Their perception of reality is completely warped by spending more time in an online bubble of disinformation than in real life. That leads them to be in a constant state of rage and panic over non-issues, even when their own lives are peaceful and prosperous. I don’t know how to even begin fixing this.
All well put, Lily. There are efforts to bring people together. See braverangels.com. I’ve been a member for a few years and I also volunteer for them. Good group, good people, both reds and blues.
The only thing that is consistent through the Trump administration is lying and cruelty. Those two things you can absolutely count on, everything else is negotiable.
We must play the hand we have and not dissolve into self pity. That, after all is what His Orange Malignancy and the MAGATs have done. And that has led to cruelty, greed, and self righteousness, characteristics that are a stain on humanity. If the last 100 years have taught anything it is that humanity’s well of behavior is filled with an endless supply of horrors, and generosity, but not in equal measures.
I still find it amazing that five people, Trump, Netanyahu, Putin, The Ayatollah, and Xi, can destroy the lives of billions of people and most of the people watch helplessly and wonder how did this happen?.
It’s the “Me Me Me” Century. Until people experience pain themselves they are unlikely to extend themselves to fight the cause. That is why we believe we all need whatever religion we can get. Otherwise we can look back to the Middle Ages for the basic Virtues.
At a diner typing this on a phone. When an amoral electorate elects an immoral man,these are the kinds of things that happen. The stain will endure long after I’m dead. And there is no fucking way I will forgive the 77 million of us that allowed this to happen.
Trump apologists claim that their purposes are highly moral, and that the righteousness and urgency of their cause -- to "save Western civilization" & "preserve Christianity" & "restore American culture" & "defend natural law" etc. -- require an expedient ranking of which virtues truly matter and who should be expected to honor them.
But any agenda that makes Donald Trump its central hero and public face cannot be a fundamentally moral one.
The Christians who support him have forgiven him for being an imperfect vessel and the smart ones, from McConnell to Vought to Miller see him as their perfect vessel to get what they want: For McConnell, it was tax cuts, RW judges, and limiting Dem power; for Miller it's creating an all white America, and for Vought it's about establishing a Christian religious state.
"They held the meeting anyway, but at the White House rather than at the VP’s residence."
Not a surprise, Trump got wind of it and demanded that they involve him...sooooo, we can most assuredly say, the actions resulting from the meeting are 100% at Trump's direction, thus he owns it all.
My first reaction when reading this about Andry was, "If he went on national TV and expressed these feelings, it would have to change minds." However, I think he would just be drowned out by the malice and ridicule from the MAGATs. How can his story not change your mind about what this administration is doing? So I guess my ultimate answer to the title is NOT ANYTIME SOON.
But he isn't on national TV, and that is a choice made by rich people to purposely look away and pretend they aren't responsible for this. We have to understand that we aren't going to see real stories about concentration camps on CBS and NBC.
Frankly, it just makes me admire people like Tim Miller more.
It might change some minds. Not all, but the Stephen Miller type immigration policies and treatment of people is not popular. If such stories started becoming routine it could make a difference along the margins and that’s a start.
I’m cynical enough to think that Andry telling his story more publicly would elicit a joyful response from MAGAs. Our once-shared humanity is drifting away, and it’s hard to fully comprehend that.
Tim, your reflection on Andry was beautiful. Andry is a remarkable person and you did a great job sharing that with us. Thank you. The video is an emotional thing to watch too.
Thank you, Tim, for writing about Andry. I wasn't expecting to tear up first thing this morning, but I did. Our so-called "leaders" could learn a lot from him. If only they would listen.
An example was the attempt at a consumer boycott at the end of February. Sounded good, until the organizers started a list of carve-outs, so as not to punish our own, or the innocent. And voilá; a valuable tool was defanged.
It's odd. I was listening to JVL and Sarah one time. And they had a segment at the end about Survivor. And how Sarah might survive on Survivor. Now, it's not a show that I ever watched. But I thought 'you know, Survivor is one of the first reality shows, and it is the genesis of The Apprentice' and here we are. So even JVL and Sarah are not quite understanding the cultural move there.
Yes ir is bleak. But I read Facebook posts from Tom Kean Jr whose district next to Mikie Sherrills. I have been in both districts depending upon the census.
Tom Jr is a decent person - or was. Son of a wealthy family. Father was a well regarded governor. But he votes with the GOP for all this shit. In NJ surely he could show some independence. But nope.
I do believe that algorithmic social media content (as much as it is helping the Bulwark on Youtube) is responsible for a lot of the moral rot. When you talk to the worst trolls from your social media feed in person, offline, they aren't normally face-to-face political arsonists (mostly). But online, social media companies boost controversial and confrontational content because it drives engagement and keeps people on the platform. People get the dopamine hit from the likes and reactions they get, so they make more of that content. And then it's turtle-trolls all the way down.
Facebook in particular is a business model of pot stirring to sell ads.
Just last night I was into a relevant conversation about the rearing of children, until of course it took a left turn into 'identifying as cats now'. I immediately tried to tell the guy it was an urban legend and to just stop. A lawyer next to me kind of sheepishly smiled. But the guy didn't even hear me. Like what I said was just something from a million miles away. Didn't break through.
I used to believe that we could repair the rot. Then I tried engaging with a MAGA family member about the Hegseth Signal fiasco and he didn't believe anything from the Atlantic. It wasn't until I sent him a link to a Fox News article saying that the Atlantic article was real that he acknowledged that anything happened but then rationalized how it wasn't that bad.
He believes that not having legal status as an immigrant is worse than being a school shooter since the latter will not be thrown into a foreign gulag.
I know there is talk of 30% of voters being full on MAGA indoctrinated that will never waver in their support. If I cannot talk any sense into a family member I have no hope at convincing Cletus that democracy is at risk or global warming is real or immigrants should not be treated worse than mass murderers and on and on.
As for the question of what to do about repairing the moral rot... I don't know. The Churchill quote of "jaw-jaw is better than war-war." The jaw-jaw doesn't seem to be working and I hope that someone smarter than I can figure out a different alternative.
We can ride it out? Well then, be prepared for when someone steals your car or rapes your daughter that you'll have to bribe somebody to investigate and prosecute. That's the difference between a liberal democracy that runs on the rule of law and an autocracy that runs on corruption. And all autocracies run on corruption. To paraphrase James Carville - I don't mean to insult you - it's the money, stupid.
Perhaps it was clunky. Not 'we can ride it out' but 'maybe it will burn itself out' if we just hold on. Believe me I am for punishment and consequences. I offer actionable items all the time. No one wants to do anything. Everyone thinks someone else will do something.
Because we have gone too far down the road to hell. I think of the Republican Party of Morris County NJ. I see their smiling faces on the Facebook page as if nothing is wrong. I live in morris cty and was a GOP voter and ours is a prosperous county. These folks are ok with the worst man to be president ever and all the evil that is being done now.
Ok thx for replying. I'm starting to think our chances of keeping the country together under the Constitution are declining. I've given it 50/50 odds until recently. I'm not at 60/40 yet.
My wife ruminated occasionally on moving to New England in the past, just a vague happy notion, not political. Recently these ruminations are becoming more political reaction, something of a 'thing' now, but not quite a 'plan'. I said I'd do whatever she wanted to do.
There is no “recovery.” There is only reconciliation. Just as slavery, Japanese internment, the fire bombings, Vietnam, and so much more…there is no erasing them from our collective conscience and history. Only the chance for a decent nation to understand the sins of their past and resolve to be a better people. That is the cause which should drive us forward.
These are good points, and I agree with the premise. But as I mentioned yesterday in this space, when we speak of the Japanese experience during the World War II era, we engage in selective recognition and justice. Tens of thousands of German and Italian legal resident aliens, and their American-born offspring, also were arrested and interned during the time, often on dubious grounds and with little regard for the rights and freedoms that we take for granted. I realize that many people are unaware of this, so poorly has the teaching of this overall experience been handled in our nation. But that is all the more reason to bring light to it here, and elsewhere, as opportunity allows. There are still some of them who are alive among us and deserve to see that dark chapter of their lives formally acknowledged. Their story needs to be told. If not now, then when?
My Italian grandfather renounced his Italian citizenship and changed his name from Fortunato to Fred in early 1942,
Many families also stopped speaking Italian. It started earlier that WWII because of the prejudice against Italians (and others). My great grandmother, before she died would mix Italian and English. My grandparents understood some Italian but didn't speak it. My mom didn't speak it nor do my siblings and I.
Similar for me. My mother knew some Italian, but never spoke it. I am no linguist, but amazingly words and phrases of Italian have from time to time burst forth from me, gotten God knows how.
There is a weird and strange history of suppression of German culture in the US in the 20th century. Some of it seems to be anti-Catholicism, some anti-Socialism. I ran into a lot of it researching the French and Indian War in my neck of the woods. Western NY and Pennsylvania were basically settled by Germans, but you'd never guess that today.
I am very fortunate in that Rochester NY is open about our history, and I can access local history for free through the library system. Interestingly, during WW2, our Italian population was so large they basically liberated the local POW camp.
One resident recalls people coming to the encampment at Cobbs Hill with gift bundles for the internees: "They'd throw it up over the fence....It was like a picnic when they brought the food....It was like they were all relatives, you know. And they talked in Italian."
They felt very differently about the German POWs. Very, very differently.
I am very fortunate to live in Rochester, New York also. I’m a Boston native. But I absolutely love living here.
How cool! I'll probably see you around!
That would be so nice. Unfortunately, I’m housebound due to autoimmune in viral conditions. I live in Charlotte Square downtown and it’s wonderful, but my health is ridiculous. What’s fun to know someone else is from here!
I suspect it was due in part to the legacy of World War I as well and the anti-German hysteria of the time -- renaming streets and even foods, banning German language instruction, taking German-language books from the shelves of libraries, driving the German-American press underground, and so on, all in the name of defeating "the Huns" here and abroad and taking it to the Kaiser in absentia. All in all a very sad and unnecessarily divisive chapter in our nation's history.
What you say is true, though this is not as well covered generally. It's the same with the Holocaust. Most recognize it as genocide perpetrated against the Jews (and it certainly was), but it was also against the Roma people, Gays and Lesbians, disabled people, Pols, etc., etc. Is the only way to note these events correctly to list out every single name? I dunno.
Greg's comment was overall a good one. Reconciliation is the only, best way forward. I believe JVL covered this a bit a few weeks ago in a Triad talking about de-Ba'athification, IIRC.
Until recently, I believed we were, as a people, on the path of Reconciliation for our past. What I don't think folks were counting on, myself included, was how uncomfortable that path would be and they've recoiled against that discomfort...but the only way to it, is through it.
Yes, indeed they were, and you are correct that most Americans have little idea that other people besides Japanese Americans were interned.
Pieces of our past like this were not fully covered when I was a student learning history—but at least we studied history in both grade school and high school!
History, like the arts and music, has been jettisoned for STEM and teaching to the test. Yet despire all the emphasis on STEM we are seeing our nation crap on science and the people who devote their lives to learning and research and sharing that knowledge. It's maddening.
How did we get this willfully stupid? My parents and grandparents didn't go to college; my grandfather dropped out of school as a child to work in the mines as a breaker boy to support his family, and my father quit school his senior year to fight in World War II. Yet all of them respected learning and education; they read books and the newspaper, which came twice a day! They watched the news. They encouraged us to do well in school. My grandmother bought my brother subscriptions to Look, Life, and Time magazine, and they got Readers' Digest condensed books that I inhaled along with stacks borrowed from the library.
What the hell has happened to us? Many Americans don't have a clue as to the basics of our nation, whether it's the branches of government or what the Bill of Rights is and why it is so important. Nor do they care. But ask them about some arcane sports rule or the latest reality tv show gossip and they're all over it.
God help us.
THIS! They won't listen to anything about politics or history ("soooooo boring, ugh"), but are all in on the Housewives/Fiancee/Whatever Other Nonsense thing.
Bruh. Actually READ some history and you will realize that ain't no drama like what's in our nation's (and world's) past. So much popcorn, so much "NO WAY." "WAY!"
The history I learned, in the US midwest of the 60s, comports with the following summary from a query into ChatGPT. My query inquired as to the numbers and treatment of German and Italian nationals, and German or Italian citizens, arrested, detained and interned in the US during WWII. I will leave it to the reader/inquirer as to whether this constitutes "selective recognition." I also defer to Tim's earlier comment about the grievance culture in which we live.
ChatGPT conclusion:
While both German and Italian nationals residing in the U.S. faced arrest and internment under wartime policies, German nationals were interned in greater numbers than Italian nationals, and both were treated less harshly than Japanese Americans. American citizens of German or Italian descent were rarely interned, with a few exceptions based on perceived security risks. Racial and cultural perceptions, political calculations, and the size and integration of immigrant communities played major roles in these distinctions.
I should add that numbers were cited in both narrative and tabular form, but the reader can seek these on their own should they be interested or incited to riot.
This is not a bad summary, and essentially accurate, but the devil is in the details. For example, why were the last German internees released as late as June 1948 -- three years after the end of the war? There never has been a definitive response from the government to that. Then there is the problematic issue of Public Law 100-383 (1988), which afforded the Japanese-American community a formal apology and remaining survivors a $20,000 reparation payment for their wartime ordeal. The Germans and Italians were not included in that and have never received the formal acknowledgment that the federal government gave to the Japanese. None of this is meant to delegitimize that the Japanese were accorded the treatment, only to acknowledge the incomplete nature of it. None of the German former internees whom I interviewed said that they wanted a cash payment. They simply asked that the government put it on the official record that it happened to them too. It seems to be a very reasonable and fair request, one that as I recall only two U.S. senators (Ted Kennedy and Russ Feingold) were willing to get behind and push publicly. Sadly, it went nowhere, and so today few people know the story. It was a big missed opportunity to bring some needed closure to those people.
It looks to me like "what happened to them" was different in an important way. Japanese were interned due to their race, while Germans and Italians were interned on an individual basis for a reason. I can't say whether those reasons were good or bad ones, only that the latter cases were on an individual basis,
There is little doubt that racism played a factor at the time. And the Japanese experience was harsher for having American citizens interned as well, whereas German and Italians who were American citizens almost exclusively were interned on a voluntary basis (such as children who wanted or needed to be with their parents). But no matter what ethnicity or how many, it still was a hardship and, in most cases, a miscarriage of fundamental justice.
I've held back from bringing up the issue with regard to the current matter of migrant detention and deportation, and places like the Alligator Alcatraz, because the situations are not exactly the same. But they are similar enough in some ways to warrant a look back at history and to see how, to some extent, it is repeating itself now. We are outraged at how the nonviolent migrants now are being targeted and rounded up, and what it says about our government and our society. It is less about the numbers and more about the mindset and the process. I've been waiting for MAGA to say "it's just a few of them out of the millions of Hispanics who are here, so what's the big deal?". The big deal is that we are dealing with human lives, not pieces of property. We tend to look past the World War II era today, but how would most people here respond to that way of thinking now, about the current situation? I'm guessing there would be more anger and disgust.
The number of German Nationals (German Citizens) detained was 11K, or 1/10 the number of Japanese Americans (American Citizens) forcibly removed to internment camps. The number of German Americans detained was only a few hundred. The number of Italian Nationals + Italian American Citizens was likewise, just a few hundred. The FBI was watching German Nationals and Citizens who had professed Nazi sympathies. One suspects those held until 1948 may have been investigated for espionage or complicity in war crimes. I would need more than a few anecdotes from interviews to be convinced that German American citizens suffered harm during WWII.
It's neither my goal nor my responsibility to convince you. I simply present the evidence as it exists. You are free to draw your own conclusions about it. But if you'd like my credentials on the topic, for several decades, message me privately and I will give you information on my background that I do not wish to put into print here. It is more than just casual reading and learning, and I did not limit my research and findings to just "a few anecdotes." It was deemed scholarly sound by people in the know and in peer review. That should suffice.
I'll simply say here that while the 11,000 figure is close to accurate for internment, it does not take into account all of those who were targeted and arrested/detained at the local (not federal) level as well, as well as a subcategory of South American Germans who were expatriated and sent here and forcibly detained and interned, ostensibly to be traded for Americans caught behind enemy lines after war broke out between the nations. And the FBI's method of targeting individuals was not as simple as who professed Nazi sympathies (e.g. German-American Bund members). Look for the term ABC List from the era to see how they were categorized, with Bundists and others who were openly pro-Germany usually in the A group. It is a complicated narrative when evaluating the B and C categories and how many people there got called in, even for something as small as a German-language newspaper or magazine subscription, being a friend or family member of someone in the A group, or having a neighbor with whom they were not friendly seeking to do them harm. In a time of war, that sometimes was all it took when police and government/military authorities sometimes acted first and thought later, if at all.
I've never been sympathetic to the "it was just a few of them" argument (define few, precisely, and why that number) or comparison, as if it is were some sort of contest after the fact to see who had it worse. It's easy for us to judge from afar and with the benefit of time. The reality is that no matter what the number is, on any side, many good people lost jobs, lost homes and their personal possessions save for what could fit into a suitcase, were separated from family and friends, had their loyalties unnecessarily called into question, and had to pick up the pieces on their own after the war and try to get new jobs and reestablish their lives with the internment experience on their permanent record. How many wrongfully detained is too many? I say: one. That's all it takes to be a problem. One ... one hundred .. one thousand ... one million ... it was a human hardship that, in way too many cases, did not need to happen and should not have happened. That is my bottom line.
From what I've seen and heard, the vast majority of those detained until 1948 were targeted for deportation to Europe shortly after the war but the government dragged its feet on the matter, with more important fish to fry. Not spies and not war criminals. Mostly just people who got lost in a system that had little interest in dealing with them. I have copies of paperwork for a lot of these matters -- the Freedom of Information Act is our friend -- buried in boxes somewhere deep in the basement after years away from it. But the information is out there for anyone who seeks it and is willing to do the legwork.
Let me add, in looking back, that the initial thread began with the idea that there was no recovery, only reconciliation. One way of reconciliation, it would seem, would be one of my grandparents who claimed German ancestry until his decease in 1956 -- even as his father and mother were both born in Luxembourg. We gather that there were advantages for him in so claiming this in the Wisconsin of his era -- he certainly never claimed himself a victim.
What if 40% of the country wants nothing to do with reconciliation but instead wants to subjugate the other 60% ?
Then it shall be a very long struggle. I use the term “reconciliation” not in a “all is forgiven let’s get along” way. More of “accepting the truth as it is” and moving forward with eyes open.
I mean, as a Christian, I can get behind what you say. But then I think of the number of people who deny the truth about the Civil War and about the backlash to the Civil Rights movement. There may be no reconciliation.
This. Our fellow Americans have removed their hoods, and we can't un-see and un-hear and un-know. I want nothing more to do with these people, EVER, and would 1000% be in favor of splitting this baby tomorrow. UNTIE US FROM THESE CRUEL FOOLS. We haven't been actual United states in a very long time, maybe ever. Time to realize that our differences are irreconcilable. I'm willing to negotiate with (boycott TFO of) the red states on trade, but otherwise, f*ck 'em. Let's split the country, let everyone move to the red/blue states of their choice, then see who has the actual power. Most people don't want Gilead N*zi Germany, so let Red America wither and die.
I did just as you suggested. Last year I sold my Texas home and moved to a very blue state. I kept hoping that before I left, the Texas GOP would come through on its perpetual offer to hold a referendum on leaving the Union. I was hoping I could vote in favor before leaving the state.
I am not looking for reconcilliation with MAGA. The Democrat who gets my vote is the one who promises to be *my* retribution.
I am at the same place. I am having more and more trouble convincing myself that it is the wrong move at this point, too, even though the 'smart' people say splitting the country would be a disaster. I don't know anymore. I can't live with these people who want to subjugate me and create something akin to the Taliban in Afghanistan. CA, NY, Washington, VT, etc. should join Canada. Let people figure out where they want to go. I know it's crazy, but is it crazier than what is happening now?
That is how it feels. It’s such a foreign concept to me, to want to rule over someone else. Meanwhile the side that wants to legislate a better life for all is seen as losers, and empathy is now “weakness”.
I was 1000% done with these people when that smug Heritage POS Kevin Roberts uttered the words "the revolution will be bloodless...if the left allows it." Mmmkay, it's on. There will be no reconciliation EVER. These people are doing every cruel thing they can think of, and their fans are screaming their admiration and mocking people with empathy for being upset that people are needlessly suffering. K, consider me "owned." We are never, ever, EVER getting back together. I will boycott red state everything until the end of time.
A little bit of "shame, shame", à la Game of Thrones can not hurt.
Straight down Pennsylvania Avenue.
The whole problem is a lack of understanding of punishment or penalty. Since there has never been any punishment or penalty for Trump and other cronies, the behavior will continue. Even if Democrats win the behavior will continue. You have to punish people. No one gets that.
Yea. People here are forgetting that the rule of law also includes accountability and punishment. It also allows for reconciliation and reintegration into society, but only if there is accountability and acknowledgment of wrongdoing and commitment to changed behavior.
I have thought for some time that when prosecuting MAGA gangsters, they should offer them exceedingly generous deals--a slate totally wiped clean!--in exchange for thorough allocutions. I wonder how many would take it.
JVL has occasionally referenced a 'Truth and Reconciliation Commission'
Agreed. In part, things improved for a while after Watergate because some people actually went to jail.
Decades ago a quotation caught my eye that I still have in a file somewhere. It was something to the effect of: "A society cannot function if its members are not held accountable for their actions."
The next Democratic President won't be able to dodge the question of holding Trump accountable. If I were running, one of my principle promises would be to reinstate the Jack Smith investigation and revive the charges. If I won, I would not visit the White House nor permit Trump to attend the inauguration. There would be no kumbaya or "hey, sorry about all that stuff I said during the campaign, nothing personal you know, just politics". I would treat him like the enemy scum he is.
Where is the Democrat saying: 'All the crimes you are committing now will be punished. All the corruption. All the ethics violations. All the shakedowns. Pardons will not save you. The Supreme Court will not save you. We have over 1200 whistleblowers reporting your activities to us. We have contemporaneous notes taken to prosecute you. You are warned.'
Instead it's 'kitchen table bla bla'
I hate the kitchen table bullshit . . . Democracy and rule of law is table stakes for our economy. It's not hard to understand either.
Punishing others goes along with wanting to rule others. Viewed through history it seems an obvious and regular human failing. That our system at least purported to be different was a very thin facade. I feel so naive; I thought it was a sincerely held goal, that we wanted to lift all boats.
Punishment is a normal thing. Without any penalties the bad behavior continues. See parents with no rules.
It's holding people accountable for their actions.
I guess I got off on a tangent of MAGA-style punishment, when it’s unevenly applied, and heavily laden with cruelty. These people love punishment for its own sake. They are more than a little sadistic.
Maybe I prefer the word “consequences”.
Bingo!
Seeing the Carville quote above reminded me of my own version for the last ~8 years, "It's the voters, stupid." The sad irony is that, had any Never-Trump politician committed half of what Trump has been convicted or indicted for, Trump voters would demand he be put in jail for life. The double-standard is beyond outrageous. Sure, many Never-Trump voters have their own double-standards, but in MAGA world it's off the charts. 8 years ago I started using the word "cult" in jest, but in the last 4 years we can all use it in the literal sense.
Not according to Damon Linker.
People like Andry are frankly too good for this country.
Is it possible to have negative patriotism? Because that's what I feel after reading Tim's article. Mark Twain said, "Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it."
But my country chose this government. They cheer it's cruelty. They buy and wear apparel celebrating Alligator Alcatraz, which is one hurricane or wildfire away from being a mass murder crime scene.
I haven't listened to the interview with Andry yet. I'm not in the right head space for that.
Totally agree.
I think of the outrage machine on the right and I'm like, how do people like that have that much energy to care about (insert stupid things that don't impact your life here)? How sad and depressed are you? Go get some antidepressants and run around a park or something.
No wonder we have nanny state rules that require teachers to out kids... These people are so stupidly angry their kids don't want to talk to them.
I often have those same thoughts. Like, don't you have a life? Who has time to sit around shitposting, making stuff up, being grievance-filled from morning until night? Not people who have a life. And I mean a real life, not a fake Twitter life.
Fox has really seduced viewers into believing they are the hero of the story. It is only up to them. It's very seductive for some folk.
I think for some older people, they can't do much. They can't travel to see family, they can't focus on reading long novels anymore, they can't do close work like sewing anymore, and gardening almost kills them. In my grandparents' time, people in their 80s turned to religion to while away the hours. My parents pooh-poohed that and turned to FOX. Many such cases, as they say.
I don't know why younger people turn to this, but I don't think they will for much longer. Time will tell.
It is moving to read the story of Andry and his empathy and compassion for others. But it will be lost upon the people who most need to hear it, because they are not listening. Their minds are made up that these immigrants who flee from dire circumstances are bad people. They have no right to seek the freedoms and opportunities that we take for granted, even if they have to resort to illegal measures to attain them, because, hey, the law, and the process, and (probably) the skin color.
Their beliefs aside, I often wonder how many of those self-proclaimed patriots have even the remotest of ideas what it is like to grow up and live in true hardship and repression, that what Andry and others are doing is a human act of desperation, not a foreign one. What would they do if it were them in the same situation? Do they realize how hard it is to leave everything and everybody behind from your entire life in seeking safe harbor elsewhere? Do they not feel the same survival instincts for themselves, and the same protective urges for their children? Have they ever lived with the fear that one day someone will come for them and take them away without any ability to even say goodbye to loved ones, maybe feed and arrange care for their pets, and safeguard what little of value they may own?
Likely the answer is "no" to all of the above. And that will not change as long as they have a protector in the White House who both enables and encourages the lack of empathy and understanding. He has successfully made it They against We, and We must fight to prevent They from ruining our lives, so black-and-white, coldly and extremely, is the issue being handled. Supporters ask no questions as human lives, of often good people, increasingly become mere statistics -- how many rounded up, how many deported, how many are in the quota. It remains incomprehensible to me how so many of these Americans among us will volunteer time, labor, and money at a moment's notice when their friends and neighbors are in need, and when natural disasters occur, but that spirit of cooperation and friendly assistance turns to stone cold anger and indifference when those others are of a different national background and moved to flee by desperate circumstances, and holding presumed different political beliefs -- egged on by someone who may well go down in history as the worst American ever. There are many good Americans out there, of all types and political persuasions. But maybe, possibly, perhaps as a whole we are not as good of Americans as we think we are. Or used to be. Or could be. Or should be. We can learn to be better. The willingness to do so is another matter altogether.
I find Andry's attitude remarkable given what has happened to him. I remember many years ago Jeb Bush said immigrants come here out of love. Love for their families, love for their new country to which they are fleeing to.
In our enormous country, it is problematic to generalize news about skin color. Obviously, we have extreme bigots in our government. Here in eastern Massachusetts, the majority of people appear to see other people for who they are not how tanned they are. We live in a CCRC, a senior community of 500 people of whom 400 live in independent apartments. We appreciate we are fortunate to grow older in a healthy way. Still, you would be amazed how many of the people here are actively working to bring back our democracy and moderate climate change. By writing postcards, emails, making calls and even appearing at activist sites, these great friends from 75 to 100yrs are making a difference.
I'm not surprised to hear this at all.
Older people remember what America once was and what it should be. They remember their parents enduring the Great Depression, World War II, Korea, and for their own generation, Vietnam. They remember Ike, and JFK, and MLK and all of the social change that happened from the end of the 50s onward. They remember both the good and bad: the assassinations, the Moon landing, the 72 Olympics, highjackings, Watergate, Patty Hearst, Reagan, Iran Contra, Challenger, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Gulf War, Ruby Ridge, Waco, OKC, the blue dress, Ken Starr, the Brooks Brothers Riot, 9/11, Afghanistan, and the Iraq War, computers, Steve Jobs, smartphones. They have witnessed and experienced so much. And they want future generations to enjoy the same rights and opportunities they had.
I'm tired of the ageism and younger people blaming Baby Boomers (I am at the very tail end) for all the world's problems.
Thank you for sharing.
Yeah, I don't like to generalize generations too much. I'm older Gen X and did not fail to notice that half the people at the last protest were older than I am.
It doesn’t take much to trigger the tribal instincts. I think sports is a method of trying to tame that instinct into a harmless outlet. But the urge lurks just beneath the surface, apparently.
Unfortunately instead of sports taming that instinct, they just turned politics into a team sport. They're so intent on "owning the Libs" and "winning", they don't give a crap abut the destruction to our country.
Yes, I agree. Politics has morphed into sport and entertainment - which is saying the same thing. I long for the days when politics and governance was boring, and not revenge blood sport.
Amen to that!
"This avalanche of trauma was piled onto him because the luckiest people in the history of the world were convinced that the immigrant down the street might eat their cat."
We can't have a first-rate country with third-rate citizens.
Assuming your conclusion is accurate, what is the solution to the problem? Settle for a third rate country? Try to motivate the third-raters to move up a notice to second place? Or, the nuclear option, get rid of the third-raters ... somehow?
Unfortunately it seems too many people like to be third rate. They want someone else to do their thinking for them and someone to tell them who to blame for their problems. That's what happens when the GOP defunds public education. The magat party wants to make it worse. Is there such a thing as fourth rate?
Sure, look at the Cabinet. One or two probably rise to that level.
LOL You think any rise that far, huh?
Well, I did qualify that thought with "probably"....😏
If we knew the solution . . . I find myself almost stunned by the swiftness and extremity of it all. I’m in a defensive crouch, without a plan to fix it that doesn’t involve money I don’t have (referring to endless requests for donations). Sarah said recently in a podcast that her focus group member expressed “uncertainty” as being their overwhelming burden. It’s not just business entities that hate uncertainty.
OK, but there are only two certainties and one is taxation.
Understanding your concern, part of the plan was to overwhelm the defenses by attacking on all fronts simultaneously, creating a deer in the headlights reaction. At least that seems to have been part of Project 2025. I can not believe that the Felon would have come up with that idea on his own.
Regardless, an old military axiom is appropriate: Any action, even if ultimately wrong, is better than inaction. There have to be others in your area who see the situation as you do. You need to find them and band together to plan whatever kinds of guerilla-type actions (or out in the open) you can think of to show your resistence.
Yes, I agree with all that. We have a vacuum of leadership on our side. It’s odd, because as you say, this strategy was laid out for all to see in Project 2025, and still we are stunned, without a coherent plan. I attend every protest. I have changed my donation patterns away from political campaigns (I can’t compete with the big donors) and instead I’m focusing on my local community needs that have intensified because of Project 2025; public broadcasting, food bank, and the Q community.
😊👍🍀🥂
David, that's a great question. I never thought that the US would end up lost in this particular wilderness, but here we are. I'm not sure of the way out, but the first step in solving a problem is to understand its nature. And the problem is not really Donald Trump or the cowardly and morally decrepit Republicans in Congress. It's the citizens who voted for them. And no amount of tinkering with the system will protect us from voters who don't know any better.
I grew up in a small city in the heart of rural Maga America. A few years ago, I went back for a class reunion. While a few of us had left, most of my classmates had never gone anywhere, even briefly. Many had started working for small local businesses in high school. Several decades later, they were still working at mind-numbing, soul-crushing jobs. You might wonder what they are curious about. Have you ever had a conversation with someone, and you think they are making jokes about Bigfoot; and then you suddenly realize they are true believers? It's disorienting.
The challenges they face are real. We have always had haves and have-nots. Over my lifetime, there has been a systematic shift in wealth from a growing number of have-nots to the smaller in number but much wealthier haves. Those left behind feel what is happening, but they truly have no idea why. We are dealing with widespread generational ignorance. When someone tells them the reason their lives are hard is because of "those people" (immigrants, gays, socialists, Muslims, minorities, academics, Jews, libs), they believe it. They are angry, and they are fine with hurting the people they think have screwed up their lives. Someone who believes Bigfoot is an actual hairy beast hanging out in the forest isn't going to waste energy questioning the narrative.
Maybe the answer is a Democratic party advocating policies that help most people. But I don't know how they penetrate the Maga information bubble. The people they are trying to reach just won't listen. I'm not sure they are even capable of listening. A better political answer is to give an alternate reason for their lives being hard: that corporate America has bought off politicians to do things that help them instead of their constituents. It has the benefit of being true, but it doesn't help that Democrats have been in on the grift. (I know it's not equivalent. Trump takes millions of dollars in cash, while Democrats mostly have taken traditional, legal payoffs in campaign contributions. But still.)
For many of us, the answer will be personal. I see you had an exit strategy and have acted on it. My children and grandchildren all have their passports. I no longer have the energy for that, and I am along for the ride.
James, another bubble busted: I have lived overseas since Peanut challenged Pea Brain, and won. My current strategy, as it has been for years, is to stay here, with my "socialized medicine" that does not cost an arm and a leg for an MRI + a C-scan because they are already paid for over the years of not unreasonable insurance premium fees.
It's amazing how Republicans have demonized "socialized medicine" as something evil. Socialized medicine is just like our medicine, except it's better and cheaper. We can't have that!
Perhaps it is because American "Conservatives" need an enemy in some form against whom to "conserve" their own power. Call it communism, fascism (although that has returned as the "ism" of choice to emulate), socialism, "wokism", anything to focus the rubes against. Even Ds succumb to needing an opponent to be against rather than something to be for, which seldom works, as 2024 showed us.
Try to motivate the third-raters to move up a notch is the most morally satisfying solution. Don't ask me how, because I have no idea. Probably something to do with making good values cool and fun? Send some well-spoken Democrats on Joe Rogan's show?
Good question. Motivating them depends on what percentage of the country is third-rate. I went into the 2024 election believing it was a minority because political psychologist Karen Stenner, who studies the authoritarian disposition, claims it is about a third of any society. The election results told me it was much more than a third. If it's indeed half, motivating them won't work because we first-raters can't get control of the federal government.
So it's either settle or war, a civil war. I don't think the first-rate voting Americans have the stomach for that.
Well put.
Thanks.
I truly appreciate the interview with Andry. Every day I struggle with not letting myself fall into a pool of red hot hatred for all of the people who have brought this country to the place we are at. I keep telling myself ‘I will not let them make me be just like them’ since I will always believe that the deciding factor for Trump being president now is hatred. Some days are easier than others and yesterday was a very horrible day. Watching Andry this morning really highlighted how important it is not to give in to hate. I am in awe of how he has come through his ordeal. I hope we hear more from him going forward.
Ah, you just hit on something I was noticing about my own feelings of red hot hatred. My better angels are in hiding. But then how am I not just like MAGAs? I would claim that my hatred is based on their genuine immorality and evil acts, whereas their hatred is based on superficial traits like skin color and gender. All the past leaders of the light, have stressed nonviolence in the face of actual violence. As many before me have learned, it’s crushingly difficult to live up to.
Well said!
Well put, JF. I also referenced our better angels just now (https://open.substack.com/pub/thebulwark/p/can-we-ever-repair-this-moral-rot-andry-romero-salvador-cecot-venezuela-deportation?r=1dlvn&utm_campaign=comment-list-share-cta&utm_medium=web&comments=true&commentId=143495981).
Agree about the superiority of nonviolence as a means for social change. (See some research on this here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2452292924000365#:~:text=This%20comparative%20analysis%20reveals%20that,respecting%2C%20accountable%20directions%20than%20violent.)
On yesterday's pod with Tim, where Anne Applebaum relayed the result of Trump's demolishing USAID, she noted the good people of Sudan whose leaders are engaged in a civil war: "The Sudanese have begun to organize themselves. There's a movement called the emergency response movement and they create soup kitchens and raise money to help feed people. And so, you know, when everything disappeared, when the whole infrastructure fell apart and the government disappears and there's no international groups there, what you do still find are these local organizations."
These, of course, are the better angels of our nature. They are an outlier in any society. The average person's fear can be exploited by the demagogues leading the war. But those better angels are there. We need to hear more about them. That will keep us from giving in to hate, I think.
So, thanks to Tim for telling us about Andry. It would be great if you had one pod a week that highlighted the better angels in the US.
I’m just concerned that our culture will normalize this abuse of our people.
Most white people in the middle of the country, especially those who hardly know any immigrants and no people of color, believe they are part of the protected class. after all, they have been discriminated against since 1964.
Thank you for this information. Honestly, I didn’t know this and would bet that many North easterners don’t either.
A legitimate concern. It's already happening. I think life is too good for most Americans to be bothered with civic norms. They used to matter. But the participation in face-to-face community groups, where behavioral norms matter, has been in decline for decades. The anonymity of social media has destroyed civic norms.
You are right. It’s exasperating that these people don’t realize how good they have it and how much those norms have shielded them from the kind of corruption and abuse people in third world countries face. Their perception of reality is completely warped by spending more time in an online bubble of disinformation than in real life. That leads them to be in a constant state of rage and panic over non-issues, even when their own lives are peaceful and prosperous. I don’t know how to even begin fixing this.
All well put, Lily. There are efforts to bring people together. See braverangels.com. I’ve been a member for a few years and I also volunteer for them. Good group, good people, both reds and blues.
That ship has sailed.
The only thing that is consistent through the Trump administration is lying and cruelty. Those two things you can absolutely count on, everything else is negotiable.
We must play the hand we have and not dissolve into self pity. That, after all is what His Orange Malignancy and the MAGATs have done. And that has led to cruelty, greed, and self righteousness, characteristics that are a stain on humanity. If the last 100 years have taught anything it is that humanity’s well of behavior is filled with an endless supply of horrors, and generosity, but not in equal measures.
I still find it amazing that five people, Trump, Netanyahu, Putin, The Ayatollah, and Xi, can destroy the lives of billions of people and most of the people watch helplessly and wonder how did this happen?.
The world is at the mercy of a handful of mentally ill men.
They can only do their evil because enough people cooperate with them.
It is not just those men, it is all the people doing their bidding who are equally responsible. Those cooperators add up to billions.
It’s the “Me Me Me” Century. Until people experience pain themselves they are unlikely to extend themselves to fight the cause. That is why we believe we all need whatever religion we can get. Otherwise we can look back to the Middle Ages for the basic Virtues.
How about basic empathy, caring , and cooperation?
Yes. Compassion, Justice, Fortitude, Hope, Kindness….
At a diner typing this on a phone. When an amoral electorate elects an immoral man,these are the kinds of things that happen. The stain will endure long after I’m dead. And there is no fucking way I will forgive the 77 million of us that allowed this to happen.
Trump apologists claim that their purposes are highly moral, and that the righteousness and urgency of their cause -- to "save Western civilization" & "preserve Christianity" & "restore American culture" & "defend natural law" etc. -- require an expedient ranking of which virtues truly matter and who should be expected to honor them.
But any agenda that makes Donald Trump its central hero and public face cannot be a fundamentally moral one.
The Christians who support him have forgiven him for being an imperfect vessel and the smart ones, from McConnell to Vought to Miller see him as their perfect vessel to get what they want: For McConnell, it was tax cuts, RW judges, and limiting Dem power; for Miller it's creating an all white America, and for Vought it's about establishing a Christian religious state.
"They held the meeting anyway, but at the White House rather than at the VP’s residence."
Not a surprise, Trump got wind of it and demanded that they involve him...sooooo, we can most assuredly say, the actions resulting from the meeting are 100% at Trump's direction, thus he owns it all.
And we can also most assuredly say that those actions will be corrupt and horrifying.
Hundo-P
My first reaction when reading this about Andry was, "If he went on national TV and expressed these feelings, it would have to change minds." However, I think he would just be drowned out by the malice and ridicule from the MAGATs. How can his story not change your mind about what this administration is doing? So I guess my ultimate answer to the title is NOT ANYTIME SOON.
But he isn't on national TV, and that is a choice made by rich people to purposely look away and pretend they aren't responsible for this. We have to understand that we aren't going to see real stories about concentration camps on CBS and NBC.
Frankly, it just makes me admire people like Tim Miller more.
It might change some minds. Not all, but the Stephen Miller type immigration policies and treatment of people is not popular. If such stories started becoming routine it could make a difference along the margins and that’s a start.
Agree.
I’m cynical enough to think that Andry telling his story more publicly would elicit a joyful response from MAGAs. Our once-shared humanity is drifting away, and it’s hard to fully comprehend that.
Tim, your reflection on Andry was beautiful. Andry is a remarkable person and you did a great job sharing that with us. Thank you. The video is an emotional thing to watch too.
Thank you, Tim, for writing about Andry. I wasn't expecting to tear up first thing this morning, but I did. Our so-called "leaders" could learn a lot from him. If only they would listen.
Our leaders have a learning disorder.
Re the question, can we repair the moral rot? No.
We could. But no one wants to because it is too hard. Punishing people requires toughness and diligence. We just don't have it.
I keep saying that the toughest task for the next president will be restoration of what this country once had.
An example was the attempt at a consumer boycott at the end of February. Sounded good, until the organizers started a list of carve-outs, so as not to punish our own, or the innocent. And voilá; a valuable tool was defanged.
Agree, Joe. It's more of the decadence JVL wrote about a lot before the election.
It's odd. I was listening to JVL and Sarah one time. And they had a segment at the end about Survivor. And how Sarah might survive on Survivor. Now, it's not a show that I ever watched. But I thought 'you know, Survivor is one of the first reality shows, and it is the genesis of The Apprentice' and here we are. So even JVL and Sarah are not quite understanding the cultural move there.
that's bleak... I have to believe we can, or else, what?
Yes ir is bleak. But I read Facebook posts from Tom Kean Jr whose district next to Mikie Sherrills. I have been in both districts depending upon the census.
Tom Jr is a decent person - or was. Son of a wealthy family. Father was a well regarded governor. But he votes with the GOP for all this shit. In NJ surely he could show some independence. But nope.
I do believe that algorithmic social media content (as much as it is helping the Bulwark on Youtube) is responsible for a lot of the moral rot. When you talk to the worst trolls from your social media feed in person, offline, they aren't normally face-to-face political arsonists (mostly). But online, social media companies boost controversial and confrontational content because it drives engagement and keeps people on the platform. People get the dopamine hit from the likes and reactions they get, so they make more of that content. And then it's turtle-trolls all the way down.
Facebook in particular is a business model of pot stirring to sell ads.
Just last night I was into a relevant conversation about the rearing of children, until of course it took a left turn into 'identifying as cats now'. I immediately tried to tell the guy it was an urban legend and to just stop. A lawyer next to me kind of sheepishly smiled. But the guy didn't even hear me. Like what I said was just something from a million miles away. Didn't break through.
Not entirely sure he knew what 'urban legend' meant, which is worrying.
All well said. Especially turtle-trolls all the way down.
I used to believe that we could repair the rot. Then I tried engaging with a MAGA family member about the Hegseth Signal fiasco and he didn't believe anything from the Atlantic. It wasn't until I sent him a link to a Fox News article saying that the Atlantic article was real that he acknowledged that anything happened but then rationalized how it wasn't that bad.
He believes that not having legal status as an immigrant is worse than being a school shooter since the latter will not be thrown into a foreign gulag.
I know there is talk of 30% of voters being full on MAGA indoctrinated that will never waver in their support. If I cannot talk any sense into a family member I have no hope at convincing Cletus that democracy is at risk or global warming is real or immigrants should not be treated worse than mass murderers and on and on.
As for the question of what to do about repairing the moral rot... I don't know. The Churchill quote of "jaw-jaw is better than war-war." The jaw-jaw doesn't seem to be working and I hope that someone smarter than I can figure out a different alternative.
As doctors sometimes say: 'Tincture of Time'
We can ride it out. A lot of dummies will die. Hopefully fewer dummies replace them.
We can ride it out? Well then, be prepared for when someone steals your car or rapes your daughter that you'll have to bribe somebody to investigate and prosecute. That's the difference between a liberal democracy that runs on the rule of law and an autocracy that runs on corruption. And all autocracies run on corruption. To paraphrase James Carville - I don't mean to insult you - it's the money, stupid.
If you're well-to-do, then no problem. You can buy all the protection you need. Like the Apple CEO did Wednesday (https://reason.com/2025/08/08/apple-ceo-tim-cook-has-learned-the-rules-for-getting-ahead-in-trumps-america/). But if you're poor, then no justice for you.
Perhaps it was clunky. Not 'we can ride it out' but 'maybe it will burn itself out' if we just hold on. Believe me I am for punishment and consequences. I offer actionable items all the time. No one wants to do anything. Everyone thinks someone else will do something.
Because . . . ?
Because we have gone too far down the road to hell. I think of the Republican Party of Morris County NJ. I see their smiling faces on the Facebook page as if nothing is wrong. I live in morris cty and was a GOP voter and ours is a prosperous county. These folks are ok with the worst man to be president ever and all the evil that is being done now.
Ok thx for replying. I'm starting to think our chances of keeping the country together under the Constitution are declining. I've given it 50/50 odds until recently. I'm not at 60/40 yet.
My wife ruminated occasionally on moving to New England in the past, just a vague happy notion, not political. Recently these ruminations are becoming more political reaction, something of a 'thing' now, but not quite a 'plan'. I said I'd do whatever she wanted to do.
No red states there!